In DSM-IV, a “diagnosis” of major depressive disorder is based on the presence of a major depressive episode. A major depressive episode, in turn, is defined by the presence of five or more items from the following list during a two-week period: (1) depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by… Continue Reading
Defining Mental Illness
There’s a take-no-prisoners article by Paula Caplan on Psychology Today. You can see Paula’s article here. (Thanks to @yobluemama2 on Twitter for the link.) Here are some quotes: “…the now well-established facts that psychiatric diagnosis is unscientific, does not reduce human suffering, and causes many kinds of serious harm.” “…the chances even that two therapists… Continue Reading
Freudian Psychoanalysis is Better than Drugs
Today I received a short comment from Ruth Elliot on my post Psychiatric “Diagnoses” for Children. Ruth linked to an article by Claudia Gold, MD. Claudia is a Freudian psychoanalyst. My ideological orientation is behavioral, and if you were to ask people in this business: what is the opposite of a behaviorist? you would probably… Continue Reading
DSM-5 Inter-Rater Reliability is Low
BACKGROUND There’s an article by Jack Carney, DSW, on this topic on Mad in America. Jack refers to the DSM-5 field trials published earlier this year in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Inter-rater reliability is measured by a statistic called a kappa score. A score of 1 means perfect inter-rater agreement; a score of 0… Continue Reading
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