A Descriptive Diagnosis or a Causal Explanation? Accuracy of Depictions of Depression on Authoritative Health Organization Websites, 2024, Valtonen+

A Descriptive Diagnosis or a Causal Explanation? Accuracy of Depictions of Depression on Authoritative Health Organization Websites
https://karger.com/psp/article-abst...-a-Causal-Explanation?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Abstract

Introduction: Psychiatric diagnoses are descriptive in nature, but the lay public commonly misconceives them as causal explanations. It is not known whether this logical error, a form of circular reasoning, can sometimes be mistakenly reinforced by health authorities themselves. In this study, we investigated the prevalence of misleading causal descriptions of depression in the information provided by authoritative mental health organizations on widely accessed internet sites.

Methods: We searched for popular websites managed by leading mental health organizations and conducted a content analysis to evaluate whether they presented depression accurately as a description of symptoms, or inaccurately as a causal explanation.

Results: Most websites used language that inaccurately described depression as a causal explanation to depressive symptoms.

Conclusion: Leading professional medical and psychiatric organizations commonly confound depression, a descriptive diagnostic label, with a causal explanation on their most prominently accessed informational websites. We argue that the scientifically inaccurate causal language in depictions of psychiatric diagnoses is potentially harmful because it leads the public to misunderstand the nature of mental health problems. Mental health authorities providing psychoeducation should clearly state that psychiatric diagnoses are purely descriptive to avoid misleading the public.


Plain Language Summary

Most psychiatric diagnoses are descriptive: They describe states of mental distress and dysfunction but do not in themselves contain causal explanations. Nonetheless, diagnoses in psychiatry are commonly talked about as if they are concrete entities that explain the symptoms they describe. In this study, we examined whether health organizations themselves contribute to this logical fallacy. We searched for popular websites managed by leading mental health organizations, and evaluated whether they discussed the diagnosis of depression accurately as a description, or inaccurately as a cause for depressive symptoms. We found that the majority of websites presented depression as a cause, instead of a description of symptoms. We discuss the potential harmful consequences of inaccurately presenting descriptive psychiatric diagnoses as causes.

 

This is especially relevant because of how anxiety and depression diagnoses are forced onto chronic illness patients purely based on loose observational confusion, and how the current fashionable push to make everything unknown a functional disorder, a concept defined in the DSM, as a prescriptive causative thing, is taking over medicine. Again and again what I see from MDs in the wild pushing psychosomatic ideology they use the "functional" terminology.

Even more so, explanations of various models, what they like to call biopsychosocial explanations of various models such as pain, are one of the most prominent recent fashions, despite the diagnoses themselves having no explanatory models and no scientific basis. Psychiatric diagnoses are the "objects fall to the ground (from our perspective as objects also falling in the same direction / stuck on the surface upright as a consequence)" equivalent of the theory of gravitation. Objects do not actually fall down to the ground, it's purely because of our similar perspective of those objects that this is what we observe. Down is a purely subjective concept, and acceleration can provide the same observation.

The former describes what is observed, the latter is a scientific theory that explains how it happens and can be used to make accurate predictions about reality. Biopsychosocial models have zero predictive potential, in part because they are very generic, very much like astrological horoscopes.

But as this study shows, purely descriptive models are commonly used as explanatory, even causative, models in blatantly circular concepts, where the description is the explanation is the description. The DSM was never intended to be used this way, MDs know better, and yet it is widely used in a very misleading way, precisely to mislead.

neurosymptoms.org, the preferred pamphlet of psychosomatic ideologues, is a major offender, and so are similar websites. They boast of providing scientific explanations, despite relying on concepts that are purely descriptive from third-party observers. So although this problem is found in authoritative sources, it's also a huge problem in loose literature pushed in authoritative contexts, such as clinics.

https://scitechdaily.com/depression-diagnoses-debunked-a-new-study-challenges-old-views/