From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris) Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative Subject: Re: Homeopathy is "bullshit" (was: Aspartame (diet drinks) good for you?) Date: 11 Feb 1999 01:35:43 GMT In <36c1b28b.5970292@news.mindspring.com> bachcole@mindspring.com (bachcole) writes: > >peter@psyche.demon.co.uk ("Peter H.M. Brooks") wrote: > >>Now, depression is an unpleasant illness, quite different from 'being >>depressed'. > >I see, the *ucking MDs now own the word "depression" and "depressed" >and the rest of us are supposed to kowtow to their definition. So I >cannot talk about my experience unless I get an MDs permission slip >and diagnosis. I hate to say it, but I think I'm with Baccole on this. Pain and depression are subjective sensations, on which the person suffering is the authority, not the doc. If the person tells you something helped their pain or depression, it's certainly silly to tell them that it "really" didn't, but they just think it did. For certain conditions for which there is no objective test, one must play by different rules (much as doctors don't want to). The only questions which doctors can address in the case of things that work for pain and depression is not whether or not the treatments "work" in individual cases. By definition, anything the patient reports is working, is working. There can be no rational argument with this (I issue a challenge here to those who have another opinion-- but think carefully before you answer <g>). The only questions science can legitimately ask are, how LIKELY, a priori, the treatment is likely to work on a given patient or patient population. This is an interesting question, and one that is more objectively addressed. You cannot tell a person who reports that smelling jasmine cured him of his depression. As a scientist, the best you can do is to report that, based on prior study (if such exists), his experience is relatively usual or unusual. You can report the same to someone who asks if buying jasmine (or whatever) is worth the money. You can give odds, and let the person decide how much that money is worth to him or her. That's it for the role of science. Steve Harris, M.D. From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com> Newsgroups: sci.med Subject: Re: Definition of "clinical depression" Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 14:47:06 -0700 Message-ID: <aav0kl$f99$1@slb4.atl.mindspring.net> James Teo wrote in message <3cd25281.2546101@news.freeserve.net>... >On Wed, 1 May 2002 17:52:05 -0700, "Steve Harris" ><sbharris@ix.RETICULATEDOBJECTcom.com> wrote: >>There's nothing even clinically predictive >>about it. [Has] anybody proven that people who tell you that they're really >>depressed and don't feel like living, are any less likely to shoot >>themselves or need to be hospitalized (or you pick the criterion) than >>people who meet the formal scoring conditions for DSM but refuse to admit >>they are depressed? I don't think so. > >Actually yes. DSM-IV depressed people are statistically more likely to >attempt suicide. Sure, but that's not what I asked. People who say they're depressed or sad and don't feel like living are statistically more likely to commit suicide also, but you don't need a complicated set of criteria to figure it out. The question is what does DSM-IV add? Clearly depression for weeks or months is worse than depression for one or two days. Why did DSM-IV pick 2 weeks? Long enough for women to get over PMS, maybe. Who knows? I am also suspicious over this stuff which attempts to differentiate depression from "normal grieving reaction". Clinically they're just the same! Normal grieving is a polite way of saying you or I would be depressed too if we had that loss. And we start some kind of stopwatch in which you're supposed to buck up and get over it. Very Germanic somehow. I can see Kubler-Ross: You VILL HAFF ZEES STAGES UND you VILL HAFF ZEM IN ORDER UND you VILL TAKE NO more ZAN PROPER TIME UND you VILL LIKE IT. Note that most descents into major depressive episodes are kicked off by a loss, sometimes major, sometimes minor. They start with grief. Then they go too far. With the rest of us, of course, defining "too far." SBH -- I welcome email from any being clever enough to fix my address. It's open book. A prize to the first spambot that passes my Turing test. |