Probably they were at decreased risk...

...Oh, there we go.

And also:

Ok, and please tell me where I can go to get this.

Is this some sort of a joke? How can someone make far reaching conclusions about the mental health of individuals based on a few answers on a questionnaire and then apply these results on an even grander scale to make conclusions such as "No link found between psychedelics and psychosis"? Do you really think people who have been effected by psychedelics to this degree would even be available to fill out surveys in the first place? I know what I would do if I got one of these essays in the mail lol. And that would be to find the nearest garbage can.

And that is why this population study used over 130,000 adults; to make sure that your sample size of 1 is not relevant.

And as you should know about statistics, you cannot apply this to an individual as is. The only thing you can say with statistic like this is that there is a lower/higher/neutral chance.

Here is the scientific article:
Psychedelics not linked to mental health problems or suicidal behavior: A population study



It would be interesting if anyone could upload the study here so we can see how the dataset was obtained. Like always, read the scientific paper and learn/understand what was done to get these conclusions before you state things like "Is this some sort of a joke?", to me such remarks give a hint that you do not know what you are talking about.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

The first article is freely downloadable at the url you posted.

Psychedelics not linked to mental health problems or suicidal behavior: A population study
Pål-Ørjan Johansen, Teri Suzanne Krebs
J Psychopharmacol; March 2015 vol. 29 no. 3 270-279
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269881114568039

Classic psychedelic use is associated with reduced psychological distress and suicidality in the United States adult population
Peter S Hendricks, Christopher B Thorne, C Brendan Clark, David W Coombs, Matthew W Johnson
J Psychopharmacol; March 2015 vol. 29 no. 3 280-288
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269881114565653

‘Visual snow’ – a disorder distinct from persistent migraine aura
Christoph J. Schankin, Farooq H. Maniyar, Kathleen B. Digre, Peter J. Goadsby
Brain, A Journal of Neurology; Volume 137, Issue 5 1419 - 1428
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/awu050

I read enough to know that these individuals weren't being evaluated on a case by case bases by a clinical professional. In order to determine someone's mental health to this degree takes many evaluations. It's sloppy work. Hey, I'll happily eat my words if I'm wrong.

Redguard: The survey that was used in the Krebs & Johansen study was the World Health Organization's Composite International Diagnostic Interview (WHO-CIDI), and having used it myself in my own research, I can tell you that it is *extremely* extensive.

Also, most mental illness isn't diagnosed after extended sessions getting to know a patient. Our mental health care system is based on a phenomenological model, where a therapist will get a list of 'y' symptoms and if the patient displays, 'x' number of symptoms, they qualify for a diagnosis, so it's actually not that hard to substitute a survey for a therapist, at least at the diagnostics stage.

(I have problems with this model but, for better or for worse, it's what we use).

Blessings
~ND

I always thought that the purpose of those surveys was to help someone to look in the general direction of an issue, an aid for a therapist/psychologist on where to look. There has to be a huge margin of error with said approach. The amount of factors that could create a discrepancy is laughable. There's no way you could be 100% certain or even close doing it this way. Could you imagine Jung diagnosing all his patients via surveys? With the sheer number of people with misdiagnosed mental disorders can you really put a whole lot of faith in this system?

It doesn't matter how much faith you have in the system, that's what the system is, and science that works within the system has to play by it's rules.
If you want to look at the rates of diagnosable psychosis, you need to know how people are diagnosing psychosis and follow their lead.

Also, while there may be a lot of problems with this method of analysis, psychoanalysis, like the kind done by Jung and Freud had plenty of issues as well, so while we may not be improving, I would say we're not getting worse either.

Blessings
~ND

I appreciate the lesson in modern (I'm more old school if you haven't noticed) methods of analyses, truly I'm not being sarcastic. It will allow me to form better arguments in the future but I believe the problems I outlined speak for themselves. There are enough flaws within the system to create more then a shadow of a doubt in my mind.

What I ask of you is to shut down that fine analytical side of your mind just for an instant! Imagine if you will, you are a Father. You have a child that is starting to behave irrationally, you mention this offhand to your child's doctor when you take her in to see him because she came down with a bad cold. The doctor gives your daughter a survey to fill out. Surprise surprise, the survey states she has depression. Said doctor prescribes your daughter anti depressents. In this situation, would you trust the system and the doctor or take your daughter to see someone who is professionally trained in these matters to make the diagnoses?

Faith/trust has a lot to do with it. When studies like this are conducted and the research given out to the public it can have huge consequences on people's lives. To simply shrug your shoulders and say "meh" it's the best we got might as well trust the results, well I think it's a bit lazy. It's dangerous as well.

I've been around psychedelics and the counter culture for a long time. I've seen and experienced the effects of prolonged exposure to psychedelics. In many cases it's not a very pretty picture. People with latent psychiatric disorders can have extremely adverse reactions to prolonged exposure. In many cases you will never know if you are in danger of becoming neurotic until it actually happens.

It seems to me that the crux of your argument is (please correct me if I'm wrong), it's the best we got. Well when it comes to people's health and well being that will never be good enough for me. At least when Freud and Jung came out with their methods they were incredible improvements for the time. You can't really say the same with these newer methods can you?

As an outside observer of this back and forth, it's remarkable how much distortion the last couple posts by you (redguard) (especially the last one) have introduced into the discussion.

If we rewind, we can see this all started from the claim





So we know you (redguard) haven't actually read the studies and despite claiming you will be happy to eat your words, when you are presented with the statements:





You then turn to arguing about the efficacy/validity of these systems. This is an attempt to introduce a false premise into the discussion. As was already pointed out, it doesn't matter if you accept the system or not, in order to produce understandable results within this framework, these are the standards that currently make sense to use.

Allow me to present a metaphor. I measure time in seconds, minutes, and hours. You tell me that time is all relative and so my measurement of time is not actually the perfect measure of time and that my measurements are therefore not the best system for creating understandings that hold true throughout the universe. While you're not incorrect, for the purpose of measuring things on the surface of the planet (in given circumstances), utilizing a standardized measurement of time means that my results all have coherence/consistency with each other. This coherence/consistency is precisely what gives my measurements meaning, even if they are completely meaningless to someone traveling in their interstellar cruiser at close to light speed.

Sure, there is room for improvement in mental health sciences, but it seems odd that someone who hasn't read the studies is saying they are invalid precisely because they appear to adhere to current standards. I'm not saying they're perfect models, and elsewhere people have pointed to some of the issues with the extrapolated conclusions, but as someone who has been sitting on the sideline reading this discussion until now, your reaction reads as very emotional.

This is evidenced again here:


You're on a psychedelic drug forum that has some of the brightest minds I've ever encountered. Yea, we've seen people have breaks of various types...I've seen that happen in non psychedelic-using population as well. I don't understand why this anecdote is being offered as a rebuttal to studies, especially when you haven't even read the studies. By all means, you're welcome to your opinion, but from my perspective it feels like an odd time for the soapbox to come out.

To demonstrate what I mean, allow me to cross-post a critique of the original study that I actually found meaningful:

Please forgive my somewhat tactiturn nature when forming an argument. We come from complete opposite ends of the spectrum in regards to how we process and divulge the things we learn. You, like Nathaniel, are both impressive analytical thinkers. I'm an intuitive type. Many times I expect people to understand where I am coming from without actually giving them the tools to do so. If you have ever studied personality theory I'm the individual that falls firmly under INFJ. Which means I come up with the answer first and work my way backward. And given this is a situation I never thought I would ever have to articulate much less argue over it's going to take me some time to form an argument that has a chance in convincing someone such as yourself. You are correct that my initial assertions were in fact wrong but through my conversation with Nathaniel I came to the surprising conclusion that my issue with this article was in a different area then I had originally anticipated.

If we are going to have any hope of being able to reach some sort of a common ground both of us are going to have to meet one another half way. I will tone down my emotional state and become more logical if you insert more emotions and do away with the walls of logic. As an infj my experiences in life play a critical role in how I perceive the world and for someone like me they play a more important role then what results one may receive from statistics. I'll make sure to leave that alone when we talk. I realize now that it's silly for me to think they have any bearing on you.

Now to get to the interesting part. I see you like metaphors. Using surveys to diagnose mental illness is like a carpenter building a 3 story porch using a ruler whose smallest measurement is inches. That's pretty much my entire argument in a nutshell.

It's not that I don't want this study to be true. I just feel that the diagnostic techniques could use a lot of improvement if we are ever going to get a concrete answer one can have faith in. Psychadelics are obviously an extremely controversial topic for good reason. There is great capacity for positive and negative change and I feel the more precise, the more thorough we are in these studies the more of an impact they will have on the society as a whole.

We may be different people with unique worldviews, but the manner in which you seek to assert these differences as relevant to the discussion at hand feels (to me) to be intellectually dishonest. Rather than go through the various statements that ruffled my feathers, I'm going to do my best to stay on track.


Thank you for acknowledging that. That said, it would be appropriate to acknowledge such intellectual shifts in the discussion when they take place, otherwise the discussion becomes a bit nonsensical as people are attempting to engage with positions that are no longer relevant to the topic at hand. It's also hard for me to take this seriously given that you go on to state:


Except it's not, as someone who is intimately familiar with the survey at hand has already attempted to tell you. Take a look at the paper and pencil component of the World Health Organization World Mental Health Composite International Diagnostic Interview. This isn't some buzzfeed survey. I'm no fan of the WHO...but your metaphor doesn't appear to hold water.

Additionally


This isn't about wanting the study to be true. It's about understanding the experimental model and the inherent limitations of that model. Had you offered a critique along the lines of the one I posted earlier, I likely wouldn't have posted a single comment in the thread. For better or worse, our feelings about this paradigm aren't relevant to what this research has to say about phenomena as understood within this paradigm.

The survey was conducted in the United States. 136,000 people were surveyed to be exact. There are over 7 billion people on this planet. 136,000 is barely a drop of water in an entire bucket. I just browsed the section on psychoses, if one were to give this questionnaire out in a different parts of the world you would have radically different answers. In many societies extended use of psychedelics is used to create these experiences on and off the drugs they take to take to initially experience them.

You keep making arguments predicated on false assumptions (read: your gut). A brief amount of research would have shown you that your stated premise is incorrect.

From Reliability and validity studies of the WHO-Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI): A critical review



Additionally, your assertion that



Conflates psychosis with the use of psychedelics. This is patently untrue. Tanya Luhrman wrote a great paper on this very subject. Hallucinations and Sensory Overrides

Two notable quotes include

Now these are the papers I enjoy to read. I will get back to you tomorrow as I have a house to ready for guests.

It sounds like nothing I saw will convince you of the validity of symptom-based psychiatry, and that's fine. I agree with a lot of the points you make, I really do, but again (and I feel I must stress this), the attitude you're describe is extremely defeatist. It wouldn't be possible to the kind of in-depth analysis you're describing for a useful number of subjects. No researcher, or research team, has anything like the time, or resources available to do that.

I would also say: look into some of the theory behind the statistics used in these papers. There is a lot of mathematical validity to the idea of using samples to make conclusions about a larger population. Honestly, the authors of these studies have gone above and beyond the call of duty with 100k+ respondents, the vast majority of survey-based psychology papers use groups that are less than 50 individuals (most of whom are middle class, white, Psych 101 College students).

Blessings
~ND

Just dropped in before sleep to ask a few questions so I can better understand you.

Unfortunately I don't have access to the whole article (the first link you posted) and in its present state it's a bit out of context. Perhaps you can post the article on here or a sufficiently large section from what you quoted from? I work backwards from my gut, remember?

How much of your understanding of shamanism is based off of real life experiences?

Maybe they would have, if there'd be "culturally prescribed" ways to deal with this condition. Also, the personal evaluation of being a shaman differs...not every shaman wants to "shamanize" but has no choice but to heal himself by becoming a shaman.

The statement that "schizophrenia" exists everywhere is a very bold one. I know that the idea of "translating" western illness into indigenous cotexts is still widespread in cultural anthropology but i do not believe in it.

What about other "schizophrenia like" illnesses such as spirit posession? In some cases, the only way to deal with it is to integrate the spirit into the sufferers life which comes at the price of continously performing certain rituals. Would you say these people have a choice? OR are the just schizophrenic ?