
77% of the population have symptoms of personality disorder? - joshuacc
http://mindhacks.com/2010/09/01/the-class-of-77/
======
jon_hendry
Sigh.

Everyone has one or two symptoms, a little, occasionally. To actually have a
personality disorder you have to have lots of symptoms, often, to a severity
that it causes problems in your life.

Lots of people have occasional headaches. You could also say those people have
symptoms of a brain tumor. But that would be stupid because they lack many
other symptoms of a brain tumor.

~~~
j_baker
I think the point of the article was to suggest that personality disorders are
a continuum rather than a binary thing. I don't know if this is correct, but
it seems a bit more logical than a "you either have it or you don't"
philosophy.

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studer
Reminds me of this, from last month:

<http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66Q4BJ20100727>

"... many in the psychiatric community are worried that the further the
guidelines are expanded, the more likely it will become that nobody will be
classed as normal any more."

~~~
j_baker
I took a deviance class in College. The most important thing that I took away
from the class is that deviance is normal. Everybody is deviant somehow.
Granted, deviance is a sociology concept rather than a psychiatric one, but I
doubt that psychiatry is much different.

After all, everyone gets physically ill. Why is it such a stretch to say that
everyone gets mentally ill from time to time?

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ascuttlefish
I'm starting to think that much of what is considered disorderly is actually
just representative of the diversity of mind within humans. Reminds me of a
Robertson Davies quote from The Rebel Angels "[P]eople don’t by any means all
live in what we call the present; the psychic structure of modern man lurches
and yaws over a span of at least ten thousand years."

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petercooper
We're animals. We're diverse. We're wired radically different to all other
species - our civilization demonstrates that. The wild viewpoints and ideas
that come out of different mental states pull our species to a net positive.

I find it bizarre that 23% of people could _not_ be considered to have any
sort of mental disorder. Everyone I've known personally has either dealt with
one of OCD, anxiety, depression, narcissism, paranoia, or low self esteem, at
different stages of life. One of mine and my wife's injokes is that we can't
think of any close personal friends who _haven't_ ever been on antidepressants
except ourselves.

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angusgr
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

------
marze
If we could now adjust the cutoffs for high blood pressure and high
cholesterol so as to include 77% of the population, that would totally
increase the market cap of the pharmaceutical manufacturers.

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xtho
If the disorder is the new standard, then the underlying notion of a "normal"
personality would become useless. Maybe the concept was wrong right from the
beginning. It's interesting though that e.g. for Freud normality rather was
something like the majority's disorder -- not the absence of
neuroses/psychoses. (At least in Totem and taboo.)

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VBprogrammer
Surely if 77% of the population have something it is the 23% that have the
disorder?!

~~~
goodside
Counterexample: Being overweight.

~~~
die_sekte
Or Herpes.

~~~
j_baker
I think you mean HPV:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_papillomavirus#United_Sta...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_papillomavirus#United_States_of_America)

~~~
wooster

      Herpetic gingivostomatitis is often the initial 
      presentation during the first herpes infection. 
      It is of greater severity than herpes labialis 
      which is often the subsequent presentations. 
      Around 90% of the U.S. population is affected 
      with this disease
    

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_simplex>

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zeteo
I wonder what the percentage is among the psychiatrists who established the
relevant diagnosis criteria. I suspect it's close to zero.

------
known
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fmri> is useful in diagnosing personality
disorders

------
rarrrrrr
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disease_mongering>

------
Towle_
_"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann..."_

------
elmindreda
When they finally figure out that there's only a single sane person in the
world, I hope he changes his name to Wonko.

------
seiji
Personality Judo: Being able to quickly identify and optimally deal with
personality defects in others.

Everybody has problems, hangups, or just weird quirks. Masking off problems of
people while dealing with them makes life easier.

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Charuru
I applaud mission creep. When most problems are labeled mental illnesses, we
can unstigmatized psychiatry and easily get everyone the help they need.

~~~
angusgr
I think I see what you're getting at here, and I agree that unstigmatizing
mental illness is important. But does "everyone" really need "help" from the
psychiatric profession?

~~~
1053r
Does "everyone" really need "help" from the medical profession? The dental
profession? I think you may be showing signs of stigmatizing mental illness
yourself a bit, there.

~~~
angusgr
I'm not the one who downvoted you, so I thought I'd reply. Cos you kind of
have a point.

But I'd argue that a psychiatrist is a medical specialist in the same way that
a cardiologist or a urologist is. Everyone needs to be aware of their cardiac
health and see their General Practitioner if they have concerns. Not everyone
needs to be diagnosed with a disease by a cardiologist. Ditto mental health.

