#pseudomedical

[theexodvs]

Kid: “Do grown-ups play doctor, too?”

Me: “Well, sure! There’s Andrew Wakefield, Kevin Trudeau, Simon Baron-Cohen, ETM Laan, Chris Donaghue…”

#andrew wakefield #kevin trudeau #simon baron cohen #simon baron-cohen #etm laan #E T M Laan #E.T.M. Laan #Chris Donaghue #playing doctor #quackery #quack #quacks #pseudomedicine #pseudomedical

[tanadrin]

Honestly what you said about corporal punishment made me wonder about amputation in, say, Saudi Arabia. Like, do they put comparable amounts of administrative thought into what ultimately resembles, in effect, Michael Madsen sawing a captive's ear off with a razor?

I don't know about Saudi Arabia, but I do seem to recall that if a victim or a victim's family chooses the lex talionis option in Iran, medical professionals get dragged into amputating the limb (or even in one case, extracting the eye). It's merciful in a way--obviously if you're going to cut off someone's limb, doing it in sterile conditions under anaesthetic is better than not--but it also feels like a parody of medicine, dragooning doctors into explicitly causing someone distress that is supposed to last for the rest of their lives.

The psychology of executioners and torturers is complex--people will, at the end of the day, find a rationale that lets them exist within the system they work in and also sleep at night, if they can--but needless to say, I think it is very rarely good for someone or their worldview to have to normalize inflicting a high degree of suffering for its own sake as acceptable in any context.

#the american medical association forbids its members from participating in executions at least #but american bloodlust means that even if doctors won't help #prison officials will engage in a similar parody of medicine #to try to come up with pseudomedical ways of executing people #that still allow them to reassure themselves they are doing so in a civilized way #even if the person executed actually is suffering profoundly #like i think at a certain point you have to admit #that capital punishment is just inherently cruel and fucked up #and has no place in modern society

[aox3hhktbdk]

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#nauseas #nonconductibility #Sybaritan #rhyotaxitic #bansalague #pseudomedically #parthenogeny #phyle #praesens #prize-playing #Dyotheletian #papelon #ailurophobe #ketuboth #danke #pedaling #complementary #forbidder #slavo- #attendings

[loving-n0t-heyting]

“But if we drop the pseudomedical façade of therapy then anyone can set up shop and offer to talk thru yr problems confidentially and offer advice! It would be a dream for hucksters and frauds! Misinformation and toxicity would abound!”

You really get the sense many of these ppl would like to require licensure for friendships and romantic relationships even if they’re too wary to say it out loud or to themselves

[normal-horoscopes]

Was left out for free I feel like reading it is just gonna be the same old pseudomedical semi spiritualised nonsense but I do want to find out what we can homeopathically learn from birds

I- I am curious about the bird homeopathy...

[naomiknight-17]

If anyone remembers me freaking out about an acquaintance trying to heal her debilitating dental pain with clove oil, there is an update

Despite not knowing her well, I was absolutely up her ass about going to the dentist, and I don't think I can take full credit or anything, but about a week after our first convo about it, she had an appointment

She had a massive tooth infection and abscess. Needed a full root canal, draining, and course of antibiotics. Last I heard she was still recovering

I'm glad she's getting better now but it's so frustrating to think that she endured 3+ weeks of severe pain hoping it would just go away with clove oil and saltwater rinses

Pseudomedical bullshit makes me so mad and this is a tiny example of why

#what if she kept putting it off? #she could have developed sepsis and fucking died #not even an exaggeration #mod post #medical stuff #dental stuff #tooth trauma tw #ask to tag

[cruelsister-moved2]

still so mad how they basically just made up an arbitrary number for how much sleep you need and the real answer is obviously to sleep until you don't feel tired. and they went as far as saying sleeping too much is bad for you when in reality people who are sick need more sleep hence the correlation with ill health and lots of sleep. idk it's hard not to see the capitalism in the pseudomedical attempt to standardise the amount of time you should be productive for and then literally tell you that it will make you ill if you don't keep to those hours

#cuz it's funny how there's periodically articles like omg some people can function on 4 hours of sleep #but neverrrrr for the natural inverse that some ppl might also need more #we literally don't even really understand sleep esp on a cognitive level #like current scientific understanding is like. not qualified to make such a judgement euwoajdhh #like i guess some people depression nap which isn't great or whatever #but personally I can't fall asleep unless I like need to sleep

[kaiasky]

another day on reddit, another 15 yr old gay kid who wants to kill themselves because nofap told them they're evil and sinful and addicted to porn and if they pray really hard (liveblog their masturbatory practices to strangers online) the gay thoughts and problems will go away. shoutout to the enlightened atheists for reinventing sin in pseudomedical terms. yaayy

#ask to tag #it just fucking sucks

[mirandamalonka]

AI can be a valuable tool in healthcare, but it should always complement, not replace, the expertise and care provided by human doctors.

[inoppositionflorien]

I should start spreading conspiracy theories, I'd be great at it.

(this is probably a lie, I don't have tiktok to make a reasonably well-produced short video to say incorrect things in so people can say "wow this thing has said things which I sure do want to be true, but I didn't previously know. Guess I'll believe it uncritically!" My ability to spread conspiracy theories is currently limited to being passable at pseudomedical woo graphic design.)

I probably won't use these powers for evil. Unless it's fun evil.

But really, I do think it's important to learn how to make a conspiracy theory, if you know the mechanisms you're less likely to fall for them.

[r4r4r4r4r44r4r4]

Drug companies routinely fund much of the research conducted by psychiatrists

/

trials of psychiatric drugs that are conducted with pharmaceutical funding are several times more likely to report positive findings than studies without such funding.

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Some persons receiving ECT die during the procedure [...] The lower estimates include: 1 in 1,000, 1 in 200 Higher estimates include: 1 in 30, 1 in 9

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Psychiatry possesses a built-in capacity for abuse which is greater than in other areas of medicine.

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The bedrock of political medicine is coercion masquerading as medical treatment.

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physician-eugenicists advocated killing certain disabled or ill persons as a form of treatment for both society and patient

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what Szasz calls the "therapeutic state", a system in which disapproved actions, thoughts, and emotions are repressed ("cured") through pseudomedical interventions.

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detainment in a psychiatric institution versus a prison, can be worse than criminal imprisonment according to some critics, as it involves the risk of compulsory medication with neuroleptics or the use of electroshock treatment.

While a criminal imprisonment has a predetermined and known time of duration, patients are typically committed to psychiatric hospitals for indefinite durations, an arguably outrageous imposition of fundamental uncertainty. It has been argued that such uncertainty risks aggravating mental instability, and that it encourages a lapse into hopelessness that precludes recovery

/

Research evidence regarding violent behavior by people with mental illness does not support a direct connection in most studies.

Envisioning "mental health treatment" as violence prevention has been a big part of the problem, especially as you are dealing with a population that is not significantly more violent than any other group and, in fact, are less so than many.

/

The gay rights or gay liberation movement is often thought to have been part of anti-psychiatry in its efforts to challenge oppression and stigma

gay liberation was "made possible by (and indeed often explicitly grounded in) traditions of antipsychiatry".

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more than 60 percent of ex-patient groups reportedly support anti-psychiatry beliefs and consider themselves to be "psychiatric survivors".

/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry

[bechdelexam]

i dont like that post going around about sids being caused by enzymes. 1. it’s only a possible reason not the only factor and 2. sids is definitely also caused by parents accidentally suffocating their baby & i think its great that theres a pseudomedical diagnosis for that which means they aren’t punished for it

[whetstonefires]

Thank you for your comment about personality disorder stigma on that empathy vs. mirroring post. As a Probably Allistic who's dx'd Cluster B, it's always something else coming across any of the multiple #actuallyautistic posts out there that can be summarized as: "STOP painting autistic people as remorseless narcissist-psychopaths - maybe it's harder for us to express, but we DO feel our fellow human beings, and we ARE capable of love, unlike those abusive, *truly* empathy-lacking freaks!!" -

- which makes me feel very.... shut the fuck up maybe? Only *I* get to call me a loveless psychopath?? Are you aware that there exist autistic people with personality disorders and/or by-your-definition Evil Psychopath Lack of Empathy, and you've wound up and punted them under the bus as well??? Anyways it's rare for people to speak up on behalf of PD havers, and I really appreciate that you did.

Aw, thank you for the message! This is good to hear. I was pretty nervous about that post add, honestly. Disagreeing with an angry person is always scary! (For me lol.)

And once I'd edited my addition down to the essential points, having learned over time that exhaustive covering of every possible point of ambiguity etc just annoys people and doesn't really aid communication, I felt like I'd probably become so imprecise as to be rudely reductive.

But it seemed important to say! So I'm glad. To hear you found it constructive. 😄✌

Heh yeah I thought about the people in the overlap zone too but I didn't think bringing that up would do anything but sow confusion--like, I wanted to keep it clear that this was a disagreement over categorization systems and being a dick about other people's brains, and not come across as trying to like, subtext, 'hey op i disagree with your experience of autism so much i'm going to hint i think you are in fact a psychopath.' Which I do not. And also it would be none of my business anyway.

But yeah, it's like--it pisses me off. Too. The language around empathy is both inadequate and seriously in flux so it's not that I care whether people use 'the right words'--I'm suspicious of demands to use the 'right' words in order to be allowed to speak--but that sentiment rubs me the wrong way. Especially in the context of autism!

Like, I often say insensitive or clueless things because I can't model other people's mental states well enough or fast enough to figure out how it's going to sound outside my head, or pick up hints I'm 'supposed' to, or because I get so wrapped up in what I'm talking about that I forget to even try, which plays out functionally as self-absorption. Decades of practice and I'm still deeply sub-par at this.

And I've gotten so much shit for it! Both as power plays and because it's caused some real harm and hurt feelings, and those categories don't sort neatly into boxes, either. Sometimes it's both. This is just, a lot of misery associated with my deficits.

(Mostly for me but like, I'm not going to pretend my obnoxiousness is without consequences.)

But you can also see people with perfectly normal base empathy stats be just as bad, when it's someone they don't want to care about, or they're tired, or they're dealing with someone sufficiently different from themselves that their assumptions trip them up. That shit's not magic.

A bunch of times I've seen people with really high empathy stats be, like...everyone knows about the kind of asshole with high empathic perception but low reactivity who uses it for evil. That's a cliche. But you know what's not any less scary and way more volatile? Someone who's got high marks in both kinds and is furiously angry with you for making them feel bad.

Because having a knee-jerk empathetic reaction to someone's hurt when you don't feel sympathetic toward them is really annoying, and can tend to feel like manipulation even when it isn't.

It's very easy for a high-empathy person with power over others to slip into abusing those people in retribution for the pain their pain causes.

I have absolutely been punished for triggering someone's empathy reactions in a way they don't like, just by existing! It sucks! Sometimes these are people with like, strong natural empathy who haven't learned good skills for processing it etc, but sometimes it's the socially adept people who are really sweet and kind and supportive and thoughtful in like 90% of life so therefore you must deserve it, when that doesn't extend to you.

But sometimes they've just burned themselves out on the rest of the world and you're inconvenient or too much or some other disqualifying thing, so you just. Are their exception. The one they get to kick.

An empathetic person who has wronged you can go absolutely feral about making it your fault. Because otherwise they're stuck feeling twice as bad, once reactively and once in guilt.

Theoretically, ideally, this is a control mechanism that keeps people from wronging one another in the first place, that's why we link empathy and morality as much as we do, but it...doesn't necessarily work that way. Sometimes it just works out to a motive for dehumanization.

Because that's the lower-effort route to less mental pain.

...and if you're in the habit of just trusting your natural impulses to ensure you behave decently, you can develop a whole entire toxic coping mechanism down that route before you even notice you're doing anything wrong. Instinct is not a sufficient substitute for self-reflection and principle even when you're naturally blessed with good ones!

So like. My point being. That someone's empathic capacity on any scale is just a tool they have to use, that usually makes it easier and/or more likely for them to achieve pro-social conduct on a regular basis the more they've got to work with, although it does have the capacity to backfire.

It's statistically predictive, to an extent. But it doesn't actually guarantee jack shit about whether a person can or will exercise compassion.

You know?

So I feel like autism and that cluster of personality disorders are in very similar boats with excessive emphasis on...social toolsets as definitional to personhood, rather than factors affecting social cohesion etc. So when I see that kind of side-punching. Feels bad.

#empathy #autism #personality disorders #like i'm not an expert! #but this is my understanding #ask #a nonny mouse #hoc est meum #mental health #bit of a ramble #i do totally get hating the misunderstandings associated with #the decades of awfulness attached to the concept of #'low empathy autistic' #and wanting to clarify what's going on there #but you can do that without shitting on other people i think! #i remember ages ago i was digging into like #the research basis for how 'psychopath' kept developing as a medical and pseudomedical category #and there was this note that most of the research pool was people in prison and i was like #Well That Sounds Real Fucking Flawed Then #and like the researchers acknowledged rather pointedly that this was the pool of 'failures' as opposed to say successful politicians #and other people too smart to get caught #but like are those the only two options you think?? #and yeah it was like #this was the result of an ambiguity of definition #between the behavioral and the perceptual #i think we're developing in a positive direction when it comes to frameworking these things #france is a social construct

[birdmanofficial]

the circle of stupidity is complete

#get to college #get completely unpacked and have your dad make the 3 hour drive home #got to bed in your freshly stocked dorm #wake up with a fever #complete mandatory self report of potential covid symptoms #get sent home without even getting tested #find out they wont accept a covid test to allow me back on campus and i have to see a doctor #fever is already gone the next day #see doctor anyway because its the only way to get back on campus earlier than my scheduled quarantine end date #doctor says im fine #send doctors note to college #college approves #return to college after three days of a pointless pseudomedical circlejerk #wyn chirps

[eilooxara]

Whyyyyyy is the internet thick with pseudomedical bullshit when you try to find information about gallstones

#eilooxara vs her innards #eilooxology

[goosegoblin]

considering this is getting talked about quite a lot at the moment, i thought i’d take a moment to explain what people can mean when they say ‘chronic lyme’.

so lyme disease is real. it’s a bacterial infection spread by ticks that makes people feel very fuckin bad! 

even if it’s caught and treated early on, it can affect people for years afterwards. this is often known as ‘post treatment lyme disease syndrome’, though some do refer to it as ‘chronic lyme’. its existence is non-controversial.

if your lyme disease goes unrecognised and untreated, symptoms are more severe, including arthritis and neurological symptoms. This is known as ‘late disseminated lyme disease’, though i suppose some people likely do call it ‘chronic lyme’. this is very real and its existence is non-controversial.

so then we come onto ‘chronic lyme’. this is essentially defined as ‘a bunch of symptoms attributed to lyme in the absence of any evidence of lyme infection’. with ‘chronic lyme’, there is never a positive result on a lyme disease screen. there is no evidence of B. burgdorferi infection. there are just symptoms, and those who claim a hidden bacteria is causing them. there is no evidence that this is the case.

the ‘treatment’ is often long-term antibiotics, prescribed by ‘lyme literate doctors’. studies have shown these antibiotics do nothing to improve symptoms, and i shouldn’t have to explain why mass-prescribing long-term unneeded antibiotics is a bad idea!

for the record, when i say ‘chronic lyme doesn’t exist’, i don’t mean ‘these people aren’t ill’- i mean ‘there is no evidence to suggest that a secret hidden B. burgdorferi is the cause’. as with many other pseudomedical diagnoses, these are sick people, often being failed repeatedly by traditional medicine and their own doctors. they aren’t the ones to blame here.

the point is, there are a lot of people making a lot of money from getting sick people to believe in ‘chronic lyme’- a condition that does not seem to exist, and does not respond to the treatments these people recommend- and that’s not something we should be okay with.

#i'm gonna get shit for this post aren't i