An interesting discussion on 'concept creep.' It's the idea that the labels we use to describe mental health are expanding and being applied to an ever-wider array of human behaviours.

We look at what's causing this, the impacts it might have (both positive and negative), and what it means for how we understand mental health conditions.

Trauma or a tough time?
The presenter is a little ditzy, with lots of, 'like' but the prof is excellent.

https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/allinthemind/trauma-mental-health-labels-concept-creep/104453538


Followed by a discussion about psychopaths and how to spot them.
People with psychopathic tendencies tend to use certain patterns of behaviour, turns of phrase, and a decoy mask of normality, like yawns or constant references to rape.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/conversations/jon-ronson-psychopath-hare-checklist-murder-ceo/104453044

I am getting my 8 cents worth.

Checklist for psychopathology - or the Keys to some Perth posters' minds:


Item 1: Glibness/superficial charm
Item 2: Grandiose sense of self-worth
Item 3: Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
Item 4: Pathological lying
Item 5: Conning/manipulative[12]
Item 6: Lack of remorse or guilt
Item 7: Shallow affect
Item 8: Callous/lack of empathy
Item 9: Parasitic lifestyle
Item 10: Poor behavioral controls
Item 11: Promiscuous sexual behavior
Item 12: Early behavior problems
Item 13: Lack of realistic, long-term goals
Item 14: Impulsivity
Item 15: Irresponsibility
Item 16: Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
Item 17: Many short-term marital relationships
Item 18: Juvenile delinquency
Item 19: Revocation of conditional release
Item 20: Criminal versatility

Each of the 20 items in the PCL-R is scored on a three-point scale, with a rating of 0 if it does not apply at all, 1 if there is a partial match or mixed information, and 2 if there is a reasonably good match to the offender. This is to be done through a face-to-face interview together with supporting information on lifetime behavior (e.g., from case files). It can take up to three hours to collect and review the information.[13]

Out of a maximum score of 40, the cut-off for the label of psychopathy is 30 in the United States and 25 in the United Kingdom.
Groggy and Bbwian tick 30 between them, easily. Some would say individually. 25, for sure.

Two of the top-ranked professions attracting psychopaths (outside their over-representation as CEOs) are police and surgeons.

Dr Kevin Dutton published a survey listing the top professions in the UK that attract psychopaths - politicians were excluded because so few would agree to be assessed!

1.  CEOs
2.  Lawyers
3.  TV/Radio - media people
4.  Salespeople
5.  Surgeons - particularly neuro, cardio-thoracic and orthopedic
6.  Journalists
7.  Police
8.  The clergy
9.  Chefs
10. Public servants

Animals can never be monsters.
Only humans can.

Jasin wrote on Nov 25^th, 2024 at 7:04pm:

Animals can never be monsters. Only humans can.

Have you ever watched a cat play with a mouse when it catches one?.

No comparison. Especially when the mice are often let go. Orcs and dolphin do the same. It has a purpose to hone their skills.

The word unhappy has almost been replaced in the common lexicon by the word depressed. For every time you hear someone claim to be unhappy, you hear a hundred claim to be depressed. This is significant: for to be depressed is now to be suffering from a medical condition, which it is the role of professionals to cure. But the fact is, and will probably always be, that unhappiness as a mental state is inevitable for human beings, though not any particular instance of it, which may well be subject to alleviation—though, again, not by medical means or those of technical psychology. To pretend otherwise is to do humanity no service.

That melancholia as a medical condition exists is almost certain; once seen or experienced it is never forgotten. But to subsume all human unhappiness under its rubric is a manoeuvre typical of professions that seek to extend their scope, all the more urgently because they, the professions, have been increased vastly in size thanks to an expansion of tertiary education beyond the capacity of society to absorb its products in any other way.

Thus it is important from the point of view of professional psychology that people should be rendered fragile: incapable, for example, of being insulted or offended without psychological collapse, or of facing distant hypothetical prospects—that, say, of catastrophic climate change—without paralysing degrees of anxiety requiring professional assistance to overcome. (I read recently that there are psychotherapists in California who specialise in allaying anxiety about climate change, though not of course eliminating it, for that would be to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.)

The habit of constantly examining one’s mental state like a hypochondriac constantly taking his pulse, his temperature or his blood pressure, is productive of anxiety, misery and triviality. The sooner we abandon the very notion of mental health the happier we shall be—though not perfectly happy.

Anthony Daniels
Retired psychiatrist