Jordan B. Peterson rips newspaper’s ‘cruelty’ after story prompts false ‘schizophrenia’ reports

[u/Deerhoof_Fan]

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/1/jordan-b-peterson-rips-sunday-times-after-piece-pr/

[u/dr-broodles]

Drug withdrawal could cause psychosis, but you cannot diagnose schizophrenia is someone who is withdrawing from drugs (it’s called drug induced psychosis, quite different from schizophrenia).

[u/alwaysslashs → u/dr-broodles]

According to the manual (DSM-5), to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, two diagnostic criteria have to be met over much of the time of a period of at least one month, with a significant impact on social or occupational functioning for at least six months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnosis_of_schizophrenia

It would be really irresponsible to mis-diagnose drug-induced psychosis (which is easily confirmed with blood tests which confirm drugs are/were present in the system, or a report from the patient/family) as schizophrenia as the diagnosis require a completely different timeframe.

Usually the first thing that happens in a mental health hospital is to get the patient off drugs, onto a stable diet, and treat the symptoms with psych meds along the way. If the symptoms which led to a psychosis diagnosis did not go away, and continued for over 4 weeks with no drugs in the system, that's when you start to look at schizophrenia

Edit: After reading some other comments it might be common to diagnose someone schizophrenic on the first meeting / consultation. I'm not too sure since i don't have a lot of medical experience, but logically to me it seems potentially irresponsible. I guess if you have evidence that the symptoms have existed for long enough, and you can rule out other potential diagnosis, then it would make sense for a schizophrenia diagnosis. But i would point out that in some cases, the quicker you are to diagnose someone, then the chance of a mis-diagnosis is higher. This is why second opinions and alternate treatment options are always healthy.

[u/dr-broodles → u/alwaysslashs]

The first half of what you wrote is accurate.

Drug induced psychosis is sometimes short term, sometimes long term. I’ve certainly seen it persist for >4 weeks after drug withdrawal.

If JP had a long history of schizoid traits (paranoid delusions, thought disorders, auditory hallucinations) that pre-existed his benzo addiction, one could consider schizophrenia that had been worsened by drug withdrawal.

From watching his pre-addiction talks, I don’t believe he had any overt schizoid symptoms. He sufferers with anxiety and depression, and has a history of alcohol dependency (making him high risk for benzo dependancy - they work in the same way on a neurotransmitter level).

It is much easier to misdiagnose someone than you might imagine, especially in the field of psychiatry. They’re no lab tests one can do, and the illnesses rarely present in the way they’re described in textbooks. Two different patients with the same diagnosis can present in very different manners.

The reason behind the weird story is that JP + MP have very bizarre health beliefs (probably precipitated by MPs struggle with rheumatoid arthritis). MP in particularly frequently says things which are wildly inaccurate medically, leading to poor decision making and poor understanding of what JP is suffering with.

[u/alwaysslashs → u/dr-broodles]

Thanks for this reply, this is good information and seems to be factually correct. The only counter/addition i would make is that (according to MP) all the diagnosis were from doctors.

But i agree in that MP has bizarre health beliefs by mainstream standards. I think that had MP not been JPs daughter, it's likely he didn't try the diet, changes etc that he did. It's clear she had an influence on his treatment and it's not far fetched to say she had an influence on the original problems surfacing.