Notable Links & Miscellanea - April 20, 2024

Most of us really have very little say in the diagnoses we get, even though we all carry a lot of self-knowledge about our bodies and minds. You see the impacts of this a lot when it comes to mental health and neurodivergence: people fighting for years for their autism or ADHD diagnosis, or trying to get an eating disorder diagnosis despite their g

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Many scientific theories assume constructs that are not directly observable (muons, genetic drift) but whose existence is inferred. In mental health research, psychiatric diagnoses play such a role. We assume that constructs, such as schizophrenia or alcohol use disorder, exist but we can only observe the signs, symptoms, and course of illness that... See more

Micha Frazer-Carroll: When you tell people in casual conversation that you are writing a book on mental health, the first thing they often want to talk about is diagnosis. I think it occupies a really central position in the cultural imagination right now. Lots of people I speak to seem to be coming to a diagnosis as a means of understanding their

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