A diagnosis is very important because almost all mental/personality/executive functioning disorders share similar symptoms (anxiety, depression, etc.), but require different approaches for treatment.
It’s very possible for someone to be diagnosed with ADHD and depression when really they’re bipolar 2, and common depression medications (SSRIs) can have extremely adverse reactions with bipolar disorder.
It’s also super common for women to not be diagnosed with autism, but instead be given a laundry list of other diagnoses instead.
A proper diagnosis is imperative to getting the right treatment, whether that’s meds, therapy, or self help.
The process of diagnosis when it involves actual testing is legitimate. Which does include ADHD. Provided your comfortable gatekeeping it behind only people who can pay hundreds of dollars for neuropsyche testing.
But the process where it concerns anxiety, depression and bipolar? It’s not. These do not have any biomarkers in diagnosis, and psychiatrists are not actually experts at identifying this stuff by asking a handful of questions for 15 minutes. Their years of training doesn’t make them have some magical ability to identify a soup of random incoherent symptoms accurately, and they are not significantly more accurate than moderately well informed patients at identifying themselves. That’s why people are so commonly misdiagnosed. It’s literally just the person’s opinion. And you shop around for the right opinion. Then they actually diagnosis you with whatever is required to get the insurance to pay for the medicine. That’s what diagnosis actually is. It’s a paper to have insurance pay for medical care. And it is not science.
Some books on the subject if you want more authoritative sourcing:
I think we mostly agree, given you acknowledge misdiagnosis is rampant within psychiatry. Is it rather that you see the DSM itself as legitimate, and doctor are just misunderstanding it which causes misdiagnosis?
“Stuff”, “handful”, “15 minutes” are a classic manipulation of the facts to insinuate validity of your point, and not a very clever attempt at it, either. Citing texts that completely refute your malformed stab at an educated point do not help your stance, and in fact just further reveal you as willfully talking out of your ass.
Folk. I don’t think I’m some clever smarty-pants and I don’t understand why I’m being talked to like I’m shitting on your mother’s corpse.
I also don’t understand how citing books that agree with and informed my position is evidence I’m making shit up. You seem determined to read me as a evil stupid troll.
I understand there’s no point in arguing with people hostile to you. But I genuinely do not understand. This is not me trolling or trying to bait or trick you.
Medical gatekeeping through diagnosis has a long history that you clearly are sympathetic to with your early acknowledgement of how institutionally these experts somehow keep misdiagnosing things. And I’m sure you’re also fully aware how entire medical diagnosis have been invented and uninvented for the purpose of persecution such as for hysterical women and blacks who ran away from slavery. I would argue we see that even today with how gender dysphoria diagnosis criteria has been used to gatekeep trans healthcare. This is not me being bad faith, and if you want me to dive deeper into this I can because it’s a huge topic.
I understand if you think psyches are doing good shit by being on demand well informed people to help people understand themselves. I agree with you!
But most diagnosis really is 15 minutes of questions that’s not a bad faith exaggeration. That’s literally what it is. And then they give their opinion. And it is an opinion. Different equally qualified person will give an entirely different opinion
I don’t know how to convince you I’m not some bad faith troll, and if that’s really what you think I am you would should stop replying. What I am is someone who has seen how the medical diagnosis model abuses people. Tells them, especially women, that they don’t know their own minds and experiences, and how it gatekeeps the poor who don’t get the luxury to shop around until some doctor tells them what they needed to hear.
I don’t think doctors should be ignored. But diagnosis is a deeply flawed system. It’s neither accessible nor proven more accurate than the alternatives. It can do good, and it does do good. But revering it as if it is a hard science is absurd. It’s not like getting a CAT scan for medical diagnosis. It is genuinely, just someone’s opinion which they write so insurance will pay for treatment. And it doesn’t claim to be more than that!
So why should someone who can’t afford it, will be abused and ignored by such a system be required to be legitimized by it? Why do they need that to get the care they need? Why should people have to do that when their symptoms are self evident? So you really think the risk of letting people know themselves based off an informed consent system, is worse than the reality of medical gatekeeping? Do you really think it’s killing fewer people than the alternative? What if they live somewhere where they isn’t an option? What if their family refuses to have them seen? Why add these barriers?
Why aren’t they allowed to be legitimate? Why aren’t they allowed to get care?
Do you actually have any evidence that gatekeeping mental illness behind diagnosis does more good than the harm?
That’s a really stupid take.
A diagnosis is very important because almost all mental/personality/executive functioning disorders share similar symptoms (anxiety, depression, etc.), but require different approaches for treatment.
It’s very possible for someone to be diagnosed with ADHD and depression when really they’re bipolar 2, and common depression medications (SSRIs) can have extremely adverse reactions with bipolar disorder.
It’s also super common for women to not be diagnosed with autism, but instead be given a laundry list of other diagnoses instead.
A proper diagnosis is imperative to getting the right treatment, whether that’s meds, therapy, or self help.
The process of diagnosis when it involves actual testing is legitimate. Which does include ADHD. Provided your comfortable gatekeeping it behind only people who can pay hundreds of dollars for neuropsyche testing.
But the process where it concerns anxiety, depression and bipolar? It’s not. These do not have any biomarkers in diagnosis, and psychiatrists are not actually experts at identifying this stuff by asking a handful of questions for 15 minutes. Their years of training doesn’t make them have some magical ability to identify a soup of random incoherent symptoms accurately, and they are not significantly more accurate than moderately well informed patients at identifying themselves. That’s why people are so commonly misdiagnosed. It’s literally just the person’s opinion. And you shop around for the right opinion. Then they actually diagnosis you with whatever is required to get the insurance to pay for the medicine. That’s what diagnosis actually is. It’s a paper to have insurance pay for medical care. And it is not science.
Some books on the subject if you want more authoritative sourcing:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4817669/
https://www.bps.org.uk/member-networks/division-clinical-psychology/power-threat-meaning-framework
I think we mostly agree, given you acknowledge misdiagnosis is rampant within psychiatry. Is it rather that you see the DSM itself as legitimate, and doctor are just misunderstanding it which causes misdiagnosis?
“Stuff”, “handful”, “15 minutes” are a classic manipulation of the facts to insinuate validity of your point, and not a very clever attempt at it, either. Citing texts that completely refute your malformed stab at an educated point do not help your stance, and in fact just further reveal you as willfully talking out of your ass.
Folk. I don’t think I’m some clever smarty-pants and I don’t understand why I’m being talked to like I’m shitting on your mother’s corpse.
I also don’t understand how citing books that agree with and informed my position is evidence I’m making shit up. You seem determined to read me as a evil stupid troll.
I understand there’s no point in arguing with people hostile to you. But I genuinely do not understand. This is not me trolling or trying to bait or trick you.
Medical gatekeeping through diagnosis has a long history that you clearly are sympathetic to with your early acknowledgement of how institutionally these experts somehow keep misdiagnosing things. And I’m sure you’re also fully aware how entire medical diagnosis have been invented and uninvented for the purpose of persecution such as for hysterical women and blacks who ran away from slavery. I would argue we see that even today with how gender dysphoria diagnosis criteria has been used to gatekeep trans healthcare. This is not me being bad faith, and if you want me to dive deeper into this I can because it’s a huge topic.
I understand if you think psyches are doing good shit by being on demand well informed people to help people understand themselves. I agree with you!
But most diagnosis really is 15 minutes of questions that’s not a bad faith exaggeration. That’s literally what it is. And then they give their opinion. And it is an opinion. Different equally qualified person will give an entirely different opinion
I don’t know how to convince you I’m not some bad faith troll, and if that’s really what you think I am you would should stop replying. What I am is someone who has seen how the medical diagnosis model abuses people. Tells them, especially women, that they don’t know their own minds and experiences, and how it gatekeeps the poor who don’t get the luxury to shop around until some doctor tells them what they needed to hear.
I don’t think doctors should be ignored. But diagnosis is a deeply flawed system. It’s neither accessible nor proven more accurate than the alternatives. It can do good, and it does do good. But revering it as if it is a hard science is absurd. It’s not like getting a CAT scan for medical diagnosis. It is genuinely, just someone’s opinion which they write so insurance will pay for treatment. And it doesn’t claim to be more than that!
So why should someone who can’t afford it, will be abused and ignored by such a system be required to be legitimized by it? Why do they need that to get the care they need? Why should people have to do that when their symptoms are self evident? So you really think the risk of letting people know themselves based off an informed consent system, is worse than the reality of medical gatekeeping? Do you really think it’s killing fewer people than the alternative? What if they live somewhere where they isn’t an option? What if their family refuses to have them seen? Why add these barriers?
Why aren’t they allowed to be legitimate? Why aren’t they allowed to get care?
Do you actually have any evidence that gatekeeping mental illness behind diagnosis does more good than the harm?