Posted by jane d on February 11, 2002, at 0:38:18
We've always had some posts along the lines of "my misery is worse than your misery". This either leads to dozens of posts disagreeing or a loud, embarassed silence. Because, after all, how many of us really know how to measure the suffering of another. Theres the GAF (global assessment of fudge eating isn't it?) but it's rather vague. The DSM could be useful with its 5 out of 7 criteria but they don't clearly give you bonus points for exceeding minimum criteria and they offer no help at all on comparing one disorder to another. I think that we need to give each diagnosis a numerical score, much like the degree of difficulty of a skating leap, which could be multiplied by the number of extra criteria met to give a total score.
In the mean time, to make it easier to know whether you can respond to these claims of suffering superiority I though we could figure out some conversion formulas. So for example, two moderate depressives are entitled to refute one severe depressive.
How about.
2 moderate depressives=1severe depressive.
3 dysthymics=1 obsessive compulsive + 1/2 a generalized anxiety disorder.
2 SADs = 1 Panic Disoder
1 atypical major depressive = - (1 melancholic major depressive)Any others? Math majors solicited to reduce this to its simplest form.
Yes I'm mad.
Jane
poster:jane d
thread:18064
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020202/msgs/18064.html