Joklem wrote:
The symptoms are the effect. Symptoms are signs of change in normal function or sensation. X Disorder, is just a term given to the set of symptoms that occurs similarly (and statistically) across people. The effect has a cause. They don't yet fully understand the causes of all disorders, but enough that they are recognized as conditions that may cause distress to the patient.
Given you're dealing with people, how do you isolate externalities such as social bias when making a diagnosis?
Is a disorder a subset of things that cause distress or vice versa? Or neither? How do you make that distinction?
Joklem wrote:
You don't have to discover the cause of depression before you can treat it, because the phenomena is right under the doctor's eyes.
So anyone who is depressed is sick? How do you differentiate being depressed because your dog got run over by a car, depressed because you don't like your life because it's not fulfilling, and depressed because you're leaking chemical messengers? What's the scientific basis for that distinction?
Joklem wrote:
I'm just going to stop. Psychiatry is a widely accepted field of medicine. There's nothing irrational or immoral going on, move along.
But many wrong ideas were widely accepted, no? Again I refer you to the examples of phrenology and the theory of humors. So isn't using the argument that something is "widely accepted" specious?
Joklem wrote:
In fact, to support your claim that mental disorders do not exist, you would have to come up with evidence that every human brain, a very complex organic system, is identical and works the exact same way - a healthy, normal way. Go.
Ah-ha.
For psychiatry to be valid, this would have to be true. After all, how can you do scientific research with no constants? Science is based on the fundamental assumption that the laws of observable phenomena remain constant.
Joklem wrote:
Quote:
If this were true we would live in a technocracy or some other form of society organized around the elitist principle that it is not possible for laymen to have a meaningful debate on any subject.
I miswrote that but that's not the matter -- in science when a finding is wrong, there is no debate.
But how do you know what's wrong? Debate. Many unpopular views have become widely accepted.
From my own education, go read about Michael Ventris or Heinrich Schliemann.