Online Mental Diagnosis Skepticism

not even psychiatrists know about their diagnosis, since there's no scientific method at all there, just bullet point stories to try to match with the pacient... so I'd suggest not trying to diagnose people over the internet too

You are fighting trend of making up diagnosis by making up diagnosis based on single assumed data point?

I agree. I'm not completely dismissive of the diagnosis. Just highly skeptical of its application. The sad state of modern medicine is that these diagnoses come not from extensive detailed study of every individual by a specialist, but from a few brief Q&A sessions where behavior is compared to a checklist. It's certainly not hard science at the individual level.

Medical practitioners aren't on a platonic quest for truth when they make diagnoses. They're generally trying to separate out those who would benefit from treatment. Physical tests aren't often that useful for mental conditions, so official diagnostic criteria often has a section about how the observed traits and behaviors cause problems for the patient at home, in school, or at work.Furthermore, people simply don't seek diagnosis and care unless they're having proble

Unless they are trained psychiatrists/psycologists, that actually tested her, shouldn't this diagnose be suspect? Especially since it's likely to be biased by personal experience?

can we stop diagnosing unknown people based on a 2 paragraph post on HN? the obsession with finding a label for all sorts of mental states is crazy. I agree with the rest of your post though

Not if you're selecting out of 10s or 100s of possible diagnoses

Where's the part about the undiagnosed?

Treat it like the DSM: a single symptom is not enough to diagnose, you need X/7.

Or maybe we're just nerds, not everything needs to qualify as a clinical diagnosis