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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32403 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Slightly aside from this, is there even such a thing as a biologically defined mental illness? Is there a single mental illness that’s diagnosed with a blood test or some other empirical measurement that doesn’t involve a checklist of symptoms that the patient describes to the physician?

Sure.

There's a whole DSM section for substance abuse disorders. Alcohol/nicotine/opioid withdrawal are real, measurable things.

Or the variety of conditions with a single, specific response. REM Sleep Disorder is measured on a "polysomnograph." Actually, there's a bunch of sleep-specific ones. Elimination disorders like enuresis are also fairly obvious. For something like PTSD I imagine you could objectively measure a panic response.

Does an effective, selective drug count as evidence? Ex. prescribing antipsychotics seems like a rather objective way to measure schizophrenia.

I'd argue that you could count certain behavioral disorders as empirical. It's not a lab test, but if someone compulsively gambles all his money away, he doesn't have to tell the physician it's a disorder. Likewise for the paraphilias.

Plus, at a certain point, it just gets lumped into physical illnesses. Rabies includes anxiety, hallucinations, and fear of water or blowing air on one's face. It's diagnosed with virus isolation. Obviously, it doesn't get counted as a mental illness on account of all the non-mental symptoms.

To the question of an effective drug counting, I would say no. I’m more concerned that there is a physiological symptom from which the supposed mental condition is diagnosable.

I’m not sure that someone having a physiological withdrawal symptom from a substance to which they’re addicted would count either as someone who is not an addict will still experience those.

The sleep disorders seem a better candidate.

I’m more concerned that there is a physiological symptom from which the supposed mental condition is diagnosable.

Things like Down Syndrome, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease etc. can be. I'm guessing your asking this question, because you don't really view them as mental illnesses and are gerrymandering the category to only include things not easily physiologically measurable. The DSM doesn't do that and includes these things.

I’m just thinking it through out loud.

My family has a lot of mental illness of the OCD and bipolar type, and those family members insist this is a well understood science and then make claims that seem essentially religious. I’m feeling out the edges of where measurable physiological issue versus vague “chemical imbalance?” meet.

Want to share what those claims are exactly? Hard to know if they’re backed by science or not without actually seeing them.

Mental illness is caused by a “chemical imbalance” in the brain.

No, because then it would be a physical illness with neurological symptoms rather than a mental illness.

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