This is hilarious. How is it that people, when confronted by the fact that an online therapy actually works, has a measurable therapeutic effect, don't ask themselves whether their mental illness is as superficial as its treatment?
To the question "Is my mental illness real?", one answer can be "If you can treat it by looking at some pictures and reading some words on a Website, then no, it's not real."
Imagine an oncologist saying, "Yes, you have cancer, but I have a Website with some pictures and words, that will fix you right up." This isn't likely, because, unlike a psychological condition, cancer is a real disease.
The efficacy of bibliotherapy should not be readily dismissed. Words, written or spoken, images, still or moving, or sounds can create or alleviate illness in the mind. Idleness will deteriorate mind and body as surely as abuse or neglect.
That having been said:
"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem
be sure that you are not first, in fact, surrounded by a**holes."
- William Gibson
> The efficacy of bibliotherapy should not be readily dismissed.
What happened to what is popularly known as common sense? A disease that can be treated by a website is virtual, not real. To see the point, try treating any real disease by visiting a website.
> Words, written or spoken, images, still or moving, or sounds can create or alleviate illness in the mind.
Yes, but only when an "illness in the mind" is imaginary.
> What happened to what is popularly known as common sense?
In my own experience, I did not gain "Common sense" until I did what you did - move to the middle of nowhere and gain direct experience. Until then, my understanding was gained through media.
> A disease that can be treated by a website is virtual, not real.
Let us begin by defining our terms. How do you define:
.) dis-ease
.) treated
.) website
.) real
.) imaginary
Make no mistake - I'm in assloads of pain with every keystroke but I will rip you a new one on this matter.
> Choose - mental illness is either real or it isn't.
Calling someone psychotic doesn't grant the reality either of the term's generally accepted meaning or mental illness as a category. Any more than the common use of the term "genius" is reducible to scientific consensus on the meaning of that term.
> Imagine an oncologist saying, "Yes, you have cancer, but I have a Website with some pictures and words, that will fix you right up." This isn't likely, because, unlike a psychological condition, cancer is a real disease.
Oncologists do say "you have cancer, I have a website with words and pictures on". CBT is used with cancer patients to manage their pain.
Your kook-like obsession with refusing to accept the possibility that mental illness exists is indistinguishabke from bigotry in this post.
People who are sometimes hospitalised can be treated -safely and effectively- with some forms of talking therapies. That does not mean their illness is not real and it is fucking offensive to suggest otherwise.
> Griefers have empirically demonstrated that websites can affect mental processes by using flashing images to trigger epileptic seizures.
That's true, but the conclusion you draw has a logical defect -- an epileptic seizure is not a mental process, it's a physical one. It can be started and stopped by electrical and other kinds of stimuli.
When you hear "epilepsy", think brain, not mind. When you hear psychology, think mind, not brain.
> Music in psychological warfare and torture is well documented.
Indeed it has, but there's no reliable science on that topic. The reason is there's no repeatable, objective way to gather evidence.
> The Amanda Todd death is sufficient to show that words have the power to kill.
The Amanda Todd death is sufficient to show that there's sometimes a correlation between words and death. To turn a correlation into science ... shall I go on, or do you know the rest of this old tune?
1. Do you have any idea how this language makes you -- and all psychologists -- look?
2. According to the NIMH and the usual rules of scientific evidence, the burden is on psychology, not its critics, to prove that mental illnesses are real, a problem that isn't helped at all by the practice of creating and destroying mental illnesses using votes instead of research.
Psychologists could easily reverse the recent NIMH ruling that the DSM is to be dropped as pseudoscience (http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-rats-of-n-i-m-h) -- they could produce scientific evidence that the mental illnesses listed there are real. But, notwithstanding this tangible injury to their livelihoods, they cannot do that. And neither than you.
> People who are sometimes hospitalised can be treated -safely and effectively- with some forms of talking therapies.
Yes, which calls into question the reality of mental illnesses. Prove this wrong using evidence -- name a real illness, from the world of medicine, an illness with a known cause, that can be talked out of existence.
In other words, meet your scientific burden of evidence.
> That does not mean their illness is not real and it is fucking offensive to suggest otherwise.
Spoken like a true psychologist: everything is an emotional issue, there are no topics that can be discussed dispassionately -- a requirement for science. And, like a religious believer, what is "real" can be asserted without evidence.
> ... refusing to accept the possibility that mental illness exists is indistinguishabke from bigotry in this post.
Let's analyze this claim. Science, and scientists, proceed using the null-hypothesis precept (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis), the precept that a claim is assumed to be false until evidence supports it. The recent NIMH ruling agrees completely with this foundational precept, and that the scientific burden of evidence rightly rests with psychology to prove its claims.
According to you, and based on your posted statement quoted above, this means that scientists are bigots.
Scientists aren't in the habit of "refusing to accept the possibility" of anything, but they refuse to accept ideas having no evidence. You think this makes them bigots. You're both wrong and science-illiterate.
Finally, if mental illnesses can be accepted as real without evidence, then Beth Rutherford's claim to have been raped by her father, and forced to abort with a coat-hanger, must also be accepted as real without evidence. But when she made her claim, Beth Rutherford was a virgin -- in reality.
> You make the mistake of thinking that I am attempting to defend psychology.
If that were true, it would certainly be a mistake -- you aren't defending either psychology or the reality of mental illnesses or their diagnoses.
> You mentioned cancer.
Indeed I did.
> Is cancer real, or "virtual"?
Since it's largely understood and is something on which different observers can be forced into agreement, since it has an explanation, not just a description, since it can be treated using physically unambiguous methods, since it survives rigorous, double-blind, controlled trials, it's real.
> How about the pain that a cancer patient feels? Is that real or "virtual"?
Virtual, obviously, since a trained actor can persuade a skeptical audience that he's in pain, as was true during the now-famous Stanley Milgram experiments.
If it happens that you plan to assert the reality of pain, its objectivity, I strongly suggest that you read up on the topic before you do. In particular read how a battlefield hospital ran out of morphine, so they administered a saline solution and said it was morphine. This worked, and began the research into the Placebo response.
Conclusion? Pain is virtual. This is not to dismiss pain's seriousness, only to dismiss its objectivity -- the degree to which different observers can be forced into consensus on the meaning of evidence.
Do you believe that some "phobia" exists? That so e people have life-altering fears to irrational degrees? Do you call those phobias "virtual" illness, or are they "real" illness?
Because current best treatment for phobia is a talkin therapy, which could be applied online.
Do you have the required electron micrograph? How about a cell culture? How about anything about which different, similarly equipped observers can come to a consensus? In other words, how about some science?
> Because current best treatment for phobia is a talkin therapy, which could be applied online.
If you were a scientist, you would realize that anecdotes aren't evidence.
No, science rejects phobia as a real illness. Haven't you been keeping up with current events? The NIMH recently ruled that psychiatry (the treatment branch of psychology) is pseudoscience, and they will no longer accept research proposals based on the DSM, psychology's "bible", for the simple reason that it has no scientific content.
And you already know this -- or you should. This means you're directing your questions to the wrong person. I didn't reject the scientific status of psychology, the NIMH did.
To the question "Is my mental illness real?", one answer can be "If you can treat it by looking at some pictures and reading some words on a Website, then no, it's not real."
Imagine an oncologist saying, "Yes, you have cancer, but I have a Website with some pictures and words, that will fix you right up." This isn't likely, because, unlike a psychological condition, cancer is a real disease.
More here: http://arachnoid.com/science_of_mind