[IFC_LLC]

How can one identify an illness where one can't even tell who and how often have said illness?

In fact, there is a way of doing that. And we, as programmers, have access to those methods. It's called Numerical Analisys. At times it's quite amazing to see how well mathematics can estimate data.

One of the examples, is German Tank Problem. https://www.numberphile.com/videos/clever-way-to-count-tanks

While being an extremely opaque problem we are able to handle it to an extremely precise numbers.

One does not have to be that acquainted with the ways of math to figure things out. One can just use some data source and point such data source out. I mean, any book, be that a book on financing or programming book would have a list of references under such statements.

And here we have it. An absolutely out-of-wack statement saying that the poorest regions of Britain are affected by this condition more than others. Who? Why? Where? How was this number obtained?

Probably "contradictory" is not a right word for such a claim. But I would love to see at least anything that would prove such a statement.

In fact, flip to the end of the DSM and look for the list of references. You'll find none. I kid you not, there is not a single reference to an outside source in this book. This means that my work on "Use of Dynamic Library Link to execute Assembly code in C#" that I've written in 2005 while in the university has 6 more references to outside sources than the DSM itself.

The reason for my beef in here mainly that all the numbers are just stated, with no respect to what numbers are. And I would expect either an explanation of a numerical method to estimate this number, or a source as to where this number has been gotten from.

[NoahZuniga]

How I see it is that they are very careful with the statements they make. It seems to me like there was a study of this disorder in lower income communities in the uk, which leaded to the 2%. However, it is unreasonable to then draw the conclusion that it is also 2% in the entirety of the USA, or that it must be lower or higher.

Also, I think its still helpful to define a disorder even if you haven't researched globally how many people have it.

> The reason for my beef in here mainly that all the numbers are just stated, with no respect to what numbers are. And I would expect either an explanation of a numerical method to estimate this number, or a source as to where this number has been gotten from. I agree that it would be nice have references. However, if you are just diagnosing an illness, it probably doesn't matter that much how many people in the world have this illness, just if the person in front of you has it or not. So the people that are actually using this text don't really need the sources.

It seems to me like the main purpose of DSM-5 is to define a bunch of disorders, so everyone has a common language to talk about the actually useful stuff like treatments. So even if it mistakenly says 2% instead of 0.2%, that doesn't really matter, I think.

Also, even if it is non-obvious to us, there might still be someplace where sources are listed. (IE maybe if you look at some meeting notes of the author committee)

[IFC_LLC]

You are stating exactly the problem.

A well written scientific book would never leave a reader in a state of “maybe”.

Also, if the numbers go down to 0.2% I can’t help but notice that this can’t be defined as a disorder. It is a statistical error.

There is a placebo effect. Furthermore any doctor knows the rule of self-diagnosis. “Any patient, given a chance, will self-diagnose anything”.

With no data on how the data about illness was obtained I can’t say if this is a statistical error or a fluke.

Also, as noted above, should there be a method of testing for such a condition that is objective, I would live with 2% or 0.2%. (For example, 0.001% of people are missing this and this chromosome, and we know that because we can do a DNA test.) But there is no way of saying something like this just cause you did a survey and ask people some vague questions about their mental state. There are people who would just fake answers in their responses for fun. And just cause of that I don’t trust numbers like 2% in this specific case.