Comment on I'm doing my part
kungen@feddit.nu 2 months agoNah, pedophilia is a paraphilia. And if someone suffers from pedophilic disorder, it’s kinda impossible for anyone other than healthcare to know that – unless they’ve made some attempts to abuse someone.
HatchetHaro@pawb.social 2 months ago
To be fair, paraphilias were listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as disorders before that definition was moved in DSM-5 to paraphilic disorder to be distinct from paraphilia (no longer de facto a disorder).
Anyway, pedophilia is a paraphilic disorder, which makes it a paraphilia and a mental disorder!
kungen@feddit.nu 2 months ago
Miss me with that American junk. But with the same logic, would you also say that gender incongruence is a mental disorder? It’s in the same books, in similar sections. It’s faux pas to call something a mental disorder without focusing on why it’d be that.
The ICD (and I would hope the DSM) focuses mostly on the distress the patient gets from their condition. Someone’s attraction to kids, without any actions, isn’t enough to get diagnosed, as it’s simply a paraphilia. If they’re distressed by it, or act out, then it’s a diagnostic criteria and something they’d be able to get treatment for.
HatchetHaro@pawb.social 2 months ago
Yes, gender incongruence may be in the same book now, but being in the book does not necessarily mean it is a disorder (e.g. paraphilia). In fact, in DSM-5, gender incongruence (they call it gender dysphoria) was actually renamed from “gender identity disorder” to avoid the word “disorder”.
DSM-5 defines a paraphilic disorder as “a paraphilia that brings distress, or when satisfied, brings harm to self or others” (paraphrased). I think pedophilia fits that description, because “if satisfied”, that’s what we’d consider “bringing harm to others”. Perhaps the ICD has a different definition?
I mean, I didn’t set the standards or write the books. All of these things have way too much complexity to properly categorize in the ever-shifting standards of society in different geographic and cultural regions, so of course different countries and different experts would treat these things differently. That also means what counts as a “mental disorder” can vary wildly from region to region. I daresay this is a universe where you and I are both right on the matter!
I’m not sure about the criterion differences between the ICD and DSM-5, and I for sure do not know enough to be an authority on the matter.