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Comment by cupcake-unicorn | Hacker News Reader

Can't this kind of focus get really dangerous towards those who actually suffer from these challenges? I've already been accused of faking various illnesses/psych symptoms that I've been diagnosed with so this is a bit scary to me, that it's already a problem that providers dismiss symptoms, and when they read something like this they're going to be more likely to. There is supposedly a way to differentiate but I guarantee no GP is going to be doing that, and with doctors visits now 15 mins in the us (with as little as 5-8 being just for the patient) it's very difficult to get anything done.

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I come from a place where specialists are hard to come by and when I finally got in to see someone about my condition she accused me of seeking pain killers (I was not, opioids are not going to help what is wrong with me) and then told me the symptom I was experiencing was my body "getting better". I went probably 4 years longer undiagnosed because of her. She eventually left the area and went to a teaching hospital to TEACH. When I told her what condition I believed I had, she literally laughed at my and ridiculed me for thinking I could self-diagnose. Meanwhile, I was diagnosed with this well after the damage was done and I experienced neck and lumbar fusion. Let's just there is a wide range of compentency in doctors, even specialists.

Doctors are no better or worse than car mechanics. Some are meticulous and think about the end result, others follow Mitchell’s or whatever and feel threatened whenever customers try to tell them what they think is wrong.

Four kinds of professionals:

1) mechanic-like workmen in the classic mold of the "blue collar" work ethic but don't pretend to be better/worse than others. Often produce better results that the "IQ" tests would suggest.

2) Usually competent but imposter syndrome people that sometimes lose focus due to lack of faith in training and ability. Capable of high achievement (probably better than #1) but often struggle with consistency in end results. Often undersell themselves, so it's hard to tell if they know what they are doing.

3) Status seekers that hide subpar ability or even downright incompetence with degrees and arrogance. Kind of a high functioning "Dunning-Kruger" subtype with conman/sociopathic /social abilities.

4) The frighteningly competent that case #3 pretend to be, #2 might be able to do, and are basically #1 combined with real talent.

Sounds like you ended up with #3.

Whenever I encounter an "expert" in a field, it comes down to diagnosing whether they are a 3 or a 4.

I like this analysis and categorization. Does it originate with you?

I considered my experience with doctors and with programmers and middle managers (plus there was the Apple abuse story mulling through my head) and came up with that.

I'm a programmer and I'm an average #2.

#3s in programming are kind of different. Incompetents get weeded out quickly from true programming jobs and punted up to management likely where they become part of the Middle Management Machiavelli perpetual war.

#3s express themselves as moderate technical competence, a typical one would be someone that gets to declare greenfield to the specific stuff they have enough ability to do, gain sheen of competence, and then aggressively assume the role of "expert" based, since to management they "produced".

Next thing you know, some guy that could rapidly stand up a PHP site is in technical leadership and pushing for PHP to serve as a big data platform because it is (rolls another dice to determine buzzword) "agile".

Then they have as much or more organizational pull as a legit #4 and your organization is in TROUBLE.

This is one of my concerns with what I've seen of the recent fetishizing of mental illness, it seems to many people I talk to or interact with, especially younger people, it is popular and cool to have some sort of mental illness, such as anxiety or depression, or something else.

Of course many of these indivudals are self diagnosed but that doesn't stop them from talking about it constantly and holding themselves up as a "suffering soul". Meanwhile those who legitimately struggle with issues like depression or anxiety now get either brushed off, or have people that "totally understand" when really they don't at all.

Paradoxically, everyone who lies to themself they they have a mental illness has a mental illness.

I think a big issue is that mental illness diagnoses are yes or no, but people experience actual mental illnesses on a spectrum. for example, you can be mildly depressed or completely hopeless, slightly traumatized or full-out PTSD with hallucinations, controllable or uncontrollable OCD, etc.

Also, the same mental illness could have 20 different causes, and a method which cures one of those causes is ineffective against others.

The people with mild illnesses need help too. The people with more serious issues need more serious help. But when someone says “I’m depressed” you don’t know if they’re a little upset or genuinely miserable. You don’t know if it’s because they’re life is boring right now, their dog died, or there’s a serious chemical imbalance. So in essence, saying “I’m depressed” no longer means much unless you state the symptoms.

I read the abstract and had the same concern. In fact I was ready to reject the whole thing, partly thanks to the blunt wording. However, I downloaded the PDF and... yeah, that's not Tourette's.

I have/had Tourette's (like most, I grew out of the worst symptoms after adolescence) and the media portrayal of it is pretty awful. These symptoms align with the portrayal, not the reality. Tourette's should be diagnosed by a neurologist, not a GP, and this doesn't sound hard to distinguish.

My concern being, once GPs start seeing this media, they are less likely to be referred to a neurologist at all. Another example: a hospital near me is denying my neuropsych referral despite a valid reason because my doctor isn't in their network. Getting to a specialist is getting harder and harder even when you do have a sympathetic GP.

Yes, many streamers on Twitch, and content creators on YouTube have faced such accusations, some of them have been extensively harassed, to the point they even provided evince, medication signed by doctors out of desperation for the harassment to stop, needless to say in some cases it didn't.

> Can't this kind of focus get really dangerous towards those who actually suffer from these challenges?

Suicide is also a social contagion. So are eating disorders, depression, gender dysphoria, cutting. All documented occurring online and obviously occurred offline pre-internet, perhaps not as well documented offline.

These people are all suffering.

You can't not talk about it. You have to work out how to treat each disease correctly.

COVID-19 related increase in childhood tics and tic-like attacks - https://adc.bmj.com/content/106/5/420.abstract

Weird that they call it "COVID-19 related" and then discuss how it's lockdown related and TikTok related.

Among boys, even pre-covid, we had Fortnite related spastic dancing tics.

Where do you lay the blame? With the trend followers who are faking disorders, or with the researchers who are pointing out that trend?

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