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Sybil

I heard some one say that if you took all of the characteristics of a typical healthy teenageer it would qualify for inclusion in the DSM as a mental illness.

As a mom of a teen I say they are completely crazy but not mentally ill.
 
Roma Hart said:
I heard some one say that if you took all of the characteristics of a typical healthy teenageer it would qualify for inclusion in the DSM as a mental illness.

As a mom of a teen I say they are completely crazy but not mentally ill.
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Yeah right, this is argument by appeal to unknown authority who is using an appeal to emotion.

No, a typical teen ager would not qualify as a DSM diagnosis, are you anti-mental health treatment or making a joke.

As stated before the problem comes when lay people read the criteria but do not know what words like 'significant' mean in the context of the criteria. They also don't have a clue as to what 'pairment in functioning' means especially a 'significan' or 'substabtial' one.
 
Dancing David said:
No, a typical teen ager would not qualify as a DSM diagnosis, are you anti-mental health treatment or making a joke.
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A little of both.

I'm not anti-health treatment but there are some people who worry too much about what is completely normal behavior in kids.

Sure there are a very few teens who really do need psychiatric intervetion but otherwise moods swings are normal in teens.
 
:D

The isseu is the parents, there are normal things and then there is the MI issue. It is normal for a teenagers to have 'mood swings' but that is different from the 'mood swings' in bipolar disorder. And while it is normal for teens to be gloomy, despondent and/or frustrated. If the feelings of saddness last more than thirty days...well depression?

But I agree the issue is parents, they overdominate their teens, they rag on their teens, they set unclear boundaries and unclear expectations, they abuse them verbally and emotionally.

Then they wonder why their teen is pissed off.

By the time your child has become a teen they are past the 'teaching' phase and in the 'learning from cosequences phase'. So parents set limits and enforce consequence, but lecturing goes in one ear and out the other.
 
Roma Hart said:
I heard some one say that if you took all of the characteristics of a typical healthy teenageer it would qualify for inclusion in the DSM as a mental illness.

As a mom of a teen I say they are completely crazy but not mentally ill.
Click to expand...

Hehe.

Some psychology books on prejudice tell the story of an experiment that was done in the summer of 1954, where two groups of 11-year-old middle-class boys were invited to a summer camp. The experiment was meant to investigate the effects of competitiveness and co-operation. The place the experiment took place was called Robbers Cave.

Each group spent the first week going hiking and swimming together and doing other enjoyable activities, so they became friends. They gave themselves group names and printed them on their caps and T-shirts. Neither group knew of the others' existence at that point.

But then they were introduced to each other, in an atmosphere of competition. Football and other sporting events were arranged between them. The winning team of each event was given points. A trophy and medals were promised to the overall winners of the games.

Almost overnight, the groups turned into hostile enemies, and their rivalry escalated into a series of battles. Group flags were burned, cabins were ransacked, and a food fight that was like a riot erupted in their mess hall.

Bear in mind that these boys had before always been considered well-adjusted and decent. They weren't street gang members. But the man who planned the experiment commented that a naive observer would have thought the boys were "wicked, disturbed and vicious".

That just shows how people can behave in more extreme ways than usual under different types of pressures. Perhaps one reason people can be more argumentative than they normally would be on the Internet is that people tend to express opinions they wouldn't in ordinary conversation, so the provocation is greater.

As the stories about the development of multiple personality disorder that were told in the articles I linked to before illustrate, people can go from coping with life fairly well to neurotics who can't seem to cope at all under the wrong type of therapy.

(The story about the boys in the experiment has a happy ending. It was difficult to bring the groups together in friendship for a while. First, the organisers tried saying nice things about each group to the other, but that didn't work. Then, they brought the two groups together under relaxed, non-competitive circumstances, but that didn't work either. What did finally work was giving the two groups things to do together where they had to co-operate with each other to achieve goals they both wanted to achieve. For instance, the experimentors arranged for the camp truck to break down, and both groups were needed to pull it up a steep hill. Those activities worked wonders. At the end of their time there, the two groups were so friendly they wanted to travel home on the same bus.)
 
Baby Nemesis said:
Hehe.

Some psychology books on prejudice tell the story of an experiment that was done in the summer of 1954, where two groups of 11-year-old middle-class boys were invited to a summer camp. The experiment was meant to investigate the effects of competitiveness and co-operation. The place the experiment took place was called Robbers Cave.

<snip>
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Thanks B N.

I'll add this to the area of my brain where I store things that illustrate, "This is the Way the World Works". An elegant experiment.

I did Google for more details and if, anyone else is interested, I found them here:
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/sherif_robbers_cave_experiment.html
 
Roma Hart said:
I heard some one say that if you took all of the characteristics of a typical healthy teenageer it would qualify for inclusion in the DSM as a mental illness.

As a mom of a teen I say they are completely crazy but not mentally ill.
Click to expand...

Actually, I've always said adolescence/late teen-age is a 10-year-long case of schizophrenia.
 
:) :) :) :)

Schizophrenia, no. Characterized by delusions, hallucinations and thought disorders.

Bipolar disorder, no. Characterized by depression, mania or hypo mania. Mood swings take months to change and manifest.

:) :) :) :) :)

Adolesence is a biologically driven process, it most resembles an anxiety disorder.
Obsessive thoughts, compulsions, social anxiety.
 
Dancing David said:
:) :) :) :)

Schizophrenia, no. Characterized by delusions, hallucinations and thought disorders.

Bipolar disorder, no. Characterized by depression, mania or hypo mania. Mood swings take months to change and manifest.

:) :) :) :) :)

Adolesence is a biologically driven process, it most resembles an anxiety disorder.
Obsessive thoughts, compulsions, social anxiety.
Click to expand...

What is the DSM diagnosis for a malnourished sense of irony?
 
Humor should be accompanied by smilies that denote it is humor. Part of the general cultural stigma of mental illness is the nyth that mental illness doesn't exist. the second part of it is the misapplication of terms.

"Teenagers could be said to have heart disease because they suffer emotionally', "Teenagers could be said to have cancer...", nope you don't hear those statements, just the ones about mental illness.
 
They're currently talking about the Sybil case on Science Friday -- mere hours after I first saw this thread. Maybe Jung was on to something... :D
 
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