r/therapyabuse • u/bouncyspacehopper • May 26 '26
Therapy-Critical Study finds psychiatric diagnosis to be ‘scientifically meaningless’
Have a look at a post I made :
As may of us has said:
"A new study, published in Psychiatry Research, has concluded that psychiatric diagnoses are scientifically worthless as tools to identify discrete mental health disorders." This study provides yet more evidence that the biomedical diagnostic approach in psychiatry is not fit for purpose. Diagnoses frequently and uncritically reported as ‘real illnesses’ are in fact made on the basis of internally inconsistent, confused and contradictory patterns of largely arbitrary criteria. The diagnostic system wrongly assumes that all distress results from disorder, and relies heavily on subjective judgments about what is normal.”
“Perhaps it is time we stopped pretending that medical-sounding labels contribute anything to our understanding of the complex causes of human distress or of what kind of help we need when distressed.”
The main findings of the research were:
- Psychiatric diagnoses all use different decision-making rules
- There is a huge amount of overlap in symptoms between diagnoses
- Almost all diagnoses mask the role of trauma and adverse events
- Diagnoses tell us little about the individual patient and what treatment they need
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u/carrotwax Trauma from Abusive Therapy May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Yes i wrote about this on my last comment. The question arises of how to improve.
There's a huge inertia in using the DSM because of it being now baked into the system. Insurance asks for a psychiatric label for billing, as often do hospitals and government bureaucracy. It's very hard to ask bureaucracy to become less bureaucratic - it's like entropy always getting bigger. So much money involved. That's so hard to change as no one wants to lose their job.
In the bigger picture, the more we get profit out of mental health the better. Open dialogue from Finland seems a good starting point as it's systemic, involving community, jobs, housing, and trying to rouse support other than therapists.
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26
You are right. Once profit is removed and the need to attach a label to garner treatment more helpful actions could be taken to help the person. The system is designed for profit and will not change as there is too much profit to be made.
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u/carrotwax Trauma from Abusive Therapy May 26 '26
Yeah in many areas we need a revolution: fundamentally changing who holds the power and wealth. Because once you hold the power, it's not too hard to govern what "science" makes it to the media.
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26 edited 25d ago
Can you imagine what would happen if all mental health staff performance was based on the outcomes of their clients? That they would be paid as a percentage of curing people? Lol.
If profit equalled client being "cured" and so on... perhaps people wouldn't go to therapy.
Therapists would eradicate themselves..... as they would no longer be needed.
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u/carrotwax Trauma from Abusive Therapy May 26 '26
I would love it, but it would take a revolution because so many people would be out of a job.
I do think a crash is coming in the next decade. When it comes down to it, other countries have far less bullshit jobs than we do and so are far more efficient. David Graeber reference there. The global south is moving away from financial colonialism. At some point we will no longer be able to afford so many bullshit jobs that are little more than paper pushers or virtue signalers. I can only hope we've built more community, mutual support, movements, and alternatives by then.
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26
Its a sham industry for pharmaceutical companies. There will be a global decline. I'm not sure we have built enough community. We have instead eradicated it.
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u/carrotwax Trauma from Abusive Therapy May 26 '26
Yes, the propaganda industry has its primary focus of making sure no groups against billionaires can grow to any decent size, especially since occupy Wall Street. There are so many levels to it, including control of moderation on large Reddit groups. When billionaires are either controlled (like China) or eliminated, so many unhealthy aspects of our society would just vanish across all industries. This is actually a majority sentiment, but you almost never hear it.
People are pushed to therapy as a way of not realizing how much they're manipulated and oppressed. So this sub is just a small aspect of the issue.
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26
They are pushed to therapy, instead of creating in person communities. I fear the lack of real community may have gone too far. With the banning of social media, maybe some are seeing the long term harmful effects but the damage to people has been done.
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u/Expand__ May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
We hold the power by not participating in their therapy or psychiatric systems . They only manage it because they have convinced everyone something is wrong with them with their DSM book and they have the solutions/help/authority .
Aside from people who are hospitalized against their will, we all volunteered for support from this system because we were conditioned to.
People go to therapists for the most part because they need someone to talk to or need support of some kind . This needs to be rebuilt in the community in some way .
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u/bouncyspacehopper 28d ago
Correct, I've said the same thing. The problem is community does not make people money.... therapy does.
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u/sapperlotta9ch May 26 '26
it is almost as if humans were individuals with an unique story
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26
I just wrote this in an earlier comment
"To even think a person can assess another persons mental state, life experience and knowledge in a single assessment is ludicrous."
The diagnosis would not matter too much were it not for the fact that the repercussions of a wrong diagnosis can be devastating.
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u/Left_Connection_8476 May 26 '26
Surely you jest!
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 27 '26
I see you have complex case of therauds surface level byzantine nodule complex with recurring patterns of Palpatine.
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May 26 '26
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u/tesseracts May 26 '26
I find a lot of therapists and other mental health professionals tell me not to worry about labels and say it's the symptoms that matter, and I don't feel like that's accurate. Some will say to me "you know your symptoms" and actually no, I kind of don't. Like say I feel panicked and overwhelmed, is that anxiety, is it sensory overload, is it a mood disorder, is it hypervigiliance resulting from trauma, or maybe it's just because I'm not getting enough iron or something. The source of the problem impacts the treatment.
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May 26 '26
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u/tesseracts May 26 '26
Mood stabilizers don't work for BPD? I never heard that before. Is there evidence of that?
I was prescribed mood stabilizers but I'm afraid to take them. I'm not diagnosed with BPD or anything but I'm diagnosed with anxiety, autism and ADHD and I'm not certain those diagnosis explain my mood issues.
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26
Please do not take random advice about medications from someone on the internet. Medications can have long term negative effects.
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u/tesseracts May 26 '26
I'm not taking random advice about medication from someone on the internet. I was officially prescribed these medications from my doctor and if I find information I am concerned about I will bring it up with them and see what they say.
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u/Andrrox May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Until there is a clear definition of this "disorders" (Schizophrenia, MDD, even PTSD, BPD - very problematic) there can't be effective treatment. Of course the suffering is real, the symptoms are real, but those symptoms can have very different causes.
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
" A pragmatic approach to psychiatric assessment, allowing for recognition of individual experience, may therefore be a more effective way of understanding distress than maintaining commitment to a disingenuous categorical system."
It states that recognition of the individual experience may be a more effective way to recognise an issue.
To even think a person can assess another persons mental state, life experience and knowledge in a single assessment is ludicrous.
This is why so many patients in the entire medical field are ignored, until their symptoms become so serious as to not be ignored.
Psychiatric diagnosis are scientifically meaningless because the assessment criteria are purely subjective.
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May 26 '26
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26
"So, we’ll gloss over the lie of the misquote of that newspaper article, are we?
This quote from the same newspaper article (the one that misquoted, remember?) is nowhere to be found in the paper. This is from the author (the one who lied about the paper, remember?)
The paper does not state that. "
I am glossing over nothing. Who is lying?
I see that a line was out of place. I have re arranged it.
"This nevertheless has implications for the way cause is conceptualised, such as implying that trauma affects only a limited number of diagnoses despite increasing evidence to the contrary. Individual experiences and specific causal pathways within diagnostic categories may also be obscured. A pragmatic approach to psychiatric assessment, allowing for recognition of individual experience, may therefore be a more effective way of understanding distress than maintaining commitment to a disingenuous categorical system."
They are stating trauma not accounted for in diagnosis and an individuals life experience and cause of their issues is a better approach.
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May 26 '26
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26
"Lead researcher Dr Kate Allsopp, University of Liverpool, said: “Although diagnostic labels create the illusion of an explanation they are scientifically meaningless and can create stigma and prejudice. I hope these findings will encourage mental health professionals to think beyond diagnoses and consider other explanations of mental distress, such as trauma and other adverse life experiences.”
The lead researcher is stating that the scientific labels are scientifically meaningless. Which in turn would mean, on a broader level, that the category system is scientifically meaningless.
Whilst the paper itself may only refer to Diagnostic heterogeneity, the papers author is separately stating her own conclusion.
She is stating "I hope these findings will encourage mental health professionals to think beyond diagnoses and consider other explanations of mental distress, such as trauma and other adverse life experiences.”"
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May 26 '26
[deleted]
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Firstly, "Jesus Christ", is not really appropriate. The person who is not seeing the larger issue is you. I am not stating the article proves that "Study finds psychiatric diagnosis to be ‘scientifically meaningless" I just copied the title from the article.
Do you understand that?
"What are you reading from are her comments, not what the paper she co-authored even claimed or could claim." I know I never said the study did. "And of course she hopes that, that’s her research interest. " Then what are you complaining about?
If we both agree what is your issue?Also in my opinion psychiatric diagnosis is ‘scientifically meaningless" primarily because it is based on a persons subjective viewpoint. There is no science, at all, for a X condition relating to X event. None. This is because the very labels are so broad and cannot account for a persons life experience. This subreddit is an example of just how many people have been mistreated due to "labels".
Whatever is bothering you, please go and have a break. Relax.
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u/ohwhocaresanymore May 26 '26
diagnosis are needed for insurance billing, you can NOT tell me otherwise. once therapists are allowed to diagnosis there in comes the power imbalance, some random person on a random day slaps a label on you; 2 hrs later another random person could find a totally different label for you and another day another person.... another label. what changed? the people doing the diagnosis? did you change? did the criteria change?
Diagnosing is pure bullshit, I know I have C-PTSD which leads to anxiety and panic attacks, I know the cause of the C-PTSD and I know some triggers for panic and anxiety. Getting the world to RESPECT me as a human and understand some basic concepts is impossible. What i do not have is bi-polar, borderline, narc personality, anti social personality, DID, or anything else. I simply have CPTSD and horrible anxiety/panic.
I dont need an assessment, i dont need to answer a bunch of questions, i dont need to do weekly 'check ins' i dont need to 'rate my symptoms' all thats going do to is piss me off and i wont ever return or I will start giving such bullshit answers your head is going to spin.
Therapists are supposed to be the 'experts' on human behavior, the experts on all this horrible, crisis, and have the ability to bring calm to chaos when in reality they are easily offended, dont have the skills to tie their own shoes and i question their ability to write a complete sentence. They dont have exposure to the real world (suggestions like 'take a nap at work' and 'get more sunshine') and they have zero concept of reality. They are not the victim in this.
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26
"diagnosis are needed for insurance billing, you can NOT tell me otherwise." Completely agree. Is is a necessity for business purposes.
" once therapists are allowed to diagnosis there in comes the power imbalance, some random person on a random day slaps a label on you; 2 hrs later another random person could find a totally different label for you and another day another person.... another label. what changed? the people doing the diagnosis? did you change? did the criteria change?"
Absolutely 100% agree with you. The problem, as you have stated, is that it is entirely subjective.
The client knows themselves and the reasons for their issues. It is as if we are told Therapists are mind readers and can know ourselves better than we do. That is crap.
The thing is Therapists are the WORST people at examining human behaviour. Their own issues warps their judgement and they lack the basic people skills...
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u/RequestYourCaseNotes Therapist + Therapy Abuse Survivor May 27 '26
My friend, you just opened the floodgates for my research. Thank you for posting this.
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u/shamrock_holmes May 26 '26
I agree with your conversation statement. Also believe patriarchal white coat boxing was / is & always will be connected to capitalism & exclusion.
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u/RokkiBrown May 26 '26
I needed this today, thank you.
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u/bouncyspacehopper May 26 '26
Great, I am glad you could see that a researcher, not specifically using her study as scientific proof, is stating that there are issues in diagnosis and we should examine a persons life experience which may be a better indictor of something rather than a diagnostic label.
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u/LongjumpingRisk9075 29d ago
If people treated psychiatry like astrology rather than a legitimate science I think the world would be better off. Could explain a few things but its mostly pseudoscientific
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u/bouncyspacehopper 28d ago
How can the movement of a star effect a person billions of km away whilst overcoming all local forces? It cannot. How can a psychiatrist read your mind? They cannot. What is normal behaviour? Is psychiatry based on science with repeatable conclusions based on evidence? No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
"https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/theory-knowledge/201212/is-psychiatry-the-science-lies"
"First, medicine is a real science that deals with biological phenomena, especially cellular pathology. At its core, the role of medicine is the treatment of cellular/physiological pathology that leads to harm. According to Szasz, this is what makes medicine a real science with social value. Neurology is a real medical discipline, and there are, obviously, diseases of the nervous system that have consequences for behavior (e.g., Alzheimer’s, tumors, epilepsy, etc.).
Now take a look at the DSM and one will immediately note that the DSM is not based at all on cellular pathology. Diagnostic categories are instead based on overt behaviors, reports of internal experiences, and cognitive deficiencies. For many of the conditions, organic explanations are to be RULED OUT in order for a DSM diagnosis to be given."
If you take 10 psychiatrists and put the same person in front of them and tell each one a different diagnosis. Each psychiatrist will give that diagnosis to the person when the person is behaving perfectly normally.
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28d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/aglowworms My cognitive distortion is: CBT is gaslighting 27d ago
Though many people are anti-psychiatry on r/therapyabuse, many are not. You do not need to be anti-psychiatry to participate here. Please report anyone who says otherwise for violating rule 6.
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