Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

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This sure sounds like an argument that the truth can be bad for you.

Maybe having a reason can lead to complacency, but is a person like that going to be a huge success otherwise? With the right attitude, having a reason can lead to better understanding, greater drive, more success.

I don't think it's about having a label. It's about understanding what's going on so you can better accommodate it. Once you have a diagnosis, you automatically have access to a vast wealth of knowledge which can help you to cope.

Think of breaking your leg. Is getting it diagnosed as "broken leg" just a search for a label which will lead to complacency? Are you better off thinking your broken leg is an eccentricity which is some unique part of who you are? Of course not, you want to get it diagnosed as "broken leg" so you can bring all modern medical science to bear on it and get it fixed up so you can heal, and cope with it in the meantime.

Mental disorders are not the same as a broken leg, but they aren't so different, either. I think we'd be better off if we'd stop drawing this fairly arbitrary line between "physical" and "mental" problems.

> This sure sounds like an argument that the truth can be bad for you.

To me it sounds like the social construct surrounding the truth is harmful. That those with a disability should be coddled lest they offend. That we should be understanding, accommodating, that we shouldn't expect much or worse, that we should medicate them into normalcy.

Bullshit.

It's when your behavior is rejected, when you meet with poor results, that you have a true incentive to improve and push yourself forward. It might be painful and difficult, but the end result can be greater than what you would have had if you were born "normal".

The only thing this environment of diagnosis, acceptance, and tolerance is creating is crippling fear for the parents and an environment that coddles the child's disability, instead of motivating the child to overcome it.

> It's when your behavior is rejected, when you meet with poor results, that you have a true incentive to improve and push yourself forward. It might be painful and difficult, but the end result can be greater than what you would have had if you were born "normal".

Ridiculous. "Just cheer up, you'll see that depression isn't so bad."

Speaking as a formerly severely depressed person: yes, that fixes it.

I worked hard at it. I wanted to fix it. I didn't take any medications. It was very, very hard. I wallowed in it for a long time. I fixed it.

"Oh you weren't actually depressed then, you don't know what you're talking about." I was (severely), and I do.

I'm not going to say you weren't actually depressed, but your experience may not be representative. A broken leg may heal with positive thinking and effort, but most people will still want to get an x-ray and a cast.

It may not be very representative, I agree. I struggle with your analogy comparing broken bones to a broken mind. We have known for centuries how to fix a broken bone. We still don't have a 'cure' for depression. "Here, take this pill and feel numb for a few hours" doesn't really compare to an x-ray and a cast.

You're right, there's no obvious cure like for a broken leg. Perhaps cancer would be a better analogy. There are various treatments, sometimes they work, but they mostly suck and it's never certain. But regardless, "just don't have cancer!" isn't going to do it.

Is it really "truth"? Some call it mental disorder, but really, it's just another position on the bell curve and could just as well be labelled as another aspect of personality. When 11 percent of population have ADHD I can't say it's a disorder with a straight face.

Something like 8% of men (~5% of population overall) are colorblind, do you object to calling that a disorder? If not, what's the cutoff: anything over 10%? Myopia is up to 30%, does that make it not a disorder?

Clearly defining a psychological disorder is far more nuanced than colorblindness and myopia, and there is good reason to believe certain of them are diagnosed too frequently. We can acknowledge this without denying the existence of psychological disorders.

It becomes a disorder when it's detrimental to regular life. Many who have ADHD are incredibly frustrated at their apparently lack of willpower. It's not the rest of society pressuring them to come closer to the norm, they want to get themselves to the norm too. Perhaps it is overdiagnosed and overmedicated in some settings, (I realize you're trying to get conversation away from the more black and white physical conditions... myopia has always seemed a good analogy though, so I'm going to continue using it temporarily) but you wouldn't tell a shortsighted person that they're not that far off of the bell curve, just squint your eyes once in a while to make up for missing detail.

I was aware of this definition, and I have sympathy for those who are frustrated with some of their personality traits. Nevertheless, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that this frustration could arise because of circumstance, rather than as the result of some "organic" problem with the person. The idea is that it's more of a mismatch between the person and his or her environment, rather than a problem with one or the other.

I didn't suggest that it was easy or that it is always properly diagnosed, just that percentage of the population is possibly not a good metric to use for whether it's a disorder or not.

Understood. However, I think the commenter might have been making the point that we expect a certain degree of variability in personality traits, and that classifying such a large percentage of the population as having a disorder where the diagnostic criteria are somewhat vague makes him or her skeptical about the existence of the disorder. A person might also reasonably argue that hyperactivity and a broad attention span are advantageous in certain environments, just not the environments where we tend to educate children. Contrast this with myopia and colorblindness, where the diagnosis and disadvantages in every environment are unequivocal. I don't claim this myself, I just wanted to clarify a possible point of difference.

Is it a disorder to have no hearing? Too have so much hearing that your neighbors keep you up at night?

Is being very short a disorder? Being very tall? Having short legs with long arms?

'Disorder' will always be a nebulous concept because it's an abstraction that encapsulates a dissatisfaction with the fitness of a person's psychological complexion in the context of the person's environment. Hyperactivity and a short attention span might be a disorder for a student who must focus deeply on a single concept, but an advantage for a hunter-gatherer who must integrate a large number of shallow ideas simultaneously. Thus I will humbly refrain from taking a strong stance on your questions; I can imagine situations in which each would be advantageous and in others the opposite.

It'd be just a trait. You can have better vision than 20/20, does that make 20/20 vision a disorder? Truth is some people have below average ability to focus on far objects, but to go outright saying there's something wrong with their eyes or minds, I think is getting one or two steps beyond truth.

> Truth is some people have below average ability to focus on far objects, but to go outright saying there's something wrong with their eyes or minds

Well yes... that's why we have glasses.

People use sunscreen in the sun, take anti-ageing medicine, go bush walking with walking sticks, too.

"Disorder" is just a label. Does it matter whether you call it a "disorder" or some other word? The key thing is not that it's something wrong with you, but rather that it's something about you which is shared by a lot of other people, which means you can learn from their experience instead of trying to get by with just your own.

Consider: there are two diagnoses, OCD and OCPD. Both cover Obsessive Compulsive behaviors.

OCD is the Disorder where OC behaviors ruin your life and cause you distress.

OCPD is when you like your OC behaviors, but other people don't . It is a Personality Disorder, because your personality is socially "wrong".

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