ISST-D Shares News that’s Not News — January 2018

Marillisa Rocco of Global News (Canada) shares a poorly-written story titled “4 mental-health disorders you probably don’t know much about — and one that will shock you” (spoiler alert: the “shocking” one is Paris Syndrome), and surprise-surprise, 4 of the 5 affect myriad numbers of plurals.

The article briefly mentions (and barely covers) borderline personality disorder (BPD), complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), and dissociative identity disorder (DID), without knowing how C-PTSD basically is a fixture in both BPD and DID.  It underplays the problems of C-PTSD, says DID is caused by a personality “splitting”,  and reinforces the stigma that DID is a controversial diagnosis (in spite of documented proof in brain scans and elsewhere that it really exists).

Then it mentions hearing voices as “auditory hallucinations” — this a decidedly plural issue as well with a great deal of voice hearers also considering those voices to be coming from within and considering themselves plural, such as median systems.

The article overall goes on to just keep people in the dark. It’s not well-written or researched (zero citations for sources, 1 interviewee mentioned), it’s not expanding anyone’s knowledge to a considerable degree, and there are factual errors in it.  This isn’t surprising — mass media has a low bar to meet — but what is is that the International Society for the Study of Trauma & Dissociation (ISST-D) posted a link to the article on their news feed.  Perhaps it’s the weekend staff’s fault, someone hoping to check something off their list and get back to their weekend antics without actually doing their homework.  Whatever happened, plurals are piling up the steamy responses to the ISST-D for their mishap (permalink).