Why Anti-Authoritarians Are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Why Anti-Authoritarians Are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill (2012)

madinamerica.com

85 pointsyamrzou38 comments

Treatment (medication specifically, but other invasive procedures exist) still leaves the patients worse off than whatever “symptoms” they were experiencing. The only difference is that the modern techniques are superficially more humane than the history of gruesome surgical interventions. Of course, the only opinions and interests that truly matter in these events are the people who are involved with the patient, not the patient. The patients opinions have already been adjudicated defective and are therefore ineligible for serious consideration. In fact had their opinions not been judged defective they might not be subject to permanent mutilation. These patients serve as a warning to anyone who would dare violate an arbitrary definition of social norms.

They're not even superficially better- a lot of them are worse.

And, at least when they called it electroshock everybody knew it was Russian roulette with the prize being a vegetable.

I agree that many are worse, for the patient. In using the word superficially I meant to imply the modern treatments are more palatable (I am searching for the right word to use in this case and struggling) for the attendants and witnesses to the treatment, not the patient.

This is true. Drugging a person is not a healing process: it's a punishment, retribution for their moral offenses which may not be punishable as crimes.

If a person complains too much, or becomes a nuisance to society, or disruptive, then they are penalized and sentenced to a "virtual incarceration" by means of drugs and clinical monitoring.

Psychiatric drugs were explicitly developed as a replacement for confinement and physical restraints. The asylum system was shut down deliberately once the technology was in place to turn them out on the streets.

All those homeless you see today are actually imprisoned and being punished. The apparatus is simply invisible to you.

this is outdated in modern pharmacology across the West

My ex had some time in the hospital before i met her, she told me sincerely that electricity applied to her head was the best thing that ever happened to her.

Meanwhile the prize I won is tinnitus and a persistant uncontrollable twitch, neither of which have subsided even years after the “treatment” that caused them. Like they said, it's roulette.

That's absolutely not the case for everyone. Dismissing all treatment for psychiatric disorders as "always worse for the patient" is dangerously ill-informed.

> Dismissing all treatment for psychiatric disorders as "always worse for the patient" is dangerously ill-informed.

Someone even fancying the idea that somebody "anti-authoritarian" is mentally ill can immediately be classified as a totalitarian cracknut.

Pretty sure you can be anti-authoritarian and mentally ill at the same time. It's assuming the latter from the former and nothing else that is the problem.

I used to know a guy who would literally roll around on the floor and growl and not be able to communicate when off his meds, but otherwise when on them, lucid, interesting, funny, intelligent, kind, and generally a good contributor to society.

I'm not sure what his problem was or what exactly the meds were, and I still think psychology is mostly bull, but I do have some respect for psychiatric pharmaceuticals and their benefits now.

Funny that you would make such an absolute — dare I say authoritarian — statement on a complicated and complex matter like this.

I rather advocate for a healthcare system that attempts to help the patient, where and how it is necessary, to the patient's best achievable benefit. Sometimes that might be medication, sometimes it might be telling them that there's nothing wrong with them and society just doesn't know how to deal with them.

And let's not kid ourselves. A good amount of society at large is a very poor fit for a good amount of people, and should probably change too.

> The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Having steered the higher-education terrain for a decade of my life, I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance

This idea makes too much sense to not be true.

While it is true that there are instances of anti-authoritarians being pathologized, one notorious example being "sluggish schizophrenia," it is a fallacy to claim that the only anti-authoritarians which exist are those who would be pathologized, especially in the United States in the 21st century.

In the 20th century, wives could be put in insane asylums, and being transgender was officially deemed a mental disorder. Knowledge of autism was nearly nonexistent, and treatments for ADHD were limited.

As for the assertion that pathologized people don't need treatment, I would say that is reckless and greatly simplifies the issue.

>> it is a fallacy to claim that the only anti-authoritarians which exist are those who would be pathologized

I don't think that this claim was made in the essay.

The author laments that there are a lack of anti-authoritarians in society, which strongly implies his intent is to redefine anti-authoritarians through his own lens.

ADHD can actually be caused by school. Teachers knowingly teach crap and the brain says “not worth my time”. It’s a defense mechanism to the industrial machine.

It's basically and edgelord trope to bring up Einstein as an example of this kind of behavior. Kids with these conditions aren't all genuises in waiting. Some are surely over medicated but a lot of people have real struggles with these things and it's not just because the adults are illegitimate authorities.

Rebelling against all of the authorities is pathological. All authorities aren't illegitimate.

From the article:

"It has been my experience that many anti-authoritarians labeled with psychiatric diagnoses usually don’t reject all authorities, simply those they’ve assessed to be illegitimate ones, which just happens to be a great deal of society’s authorities."

I personally almost got an ODD diagnosis, though the psych didn't think it was severe enough to warrant that. Guess what? I did have a problem with authority at the time, but that's mostly because people in authority in schools are complete nincompoops. I've got absolutely zero issues listening to the authority in my job because my boss is competent and doesn't demand absurdities from me.

Is believing your own thought processes over the thought processes of authorities really something that should be labeled a disorder?

I'm reacting to this paragraph most specifically.

> ODD is defined as a “a pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior without the more serious violations of the basic rights of others that are seen in conduct disorder”; and ODD symptoms include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules” and “often argues with adults.”

This is presented as enough to diagnose the disorder. If you have a look at the full list, you can see why it's a disorder.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/oppositional-...

> I personally almost got an ODD diagnosis,

But you didn't. Probably because you're just anti-authoritarian, but not all the long list of other issues associated with the condition.

Einstein was justifiably anti-authoritarian because he actually was a genius but he also wasn't pathologically so. The author drawing a this comparison belies his own belief that he himself is smarter than all of those authorities which justifies his behavior. Which is actually a symptom.

> Often blames others for their own mistakes or misbehavior.

> But you didn't. Probably because you're just anti-authoritarian, but not all the long list of other issues associated with the condition.

It's actually not that long of a list[1]. You only need to have 4 symptoms out of 8 to qualify as "clinically" ODD, and the "symptoms" are literally just being unpalatable to those around you. Here are 4 of the symptoms that can get you diagnosed as ODD, straight from the DSM 5:

1) Is often touchy or easily annoyed

2) Is often angry and resentful

3) Often argues with authority figures or, for children and adolescents, with adults

4) Often deliberately annoys others

I don't know about you, but I can blaze through all those in a 10-minute webex call with a "scrum master"... and the DSM just requires (for someone 5 years or older) them to have happened *once a week* for at least 6 months.

Very tellingly, the second major criteria is:

> The disturbance in behavior is associated with distress in the individual or others in his or her immediate social context (e.g., family, peer group, work colleagues) or it impacts negatively on social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning,

So literally whether it bothers you - OR - people around you. There's a reason that the vast majority of ADHD and ODD diagnoses occur as a result of school requests, not from parents.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t14/

If a student is troublesome in school, troublesome enough to warrant the BH referral, better take a good look at the home life and their social-environmental factors.

Or just blame, diagnose and medicate them. Only then shall they be better equipped to accept and obey authority figures.

Telling that there's not an Authoritarian Defiant Disorder, for those teachers who are particularly disagreeably unreasonably authoritarian. Surely everyone has had at least one of those.

Mine was an English teacher. I realized by the second class that I needed to transfer out of his course. The school administrators were completely unsurprised by my request. It seems that I was just one among many who had done the same thing.

I would conclude:

- the default for the vast majority of people is don't worry be happy. This aligns with my life experience

- nonconformists by almost tautological definition then aren't happy. That's going to get you placed immediately in the fringes of psych classification.

- nonconformists also tend to be smarter, which we know also drops you down the happiness scale

- legitimacy of authority is a funny idea, arguably all authority is via direct or abstracted power, despite the ideals of democracy, will be arbitrary and somewhat illegitimate

- and thus we get to the contradiction: most people (the "sane" ones) apply a compartmentalization to deal with an insane world: that is they adopt willful insanity to stay sane in a capricious insane world. Those that accept reality and try to change it are "insane" for rejecting the short and long term cost benefits to accepting the big lie for the pure sane truth.

- if this were a conscious decision it would be more stark, but kind of like accepting the matrix in the movie, the machines had to adopt a facsimile of the sucky real world rather than paradise, since that had all the subconscious psychological engineering worked out to get everyone to mostly confirm.

Some authorities may be legitimate, but a child (for example) may not be able to distinguish those if they find themselves constantly berrated: 'do as you are told'. The illegitimate authorities mask the legitimate, particularly when discussion, explanation or negotiation are denied. It's quite understandable that anyone who questions authority simply rejects the whole deluded 'game' once they realise they won't get any answers, or worse, when they're told that they themselves are the problem.

The article doesn't assume that such diagnosed people see all authorities as illegitimate, in fact it specifically posits the opposite.

> “All authorities aren't illegitimate.”

Not all authorities are illegitimate.

(This grammar error can be harmful.)

I reject you as an authority on grammar. (topically).

Who says that's a grammar error?

It uses a double negation in a way that creates ambiguity. A literal interpretation would be “all authorities are legitimate”, but likely the intent was “there exist legitimate authorities”.

Illegitimate and not legitimate are not the same words. It's only a double negative if you treat them as such.

we are primed for a little autoritarianism during the breeding phase, vurnerable and longing for stability, we are backed into a corner and willing to cut them to see this through. little on the egoistic side, but the whole "immortality by more of me " project always had that aspect. and it is a narrow road that is sanity here, between society collapsing inwards and outwards, often not walked and not even honestly talked about by those attacking the conservative guardians of that process.

Anti-Authoritarians are Mentally Ill? Wtf? Right, govs want slaves...

http://ds-1.ovh.uu3.net/~borg/pics/FITUDAhXEAg52Rm.jpg

This discussion is on the brink of doom, but I'll try to contribute anyway.

It may be that personality and attention disorders are over-diagnosed because we select those away when creating psychologists / psychiatrists, but it does not mean that the attention and behavior disorders are somehow good, either.

This really vexes me:

> The very characteristics of Einstein that upset authorities so much were exactly the ones that allowed him to excel.

Really? Which exactly?

You can certainly get a good job and become successful in today's society while harboring a deep-set suspicion of everyone who is in authority. But I do think that it's just harder to succeed in a workplace if you are constantly bucking instructions and only bucking them, based only on principle. If this drive motivates you to learn more and discover why things are the way they are, and come up with better things, you're not necessarily exhibiting those behavioral disorders at all! But the implication all over this article that anti-authoritarianism is by definition a good thing is suspect. (except, I guess, to those who self-identify as anti-authoritarians, usually politically)

I'd say that my childhood suffered a one-two punch, from problems with my adoptive parents to my tendency to imbibe popular culture from a firehose (radio, TV, records and CDs)

Pop culture and social media can really breed discontent and rebellion. I was just trying this weekend to compile a playlist celebrating Labor Day and I realized that I knew of zero songs about a strong work ethic, or loving one's employer, or enjoying the workday, so I ended up adding Johnny Cash's "Legend of John Henry" and "Manic Monday".

It used to be that parents could adequately control/monitor influences on children. Not that they would be qualified to do so, but at least you could check out book titles on a kid's bookshelf and ensure that they cultivate good friendships. The unmonitored firehoses of information coming to a typical household now is unmanageable. How does a parent even start?

We're closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. Medicating children and diagnosing folks with mental illnesses without addressing root causes, looking at their environments, acknowledging collective responsibility.

You might as well round up all fans of "The Simpsons" and sound the Independent Thought Alarm. A nation of rebels looks up to Washington and sees impeachments and raids on the Capitol: are they our role models?

> I was just trying this weekend to compile a playlist celebrating Labor Day and I realized that I knew of zero songs about a strong work ethic, or loving one's employer, or enjoying the workday

You do realize that Labor Day is not about any of those things, right?

I raised an eyebrow reading this part. The irony here is palpable.

I was about to post a Wikipedia link to the Haymarket Square Massacre, but then realized that had more to do with May Day, then thought, "wait, Labor Day and Memorial Day are backwards on the calendar" (Labor Day would most naturally be in May, associated with May Day, no?), then found this explanation:

https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-labor-day-celebrated...

Think you might have an authoritarianism problem in your organization/group/mental-health environment?

Follow the money. Where the money flows, you will find the source of your authoritarianism. And if it flows over many points, each and every one of those points will have a modicum of authoritarianism designed to protect that flow ..

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