Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Mental disorders aren’t diseases, they’re networks of symptoms

#1
C C Offline
https://psyche.co/ideas/mental-disorders...f-symptoms

EXCERPTS: Views on what a mental disorder is have changed radically in the past hundred years. [...] in the 1960s and ’70s ... psychiatry came under attack, even from within its own ranks, with critics challenging the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis and even the very concept of ‘mental illness’.

As the reputation of psychiatry reached its nadir, a group of research-oriented psychiatrists sought to restore the credibility of their profession. These self-described ‘neo-Kraepelinians’ revived the descriptive tradition championed by the psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, who believed that careful observation of the signs, symptoms and course of mental illness had to provide the basis for reliable diagnosis. This, in turn, could guide speculation about aetiology and treatment development. This perspective informed a pivotal revision of psychiatry’s ‘bible’, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)...

[...] Despite these advances, the limitations of this now-dominant framework for understanding mental illness have become increasingly apparent in recent years. The difficulty scientists have had finding biological markers of the mental disorders listed in the DSM prompted a former head of the US National Institute of Mental Health to wonder whether our diagnostic categories were nothing more than reified labels, not genuine disease entities...

[...] A novel perspective on psychopathology promises to help solve the problems vexing the neo-Kraepelinian paradigm. This is the network perspective, pioneered by the Dutch psychometrician Denny Borsboom and his colleagues. Borsboom was inspired by contemporary theorising about intelligence – specifically, how it might emerge from the interactions of multiple cognitive subsystems. According to the network perspective he and others have developed, a psychiatric disorder, such as major depression, is itself an emergent phenomenon. It arises from a network of interactions among its constituent elements (eg, sleep, mood and energy).

For an example of how this could work, consider someone who has experienced a stressor at work, and now has difficulty falling asleep. Fatigue will likely occur the following day. Fatigue, in turn, can impair attention to tasks at work and increase irritability. Subsequent conflicts with coworkers can lower mood, exacerbate other symptoms and activate additional ones (such as hopelessness). Causal interactions among these symptomatic elements can reinforce one another, establishing the state we call depression. Hence, unlike a bacterial infection or malignant tumour, depression is not the underlying cause of symptoms. Rather, depression designates the system that emerges from these causal interactions.

The network perspective on psychopathology has stimulated an immense amount of research in recent years. [...] To better understand the systems that give rise to mental illness, network analytic researchers break them down into components. Capitalising on major computational and statistical advances, researchers produce graphs that depict psychiatric syndromes as networks comprising circles (nodes) connected by lines (edges)... (MORE - missing details)
Reply
#2
Magical Realist Offline
My own experience with depression links the general feeling of malaise or low energy to a cognitive state of believing there's no hope---that the feeling I have now will remain and never lift. That's how suicidal thoughts rear their ugly head because the only solution appears to be escaping this despair into non-existence. That in itself is an anxious and frightening prospect, that death can appear as a viable solution. So I focus on things that give me hope, like poetry or uplifting quotes or art or online discussions or even just the news to distract me from the despair. Eventually I come out of that cognitive state and regain my belief in the value of my life however tenuous it may seem. The state of no hope is proven to be a temporary delusion afterall, and I come out of it a stronger person than I was before. It was right there in front of me all along--the peace and calm of an open and free future filled with possibilities that is mine for the taking.
Reply
#3
Syne Offline
You could sum all that up as simply: Treat the causes, not the symptoms.
Depression and other mental illnesses are labels for symptoms, not causes. But but giving someone a label allows them to avoid facing the causes by only facing the reified label. A crutch to hobble around on, instead is a splint to help heal.
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Article Owning a pet does not reduce symptoms of severe mental illness, study shows C C 4 168 Jul 20, 2023 12:01 AM
Last Post: confused2
  3 key factors may give 90% accuracy in predicting wide range of psychiatric disorders C C 0 63 Dec 10, 2021 02:41 AM
Last Post: C C
  Cognitive immunology: Why aren't we all conspiracy theorists? C C 2 117 Sep 12, 2021 04:02 AM
Last Post: Syne
  Drug-misusing sexual minorities & low-income kids more prone to have mental disorders C C 2 250 Nov 20, 2020 10:49 PM
Last Post: Zinjanthropos
  Do antidepressants create more mental illness than they cure? (interview) C C 1 169 Jun 15, 2020 05:39 PM
Last Post: Syne
  New approach to mental disorders + Bullying the common factor in LGBTQ suicides C C 0 122 May 26, 2020 06:51 PM
Last Post: C C
  Single molecule linked to anxiety disorders Magical Realist 15 1,048 Sep 12, 2019 07:43 PM
Last Post: Yazata
  Genes underscore 5 psychiatric disorders Magical Realist 17 951 Aug 30, 2019 12:52 AM
Last Post: Syne
  Vitamin D toxicity + Fecal transplants reduce autism symptoms C C 0 366 Apr 10, 2019 02:24 AM
Last Post: C C
  10 silent killer diseases Magical Realist 1 281 Apr 16, 2017 02:05 AM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)