I appreciate your sharing this view... but i lack background as to why. This tone and line of thinking is quite regular with the exception of a few friends who prefer surrendering privacy for safety.
Tell me more about your views? Basically im trying to get at does this non psychologist have valid insight or is this just a knee jerk disagreement+quarantine comment?
And to better clarify my boiling over thing it is really to say that with the added time on our hands we all have so much time to read and think about our lives.
Just in case you’re right... hello from loony town. Haha. Sorry not funny.
>Basically im trying to get at does this non psychologist have valid insight or is this just a knee jerk disagreement+quarantine comment?
Neither. I am only reacting to your writing style, which reminds me very much of some schizophrenic people I have known. If I had to describe it, I would say it is characterized by disjointedly jumping around a theme, often using sentence fragments instead of complete sentences. It makes sense to you, but it is difficult for others (well, me) to follow. Again I don't mean this as an attack at all, just as an encouragement to reach out.
I don't have a lot to say about the actual content of your comment, except to say that it sounds awfully pessimistic and that life can surprise us with history's twists and turns. I'm sure things felt similarly hopeless in the early 20th century with the robber barons, or during the plague that immediately preceded the enlightenment. Chin up!
Thanks. I am guilty of being either loved or hated for my communication style. Whether it is or isnt an emerging psychological problem i can only proceed to read always and try to write carefully without impeding my mental rhythm which some may call add. Anyway i really appreciate your thoughtful reply.
That does appear to be the crowd consensus. However I have recently witnessed, on IRC, someone who was genuinely entering a schizophrenic episode be brought to reality and convinced to seek help by a kindly and understanding channel. Knowing that this is possible, I find it difficult to remain silent if I think there's even a small chance my words might actually make a difference for someone, and the harm inflicted seems to me to be relatively minor; I seem to have upset the crowd here considerably more than the person I was actually addressing.
However, the overwhelming negative feedback suggests there might be a flaw in my logic. So I would appreciate some feedback - why is this so very objectionable?
I think the objections are similar to those against Pascal's wager. Of the four quadrants, the "Believe in god, but god doesn't exist" lists an outcome of "no downside". But that isn't true -- from the perspective of a non-believer, there are downsides to living the life of a believer.
Similarly, your position seems to be "If I give a diagnosis of schizophrenic, but they aren't schizo, there's no downside" (the charitable interpretation of your motivation being "it's better to err on the side of caution"). What you are missing is that it is harmful to tell someone they are schizophrenic when they are not.
Edit: try to put yourself in their position and understand how they would feel. How would you feel if someone at a party pulled you aside and said "I think you might have mental retardation" or "I think you might have cancer". How would a mother feel if a babysitter told her "I think your son has Autism"? Even if they believe these things to be true, they aren't professionals and it isn't their place to give such a diagnosis, and it is inappropriate to do so because of the potential harm caused by an incorrect diagnosis.
Edit2: Also, your post didn't contain any actual help, e.g. "here's the number of a hotline you should call". It was just "Here's my diagnosis".
I think in all those circumstances, the delicacy of the delivery, disavowance of unearned authority, and presence of actionable advice makes the difference between "appropriate" and "inappropriate". I would not be in the slightest bit offended if someone at a party said to me "Listen, I'm no dermatologist, but that mole you said wasn't there last month looks a hell of a lot like one my co-worker had, and it turned out he had skin cancer. Couldn't hurt to get it checked out." Broadly, that tone was what I was trying to achieve.
While I don't disagree there's a negative effect from a "false positive", I think it's likely very small. The worst you'll likely do is offend someone. And while your Pascal's wager analogy is astute, I don't think the same objections quite apply - this case is a much more straightforward one of "high probability of very low harm, vs low probability of very high good", closer to buying a lottery ticket than Pascal's dubious infinities. Precisely calculating the expected return isn't possible, so you have to apply your best estimates.
My post did in fact contain actionable advice - "call your loved ones" - which has the useful benefit of working for many psychological issues besides schizophrenia, and also just being a nice thing to do generally. It was the best advice I could come up with. However, I can see now that in this instance I could probably have achieved the same result by giving the advice without the "diagnosis".
