Throwaway05
3d ago
Haha I am a physician but I am not Scott and disagree with him on a large amount of his medical opinions.
I think you make a very fair point about access, and I don't have a good counterargument but it is worth noting that people excessively overweight their ability to manage their own health (including health care professionals who have lots of training in knowing better).
I guess the best argument I have is that these days a lot of mental health problems are caused by socialization adjacent issues and solving that with an advanced form of the problem is unlikely to be an elegant solution.
Throwaway05
3d ago
Oh hey!
When you get a chance I would love to hear how things are going for you!
On to the matter at hand -
Please update my understanding of that particular suicide if it's incorrect, but what I'd heard is that the person was substituting human contact with the chatbot and his parents didn't catch the worsening social withdrawal because he was telling them he was talking to someone. My fear is not that chatbots will encourage people to do things, but that they won't catch and report warning signs, and serve as an inferior substitute for actual social contact. Not sure what the media presentation is since I'm relying on professional translation.
Moving beyond that however, I think you underweight the value of therapy. DBT and CBT have excellent quality evidence at this point. The reason for those two specifically is likely two fold - they are "simpler" to perform, and because they are more standardized they are easier to research.
Also, good psychodynamics is not Freudian nonsense, it's mostly CBT with different language and some extra underlying terminology that is very helpful for managing less severe pathology. Again I tell you to read Nancy McWilliams haha.
At its absolute worse therapy is stuff like forcing social interaction, forcing introspection and so on. Some people can function well off of a manual, and some people can study medicine on their own. But nearly everyone does better with a tutor, and that's what therapy is.
A tutor is also more likely to catch warning signs because of (at this time) superior human heuristic generation and the ability to perform a physical and mental status exam.
Throwaway05
3d ago
Tremendously poor idea, general purpose chatbots have already led to suicides (example- https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/23/character-ai-chatbot-sewell-setzer-death).
Purpose built ones will have more safeguards but the problem remains that they are hard to control and can easily go off book.
Even if they work perfectly some of the incentives are poor - people may overuse the product and avoid actual socialization, leaning on fake people instead.
And that even if is doing a ton of work, good therapy is rare and extremely challenging, most people get bad therapy and assume that's all that is available.
Services like this can also be infinitely cheaper than real therapists which may cause a supply crisis.
Throwaway05
4d ago
Medications and management of medical issues is more complicated than most realize. Medical education emphasizes teaching doctors about our knowledge deficiencies for a reason, and it's very common for people in the field to grossly overestimate their understanding and knowledge. We complain about nurses, midlevels, and even other doctors having no fucking clue what they are doing at times.
It is extremely challenging for a layman, even one who is intelligent and informed, to bridge the training gap.
"Ok but who cares" is a reasonable question, but it is important to understand that errors don't just hurt you. A big example right now is antibiotics. Left to their own devices people will ask for and use antibiotics even when it's dangerous or simply not even a bacterial infection. This has a downstream effect on others, like an increase in antibiotic resistance.
It's also easy to hurt yourself and we find it unacceptable to allow society to not pick up the bill.
Let's say you have some mild chronic pain like arthritis, you read and are smart enough to know that ibuprofen can be good for this. But then you don't know the right dose, or the right frequency and then don't realize it is not a good idea with your diabetes. After a reasonable amount of time your kidneys are dead and you end up on dialysis - and society is paying for that. Even if you have good insurance or a lot of wealth that's a spot that could be given to someone else.
And that's a medication you can already buy over the counter.
Throwaway05
4d ago
For reading purposes I'd recommend just looking at DSM criteria or searching pubmed and finding what seems to be a reasonable review article.
Correctly making these diagnosis can be hard, and many cases seem obvious but aren't. While Borderline (BPD) is more common in women we find that Antisocial (ASPD) is over-diagnosed in men (not all criminals have it but...) and under-diagnosed in women. Borderline is the opposite (just because this dude murdered someone doesn't mean he isn't borderline). People with disordered personality who hurt people almost always get an ASPD diagnosis but people with severe BPD often hurt others. Impulsivity is a cardinal symptom in both (contra organized serial killer stereotypes). Often the dx just gets thrown out on gender lines, which is sometimes accurate but not always.
ASPD can be thought of us being a fucking asshole in mild to moderate cases and evil in moderate to severe cases (as demonstrated by disregard for the rights of others).
People with BPD in contrast care too much about others to some extent. There's been an attempt to rebrand it as "Emotional Dysregulation Disorder" which is instructive. Impulsive, passionate, lots of relationships that end abruptly, things like "I LOVE YOU, I HATE YOU" (splitting). For most they'll pattern match to a moody teenager, but in an adult body.
This is also a core part of what Cluster-B disorders often are, over expression of immature coping mechanisms aka acting like a kid. Also one of the reasons why they often burn off with age.
Severe borderline looks like psychosis (inability to determine what's real) and that's what the border in borderline is named for. There's an attendant identity instability which sometimes leads to being trans. Severe antisocial is lizard people types.
Histrionic is less interesting, you can call it stereotypical energetic Italian disorder if you like and wouldn't be too far off.
Narcissistic is simple at a basic level - Trump often gets accused of this (although I'm not sure I buy that). It gets pretty complicated if you look deeper though, most mass shooters are a subtype of this and not ASPD.
People often overweight anger in antisocials, it is often present but the lack of emotion is frequently more startling - lack of remorse, lack of respect for others, lack of love for partners). Often violence, anger, and intimidation happen because they are cheat codes towards getting whatever utility they are seeking, not because of investment leading to anger.
Most mental health conditions have heritable elements and we suspect that ASPD and BPD are two-hit situations (lived experience and genetic predisposition). Raisedby types may have it themselves, and failing that some shit happens with mothers and daughters - boys will just leave or pushback physically and be able to protect themselves, would be my guess.
In contrast crazy bitch exes are of interest to men because a lot of borderline traits are desirable (most stereotypical: abundant, quality sexual activity) and unlike mothers, exes can be more easily a legal or financial threat.
Uhhh that rambling went on longer than I thought it would, sorry. Everything I said is shortcuts/oversimplification.
Throwaway05
8d ago
The boyfriend died shortly after he showed up unannounced at Thiel and his husband’s Christmas party and apparently made a big scene. (Classic case of a mistress with unwarranted confidence).
Do you know anything about the personality this guy had? Stories like this almost always pattern match to certain kinds of mental illness (in this case maybe Borderline Personality Disorder).
Unstable relationships, attractive and likely to get in a superficial relationship, aggressive and maybe suicidal when spurned, possibly paranoid...
Likely someone who knows the people involved would be like "oh yeah that checks out he was crazy."
But outside looking in it isn't as obvious and these other explanations pop up.
Throwaway05
12d ago
Man you must have been around in the "shit I can't double click, I might as well just retire" days.
Throwaway05
12d ago
I thank god every day that I mostly use Epic (like at this point most damn doctors in the U.S.).
It sucks but it sucks way less than all the other options.
I don't know if you've run into any of this yet but AI assist tools are getting quite good. Should people be using them? Likely no, but they are hugely helpful.
Throwaway05
12d ago
That being said, there are lots of reasons why people don't take their medication
Putting side effects and related problems aside (and they are severe, antipsychotics increase all cause mortality for example), many patients don't think they have a problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia
It's a core symptom for many with psychotic illnesses and but many mood disorders or personality disorders involve people thinking nothing is wrong or blaming unrelated things.
Many of those with awareness of illness want to be free anyway, even if it means being miserable. Sometimes it is so they can do drugs. Sometimes it's because inpatient facilities suck.
Valuing autonomy is good but it leads to some grossness at times.
Throwaway05
12d ago
I'm going to admit that I mostly skimmed looking for clinical pearls, but you may find this article interesting.
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/03/vista-computer-history-va-conspiracy-000367/
Anything about your end of things that you think a doctor should know?
Throwaway05
13d ago
I think the perception is more important than the reality here. The lefts wants to paper over all of her faults right now, but if she had won give it 5, 10, 20 years and their is going to be a big old asterisk on the first female president.
That Scarlett Letter would be tough to manage in the long term.
Throwaway05
13d ago
I can't endorse this enough. I've been more positive than you on Trump for a long time, but even with that (as well as an outright hatred of the woke) I still bought some of the propaganda, and I never really had an interest in hearing his speeches.
Now he sits down with Rogan, they both sound reasonable despite the spin, and their personalities make sense and match to others I have encountered in my life. I don't think Trump meets the criteria for narcissism after that interview, and Vance is clearly one of us regardless of any flip-flopping.
Even with all the practice in avoiding the democratic propaganda machine I still fell for it.
Throwaway05
14d ago
Wokeness is widely popular with women and necessarily involves holding together a lot of contradictory opinions, so the training is out there. Consider the modern dating market - women still want a man who is masculine, pays, etc. but they also want feminist girl bosses at the same time. These things don't work together, but they manage.
Cultural acceptability is what is normal. Lots of culturally acceptable believes are unwise or harmful, however.
Throwaway05
14d ago
Yeah I mean their are variations in personality and certainly some men are like this, but a large portion of my social group is going off right now and yeah that includes people from "histrionic" backgrounds but also lots Asians and so on who are all freaking out because they are deep in the woke bubble and panicking and huffing propaganda. This is people with graduate degrees mind you.
Most of them will calm down.
I'm not saying this is normal in the sense that is healthy, but it is reasonably common in certain social groups (yikes).
Throwaway05
14d ago
Eh it's almost always tied together when it comes up, if you feel like it isn't for you, carry on.
Throwaway05
14d ago
How many Jewish/Italian/Irish/Black etc... women do you know.
They'll say it, but only a fraction will actually believe it.
Throwaway05
14d ago
Ehhhhh I think you underestimate how consensus reality holders feel about things. Most of us here aren't really about that kinda thinking but it is wildly popular, and plenty of otherwise well adjusted little to no other abnormal belief people are shitting absolute bricks right now.
Throwaway05
14d ago
I mean I'm not pro-vaccine mandate, although I did get vaccinated ASAP. I was also pro-lockdown initially but displeased with the length and way they are implemented.
The issue is that the people who are still talking about this years later did not learn any lessons (both sides) and in the case of the skeptics, miss how bad it was.
Throwaway05
14d ago
I know it's kind of off-topic, but I would not call those totally normal women lol. Anyone who says that unironically is crazy.
If they are still saying it in a in two months they are crazy, for now? Just angry.
Women tend to interact with the world in a more bubble and consensus oriented way, the ego damage when that gets popped leads to immature defense mechanisms aka the batshit insanity. Most people will course correct.
Throwaway05
14d ago
"Sufficiently damaging to the economy, American lives, and functioning of the government" isn't quite the same as "existential threat" and still justifies much of what happened.
Throwaway05
14d ago
Come on ya'll we can be better than /r/relationshipadvice
It's possible that the advice of others is the correct way to go, and it may be the case, but don't do it prematurely. People are freaked out right now and the average woman is more vulnerable to that. She may calm down acutely, in which case the fight is not necessary. Like most she will probably calm down in the long run but it would be a serious question of what time horizon you need for people to go normal.
I know totally normal women who are saying nobody should have sex with men anymore. It histrionic nonsense. If you can tolerate taking Trump non literally you can tolerate this haha (again assuming it has hope to be temporary).
Throwaway05
14d ago
I'm not saying it was truly an existential threat, but it was way worse than a lot of people are willing to acknowledge. What those numbers translate to practically is pretty bad. It's hard to notice if you were locked up though, which many were...so they didn't.
Throwaway05
15d ago
A relatively small number of deaths can easily cause massive economic problems and overwhelm hospitals leading to all sorts of problems including...you guessed it, more deaths.
The problem wasn't the lockdowns. They were sensible. The problem was the way they were implemented and not having a reasonable offramp.
Throwaway05
16d ago
That's a fair point, although quite a few of the people I've talked to today are under the impression that Trump has a magic ability to instantiate an army from the aether. TDS is still real.
Although on a counterfactual note I think we should be pleased that institutions seems to be prepping either way. That's more competence than I've come to expect as of late.
Will message you.
And yeah no doubt the media fucking sucks.
My fear is that people will engage in HER style stuff and this example is a bleeding edge version of that.
McWilliams is useful even if you are just skimming the personality disorder chapters because you will have colleagues with those. It's also interesting enough to make you go through it at pace haha.
I think things like your therapist looking at you like you are an idiot and you going "yeah I know" are underrated parts of therapy and the chatbot isn't going to do those things for now.
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