So that’s the beginning to what has to be my favorite creepy convo I’ve seen posted to the Reddit CreepyPMs subreddit yet. I don’t want to SPOIL anything, but let’s just say that the pink lady in this conversation comes up with a rather unique way to send this dick-pic-posting male correspondent packing.
See here for the rest, and here for the Reddit thread. Oh, and don’t worry, you won’t have to look at his c*ck, or any other horrifying thing, and nothing else will be spoiled if you scroll down through all the pics. (You’ll get what I’m talking about in a second.)
Really? You don’t understand that it’s a multi-variable analysis? Having a mental illness is linked to higher rates of violence when that person with a mental illness is also a young man with a substance abuse problem. Being a young man and having a drug abuse problem are confounding variables. They are more likely to predict violent behavior than having a mental illness is. Studies that do not control for these variables are going to have a lot of error. The results won’t be accurate.
That’s a pissy way to admit your wrong.
@nepethne
@It’s alright. My partner is forbidding me from coming here, since it always makes me ragey. Just remember, when the data says something you don’t like, ignore it!
Did you even read what Argenti typed out? Or are you just great at this whole ‘ignoring actual facts’ thing?
@hellkell
It’s what’s contributing to my lack-of-charitableness, at the moment. :/
sorry, i was using the words the study thing i read used. I didn’t know exactly what thhey meant, just b/c it seemed so… ambiguous.
What the hell just happened? I feel like I missed something, which is weird since, er, by most ideas I’M severely mentally ill, to the point that “Are you dangerous?” is the first thing out of a lot of people’s mouths when I disclose it. And you know what? I fucking hate it. DAMN YOU BILLY MILLIGAN.
I’m not sure WHY Nepenthe is suddenly so hellbent on declaring why mentally ill folks are more violent, but yeah, if it gets them this angry, I agree it’d be best they go.
WTF, Nepenthe? I’m not sure why this is the hill you’ve decided to die on, but seeing how I learned a lot of social skills BECAUSE I was constantly trying to reassure people I wasn’t going to murder them with an axe, I really wish you’d can it.
Also, yeah, what the hell categorizes something as ‘severe’? I feel like this is trying to gauge whether physically disabled people are more likely to be violence. It covers such a range of issues and impairments that… seriously, wtf is going on?
(It seems oddly appropriate that I’m crunching HTML on my comics based around destigmatizing mental illness at the moment.)
damn it, it was serious not severe. I still am not exactly sure what it means. :/
For bonus fun! Anorexia is a mental illness. Severe cases can and do result in the death of the person who has it. When was the last time you saw “Anorexic goes on anorexia-fuelled shooting spree” as a headline?
“Mental illness” as a category contains far too many subcategories to tell you anything useful about the likelihood that someone who’s been diagnosed with one will be violent.
I admit to feeling really uncomfortable in this conversation, especially since a fair amount of shit I’ve dealt with is having folks presume I’m dangerous, and having to actively work to convince them otherwise. <.< I don't know, it's like I get this weird creepy feeling that all this time, people were RIGHT to presume that about me, even if they were my parents.
I skim-read the thread, and I’ll be general so as not to upset anyone, and I’m not writing this with any particular person in mind. I just want to emphasize two related points:
1. correlation does not imply causation.
2. arseholes can get psychological/neurological conditions too, so the evidence would need to go the extra step and show the counterfactual: that in the absence of the condition, the person would not have been [insert negative outcome of interest here]. It’s tautological to point to the condition as the cause, especially if the [negative outcome of interest] is highly correlated with one of the symptoms used to diagnose the condition.
Kiwi Girl — re: #2 — yeah and with antisocial personality disorder having a history of violence is pretty much required for the diagnosis. Re: #1 — which is why I mentioned such things as the rate of violence among young men, controlling for other variables shows them to be bigger factors than mental illness.
“Why are you comparing the subgroup of mentally ill people to the subgroup of young men? The relevant populations when evaluating the claim “mentally ill people are no more likely than anyone else” to be violent are the subgroups {mentally ill people} and {all people who are not mentally ill}.”
And the death penalty isn’t racist, white people get death sentences at the same rates as minorities! A fact, until you account for the race of the victim at which point holy shit is it racist — multiple interaction variables, what’s that intersectionality thing again?
As for noting what I’m citing, you missed the quote marks?
Oh what, you’ve yet again come here and made a claim that, when met with a rebuttal, made you angry, so you won’t even read this. Okay then.
In general —
1) the ones that defined severe/serious included unipolar depression and schizophrenia, so no, not remotely useful. (They have notably different levels of impairment, especially when looking at a long time period)
2) it was substance abusing mentally ill people are more likely to be violent than the general population (as are other substance abusers, just a bit less so), but young men are more violent than any of the other groups
3) Fade, no, you pretty much got it.
4) bipolar and PTSD over here, so yeah, I also get the backlash of this stigma
5) in the studies defining what a violent act was (and not all did) they were all against someone else. Some did include simple run ins with cops though, no indication if it was because of violent towards someone else, general symptomatic behavior (eg screaming in public), suicide threats, or what have you — definitely not a useful measure of violence against others.
For psychological conditions, it appears that some people think that the diagnosis is based on the same quality of evidence as, say, being diagnosed with measles or a wasp sting allergy.
Psychologists and psychiatrists fight over the various conditions, let alone the diagnostic criteria. As the diagnoses are based on symptoms, they’re more akin to medical syndome conditions than precise disease states.
That’s not to say that the conditions don’t exist, this is an observation that we still don’t really understand what the hell is going on to cause them. And when I watch the vast quantities of money get spent on things like measuring neutrinos and looking for the Higgs Boson, compared to the lack of funding in this type of area (let alone the lack of money for support and treatment), I want to go to bed and stay there crying. Because I think the funding priorities are seriously wrong.
http://promoteacceptance.samhsa.gov/publications/facts.aspx?printid=1
More likely to be a target of a violent attack, actually.
You can always count on Diogenes to dumb the conversation back down when it was starting to get more fine-grained.
Kiwi Girl — as someone who knows all of that too well, I second that last sentence.
To make her(?) point about not being precise disease states a bit clearer — wtf mood disorder I have seems to vary as widely as who you ask. I think we’re on “other bipolar disorder, depressive features” currently (not in the DSM at all, closest is “bipolar disorder NOS” — Not Otherwise Specified)
And how any particular thing gets interpreted is subject to bias, BPD for example, the criteria about risky or impulsive behavior? News to no one here — a penis can go in more vaginas before being considered too many than a vagina can have penises enter it. Which means (cis) women are deemed to be having risky sex while having fewer partners than a (cis) man deemed not to be having risky sex. Or, how aggressive is a reasonable reaction? Or, in HILARIOUS things, is sarcasm proof of anger control issues? (Yes really, meds psych from hell can go trip and land in my cactus bed)
Diogenes — oh fuck yes, but Nepenthe declared that irrelevant so I ignored it.
Cassandra — just this once though I appreciate it. It may’ve been irrelevant to Nepenthe, but it’s very relevant to the actual problem.
There’s all kind of gender bias in how things are diagnosed. The psychiatric community also has a nasty history in terms of helping to enforce socially acceptable sexual behavior and punish people for stepping out of line – wasn’t all that long ago that gay teens were being “treated” for homosexuality.
@ Argenti
Again, depends on the diagnosis, which is why I snarked at him. Part of the reason that Nepenthe’s approach is so irritating is that, based on what zie has to say about zir personal history, zie should know very well that not all mental illnesses are alike in terms of likelihood for violence.
Nepenthe’s hardly done anything for a long while now except drop in to be obnoxious to other regulars, then either double down or shrug it off with “Oh yeah well I’m an arsehole” (the implication being that other people just have to accept zir arseholish behaviour). Very trollish choice of behaviour.
All I can say is that I want to send Nepenthe’s partner a giant bouquet of flowers. Yes, please, please, tell zir not to spend time here!
And I’m sorry because Fade spotted that Nepenthe was here with an axe to grind and I said that no, I thought it was a good-faith question, so I helped set this thing going. Sorry. 🙁
This thread needs some positivity, so here you go.
See, the internet can be good for something besides porn and cat videos.
I’m glad Nepenthe is back to be a jerk for no reason. Again.
Yeah, nothing like consistency. Once upon a time zie would contribute, like a regular. Nowadays? Nothing but sniping at people here, indirectly or directly. Charming.
@Argenti, thanks, yes that was my point and yes she is fine. I don’t care too much as long as I am not identified as a male, so even neutral pronouns are fine for me. 🙂
And I just remembered this study: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment which demonstrates how trained psychiatric staff fall for confirmation bias. And why, once a person has a psych label, they’re pretty much stuck with it. And, of course, it “explains” all their “bad” or “weird” behaviour.
/headdesk