There is an effect, called the placebo effect, where the power of suggestion can cause a statistically significant rate of healing even without real medicine. You tell someone the sugar pill is a new wonder drug and some will get better. This observation strongly suggests there is also placebo sickness that is based on the power of suggestion. This is where we define a new syndrome or mental health condition that is real in som case, and the placebo effect will create additional sick people based on the power of suggestion. When I lived in Florida, i was surprised at the number of women on pain killers and other prescription drugs. It was almost fashionable. This was based on a small observation sample. To get those prescription meds, you needed a sickness. Luckily, there were plenty of sickness and symptom variations to go around. Many of these ladies took advantage of a system that was providing the answer to the questions. The 1950's was the rise of the drug age where powerful mood enhancers were being prescribed; mothers little helpers. I would have expected the pavlov placebo response to help get the food pellet. Depression was fashionable and the stock response needed for the food pellet. If you consider viagra, all you need to get that is say the stock answer and then pretend a placebo sickness. There are real cases, but more viagra is sold for fun by saying the stock answer that is taught. This medical effect is similar to lawyers, where the more laws you create the more violations of laws will occur by defualt, and therefore the more business for lawyers. it is simple math. Mental health industry needs to define more and more conditions to take advantage of the placebo effect to generate more patients. It is simple math. If the hypocratic oat is to do no harm and defining more and more mental health conditions does harm via placebo sickness, what should be done?
As usual, another clueless ramble. Never heard of a psychosomatic illness? Pretend a placebo sickness? :wtf:
The entire internet is a woo-positive environs... preventing the takeover of woo is analogous to preventing cellular lysing in saltwater. To keep the woo from overwhelming the forum, constant energy must be expended to keep the interior environs from reaching a critical saturation point of woo and bursting into new-ageyness. Since woo is constantly filtering in through the porous forum membrane, scientific knowledge must be transported in via energy use by forum members and processed into relatively coherent posts, thus keeping the forum in fact-focused balance. So we are rather like mitochondria of the forum. If it helps you to think of me as a kidney-shaped, free-floating, bilayered blob in the forum protoplasm, feel free. *bows* And you're welcome.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Shouldn't it be woo negative, to attract the woo positive? Maybe if we get enough of them to make it woo positive it will start to repel them. Ah, magnetism jokes, I always knew there was a field for this.
Well, as in positive pressure. Like an in-woo-dation You don't have to expend any ATP to bring woo into the forum environment; on the contrary, you have to increase the pressure of facts to crowd the woo-woo out.
interesting question look at the religious right, compleate "woo-woos" yet NOT MENTALLY ILL, the guidelines are very specific that belief in god is not a mental illness for all that they mirror eachother. Infact i managed to ofend all the nursing students in my class (and amuse all the paramedics) by pointing out that the definition of "Delusion" is identical to the defition of "religious faith"
Think Venn diagram. There are some people who are just Fluffy White Lighters, some people who have mental problems, and some Fluffy White Lighters with identifyable mental problems besides the obvious one of being taken in by hogwash.