Diagnosis without training is just idle speculation, even though the average person with ordinary intelligence can see superficial parallels in someone's behavior and what he reads in DSM. An actual diagnosis is neither within our expertise here nor necessary to address the claims.
Quite. And, indeed, if we are wrong, we can get into our own legal trouble.
Even we practitioners of "hard" sciences who mock the often fluid science of psychology, after seeing the mental health diagnostic procedures at work, realize that a psychiatrist or psychologist would no more diagnose a patient without the battery of standardized tests and interviews than we would modify a structural design without looking at the strain gauges and LS-DYNA output. That said, I've had a bit of experience -- enough to know that those who have diagnosable illnesses won't necessarily seem that way. Ironically, I've observed that people I know who were later diagnosed and treated for paranoid schizophrenia (yeah, one of the "biggies") seemed quite coherent and believable when they talked about their perceptions. This is what you get when someone legitimately detaches from reality and speaks from what he or she truly believes.
Delusions are a terrifying thing. I have a dear friend whom I believe to have had a couple of psychotic breaks, and both times, there was delusion involved. The agonizing thing is how hard it is proving to get him the help he so desperately needs.
Nor do I. I think some are just out to have a lark. Note how Patrick backed away from his impersonation after I warned him he may be in violation of California law and that I intended to do something about it. His behavior is consistent not with someone who is somehow compelled or constrained to behave that way by some infirmity, but rather with someone who is consciously walking as close to the line of impropriety as possible, and has to occasionally step back into safe territory.
Yeah, no matter what else you can say about him, it's obvious that he knows exactly what he's doing. This is funny to him. I think we can agree that he's a jerk, but if that were a mental health problem, the system would be even more overloaded than it already is.
I guarantee every person you've ever met exhibits something that the DSM could get its teeth into. The question is not whether people exhibit a variety of observable, categorizable, and (if necessary) diagnosable behavior. The question is whether anything needs to be done.
Graham is taking abnormal psych this quarter (as a favour to me, of course!), and the warning everyone has given him is that it leaves people prone to self-diagnosis. This is because, except for hallucinations and similar, the vast majority of mental illness is what I've taken to referring to as "normal behaviour turned up to eleven." Everyone is sad for no reason sometimes; when it becomes clinical is when it starts having a negative impact on the rest of your life. Everyone has irrational mood swings sometimes. And, yes, everyone believes at least one or two things without evidence. It's all part of the human condition until it starts being a serious problem.
I'm sorry this affects you that way. As in the rest of life, apparently the people who need help and attention are often drowned out by clowns.
All too often, yes. I do feel sorry for some of the conspiracists; I do believe that some of them aren't getting the help they actually need. However, that is not true of all of them. Some of them just need to be put in their place--and some legitimately can be educated. And some know exactly what they're doing and are in it for some ulterior motive, like fun at others' expense or a buck.
