Weird Psychiatry

[zotz]

According to this article, almost 15% of US residents have some sort of personality disorder, according to DSM criteria. Now, it has struck me for a while that the US seems to going a bit over the top on personality disorders - in fact, US psychiatry generally strikes me as being a bit faddish - and this isn't likely to dissuade me.

I obviously am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist, but those of you who are - does it seem reasonable to you to cast the net so widely? I know personality disorders aren't diseases, but presumably a lot (most?) of these people are adequately functional people.

Also, it immediately suggests a rewrite of the old joke about Parliament :

1. 15% of Americans have a personality disorder.
2. The US federal government has 100 Senators and 435 members of Congress.

The physics article looks intriguing also, but obviously I've no idea what it all means.

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Heh. You obviously haven't been in the States for very long. It's like the old joke about why so many of Texas' elected representatives are against abortion even in cases of incest: if not for multiple generations of brother-sister marriages, Texas wouldn't be the place it is today. (Or, dead seriously, when I joke that I don't have to sing my high school fight song at class reunions only because "Dueling Banjos" has no lyrics, I get Lewisville residents who ask "And what's wrong with 'Dueling Banjos'?")

[redcountess]

CFS/ME/CFIDS is in the DSM IV, and the Ministry of Health in the UK nearly classified it as a psychiatric disease for treatment here as a result. It took lobbying by the ME Association of the UK to get the Ministry to change to the WHO definition which refers to its neurological nature.

[incy.livejournal.com]

and just one President sometimes the odds just sting you

[reddragdiva]

Erm, isn't that a completely bogus use of the DSM? That is, the DSM is for sorting out what's happening when there's already a clear problem. A lot of the stuff is explicitly "if it's not a problem, it's not a problem."

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that with many disorders one can remain 'adequately functional', as there are of course minor disorders and major ones.

Faddish, absolutely. And of course we're talking about Americans (while remembering that where they lead we follow).

[nickys.livejournal.com]

> US psychiatry generally strikes me as being a bit faddish

I thought part of the problem with all the odd things which are declared syndromes and diseases in the USA is that US medical insurance only covers you if you have an named disease, so doctors keep finding new names for things so they can be paid to treat them.


And then there's the tendency to translate the stuff about "the pursuit of happiness" in the US Constitution into "an inalienable right and duty to be happy all the time".

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the physics article - I think it means that the universe is a very very strange place indeed, and that the only people who even come close to beginning to understand it are even stranger.

But I love the idea that the deeper we dig the more we realise how little we know.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Could somebody explain why there being more B meson than anti-B meson decays into kaon+pion means that B mesons are somehow preferred by the universe? Did the rest of the anti-B mesons decay by some other mechanism quicker, or were there just less of them produced?

[zotz]

Perhaps the word "preferred" in the article was badly chosen? I suspect the only way to find out for sure is to track down the original paper or an article on it aimed at a more technical readership.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

"Preferred" is me trying to find the right word and not succeeding, but you see what I mean. Um. More stable, or something.

[zotz]

Maybe you've picked it up from the article:

The new observation of a 13 percent preference for the B meson over the anti-B meson

Does it look like the meson is more stable than the antimeson, or that they decay at the same rate but with proportionately different outcomes?

[zbyszek.livejournal.com]

The difference is in the rate of decay. The significance is the direct measurement of a difference in behaviour between matter and antimatter. It's not the first but for various reasons it's a good one.
OK, I'll put something about this in my journal when I get a minute. In the meantime, if you want, here is the BarBar paper, and one from Belle which I haven't read yet.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Just remember how recenly homosexuality was removed from the DSM. Or has it even been removed yet?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Yes, it has. SM is still in there though IIRC.