Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Are psychiatrists crazy? Read this story:~

DOES ANYONE want to read a psychiatric short story? It's here. A fictional story about a "patient" who begins sleeping poorly and eventually comes out to his rather concerned girlfriend with a story about being in possession of a multimillion pound offshore account with which he will feed the starving and the needy. Enemies are out to get him and he can identify them by the colour of their eyes. Different versions of the story were circulated to psychiatrists in which 1. he had a verbal argument and 2 hit his girlfriend ie there was a violent and a nonviolent version. The Royal College of Psychiatrists wanted to see what possible effects violence might have on diagnosis. Not surprisingly the violent version of the story scored more schizophrenia diagnoses than the nonviolent one, which rated higher on bipolar disorder (poor sleep, grandiosity and paranoia are all symptoms of mania AND paranoid schizophrenia though schizophrenics tend towards oversleeping (I learned something Googling!) anyhow...)... even MORE interesting was the fact that female psychiatrists were more likely to make a bipolar diagnosis than male psychiatrists who preferred schizophrenia and this was irrespective of the violent/nonviolent version they got... you can read the write up here.

Here is the table. NB there were FOUR versions of the story but you really need to click the link to get the detail or I'll just repeat them.

The overall diagnostic breakdown from male and female psychiatrists went like this.
Male psychiatrists: schizophrenia 35%; schizoaffective disorder 20%; bipolar disorder 45%
Female psychiatrists: schizophrenia 27%; schizoaffective disorder 19%; bipolar disorder 54%

2 comments:

  1. best to give them a wide berth...


    Warm Aloha & Gratitude from Honolulu!


    Comfort Spiral

    ><}}(°>


    ><}}(°>

    ReplyDelete
  2. who them shrinkos yeah hey i got the middle one but i don't think i have an offshore bank a/c. i just thought i should walk to france via the strictly rail-only channel tunnel (i was with it enough to bring a passport (probably) and to beg up the money for a one way ticket across)
    et je parles francais oui oui madame!

    ReplyDelete

For legal reasons, comments that incite hatred, racism, issue threats or include personal contact information will be deleted.