None of the DSM editions had ever been scientific lmao.
“our understanding of the biology of mental disorders has been slow in coming.”
There’s no biology in mental disorders; none of them have objective phenomena and they are arbitrarily given and created.
Idk about the article itself but to say that there is no biological phenomenon behind mental disorders is to deny the experience of everyone who has anxiety disorder and goes through dissociative symptoms.
there is no biological phenomenon behind mental disorders is to deny the experience of everyone who has anxiety disorder and goes through dissociative symptoms.
This is a false equivalency; the experience of someone is not the same as a lack of scientific validity in mental disorders.
As an example, if someone was traumatized through astrologists; their experience can be valid and accepted without accepting astrology as a valid science.
But no one’s saying that people suffering from anxiety disorder happen to be going through those experiences through psychiatrists, that’s completely irrelevant. The physical experiences come alongside an Anxiety’s phenomenon, and so do dissociative experiences due to anxiety itself.
But no one’s saying that people suffering from anxiety disorder happen to be going through those experiences through psychiatrists,
They are; that doesn’t make Anxiety Disorders scientific; and the lack of mention of such situation is independent of its possibility.
that’s completely irrelevant.
It is relevant.
The physical experiences come alongside an Anxiety’s phenomenon, and so do dissociative experiences due to anxiety itself.
I’m referring to Anxiety Disorder, not the Anxiety of emotion, don’t equivocate the two.
How would you define anxiety of emotion, and differentiate it or disassociate it from anxiety disorder?
Anxiety, as an emotion, is a feeling of unease, such as worry or fear, that can be mild or severe. It is generated as a reaction to stress.
Anxiety disorders are “mental disorders” characterized by symptoms of intense anxiety or panic.
And what’s the issue with those characterisations? Given that the symptoms of intense anxiety or panic in themselves ought to have biological phenomenon behind them if we’re going by a physicalist-realism perspective of the human mind and body?
And what’s the issue with those characterisations
Nothing. The problem is that anxiety disorders are subjectively given and do not have falsifiable phenomena.
They are also very reductionist; anxiety is an important emotion and it is very rational to be anxious when dealing with uncertain issues (like getting food poisoning). Anxiety helps to motivate to take action.
Given that the symptoms of intense anxiety or panic in themselves ought to have biological phenomenon behind them
Ought to have is not the same as proven to have (through disproving a null hypothesis); and anxiety disorders are not based on scientific research; but instead assertions.
if we’re going by a physicalist-realism perspective of the human mind and body?
what’s physical-realism?
Someone help me understand this. From what I know they are arbitrarily created to make it easier to categories groups of symptoms and try to understand mental conditions by approximating them to very similar circumstances.
Mental disorders is still a new field and for the DSMs it was always expected to only capture the newest discoveries of that time, as the field is slowly progressing our understanding of mental health.
None of them have objective phenomena
But aren’t they just describing symptoms and phenomena? From what I’ve heard they are supposed to make it easier to understand mental conditions and magically create phenomena; they are supposed to describe what we see and support theories and relate to similar phenomena, so a therapist or psychologist knows how to proceed.
Please correct if I’m wrong because I am not a medical professional, I’ve only been at the receiving end of therapy.
I am not a doctor but did some neuroscience graduate studies and will try to provide a basic explanation.
The biggest problem with our current understanding of mental illness is we cannot directly connect the cause of mental illnesses to the symptoms like we can in other illnesses of the body. We run into a problem due to the complexity of the brain. For example, Parkinson’s disease is generally caused by degradation of the substantia nigra. This causes problems with dopamine signalling leading to paralysis. However, there are psychiatric disorders, for example the catatonic subtype of schizophrenia, which are defined by periods of paralysis that are not affected by the same medications used to treat Parkinson’s disease. To use Major Depressive Disorder as an example we have multiple classes of drugs that work on different chemical levels (serotonin and norepinephrine being the most common) and systems in the brain but don’t have a one size fits all treatment.
The focus of the DSM is a diagnosis guide that focuses on standardization of symptomology and diagnosis. It has guides on best treatment practices but it is not the primary purpose of the DSM.
Neither the diagnoses nor their criteria are arbitrarily created. Researchers look at clinical data and notice that some symptoms of mental illness co-occur at higher rates that cannot be due to random chance, and when they isolate a group of symptoms that co-occur fairly regularly, that becomes the basis for a new diagnosis. It’s far from a perfect system, but it’s the best one we’ve got while the brain remains the mystery it is. And it is scientific, it’s just on the softer side due to a necessary reliance of “soft” data like self-reporting.
Mental illnesses are categorized based on observation of symptoms and trends, which can be measured and treated, even though we can’t write an equation that fully explains how they came about.
It’s like how you can troubleshoot problems on your computer without knowing how to write an OS or build a motherboard.
