oh wouaw...

so what do psychologists do when faced with someone who's being diagnozed with "bipolar" by a psychiastrist?

It's more against the new DSM categorisation than psychoatry as a whole...as I've understood the article, and based on other stuff I've read.
The DSM is American and the ICD is British, and I need to go over their differences for my exam, damn. But the point is different places use different symptoms and ways of classifying. This leads to different percentages of people being seen as having mental illnesses, for example ADHD is diagnosed more in the US than over here. The new DSM has made some big changes, I read that e.g. normal grief after a death of a loved one could be seen as depression according to the new DSM and there are other things which have been objected too.

So, (@ Lilly) a psychologist would not just say "no, you haven't got bipolar", but their issue would be *how* that diagnosis has come about and if it is accurate. As far as I understand.

The guardian article mentions psychologists are moving away from the biomedical model and suggests there are other factors too. I didn't know this was the dominant factor but it just makes sense to acknowledge there are other factors at work too.

Labelling and classifying and diagnosing mental illnesses is an issue I think. Sometimes normal emotions and thoughts are just given a label and stigmatised unnecessarily.

I agree with your last line. Diagnosis is not always the best way to soothe a troubled mind; whereas dangling the carrot of inner satisfaction makes for a highly profitable industry and sometimes far greater long-term dissatisfaction. It isn't just the social stigma, it is the internal upset. Think what greatness might have been stifled if society had always wielded such a narrow conception of normality...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15033046

Part of the reason for the prevalence of mental 'disorder' is in the reduction of categories of work imo, so that outlying tendencies unsuited to, say, office life, can have a severe financial impact, essentially forcing efforts at normalisation that eventually trickle down to schooling, just crushing high spirits. Probably also our hi-tech civilisation is throwing us off our natural rhythms. Drifting off-topic but it's personal for me because I was always such a misfit. Now when I struggle to get things done I find thoughts of being somehow damaged deeply unhelpful. So the very people who promote a better self-image risk trapping others in low-self esteem and the angst that goes with it. And I know a few people in need of very dedicated help who won't get it because they can't really be brought into the workforce and it isn't profitable, and they understandably won't surrender their wellbeing as they see it to the local authority.

I would class most psychology as unscientific (masked by an obsession with statistical significance tests), but most psychiatry is inappropriate for the reasons above. Of course counsel is in itself a good thing. A nice thing about traditional family and community is that you can have a personality and still be in the group - although membership of those groups can depend on accepting some very outlandish beliefs and norms.

And horses for courses, some people will swear by their meds and find clinical diagnosis to be a relief, and some people do need to be controlled or protected.  C'est la vie.

An appropriately scattered post.

Quote:

An appropriately scattered post.

I came across this article today, it shows the difficulty of diagnosing mental illnesses, in this case PTSD. But it contains spoilers to Iron Man 3 http://m.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/iron-man-3-does-tony-520868

wouaaaaaahhhhh medication?! TIME FOR A REVOLUTION. trying to zombify the next generation are we...