Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT 4116-4120 (October 21st-25th, 2019)
Thrudd:
--- Quote from: Wingy on 25 Oct 2019, 12:58 ---OK, points taken for the Barry/Arthur confusion. But that doesn't change my expressed opinion that Melon already has some kind of psychological damage based on some of her prior utterances and actions.
--- End quote ---
This brings up an interesting thought/observation.
It is so very easy to be diagnosed as some form of crazy but it is near impossible to counter that once someone makes that label and sticks it on you.
As for mental issues?
I liken that to the human genome - full of busted or weird bits and yet able to remain functional.
We are pretty much a MacGyver assembly of odds and ends that can be repurposed in any emergency to get out of an unforseen situation [mostly]
oddtail:
--- Quote from: Thrudd on 29 Oct 2019, 07:49 ---
--- Quote from: Wingy on 25 Oct 2019, 12:58 ---OK, points taken for the Barry/Arthur confusion. But that doesn't change my expressed opinion that Melon already has some kind of psychological damage based on some of her prior utterances and actions.
--- End quote ---
This brings up an interesting thought/observation.
It is so very easy to be diagnosed as some form of crazy but it is near impossible to counter that once someone makes that label and sticks it on you.
As for mental issues?
I liken that to the human genome - full of busted or weird bits and yet able to remain functional.
We are pretty much a MacGyver assembly of odds and ends that can be repurposed in any emergency to get out of an unforseen situation [mostly]
--- End quote ---
This is gonna be about as legitimate as any "I've read this somewhere, but no, I don't have a link" since I read about it about 15 years ago, but there were actual experiments conducted where psychiatrists were admitted to mental hospitals under the pretense of having some (minor but somewhat disruptive) mental issues. IMMEDIATELY after being admitted, they stopped faking the symptoms.
Some took notes about their stay in the hospital, and hospital staff made a note that they were "engaging in writing activity" without ever asking what the patient was writing. Which, call me crazy, strikes me as the first thing a doctor should do? Scratch doctor - if I knew someone and they started taking extensive notes, human curiosity would drive me to ask "hey, whatcha writing?".
Some simply said they were psychiatrists and were fine and this was an experiment, and they were disbelieved or ignored altogether by the staff. Note that the symptoms they had been faking had nothing to do with delusions or a disconnect from reality, and this would be a pretty strange lie for someone who admitted themselves voluntarily to a hospital to tell.
The conclusion seemed to be that if a person is perceived as mentally ill by doctors and nurses and whatnot, it's impossible to convince them otherwise. It doesn't matter how "normal" you talk to them and behave, and even having specialist knowledge about the human mind is not enough.
Here's the kicker. The staff of a few other hospitals were TOLD a similar experiment would be conducted (e.g. some patients would really be doctors with no mental illness symptoms). The staff became extremely suspicious of many newly admitted people, to the point of being certain they were actually doctors. From what I remember (don't quote me on that), up to HALF of people admitted were believed to be faking it. Of course, the experiment consisted in NOT sending a single doctor to the hospitals. When people with legitimate mental problems - or at least people who were genuinely thought to have some - were implied by other circumstances to maybe actually be healthy, doctors second-guessed themselves a lot.
YMMV, but to me the notion that whether you're mentally healthy or not can largely depend on the completely subjective reasoning of a doctor and you're evaluated on the basis of expectations more than your actual behaviour? Pretty scary. And I'm sure it's changed, because medical knowledge has surely advanced in the decades since that experiment probably took place.
But y'know, still makes me uneasy. And that's just about misdiagnosis, as opposed to committing, medicating or crippling people because they were inconvenient to deal with - for personal, political, racist reasons. Which is well-documented in many countries' histories. Lobotomy was a way to cripple a person permanently in order to essentially make them less disruptive. It offered literally no benefits other than making the patient docile. And it received a Nobel Prize in medicine.
oddtail:
--- Quote from: Tova on 29 Oct 2019, 01:17 ---I have the feeling that the notion that power “reveals” rather than corrupts is unfalsifiable.
--- End quote ---
Fundamentally? Yes. It's impossible to fully explain a person's motivations as opposed to actions, not without being able to read their mind.
But it's possible to point to earlier, less obvious behaviour and show that there is no apparent pattern of worsening behaviour when a person gets more power.
In other words, when a dictator has a history of acting like a power-hungry, petty tyrant, saying that power influenced their behaviour and restraint may be a stretch.
Besides, isn't "power corrupts" also unfalsifiable on a fundamental level? And it's a commonly accepted wisdom.
hedgie:
--- Quote from: oddtail on 29 Oct 2019, 08:58 ---This is gonna be about as legitimate as any "I've read this somewhere, but no, I don't have a link" since I read about it about 15 years ago, but there were actual experiments conducted where psychiatrists were admitted to mental hospitals under the pretense of having some (minor but somewhat disruptive) mental issues. IMMEDIATELY after being admitted, they stopped faking the symptoms.
--- End quote ---
Okay, story time:
I was never a shrink conducting an experiment in a mental hospital, but I have been to a few. The most recent times, I was even there voluntarily after the initial hold was over. But the first time, there was this extremely corrupt doctor. Granted, I was having some issues, which were compounded by having been really depressed/erratic after an argument with the young lady I was dating at the time, which did land me down in there. But I played nice and figured that, hells, I'm going to be out in three days, no big worry. And on the third day, I get called into the doctor who said that he planned on keeping me there another two weeks because he thought that I was a "danger to myself", and "gravely disabled" due to technically being homeless, although I don't think that really counts if one is working, and between that and savings is staying in a hotel every night until I found a new place. People who were actually on the streets, and seeing people who weren't really there were getting thrown out nearly as fast as they came in. But I had decent insurance, so they were pocketing about $3k/day to keep me in there. I ended up talking to the patient's rights advocate, and she was filing the paperwork to get me out, and told me that several of the nurses had signed on, since they thought that there was no reason to keep me there. My then-gf flirted with ending up inside herself, or at least charges when she threatened the doctor. Okay, maybe that wasn't the best thing for my case.
What got me out within 24 hours of doing so was having her talk to her older sister, who had just passed the state bar about a week prior. She didn't have a job in the field yet, and had never tried a case, but that didn't matter. Just having someone who was able to practice law sending a nastygram, and I was out as soon as the ink on the paperwork dried.
oddtail:
Thank you for sharing your story, hedgie.
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