(August 10, 2023 at 8:04 pm)Angrboda Wrote: It's been my understanding that no test is diagnostic for clinical depression and that as a result, self-reporting is the primary tool.
As far as I know there's no definitive test. Most diagnosing takes place through interviews, as I said.
The fMRI differences are detected in patients who have already been diagnosed, but in practice this is far more than self-reported feelings. Severe cases exhibit certain kinds of behavior which can be observed independent of self-reporting.
The kind of severe withdrawal and anhedonia one sees don't seem like choices that one would make. They do allow experienced diagnosticians to say that a person self-reporting as severely depressed does not show the indications of depression, and the doctors should consider treatment accordingly. It would be bad to misdiagnose something and give it the wrong treatment.
Quote:There's evidence that there are objective markers for gender and while we don't currently have the ability to determine gender scientifically, that doesn't mean that it isn't objective; that would be an appeal to ignorance.
It will be interesting to see what gets discovered in the future. I remember when they started mapping the genome a lot of people were talking about a "gay gene," and of course things turned out to be not so simple.
Maybe there will be objective tests which will allow doctors in the future to tell self-reporting individuals "no you're wrong." I wonder what people who are confident in their self-report will do when the objective test tells them that their gender identification is incorrect. Will we continue to support their choices? Or will we tell them that they will not be allowed to transition based on these tests?
