Not that anyone suggested this, but I just wanted be clear that I don't mean to say the DSM is useless. My post wasn't meant as a tract on the failings of Psychiatry or Psychology. These institutions have their utility. I actually believe in therapy and will always support self-help literature. Drugs, for all of their usefulness, failings, or abuses, do have a place for many.
I just want people to recognize the DSM's limitations, not to get to caught up in the stigma sodden narrative fostered by societal ignorance. These diagnoses were never intended to be prescriptive about a diverse span of
entire personalities.
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Originally Posted by shakespeare47
I've also noticed that there are many who almost seem to think that they are their diagnosis, and are basically helpless to do anything to change that fact. So, for them, it's self-fulfilling prophecy after self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Exactly this. I've never understood how coping or emotional processing 'habits', for good or ill, have been equated with terminal brain cancer for some people.
The stigma, social constructs, and uninformed baggage of personality "disorders" has done a lot of heavy lifting for the way people react to these diagnoses.
Rewire Your Brain by John B. Arden Ph.D really underscore how much more mechanical we are than we we want to think. We can be habituated to new thinking virtually as easily as removing bad code causing errors in software. We're talking about bad habits ultimately.
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Originally Posted by shakespeare47
It is that - it is presented to us as a scientific text, and yet in what other medical field are scientists voting on what a disease is?
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This just reinforces this deepening problem for anyone left who still might view DSM classifications as all-encompassing. It's so intuitively not. And it's not even the DSM who are saying this. The DSM aren't like twirling their mustaches about this saying, "Muhahaha here is your new identity." Remember this quote from before:
"The most central, memorable, and knowable element of any person — personality — still defies any consensus."
An argument could be made there are of course bottom line interests in the psychiatry field. Selling prescriptions is big business. But that's more another discussion. Here we're talking about people who, as you say, "think they are their diagnosis" and there's simply no good reason to.
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