I appreciated your cautionary question near the end because it seems to me that we can do better than just return to the old responses of “man up” and “you need to toughen up sweetie”. One approach might be to teach young folks (and ourselves) how to live a philosophy of resilience with modern Stoicism being one very promising model. Instead of a reactive approach to mental illness (which can activate a counterproductive process of auto-suggestion) we take a proactive approach of providing tools and habits of thinking that anyone can benefit from in an uncertain, hard and often cruel world.
I thought this quote also made an important point that can be applied to governments: “Firms may prefer to label stress a disorder rather than deal with the consequences of acknowledging that working conditions are poor…” Perhaps medicalization of stressors is one response to governments that refuse to take a more active role in creating a higher quality of life for those being left behind.
governments that refuse to take a more active role in creating a higher quality of life..."
Yet, there is the paradoxical rebound that suggests that the higher a person's quality of the lesser their resilience quotient. Increased comfort also leads to increased sensitivity to stressors. It is a catch-22!
So the idea is that mental illnesses are over-diagnosed - a claim that many people love to make. This would mean that many people are diagnosed with mental illness than they should be, presumably because some people receive a diagnosis even though they do not have that mental illness.
But we can only say there is an over-diagnosis problem if we know the actual number of people who suffer from mental illness and discover that the number of people with a diagnosis exceeds that. So I ask: where's the data? Because if we do not have data to show that many people receive diagnoses when they shouldn't, we cannot talk about over-diagnosis.
There's no ground truth, it'a a matter of semantics. If someone is diagnosed with depression by a psychiatrist, then it's basically true by definition. Psychiatry does not yet use neural biomarkers to guide diagnosis (except in some very rare cases).
Post partum is another one that's over diagnosed. The reality is having a baby is objectively hard. Of course you're going to be depressed after having one. It's the ones that seem over the moon about it that are actually insane! New moms need more help from dad, not drugs.
It’s all political. On the one hand TikTok etc. are run by the CCP aka fake China (the real China is generally called Taiwan) who are commies who would love for all their political opponents to be labeled mentally ill. On the other hand the Baby Boomers only keep their power by taxing the young and generally keeping them down, and there’s nothing that disenfranchises someone more than saying their entire mind is invalid and they’re not allowed to do basic things for themselves such as cooking because that involves a knife and you could kill yourself or someone with it, never mind voting, jury duty, donating gametes and tissues, driving, etc. On the bright side, all the people who stand up to say they’re mentally ill with pride will probably make it a bit harder for communists of any stripe to label people who aren’t dysfunctional and don’t want the label as mentally ill, since now people are treating it like a trophy rather than the shackle it so obviously is.
I appreciated your cautionary question near the end because it seems to me that we can do better than just return to the old responses of “man up” and “you need to toughen up sweetie”. One approach might be to teach young folks (and ourselves) how to live a philosophy of resilience with modern Stoicism being one very promising model. Instead of a reactive approach to mental illness (which can activate a counterproductive process of auto-suggestion) we take a proactive approach of providing tools and habits of thinking that anyone can benefit from in an uncertain, hard and often cruel world.
I thought this quote also made an important point that can be applied to governments: “Firms may prefer to label stress a disorder rather than deal with the consequences of acknowledging that working conditions are poor…” Perhaps medicalization of stressors is one response to governments that refuse to take a more active role in creating a higher quality of life for those being left behind.
"...G
governments that refuse to take a more active role in creating a higher quality of life..."
Yet, there is the paradoxical rebound that suggests that the higher a person's quality of the lesser their resilience quotient. Increased comfort also leads to increased sensitivity to stressors. It is a catch-22!
So the idea is that mental illnesses are over-diagnosed - a claim that many people love to make. This would mean that many people are diagnosed with mental illness than they should be, presumably because some people receive a diagnosis even though they do not have that mental illness.
But we can only say there is an over-diagnosis problem if we know the actual number of people who suffer from mental illness and discover that the number of people with a diagnosis exceeds that. So I ask: where's the data? Because if we do not have data to show that many people receive diagnoses when they shouldn't, we cannot talk about over-diagnosis.
There's no ground truth, it'a a matter of semantics. If someone is diagnosed with depression by a psychiatrist, then it's basically true by definition. Psychiatry does not yet use neural biomarkers to guide diagnosis (except in some very rare cases).
Post partum is another one that's over diagnosed. The reality is having a baby is objectively hard. Of course you're going to be depressed after having one. It's the ones that seem over the moon about it that are actually insane! New moms need more help from dad, not drugs.
It’s all political. On the one hand TikTok etc. are run by the CCP aka fake China (the real China is generally called Taiwan) who are commies who would love for all their political opponents to be labeled mentally ill. On the other hand the Baby Boomers only keep their power by taxing the young and generally keeping them down, and there’s nothing that disenfranchises someone more than saying their entire mind is invalid and they’re not allowed to do basic things for themselves such as cooking because that involves a knife and you could kill yourself or someone with it, never mind voting, jury duty, donating gametes and tissues, driving, etc. On the bright side, all the people who stand up to say they’re mentally ill with pride will probably make it a bit harder for communists of any stripe to label people who aren’t dysfunctional and don’t want the label as mentally ill, since now people are treating it like a trophy rather than the shackle it so obviously is.
https://psychskeptics.substack.com/p/our-obsession-with-mental-well-being
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/08/09/simone-biles-and-the-problem-with-self-care/