# What's wrong with my friend? (Mental condition..) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 11, 2011, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-my-friend-mental-condition/599259 "2011-10-11T04:32:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![lavenderviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cdc98d/32.png) [@lavenderviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lavenderviolet)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-my-friend-mental-condition/599259/41 "2011-10-16T14:02:01Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#): > > I want to help him, but don’t know how. The best thing you can do is try to convince him to talk to a psychotherapist about his issues. If he does in fact have a personality disorder, then psychotherapy is really the best treatment for that anyway (although it IS possible for someone to have both a personality disorder AND depression, so I definitely do not agree with the advice to tell him to stop his depression meds - that could be dangerous if he is in fact seriously depressed). However, even if he doesn’t fit the diagnosis of any particular psychopathology, counseling would still be the best approach to trying to get him to see that he needs to change how he deals with people. You can’t medicate someone out of behaviors like blaming others and attention-seeking, regardless of why they’re doing it. Diagnosing mental illness, especially personality disorders, is complex and you’re really not going to get an accurate diagnosis in a setting like this. There are nuances to diagnostic criteria that someone who hasn’t had a chance to see a lot of people with the disorders may not be able to tease out. For example, I have a friend who isn’t a mental health professional but is convinced that ALL his exes had borderline personality disorder. Looking at things from the outside I can see that it’s not borderline personality; it’s just that they had bad breakups! Just because someone acts badly does not mean that they have a personality disorder. ---
**Author:** ![moejoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@moejoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moejoe)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-my-friend-mental-condition/599259/42 "2011-10-16T16:54:51Z")
Huh, I took the little quiz linked up thread and got 78% schizoid personality disorder. I am definitely a loner, but my affect isn’t flat at all. So I guess you get what you pay for with internet quizzes too 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2011, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-my-friend-mental-condition/599259/43 "2011-10-22T04:58:54Z")
Sigh. > [@BigT](#): > > Other people telling you there is something wrong is about the only way you can even get that insight if you have certain disorders. > [@monstro](#): > > I sympathize, but I’m going to echo the responses about how someone needs to be told they have some kind of problem. Maybe the OP doesn’t need to go into specifics (and frankly, someone making me take a personality test would have thrown up red flags), but telling them, “Hey, are you doing alright? Because I’m not thinking you’re doing alright. Maybe you should get help? I’ll help you get help, because I’m really worried” is not a bad thing. > [@Kaio](#): > > You can say “I think you should talk to someone about this” with **or without the label**. And that’s pretty much the sum total of what you can do. Emphasis added. I have no idea how to make that clearer. > [@](#): > > And, really, **Kaio** , I don’t get your anger. Since you are already seeing someone, all you have to do is go to your therapist, ask them if you have X disorder, and they’ll answer you. I did it when I was accused of having Asperger’s. I was told that I did not come close. The end. Because a therapist who has met with me two times thus far doesn’t have enough information to properly diagnose me yet, so getting the pseudo-diagnosis disrupted what should have been an organic and therapeutic process by feeding me false information. And aside from the false information, someone telling you they think you are basically completely screwed up, when in fact that’s not the case, kind of shines a floodlight on what that person really thinks of you. And if finding _that_ out isn’t disruptive – coming from someone who should know me better – and one more thing on the shit pile, I don’t know what is. This happened years ago, so yes, NOW of course 1\> I’m no longer dealing with great big piles of shit that I can’t handle by myself and 2\> my therapist knows me better than my mother does, so we’d both get a chuckle out of an armchair diagnosis and that would pretty much be the end of it. _At the beginning of the process,_ which is by definition what we’re talking about here, since the person in question hasn’t sought help yet, it is extremely disruptive. This is not about me being angry, it’s about doing a huge disservice to a friend. ---
**Author:** ![addelyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@addelyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/addelyn)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2011, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-my-friend-mental-condition/599259/44 "2011-10-22T06:32:23Z")
I used to work with the handycap some of these traits in my opinion points to autism but I’m not a doctor just an opinion … and not all autistic people are mentally challenged there’s a few that are completly normal brainwise they are just closed off to certain things and people [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-wrong-with-my-friend-mental-condition/599259.md?page=2)