This House Opposes the popularization of therapy speak

"Therapy speak" refers to the significant expansion of psychological and medical language and concepts to daily life, outside of the academic context.

This could include but is not limited to: 

• using terms like "toxic" or "gaslighting" when talking about interactions, friendships, or relationships in situations that do not meet the academic definition of these terms

• referring to the urge to tidy up as "OCD", or a temporary inability to focus as "ADHD"

• partaking in speculative psychiatric diagnoses of others, including public figures

Belgrade WUDC 2022 Round 7

MG | CG | 84 

Matt Caito 

Medical

Youtube Link (Timestamped) Here 

Introduction

Starting in three, two, one.
The problem with both top half teams is they do not understand the nuance of the human experience when you are struggling. Crucially, people have a vast array of different conditions whether they are mental health conditions or not, just suffering from gaslighting.

People have responded to suffering differently and different people need to hear different advice from different people at different times. 

Re-framing

What therapy speak uniquely does is homogenizes and collectivizes lots of different struggles under specific umbrella terms that fail to reflect the nuances of people’s suffering and trades off directly against seeking medical help the most vulnerable people, i.e, the people who are sick. 

First point of framing. I do not think in the absence of popularization, other narratives with stigma would take over. and I want to deal with OO here because this is not a regrets debate and I do not think destigmatization happened as a result of the popularization of Therapy Speak. 

Paraphrase and state what your primary disagreements with Opp are

Why? Firstly, prior to this popularization, which is fairly a recent phenomenon, we had increasing medical knowledge and understanding of mental conditions, we understand contributing factors, IE, brain chemistry, gene pools, biological heredity for specific conditions, and things like this. 

Might be seen as somewhat assertive (even considering their following analysis)
-  Additional points to consider:
Since more people exist now with better access to medical institutions (due to comparatively better economic circumstances), people and parents send their kids to get diagnosed.
- Generally people have greater access to higher education leading to more awareness 

- news media with the incentive of covering new exclusive info will eventually stumble across mental health rabbit hole and sensationalize it
- media gradually shifts towards covering personal and milder topics like mental health rather than broader and immediate problems like poverty, healthcare, etc as a country transitions to better economic circumstances

Secondly, increasing diagnosis of things like depression and autism sparked a lot of awareness in the public consciousness. Moscovici(DLO) says, ah, when it's just in the academic sphere, nobody hears about it. But when autism rates rise, people have relatives who are diagnosed with these kind of things. Friends, parents, and people see other people have diagnoses, when depression is on the rise massively and you see visible signs of that among the body politic, more people are likely to be aware of the existence of those things, not passively neglecting it entirely.

Why the counterfactual (if it existed) would’ve been done adequately ?

But thirdly, crucially, there are tons of other narratives that exist in the status quo that say that people are legitimate for being different and have to cope with things differently. This is very popular when we look at things like the commercialization of self-care and popular media. That says you are legitimate for coping with things in different mechanisms and you are legitimate for having differences even if you don't want to put a label on it or acceptance of different queer identities that say you are legitimate for being different even if you don't fall under a specific umbrella term. I think this is often cross applied to things like this. 

-Therapy speak normalizes a homogenized set of conversations and coinciding proposed solutions around mental health problems which goes against pre existing norms about society recognizing different people are different and need varying coping methods 

-commercialization of self-care and the lgbtq+ movement both serve as proof of wider acceptance of people identifying as being different 

Injecting a symmetry into the debate 

But finally, doctors and so on are going to have incentives to reach out and make these things accessible to people through things like WebMD, through things like easily accessible online things like Google that can discuss these kind of things and people who actually have these conditions still going to speak out on either side of the house. So, I really don't think they get a large delta in terms of popularization. 

What happened in the absence of this popularization? I think narratives of destigmatization without labels will become significantly stronger. Why? Firstly, I think that in so far as I've already proven that a lot of acceptance has risen for situations that each individual is unique and their own experience is something that is unique. More people are willing to accept that in so far as the popularization things like your own truth in the media through things like the Me Too movement have become quite prominent but secondly, in so far as most people believe that you should not be prescriptive, i.e my life is my life alone. You should not react in a way that suits others rather than yourself.

-referring to how it’s more acceptable to not live life based on societal expectations 

Impact 

I think it's probably the case that narratives of destigmatization would emerge on either side of the house. 

1st Extension 

But finally, even if they're winning on awareness very marginally and I give you significant reasons to cast doubt on that.
Why even their best case isn’t as great 

Claim 

I'm going to explain why greater awareness is bad. Because more information is not an inherent good if it comes at the expense of misinformation. First extension. How does popularization look and why can't it be nuanced?

Weighing over top-half, OG 

I want to characterize first of this population actually looks because OG asserts that it seeps into every vernacular. You see memes and therefore you take things less seriously. I think it far, far more structurally flawed. Why? 

Analysis

Firstly, it looks at people on social media. You have authority and are claiming to be an authority on the matter. This looks like your favorite influencer, your smart cousin, people you already attribute a degree of trust to like celebrities or influencers speaking out about this kind of things. This is why in many cases, you likely trust them and ascribe a unique authority to them even if they're wrong

but secondly, the popularization is a degree to which medical services and mental health services are able to be accessed because note that the broad destigmatization for mental health which we’ve proven that is happening symmetrically at least to an extent, creates incentives for doctors to reach more patients to easily accessible online forms. Through utilizing social media and through spreading awareness of conditions by like dedicating specific days like Autism Day for example and things like this. And states have incentives to make these things successful in so far as a more healthy mental population is better and broadly increasing scientific knowledge happens on either side of the house. What popularization does is it deludes the platform for those experts significantly. 

But thirdly, popularization creates a race to the bottom because the more popular these terms become, the more content creators, influencers, and celebrities have incentives to attribute symptoms of depression i.e overeating can be a symptom of many things. It might not be depression. But the most popular conditions, i.e, the ones that rise to the top in discourse you attribute a lot of different symptoms to the same cause. 

As certain informal medical terms become popular i.e eating disorder, influential people may incorrectly attribute either their personal symptoms for instance depression to the mental health disorder, whereas in actuality it may be symptom of a plurality of underlying issues 

But fourthly there's a trend towards homogenization. i.e grouping different cases that sound like gaslighting depression to one specific catch all term. Even though there are many many other mental illnesses like borderline personality disorder. Like various forms of mental incivility that are very similar to depression but very different in terms of the actual solutions to that kind of things. When you homogenize those things makes it harder for people to find the right

solution. But finally when these terms enter popular lexicon, they become single catch all solutions that have become common knowledge. IE people more likely to be prescriptive about them to a significant degree i.e, the right response to gaslighting is leaving your partner. The right response to depression is doing X rather than why. When in reality, people have many different nuances and you need to talk to a medical professional about these kind of things. 

Weighing Against OG & OO

What does this do to the debate? Firstly, this characterization already places us over OG because OG is dependent on characterizing to unlock any of their impacts. They barely do this. They say popularization happens in harmful way because it's memes, it's not nuanced. This is far better.

OG’s material about how such info is spread (sensationalized or diluted through memes, etc) isn’t nuances enough

But secondly, it also beats OO because OO relies on these truths being explained in a very very nuanced way. I gave structural reasons why information doesn't translate in people's minds into a way that is reasonable rather it homogenizes conditions, makes people think they have false solutions to their problems, and dilutes the quality of actual medical experts he's getting to you. 

Misinformation vs more information 

2nd Extension 

This is sufficient to win this debate, but now I'm going to explain why it robs people of coping mechanisms. Firstly, it increases the odds that everyone in your social circle believes your situation makes the criteria for a specific high profile personality disorder, or a specific term like gaslighting which is high point level, at the expense of others. This reduces the diversity in coping mechanisms - people you can turn to because different friend groups and different people know you differently but now the majority of people are likely to leave a one very high profile mental illness rather than a diversity or a spectrum of different ones. 

They're formerly going to counsel with homogenized solutions because the one that seeped in the popular culture which is far less diverse and solutions you attribute to. But secondly, what everyone's telling you is the same thing. You have far more reduced coping mechanisms. What everyone labels you with one thing  even if you don't have that condition, it's really, really hard to think that you're ever going to hear actual solutions for people because you know they're going to tell you, “I'm just depressed. Ah, everybody's told me that. I don't know. I'm depressed.” You preemptively opt out so you never get the empathy that Moscovici(DLO) wants you to get 

POI

before I go on opening opp. “If you're correct that people have much greater understanding of mental health regardless, presumably that would be have significantly more nuanced understanding also on social media. Either people have more understanding or they do not.” =Sure. No. Because the popularization necessarily crowds out the expertise that otherwise would reach them and even if it's marginally less accessible, we get better quality information to more people so we outweigh you and flip you. You're out of this debate.

Why do we make it less likely that doctors and nurses and experts reach you? It's because of awareness. They now never connect with the people who need it the most. Because you preemptively self-select to the most popular diagnosis, believe they have that coping mechanism and then move on with that. But finally, the popularization gives credence to people with the most social clout. So, you look at the white girl who says, I deal with my depression by making a soy latte on Instagram think that that's the solution rather than embracing the actual solution that would allow you to embrace nuances in your thing. 

Impact 

This means the solutions you raise are far worse and don't align with your personal background to a significantly greater degree that compares Business argument outweigh OG. Firstly, it

outweighs OG by explaining why it is the case regardless of the conditions you're willing to get access to nuanced and successful advice on our side of the house but secondly, it explains why in the absence of these kind of things, you preemptively self-select out of asking for help. So, it's unclear you ever get access.

Last Min Extension 

Finally, funding. It's honestly symmetrical but the reason you get more of it on our side is because what happens, you create an informal third sector for the service. Quacks get paid

for this kind of thing more. Doctors are getting less money which means they're more underfunded significantly. This is the only actual delta in funding even though I spent only 10 seconds on it, it's still more important than anything Top Half said. I'm incredibly proud to win from closing gov.