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http://dsm.psychiatryonline.or...

You said:

Yes, it's been extensively studied. The suicide rate goes down for transgender people who are 1) Accepted by their family and community 2) Allowed to transition 3) With minimal societal discrimination and rejection.

In fact, it goes down to the normal average for their age groups.

Sorry, but nowhere in the DSM is there support for your claim "In fact, it goes down to the normal average for their age groups". If you think it's there, quote chapter and verse (Yeah, I've already read most of it, and didn't find the claim you made to be supported).

PS. I already know you didn't read the manual, which is why you aren't able to quote chapter and verse. If you think it is there, show us.

http://dsm.psychiatryonline.or...

http://dsm.psychiatryonline.or...

Because totally linking to the DSM V definition of Gender Dysphoria doesn't support the argument that GD is a mental illness, which it has to be to be in the DSM. Calling a banana a banana isn't hate, it is being descriptive. If you can't handle the truth that GD is a mental illness, please continue to deny the truth. The oucome of that denial though is that insurance doesn't cover it if it isn't an illness, so you will be hurting far more transgenders than any "hater".
 

You calling a transgendered person "mentally ill" sounds no different than the bigots who called homosexuals "mentally ill"
How is your bigotry any more justified than theirs, bigot?

I'm not calling transgendered people mentally ill. I'm saying Gender Dysphoria is a mental illness.

http://www.ifge.org/302.85_Gen...
http://www.theravive.com/thera...
http://dsm.psychiatryonline.or...
https://www.psychiatry.org/pat...

And I'm right. Sorry, but it's true.

Now, since being Transgender requires Gender Dysphoria -- so called Tumbrina "TransTrenders" aren't transgender, they're attention seeking children -- it's an unpopular, but correct, statement to say that they are people with a mental illness receiving treatment.

Fortunately for me, an "unpopular" opinion is not bigotry, no matter what the authoritarian regressive post-modernists that have taken over the left in the west think.

I guess these Ph.Ds need to stop using the term then.

https://www.psychologytoday.co...
http://psychcentral.com/blog/a...
http://www.webmd.com/mental-he...

Oh, and they need to remove it from the DSM
http://dsm.psychiatryonline.or...

I really wish the British would learn the differences between a pedophile, child pornographer and child molester already. And that being a pedophile is not a crime.

Another Yank without a clue. "Child molesting" is rape, and is a crime. Possession or creation of "child pornography" (i.e. portrayals of child rape) is a less serious crime, but quite rightly still a crime.

Simply being a paedophile and not acting on it is no more illegal than being a Holocaust denier or goat-fucker.

I love insane people they make me laugh. However, they are a danger to themselves and others so I generally avoid them. Being a pedophile IS a crime. By definition: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/...

pedophile pedfl/ noun noun: paedophile; plural noun: paedophiles; noun: pedophile; plural noun: pedophiles a person who is sexually attracted to children.

Is that British enough for you? How ever here is something you don't grasp. It is virtually impossibly for people afflicted with this mental disorder ( http://focus.psychiatryonline.... ) to NOT molest children. Either they rape them or they force them to engage in sexual acts with each other, or they trade in the movies and photographs of others who have done so. For example Steven Collins has admitted to being a pedophile because he exposed himself to a child. Sadly, the statute of limitations for his child molestation crime as ran out in NY state, he cannot be charged. Nevertheless, he acts on his impulses. Oh and being a Holocaust denier or goat-fucker are also illegal. The second is bestiality, the first is a crime is Germany and Israel. It is the only that isnt a crime here because it falls under free speech and has nothing to do with sex. So to be succinct: Pedophile = child molester. Child molester = Child pornographer, They are the three sides to the same evil triangle.

It is not uniquely North American.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.or...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

https://scholarsbank.uoregon.e...

Oh, dismissive, unsupported appeal to authority.

I take it this is the first you've heard on the subject. That particular article --in Wired (the nerve!!!)-- won a few awards: The Best American Science Writing 2010, The Best Technology Writing 2010, and the 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award.

There no dearth of scholarly articles focusing on placebo effect either, as you'd have found if you had cared to look. For example, http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=175282 Though I suppose one could always continue to disregard the idea if by deciding to characterize a measurable, significant increase in prefrontal cordance --perhaps even depression itself-- both as merely subjective phenomenon.

You raise, a good point. The evidence suggests that to some extent criminals lack of education is caused by other variables that lead to both to criminality and make completing school more difficult. In particular, criminals have on average lower intelligence, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201006/why-criminals-are-less-intelligent-non-criminals poor impulse control,http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=101809 and extremely high self-esteem ,http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/papers/baumeistersmartboden1996%5B1%5D.pdf, all of which are associated with doing poorly in school.

However, there's also evidence that some amount of criminal behavior is due to lower education reducing work opportunities. The most successful programs at reducing recidivism are those which educate the convicts. https://www.stcloudstate.edu/continuingstudies/distance/documents/CollegeEducationandRecidivismEducatingCriminalsisMeritorious1997.pdf although the exact causes of this are unclear http://www.bop.gov/news/research_projects/published_reports/recidivism/orepredprg.pdf. So, while there is a correlation v. causation issue, it does look like education genuinely helps.

If I can recall correctly, brain scan does introduces radiation into the brain

Depends on the type. PET scans do have some radiation. The study in question - http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=668180&RelatedWidgetArticles=true used diffusion tensor imaging which is a variant of MRI, which uses strong magnetic fields and does't produce any radiation. The technique is essentially harmless.

So far, the only drug known to treat the negative symptoms of schizophrenia is nicotine[1], but that can't be patented and it's of the devil so we'll pretend that research doesn't exist.

[Citation needed] ... id like to read that paper.

[1]
FTFY

Now a days it seems like only illegal immigrants are allowed to work with their hands. ( They also have the lowest rate of mental illness).

[citation needed]

Or, rather, not - because it's not true. Illegal immigrants tend to have a high rate of mental illness (on top of other health issues). They don't show up in psych clinics all that much because they're illegal aliens and have less access to medical care (along with various stigmas for mental health issues, other societal factors and other reasons).

So, no, kicking everyone out of the cubicles and making them pick lettuce is not the answer to psychiatric illness in the US. Exercise is important and it helps, but it isn't the only thing....

Could not find the vomiting study in the rotating drum but I believe the muscle relaxant study was of Carisoprodol and can be found at this PDF. The asthma placebo effect study appears to be this study on this new bronchodilator.

If you're saying "citation needed" to imply that the placebo effect is not real, then I ask you why so many reputable institutions almost require a placebo group? It's obviously so they are capable of renormalizing the results to account for the placebo effect and not wrongly attribute their drug to something the patients caused themselves to believe they felt or to actually feel.

I might take issue with his claim that the placebo effect 'caused the muscle relaxant molecules to be more effective in relaxing the muscles' (or however he rambled it) as I have always thought that the placebo effect operated on a psychosomatic or neurological level.

People today spend decades in solitary confinement and come out relatively unscathed.

Not so much. The attached link is one example, and there are many others that show that solitary confinement is extremely psychologically damaging.

There is too much mollycoddling and emphasis placed today on psychological wellbeing

Dude, it's not about touchy-feely being nice to everybody. It's about the mission - if your crew goes crazy either while en route or on the planet due to inattention to their psychological well-being, the mission is probably not going to be a success. Mental health is part of overall health, and it matters to mission accomplishment.

It's just a matter of effort to move to Mars. It should be done, and the sooner the better.

This is a classic statement. Why should it be done? It would be staggeringly expensive and fairly dangerous. And what's the payoff?

Our jails and prisons are also swelling because of the slow death (through years of budget cuts) of our community mental health system. A scholarly article on the matter

As long as no one can be sure that the criminal will not commit other crimes, and as long as recidivism among "cured" criminals is so high, we, the honest people, have the right to know who are the people most likely to commit crimes against us.

Recidivism among murderers is quite low -- the three year rate is that 1.2% of those who've served time for homicide are arrested for a new homicide. (That's "arrested", not "convicted".)

One study in Finland found that all of the repeat murderers in their sample suffered from either schizophrenia or from severe alcoholism combined with personality disorder. So if you want to know who's most likely to commit murder, it might be that knowing who has severe mental health issues would tell you more than knowing who's been to jail.

And if we knew who has severe mental health issues, maybe we could even, you know, treat them. But I guess that would be socialism or something.

Sure, jail isn't perfect, but it's an effective way to keep criminals isolated until they learn how stupid it is to be a criminal

The only thing that people learn in our current prisons system, is how to be better criminals.

It wasn't always this way. NPR had a great story a few months ago about Folsom prison, once a model institution where almost every man got some job training. The majority of inmates never returned.

But that was "coddling" criminals -- and it went against the interests of the prison-industrial complex. Now Folsom is overcrowded to three times its design capacity, there are only a handful of classes with waiting lists more than 1,000 inmates long. And 75% of those released will be back within three years.

Yes, it certainly would be nice.

Especially when you consider there appear to be links between Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s.

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/36/20/23-a

There has been other research suggesting that understanding one of these diseases leads to avenues of research for the other.

Alzheimer's suffers have amyloid-beta plaque deposits in their brains. Usually. Not always.

There are people who have amyloid-beta deposits in the brains. Some of them have dementia, including Alzheimer's. Not all.

Amyloid-beta plaque can be cleared from the brain by immunization. The dementia occurs anyway.:
AB42 Immunisation Clears Brain Plaques, Does Not Prevent Dementia ...
http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/225f1e.htm

Thus, this article should read "Amyloid-Beta Plaque Desposition and Clearing Possibly Associated With Sleep", and any implied link to Alzheimer's saved until the discussion section at the end.

There is a family of amyloids associated with Alzheimer's and dementia, of which AÃY42 is only one. While AÃY42 is typically the quickest to aggregate, AÃY40 can cause dementia just as easily (though it takes a lifetime to aggregate enough of it).

"... can cause dementia just as easily ..." implies a persistent belief in causation despite the reference providing evidence that one of the two obviously is not causative. What can be taken as adequately supported understanding of causation is the fact that Ab40 accumulation (by far the majority of plaque deposit) is seeded by the earlier accumulation of Ab42 (and 43) that forms tendrils much faster, attracting Ab40 out of 'diffuse plaque', the solution of non-tendrilled amyloid beta proteins with a hydrophobic C-terminal sequence anywhere from the 39 to 42 locus.

It likely takes much more than a lifetime to accumulate the kind of plaque deposition seen in AD from Ab 40 in the absence of tendril forming Ab42 accumulations. And, as stated by the reference above, and implied by the wording of most publications on the subject, there is plenty of evidence associating both Ab40 and 42 to AD, but not supporting causation.

Ref for my reply: http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/11/1/19

Thanks for challenging me, I enjoyed it.

Make the act of studying have a negative association with it in the child's mind. That way when they depend on themselves to learn things later in life, they'll be reminded of your horrible freedom inhibiting imprisonment technique.

This should work exactly as well as physically abusing your child when he or she does something wrong. That way when they are faced with conflict later in life, they follow in your steps and resort to violence.

Utter BS. I was physically punished when I did not do well in school by my mother in the beginning until I became an A student. Later in life I graduated college Magna cum laude and did my Ph.D.

The older I get the more thankful I get to my mother for those lessons.

You can claim other negative effects of corporal punishment later in life, but that particular effect you wrote about is complete nonsense.

Ah, the magna cum laude doctor cites an anecdote of their own personal experience and considers my point rendered complete nonsense. I bow to your supreme intelligence, my lord.

So I assume you beat your child when he or she does poorly at school?

Nowhere did I say that corporal punishment leads to violence 100% of the time or that it has no positive effects. You could be a straight A student and still physically attack your opponents. Not that child psychology is a solid science but I think studies support my argument (there's more than just that).

"Hi! Stand back in awe as my completly unverifiable anecdotal evidence trumps your generalization!"
And you stand down in shame, as your implied anecdotal evidence gets burned as an outright lie.

"Almost 15 percent of Americans, or 30.8 million adults, meet diagnostic criteria for at least one personality disorder, according to the results of the 2001-02 National Epidemiologic Survey"
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/39/17/12

You can also search online for definitions of the DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic Criteria. e.g.
DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic Criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder (301.7)
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/39/1/25-a

"Hi! Stand back in awe as my completly unverifiable anecdotal evidence trumps your generalization!"
And you stand down in shame, as your implied anecdotal evidence gets burned as an outright lie.

"Almost 15 percent of Americans, or 30.8 million adults, meet diagnostic criteria for at least one personality disorder, according to the results of the 2001-02 National Epidemiologic Survey"
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/39/17/12

You can also search online for definitions of the DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic Criteria. e.g.
DSM-IV-TR Diagnostic Criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder (301.7)
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/39/1/25-a

"I can believe that, but you should still seek therapy.If you like the idea of having sex with young boys, it's not an idea that is healthy for you. It's like liking the idea of killing people, or raping women. [..] You should probably seek help/therapy so as to free yourself of addiction to these though[t]s"

"My problem is with the people who encourage you to think about these thoughts, THEY are the problem."

30% experienced psychotic episodes?! Are you high? It can cause cause strange dreams in maybe ten percent of people, but nausea (the most common side effect) is the only one close to that percentage.

The only psychotic episodes with varenicline that I'm aware of have been in people who had them already.

According to this paper the revenue to NBC would be about one dollar per viewer with traditional media distribution. I'm not an Apple fan boy, but at the $1.99 price for television I would guess that NBC was actually making more money per video than they will running their own distribution system and supporting it with advertising.

here's one:

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstra ct/153/1/27

I read this case study and discussion of a young man with MMORPG addiction in the American Journal of Psychiatry written by a few psychiatrists with experience in this area (no pun intended). One of their conclusions is that MMORPGs cannot truly be considered "addictive" since they do service a social need of people who may have underlying social anxiety problems. It's definitely worth a read. Allison, SE et al. The Development of the Self in the Era of the Internet and Role-Playing Fantasy Games. Am J Psychiatry 2006 163: 381-385 http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/1 63/3/381

Based on the paper at http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/1 64/3/516 I can sort of address these points..
(all quotes are from the paper)

1. Correct, no experienced FPS players: "Given a likely relationship between familiarity with video games and the outcome measure, individuals reporting high expertise in video games were excluded"

I am probably not free to copy the whole paragraph about the program, but here's the gist: The program was a virtual reality town. On day 1 subjects got 20 minutes of orientation then 30 minutes navigating around the town to destinations selected by the computer. Their ability to find specific locations was then tested, and if they didn't perform well they got 30 more minutes of practice.
Three days later they got 20 minutes to get used to the program again. Two to four hours later their memory of locations in the town was tested (they were tasked to navigate to a new set of locations, different from the specific destinations used on day 1).

Keep in mind this is not a game (despite ./'s title), it is just a virtual navigation task. They don't say, but I expect it was just using arrow keys to move around the virtual town. Not much learning curve.

2. They didn't have to memorize many routes. The whole virtual city (from the figure they show) is basically a big, curved X shape with maybe 2-3 other side roads in total. They just had to learn the basic set up of the town so they could go back to a location when asked to.

Regarding the "less mental power", the depressed subjects performed just as well as healthy controls on a spatial working memory task. The distinction is important: the game task tests navigation memory learned over more or less 2-3 days (plus the short refresher on the day of testing), working memory involves manipulating things online. If anything, the latter is probably more challenging (I could be wrong, though, I haven't done the two tasks myself).

3. I dunno, 30 minutes of testing doesn't seem like long enough to really reduce motivation. They must be somewhat motivated in the first place, though, to even show up for the two days of testing.

There actually is some evidence that video games either cause violence or potentially could. For example, studies that show that witnessing violence makes one more violent. I can't recall the location, but another study found that merely seeing a picture of a gun made one prone to violence. The problem for politicians (or maybe not, which would be worse) is that such studies would by their logic make the case for general restriction of the media rather than video games in particular. Additionally, it has been found that participation in organized sports has a high correlation with violent activities, and I would bet it would be an even higher correlation than with video games and violence. Yet I don't believe we will see any politician voting for a ban on basketball.

I don't doubt that video games COULD cause violence, there seems to be evidence that a lot of things do and it would be weird if video games would be one of the few things that didn't. The argument that video games make kids into little killing machines, that's a different kind of claim altogether. There is no such study, doing one would be completely unethical.

That article does not even contain the word "psychopath". Did you even read it? If so, your surely did not understand it.

Yeah, you're right.... I am talking out of my arse: http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/37 /12/2

Before modding me down, look into it for yourself... it has been known for a very long time that in the most severe cases of clinical depression, shock therapy is an extremely effective treatement, although it tends to conjure inhumane images in one's head.

What's more interesting is that transcranial magnetic stimulation also holds promise as a treatment for depression. TMS works by induction so it's non invasive. However the resolution of these implanted electrodes would be much better.

First, what is your definition of illness?

I'l steal a page from Szasz here:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, disease is "a condition of the body, or of some part or organ of the body, in which its functions are disturbed or deranged; a morbid physical condition." Diagnosis, in turn, is "the determination of the nature of a diseased condition ... also, the opinion (formally stated) resulting from such investigation."

The core medical concept of disease is a bodily abnormality. Literally, the term "disease" denotes a demonstrable lesion of cells, tissues, or organs. Metaphorically, it may be used to denote any kind of malfunctioning of individuals, groups, economies, etc. (substance abuse, violence, unemployment, et al.).

The psychiatric concept of disease rests on a radical alteration of the medical definition. The mind is not a material object; hence, it can be diseased only in a metaphorical sense. In his classic, Lectures on Clinical Psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin--the founder of modern psychiatry--wrote: "The subject of the following course of lectures will be the Science of Psychiatry, which, as its name implies, is that of the treatment of mental disease. It is true that, in the strictest terms, we cannot speak of the mind as becoming diseased."

...

Diseases are physico-chemical phenomena or processes--for example, the abnormal metabolism of glucose (diabetes). Mental diseases are patterns of personal conduct, unwanted by the self or others. Psychopathology is diagnosed by finding behavioral, not physical, abnormalities in bodies. Disease qua psychopathology cannot be asymptomatic. Changing the official classification of mental diseases can transform non-disease into psychopathology and psychopathology into nondisease (i.e., smoking from a behavioral habit into "nicotine dependence"). In short, medical diseases are discovered and then given a name, such as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Mental diseases are invented and then given a name, such as attention deficit disorder.

(BTW, that's not to say I agree with Szasz on everything.)

Once problems such as depression, schizophrenia, etc. are not considered illnesses, they will not be covered by health care.

Why not? If I break my leg, that's not a illness, but it's covered by my health insurace. No reason why "problems with living" or "psychosocial dysfunctions" couldn't be covered.

I am dismayed by your claims about "neurological expression". Where do you suppose these people's problems reside?

A problem may reside directly at the level of the nervous tissue; alcoholism, for example, is a change in the (IIRC) ion channels along the axon. You could, in principle at least, look at the physiology and see the pathology. (Though the pathology is rather evident when someone gets severely ill or dies from the DTs.)

Other problems do not have such a pathology. Of course beliefs, behaviors, and ideas have some neurophysiological correlation, but not so directly. For example, there's no pathology of the nervous system in holding racist beliefs, which some argue should be considered mental illness. Problems like this are not diseases in need of a treatment, but dysfunctional relationships of the person with themself, other people, and the universe at large in need of adjustment. (Non-coersively, of course, unless the person is a credible threat to the rights of others.)

It's a trite analogy, but think of a "software problem" versus a "hardware problem". The software problem has an certainly has expression within the hardware, but it's not because the hardware is broken. Of course the brain is not a stored-program computer with a clean delination of hardware and software.

Thanks for noticing that shameful grammar error.

But if you wanted to make a joke by reminding me on who was the author of that aphorism, you should check better also your sources ;)

[...]I had always thought that the phrase was Newton's: "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," but Merton, characteristically, traces it back at least to the 12th-century philosopher Bernard of Chartres: "We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants and so are able to see more and see farther than the ancients" [p. 231][...]