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Comment by disgruntledphd2 | Hacker News Reader

Please note that Psychiatry and Psychology are very different fields, despite the common associations between them. In most countries, psychologists may not prescribe drugs, while psychiatrists, as medical doctors are allowed to do so.

Incidentally, I highly recommend reading the DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders) and figuring out which disorder you show the most signs of. Myself, I meet all the criteria for ADHD, and if I had been born some years later or in a different place, could easily have been diagnosed with it.

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Self-diagnosing psychological disorders is a VERY bad idea.

I'm not really suggesting that people self diagnose, I just thought it might be interesting for non-professionals to read the diagnostic criteria to get a sense of how easy it is to be diagnosed on these bases. Unfortunately, due to the way the american insurance system works, I can't see DSM ever being rolled back to a semblance of sanity (with pun intended)

Just about anybody with their self-esteem low enough can get diagnosed by those sociopaths.

Surely you recognise the irony of that statement?

Just in case someone doesn't, there are two diagnostic assertions in choro12's statement: low self-esteem, and sociopathy. This just goes to show that we as a society are dependent on psychiatric labels, even if we profess to hate them. We need them because they help us understand human behaviour. I'm not saying that this is good, and we should not try and develop an understanding of ourselves which goes beyond simple taxonomy, but that we should not be so hasty to disparage those who formalise and act on these categories, because we all do it, and we have always done so.

Good point, I agree.

Anti-psychiatry (wiki explains their position in good detail) says that basically the very moment we stopped believing in magic, witches and wizards, psychology/psychatry surfaced as 'sciences' with exactly the same role - to root out people who are too non-compliant with the system from the society.

USSR and communistic states (I used to live in one of them) are great example. All dissidents were automatically labeled 'insane' because anybody doubting communism had to be crazy in communist view of the world.

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