Merged Psychological conditions are illusory

Tracy Dalziel said:
Could anyone explain the diagnostic criteria for dyslexia ? I do believe in its existence but I must admit it sounds as if it would be difficult to diagnose. I have a few friends who are school teachers and they have said that they believe many genuine cases go under the radar in children who are perhaps deprived but that the children of more pushy parents are often given what is probably an incorrect diagnosis because mum and dad just couldn't accept that their child just wasn't that bright in the language department. They also have the opinion that this could give the said kids an unfair advantage in written examinations as it entitles them to extra time and perhaps help from a scribe.
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You believe in he existence of dyslexia?
So you mean that you believe that certain people, who write or read worse than others, have a condition?
A condition of what? Reading worse?
 
Dinwar said:
I'd be curious myself, but I know there is a definition (I've seen it before, just can't recall it offhand). And while it can be misdiagnosed, a misdiagnosis doesn't negate the validity of the condition.
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Tell me, how does a "definition" turn into a "condition"?
 
bruto said:
This was my immediate reaction. It's only disempowering if it leads to exclusion or limitation of options. Here in the U.S., at least in the parts I've inhabited, the opposite is generally true. Great efforts are made, with great success, to address dyslexia.
I actually know some people who are, or were, dyslexic. Identification of dyslexia is, when done right (sorry to have to use that terribly privileged term here, but I cling to the primitive notion that some things can be done right and some wrong) anything but disempowering. When a person with dyslexia is correctly identified and special efforts made to overcome it, that person will often end up able to read and continue with his education at a level that would have been impossible if the condition had not been addressed. Not so very long ago people who were dyslexic were labeled as stupid or slow, and denied many opportunities as a result. In other instances, the special education was once reserved only for the luckiest, and perhaps the richest, among us. When Nelson Rockefeller was growing up dyslexic, the special education he got was pretty rare. Two generations later, it's pretty common.

I don't know where Jonesboy comes from (if there's any there there for him at all), but from my American perspective his original post is not only nonsensical, but trivializes and insults the work done by the many educators who have succeeded in opening doors for dyslexic students which once were closed to them by people who, like Jonesboy, failed to recognize the condition and in so doing failed to provide the necessary teaching to get past it.

Jonesboy, even if you were correct in saying that dyslexia somehow doesn't exist, you would be dead wrong in calling it a "disempowering term of abuse." That's just sheer ignorance.
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Listen carefully, it is disempowering because you become a patient.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
Problem with the reasoning of the OP, and for that matter the other thread that seemed to claim PTSD doesn't exist*, is that if you use it to discount these two conditions, you also need to discount all conditions, everything from depression to cancer. If PTSD doesn't exist, neither does leukemia. If dyslexia doesn't exist, then neither do allergies.

The OP's reasoning on asthma:
Individuals have a range of respiratory skills: hardly unexpected. To make victims from these normal distribution patterns a scientist or medic will arbitrarily declare certain reading ranges as a "condition", as if it has some defining property that distinguishes it from the rest. It does not, of course. Medics privilege the binary - one range is privileged over the other as being not a condition.

*oh. Same poster. Should've realized that right away, feel really bright now:p.
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Yes. A condition refers to a physical impairment or injury.

This cannot be said of individuals - they are not "autists", or experience- however they behave or whatever they expereince.
 
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Dancing David said:
Stanislav Grof :

Oh MY, so you really do hate science because you prefer the comfort of unsupported neo freudian twaddle.

Again some people get off on pretending they are special and that they are persecuted for being special.

If you want to do hallucinogens , go ahead. But they are not shown to be effective in the treatement of PTSD. that area of research is so piss poor it isn't even funny.

I know what PTSD is, and I have lived with it, I also know the serotonergic hallucinogens made my anxiety worse. Panic was never healing for me, nor is it for most of those who live with PTSD.

It is some sort of freudian twaddle that the 'trip' will free you, that is just unsupported mythology.
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You've been sold the medical model. You've been sold the idea that your feelings are wrong, that your dreams, your physical manifestations are wrong. And you apply that model to all your options.
 
Finn McR said:
How about heart attacks? They are a perfectly natural response to atherosclerotic disease. Should we let them play out? And how about anaphylactic shock? Just a response to allergens.

The good old "just get over it" treatment for PTSD / Combat Fatigue / Shell Shock... Please.
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Why compare PTSD to heart attacks? you might as well compare sleep to heart attacks.

You also said "please" Please what?
 
Dancing David said:
Excuse me, I think most rape victims, most trauma victims and most vetrans and victims of war would beg to differ.

So... I wonder what research base this bizzare idea you have presented has?

And it is not a social value, it is a personal judgement of discomfort that leads peopel to seek treatment for PTSD. So we can examine the basis of your claim and then you can deny the benefits of the scientific method.

Now the fact that there seem to be some narcissistic people who glory in their 'special and privileged status as people who aren't really ill' is fine, they are free to not seek treatment as they choose.

But you have no basis for saying treatment for PTSD is forced upon people ebcause of social mores, people can seek it as they wish. Involuntary hospitalization is based upon threat to self and threat to others.

Unlike like some I have worked in mental health, I never recall anyone being forced into treatment for PTSD.
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No- they wouldn't beg to differ. They would give it some thought. Unless they are believers.
 
Halfcentaur said:
So, people with debilitating PTSD who do not seek treatment for decades should be fine if they allow their panic attacks and nightmares to play out to the "end"?
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Well, yes, to an extent. But they need to be supported in encouraging them. And that is VERY hard to get.
 
Jonesboy said:
Yes. A condition refers to a physical impairment or injury.

This cannot be said of individuals - they are not "autists", or experience- however they behave or whatever they expereince.
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So, then, you argue that the brain structure is not what determines behavior? In short, you believe in some mythical, unproven, undocumented, untestable entity rather than physical brain structure?
 
Jonesboy said:
Listen carefully, it is disempowering because you become a patient.
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No you don't. I was diagnosed as severely dyslexic when I was a child. I was put in some special reading classes for one year. I was given the option to take some tests on a computer rather then by hand in high school.

That's it. I don't see how I "became a patient".

Perhaps because of the special reading class? Well, if that's the sense in which you mean it, then "becoming a patient" was empowering: it gave me the tools to actually learn to read. How you can consider that disempowering, I have no clue.
 
ApolloGnomon said:
Your personal knowledge and experience base on this subject appears to be insufficient.

Soldiers deep-throating a 12gauge shotgun is not "a healing and an opportunity" for themselves or any one they know.

First responders drinking themselves to sleep every night to try to prevent the recurring dreams is not a "natural healing response."

Being upset about a cop shooting his wife and then deep-throating a PAIR of Glocks isn't "misplaced christianity-based emotional puritanism."
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Quote-bumping this, because it was the last post on the page and Jonesboy appears to have missed it.

The cases above are not imaginary examples, they're people I know/knew. The cop, in particular; he was a new member of my National Guard unit and was suffering really intensely from some bad stuff. I played a game of chess with him in the Chaplain's tent during annual Training. Two weeks later he was in the news, posthumously, and his 6 month old daughter was an orphan.

Two Glocks in the mouth, Jonesboy. That is not a healthy healing process.

Your ignorance may seem like innocent innovation when you type it, but I find your half-baked (or maybe fully "baked") theories more than slightly offensive.
 
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Jonesboy said:
You missed my entire point. I understand what a difficulty in reading is. But what's dyslexia.? I gave a reason for the use of this term.

As to feelings disempowering argument, how does that happen?
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Let me Google that for you.

And, in case you're too lazy to click the link, here's one of them:

What causes dyslexia? What are the different types of dyslexia?

There are several types of dyslexia that can affect the child's ability to spell as well as read.

"Trauma dyslexia" usually occurs after some form of brain trauma or injury to the area of the brain that controls reading and writing. It is rarely seen in today's school-age population.

A second type of dyslexia is referred to as "primary dyslexia." This type of dyslexia is a dysfunction of, rather than damage to, the left side of the brain (cerebral cortex) and does not change with age. Individuals with this type are rarely able to read above a fourth-grade level and may struggle with reading, spelling, and writing as adults. Primary dyslexia is passed in family lines through their genes (hereditary). It is found more often in boys than in girls.

A third type of dyslexia is referred to as "secondary" or "developmental dyslexia" and is felt to be caused by hormonal development during the early stages of fetal development. Developmental dyslexia diminishes as the child matures. It is also more common in boys.

Dyslexia may affect several different functions. Visual dyslexia is characterized by number and letter reversals and the inability to write symbols in the correct sequence. Auditory dyslexia involves difficulty with sounds of letters or groups of letters. The sounds are perceived as jumbled or not heard correctly. "Dysgraphia" refers to the child's difficulty holding and controlling a pencil so that the correct markings can be made on the paper.
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http://www.medicinenet.com/dyslexia/article.htm
 
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ApolloGnomon said:
Quote-bumping this, because it was the last post on the page and Jonesboy appears to have missed it.

The cases above are not imaginary examples, they're people I know/knew. The cop, in particular; he was a new member of my National Guard unit and was suffering really intensely from some bad stuff. I played a game of chess with him in the Chaplain's tent during annual Training. Two weeks later he was in the news, posthumously, and his 6 month old daughter was an orphan.

Two Glocks in the mouth, Jonesboy. That is not a healthy healing process.

Your ignorance may seem like innocent innovation when you type it, but I find your half-baked (or maybe fully "baked") theories more than slightly offensive.
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I'm still waiting for the evidence to support anything relating to the bare statement in the original post. I wouldn't hold my breath for anything substantive - OP's a very lazy philosopher.

Mind you, he might just get his jollies by throwing and running, in which case the reaction to each of his posts must be most gratifying...
 
Jonesboy said:
You've been sold the medical model. You've been sold the idea that your feelings are wrong, that your dreams, your physical manifestations are wrong. And you apply that model to all your options.
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Of course he's sold on that. But you're asking for him to believe you. Why should someone trust a very confident random internet guy's "just so" declaration over a massive quantity of devoted experts?

Where is your sales pitch?
 
Jonesboy said:
PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder isn't an illness. It is also not a disorder, as a disorder isn't a scientific fact but a veiled social value.

Researchers such as Stanislav Grof have shown that hyperventilation and flashbacks with intense emotional involvement are powerful, natural healing responses that are extremey healing events if allowed, supported, encouraged and completed. Various drug and non-drug techniques have been employed to this effect.

Mainstream medicine under the hegemony of the medical model and a misplaced christianity-based emotional puritanism has pathologised these natural healing events. Hyperventilation, for example, has many myths associated with it, ranging from nervous breakdown, to dangerous oxygen/carbon dioxide "imbalance", to "psychotic breaks". Typically, doctors will panic when faced with a hyperventilation episode, and may employ sedatives or talk people down.

PTSD is not a problem but is itself a healing and an opportunity, unless one employs mainstream medicine, when this healing response is routinely sedated. Outside of medicine, there are many opportunities for working with this ancient, natural process in a productive, positive way.
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I'll bring it up next group at Swords to Plowshares.

Any personal experience with PTSD jb?
 
Jonesboy said:
Yes. IT can be done.
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So what happened to all the veterans with PTSD who suffered from it for decades before it was finally even recognized as an actual illness, due to an overwhelming number of veterans building up with the condition who most certainly were not getting better?

Do you realize how long it took for this issue to even be recognized by medical science formally?
 
Have you suffered from PTSD or uncontrollable randomly triggered panic attacks, Jonesboy? Did you learn to overcome them through novel methods akin to what you're championing?

Describe the proper support you're espousing.

Should the individual be placed on a couch with their flashbacks, told to focus on the experience and aggravate it to it's peak intensity, all the while surrounded by loved ones?

What is this procedure you're recommending be done, as opposed to therapy and medication?
 
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