Can you pass the psychopath test? I can.
I love these Internet tests that tell me who or what I am. I’m fascinated with the idea that finding out if I’m a psychopath, or which Disney princess I am, should mean anything to anyone. What is up with this phenomenon?
The other day I found out that my fairy tale character is Rapunzel. Good grief. That makes no sense whatsoever. I don’t live in a tower. My hair is long but not that long. I have no interest in princely visitors. It’s complete nonsense. If it had said Rose Red I could have accepted it.
You know all the results from all the Internet tests are handed over to the NSA for the government to psychologically profile us. So when it comes time to round us up and put us away, they’ll know which of us are the biggest troublemakers and go after them first. Saving the easy pickin’s for last. I don’t worry about any of that because I’m sure I made it to troublemaker list long before the Internet. That’s a done deal for me.
A related issue is: What disorder are you in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, called DSM-5? Now there’s a fine Internet quiz question. One that brushes right up to reality.
I mean, if you find out, as I did, that the classic Star Trek character you are is neither Spock nor Scotty, but an amalgam of the two, that’s useful. But it won’t get you a week in a mental health clinic. But if you’re an amalgam of schizo-affective personality, chronic depression, borderline personality disorder, Asperger syndrome and PTSD, you’re on your way.
The reason I mentioned those five particular diagnoses is because I personally have been diagnosed as all five of those by different psychiatrists. If you wonder why they got such different diagnoses, congratulations, you are sane compared to them. The reason they could get such different ideas about me was simple: The average interview for the first three diagnoses lasted 15 minutes, and the interviewers barely got to know me.
The Asperger’s diagnosis came from a psychiatrist assigned to me by a mental health outpatient clinic. After interviewing me a record 40 minutes, she based the Asperger’s diagnosis on my being good at mathematics, and so “You probably belong somewhere on the autistic spectrum.” I should have said, “So what does it mean that you suck at psychiatry?” but fortunately I didn’t, or by now I’d have had certified oppositional defiance disorder.
Instead, I went over her head to her supervisor. And an amazing thing happened. After giving the psychiatrist a chance to do better, which didn’t happen, the next thing I knew she was transferred out. And, what was really amazing, knowing I had succeeded in getting one of these bozos out of my life actually made me noticeably less depressed.
Recently a study was published in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, which found that people who have dealings with a mental health outpatient clinic, like I did, generally are 8.2 times more likely to kill themselves within a year of it compared to people with similar diagnoses who receive no outpatient care. Spending time in a psychiatric hospital bumps it up to 44 times more likely.
People are facing off to explain those figures.
On one side are those who say it just means if you’re the kind who gets the treatment, you’ve got a worse case, that’s all. The numbers say how much worse.
But another side says, whoa, not so fast. Those numbers are too large for that simple an explanation. They say that the kinds of psychiatric care people get from outpatient clinics and hospitals make many people more suicidal.
My opinion is in between.
I think that psychiatric patients would be less likely to kill themselves if they had more psychiatric treatment, but along with it they should be able to get rid of all the bozo psychiatrists they run into.
Because that’s what really makes you better.