5 ms·

APA should ditch the Goldwater rule.

• hrktb 12y ago
  It's the first time I heard of this rule, thanks. As far as I understand, it only limits professional diagnostics, shouldn't it be OK if it's not done as a practicing psychatrist (i.e. call it an analysis or interpretation and not a diagnostic)?
  • dthunt 12y ago
    The end result is that the public doesn't know about the rule, so they see psychologists acting a certain way and frequently think it's actually epistemically bad, or impossible, to reason about the mental states of other humans based on their actions, writings, and other artifacts. Imagine if computer security experts couldn't talk, in general, about the security of a line of products offered by a company, or about the probable cause of a specific issue that had been observed in a particular product. The parallels ARE actually there; it's not as strange an analogy as it looks at first glance. I understand some of the reasons the rule exists. I think this is probably not the best solution, in that it creates a public who have very strange ideas about psychiatry, and that is actually a great harm. I'm neutral on most of this article, but like, specifically, if public perception is an issue, finding a better way to resolve the ethical dilemma that spawned the Goldwater Rule sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
• lutusp 12y ago
  If the public thought psychiatrists were all quacks, I would agree, but the public's regard for psychiatrists means their evaluation of a public figure could be very damaging. Therefore I think the Goldwater Rule still serves a purpose.