Messages

Wait, what?

Basically, it will result in people not wanting to get better, and in turn not getting better because they find those mental health support forums a welcome community for them to participate in only as long as they have their mental illnesses.

What? Are you serious here? Are you seriously implying that mental health support forums actively make people regress when they're improving because the need to remain part of a community at the obvious cost of their mental health?

I'm not saying this doesn't occur, but I think you'd be more accurate if you were talking about forums that involved pretty much anything else. Games. Films. Clothing. Wicca. I can see this occurring in all these places but this surely must be frowned upon at the least in any semi-respectable forum devoted to mental health.

Or maybe I'm insane and Narcissism support forums are filled with selfies and Depression support forums rife with "Here's how to not improve anything and end it all" threads.

What I got out of this was that you are saying that it could make the problems of people with obsessions worse, and you wouldn't be mistaken.

I kind of see what you mean with:

One other "group" aspect of social psychology is that people like people who are similar to them, and in a group they like those more similar to them at the expense of those different from them.

Which just makes the follow on even stranger. Why would someone suffering from X seek support from people with problem Y? That makes no sense. You talk to people also dealing with X. Y may be a related issue which they share but it's not the immediate and sensible go-to place.

They wouldn't. Usually on these forums it is broken down into categories by label. All the people the state says are sad go one place, all the people who don't get along well with others go in another, etc. etc. As you can imagine, that last forum is a hoot.

If you've got some mysterious qualifications or knowledge, I'd disclose it now. More than a couple of us here are intimately familiar with mental health care, assessments, treatments, etc. and you seem to be talking out of your arse.

I'm definitely not talking out of my arse, at least not any more than anyone else. I've taken social psychology, I've read my fair share of social psychology books, I've been on a mental health support forum as a casual observer out of boredom and I was specifically asked what illness I had under the pretense that I didn't belong there if I didn't have an illness and I've been in an inpatient psychiatric unit for 3 months. After about a week I didn't think I should be in there anymore. My "problem" was that I was in a bad situation, not that there was anything wrong with me. The institution didn't think so and that was seen as further evidence that I needed to remain on the unit. The only way to get out of a mental institution is to admit that you have a problem or that there's something wrong with you (whatever got you on the unit) and that you're working on it. It's not that there's a problem with society or anything...

I thought it was fiction, then it turned out to be fact.  Then, it turned out to be fiction again.

Link?

Here you go.

I GOT PUT IN A EPILEPSY BY AN ATHETITS.

It is clear that you are suffering from severe paranoia, quite possibly brought on by the dildo dance party going on inside of your noggin, brought on by the athetits.

That is my completely unprofessional professional opinion. If you would like more information, please stop being so nosy.

Dude, I got pull-start vibrators up in that bitch.

In your nose? Are you sure you aren't using my electric toothbrush? Cause I would have to do something fairly awful if it was. Probably buy a new one, and those things aren't cheap.

[have we hit the tipping point where the majority of people are at significant risk of mental health concerns due to their intelligence?]

have we hit the tipping point where the majority of people are at significant risk of mental health concerns due to their intelligence?

Anyway, back to this.

Yes, back to that. I think there are a couple of psychological phenomena that may be contributing to the problem, one of which you mentioned. One of these is groupthink, which is made worse by the media and to varying degrees by various different kinds of media. For those who aren't well-versed in social psychology mumbo-jumbo, groupthink is the tendency for people in groups to stifle countering opinions and make people resistant to countering arguments even while not inside that group. Obviously, different people use the web for different things, and  there are a lot of different websites on the web. I know this may come as a shock, and if you were not sitting down at the time please do so. I can not be held responsible for any computer monitors having soda or water spit all over them, because I would probably just offer to give you Montreal and Park Place in exchange for forgetting it ever happened.

Back to "this"...

As I was saying, different people use the web for different things. Shocking, I know. If you weren't sitting down, see above. I should probably have warnings about drinking beverages near your monitor while reading my replies. One particular group of sites are these things called forums, and different forums have different themes. "Mental health" support forums, for instance, provide support for people suffering from problems with their mental health. Just get a washrag to cover your monitor with. The trouble with that, however, is that people identify with labels. It is how they make sense of their pathetic little world, in addition to themselves. Particularly when they take the person dishing that label out seriously. What I fear is going to happen if it hasn't started happening already is that people will identify with their diagnosed mental illnesses and find support groups for those mental illnesses. One other "group" aspect of social psychology is that people like people who are similar to them, and in a group they like those more similar to them at the expense of those different from them.

Basically, it will result in people not wanting to get better, and in turn not getting better because they find those mental health support forums a welcome community for them to participate in only as long as they have their mental illnesses. Although, it's not like the mental health community ever really removes your diagnosis. There's no way to prove your sanity.

Oh please, explain. I've not had a good laugh all day.

Probably should have paid more attention to the links I collected, buuuuuut there's no changing that now so here we are. You guys get to call me stupid Please do it as hard as you can, no one has had the opportunity to call me stupid for quite some time.

Self-esteem and depression ARE inversely correlated according to the mental health world, though. Society harbors the delusion that everyone is special, and if you can't see that you're special you just need to take this here blue (or red or yellow or white or orange) pill to make you see how special you are. I didn't learn a damn thing about psychological disorders in my abnormal psychology class, but I sure learned why the next generation of workers in the mental health community is going to suck.

If you actually think mental issues are diagnosed using short questionnaires, please let me know and I will be more explicit with my condescension and sarcastic remarks.

That is just one small part of the whole clinical process. The second step is where the clinician proceeds to interview you with a list of questions suspiciously like the questionnaire you just answered, only with a little bit more detail. I would know, I'm a PRO at being interviewed.

I believe that in the Industry, this is known as "win-win".

Yes.

We're being a little harsh.

After all, short questionnaires written by clowns have told me my favourite colour, which circle of hell I'm heading to and many other things which are obviously accurate and life changing.

OMG, what circle am I going to? I hope it's the one with four sides.

Is he still too new for me to call a shitheel?

I don't mind being called a shitheel. I don't know what it means so I'll absorb it without caring or understanding what it means.

And there I was thinking a common ground could be something other than sarcasm.

That's the only ground any of us share. The rest of it is just spaghetti and meatballs.

Depression is not low self esteem.

Yes, brilliant.

Do you know how the two are diagnosed?

Simple self esteem questionnaire:
http://www.counseling.ufl.edu/cwc/uploads/docs/Sorensen_Self-Esteem_Test.pdf

Simple depression questionnaire:
http://phqscreeners.com/pdfs/02_PHQ-9/English.pdf

If you can not see the similarities, please let me know and I will be more explicit with my condescension and sarcastic remarks.

I thought it was fiction, then it turned out to be fact.  Then, it turned out to be fiction again.

Link?

Here you go.

I GOT PUT IN A EPILEPSY BY AN ATHETITS.

It is clear that you are suffering from severe paranoia, quite possibly brought on by the dildo dance party going on inside of your noggin, brought on by the athetits.

That is my completely unprofessional professional opinion. If you would like more information, please stop being so nosy.

[even though it still suffered from the kind of thinking it was trying to overcome.]

Our experience of freedom has been masked and concealed to only reveal what our "masters" allow us to consider.  Then we take it personally when we do not perform according to our now internalized limitations.   Has me banging my head against the wall sometimes.  It's like a paradox in which I resign myself to getting out of my own way in order to actually approach myself.

An interesting documentary about that was made by a guy named Adam Curtis called "The Trap". It has three parts, with each one around an hour a piece but I would say it's worth a watch. Basically, it suggests in the first two parts that people have had limited conceptions of each other as simply "rational" beings, (which I would go so far as to say is hilariously misguided) that was caused in part due to game theory as an academic/economic discipline. I'm probably botching the synopsis, but the third part goes on to say that there is a split between "positive" and "negative" liberty. Positive liberty is the right to do things and "live up to your full potential" garbage while negative liberty is the freedom to NOT be restrained or constrained by the government. It goes on to suggest that positive liberty HAS to be suppressed because it inevitably leads to a revolution. I don't like his conclusion, because he says that it DOESN'T have to lead to revolution. I don't see why it shouldn't lead to a revolution, because "f**k the system!" and all dat jazz.

What I said in my other post, however, may very well negate any kind of depression "epidemic". Depression is just as subjective a phenomena as is self esteem, based on how a person says he or she feels most or all of the time. It's easy to see everyone on Facebook having a bias towards posting positive things that they don't hear about how sh*tty the rest of the other users' lives are.

Yea, I totally enjoyed that doc. even though it still suffered from the kind of thinking it was trying to overcome.

W.r.t. "epidemic" - I agree, self-esteem is not a good metric for a whole shit-ton of reasons.  At the root of it, the problem is not a measure of esteem.  The problem is how easily we are distracted from the understanding of ourselves existing prior to a definition of freedom that is either positive or negative (re. above).  A question of esteem is also only the result of having lost self-respect.  All signals of a systemic problem.

I'm not clear what you mean by the part in bold. Are you suggesting you don't like it because it says that positive liberty can or can not proceed without inevitably leading to a revolution? The thinking it was trying to overcome was that it was impossible to proceed without a revolution, and the conclusion was that it CAN proceed without a revolution. I don't like it because it says that it can proceed without a revolution. I don't necessarily think there should be one, but I think it is important to consider the evidence against that conclusion before unanimously declaring it possible.

As far as the rest of it goes, in the paper I cited in my other response there was another general tendency noted for some people to be more biased negatively in their responses to everything and some people were more biased positively. That would also need to be taken into consideration before any depression or self esteem scale was to be taken seriously. That paper, while a bit lengthy at 41 pages, was actually fascinating in what it had to say. I highly suggest reading it if you like that sort of thing. It's easily accessible via Google in full. Also, "The Social Importance of Self-Esteem", which is the paper that sort of preceded the self-esteem task force in California is fascinating in its implications for society combined with the lack of substance so far as evidence towards its conclusion is concerned.

I can see benefits to both sides... Personally, I don't tell most people as it isn't really a topic that comes up in conversation. I've actually only told one person I know about my personal philosophy, and it's only because she has a very similar philosophy. My inner circle of friends has a pretty limited grasp of my indifference, but that's only because they've known me for years and things sometimes come out inadvertently.

What about you guys? Does your family know? I'm sure it would make for a nice dinner conversation with some more conservative parents.

Our experience of freedom has been masked and concealed to only reveal what our "masters" allow us to consider.  Then we take it personally when we do not perform according to our now internalized limitations.   Has me banging my head against the wall sometimes.  It's like a paradox in which I resign myself to getting out of my own way in order to actually approach myself.

An interesting documentary about that was made by a guy named Adam Curtis called "The Trap". It has three parts, with each one around an hour a piece but I would say it's worth a watch. Basically, it suggests in the first two parts that people have had limited conceptions of each other as simply "rational" beings, (which I would go so far as to say is hilariously misguided) that was caused in part due to game theory as an academic/economic discipline. I'm probably botching the synopsis, but the third part goes on to say that there is a split between "positive" and "negative" liberty. Positive liberty is the right to do things and "live up to your full potential" garbage while negative liberty is the freedom to NOT be restrained or constrained by the government. It goes on to suggest that positive liberty HAS to be suppressed because it inevitably leads to a revolution. I don't like his conclusion, because he says that it DOESN'T have to lead to revolution. I don't see why it shouldn't lead to a revolution, because "f**k the system!" and all dat jazz.

What I said in my other post, however, may very well negate any kind of depression "epidemic". Depression is just as subjective a phenomena as is self esteem, based on how a person says he or she feels most or all of the time. It's easy to see everyone on Facebook having a bias towards posting positive things that they don't hear about how sh*tty the rest of the other users' lives are.

Actually, I did a presentation on the Self-Esteem movement for a sociology of deviance class and one particularly terrifying remark I read in one of the papers was that there is no objective measure of self esteem. This, on its face, is not necessarily a bad thing but it DOES call into question any and all past studies of the phenomena that did not maintain any timidity in its conclusion.

On to my point, the lack of objectivity in determining a person's "self esteem" is bad for several reasons. It means that over time, there may be a shift in how much self esteem is needed in order to be classified as having a "normal" level of self esteem. As some people who were raised on the ideas within the self esteem movement choose to go into the field of psychology, they will invariably be biased in determining who has a "high" level of self esteem.

Also connected to this idea is that average self esteem lies above the midpoint of the scale used to measure it. The idea for most scales is that they fall on a standard normal model (bell curve), but for self esteem the majority of the population, including those with "low" self esteem, are above five on a scale of 1-10.

Also disturbing was the lack of evidence cited in the 1986 California paper leading to the "self esteem task force" that, while not inherently a bad thing, gave governmental legitimization to the idea that self esteem caused bad things to happen, but that's altogether an unrelated and even stupider idea like suggesting that shoe size is a causal factor in determining intelligence.

"Self-esteem" is correlated with depression, and while I know that means it is not necessarily caused by it, I can see how there could be a connection IF there is merit to the idea presented originally. It would just be another thing that needs to be taken into consideration.

EDIT: For those who want to know the name of the paper, it is "Does self esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness or healthier lifestyles?"

Since this thread clearly could go into at least five different directions, possibly ten based on the responses received, it is clear that some form of structure is in order. Obviously, all attempts at order inherently lead to chaos so the structure is as follows: when you read this, post the first thing that comes to your mind excluding anything in this post before reading any of the replies afterward. They'll either all be coherent or none will make any sense. I'm guessing the latter.

Obviously there is the objective definition that none of us have access to, and then there is the subjective definition(s) that are interpreted and reinterpreted and reinterpreted and reinterpreted and reinterpreted ad infinitum until one of them got to your wonderful little sensing organ (not that one, the OTHER sensing organ. No, I didn't mean it was small; stop being so insecure.).

I'm asking for lots of reasons, but I will boil it down to five:
1. Seemed like a good first thread
2. I just read the book last night (yea, all by myself)
3. I HAD to know.
4. Another awesome reason
5. My mommy made me do it

I'm also curious how all of you stumbled upon it. I'll need specific times, dates and places unless you were stoned or drunk. In that case, I'll just settle for whatever days, times and places you feel like saying. Circumstances would be nice too, though not too much detail because no one wants to hear your life story unless you say they do.