A journalist named Jon Ronson describes looking through the DSM manual and thinking that his behavior sometimes matches the symptoms of several psychological disorders. This began a project to find out how certain conditions are diagnosed and treated.
A video of his presentation and some questions to help you understand the topic are available on my blog:
http://www.enupgrade.com/listen-up/2014/8/16/jon-ronson-strange-answers-to-the-psychopath-test
What do you think: is it possible to diagnose yourself with the DSM manual or a psychiatric test?
Unfortunately, I am not as proficient in English to understand everything from this video.
However, I'll try to answer your question with a joke.
When a student of the third course of medical university was learning medicine, he found out that he was suffering from each of diseases, except for pregnancy.
As for the DSM, I know that the distinction psychiatrists make is that while many people may have mild symptoms of some recognized disorders, it is the severity and the extent to which the symptoms control your life that is the focus.
For instance, many people in the USA use the acronym 'OCD' casually these days - "I'm a little OCD about that." There is a big difference between preferring your desk to be organized and not being able to leave the room until all of the books have been stacked from large to small.
I agree with you Bruce in that it is difficult to even know which terms to use. Unfortunately, these words are used pejoratively too often.
Thaddeus:
I don't think one can diagnose one's self that way.
It is a proverbialism in the USA, that what distinguishes a "crazy" person from others is that a person
who is "crazy" never considers this as a possibility. A more reasonable person will always consider the possibility that something is wrong with them.
Also, one of the difficulties with modern Psychiatry and Psychology, is that they to not actually define
for us a standard that could be identified objectively as "normal" or "healthy". There are, in this regard, only diagnoses for abnormalities. (I guess that is the appropriate or sufficient term to use.)
I am thinking at the moment of a person I am familiar with who is almost continually "angry". I think it reasonable to say that people who qualify for some kind of a diagnosis, do so because they are driven by either anger, depression, or fear, rather than by a feeling of acceptance of others. I would propose that generally, people who do not qualify for a diagnosis are those who have learned to resolve anger, depression, and fear within themselves, by acknowledging and resolving it in some way.
Of course, we live in a world in which anti-depssant drugs are very much a norm.
For myself, I do not medicate myself in this way and never have. I do think there are many people in the population in the USA who are using some kind of Anti-Depressant drug. So, in that regard, it will suffice to say that many people suffer from some kind of diagnosis for "depression". Generally speaking, I feel serene and calm most of the time.
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I read somewhere something like keti's words. University students majoring in psychology tends to analyze how their parents raised them wrong. Of course it's only a joke.