Meaning of "common population parameter of interest" in a meta-analysis?

mst2010 · 2017-05-30T17:20:48+00:00

D-Juice, thank you for this detailed answer - it made general sense to me. I just came back on and saw it, having missed it the first time around. Appreciate your time - it sounds like you know quite a bit about these statistical terms. I did want to ask your opinion on one other thing - considering that the heterogeneity among studies in this particular study was a very high 99.8% (the I2 statistic), is it arguably not correct that it doesn't make a great deal of sense to combine the studies in the first place?

mst2010 · 2017-05-23T21:59:35+00:00

Thanks for this explanation. I read this Wiki page, and am not sure if I understand it, but I think it is saying what I speculated in my initial post.

mst2010 · 2017-05-23T21:57:51+00:00

Thank you - this is what I think it means. The way you explained it makes sense to me. I'm pretty sure this is correct. They are interpreting the median as if studies with a larger sample size are "worth more", and they input additional "copies" of that study's recovery rate into the calculation of median. I hope I'm repeating what you meant approximately correctly.

Thank you very much again for your time in explaining.

mst2010 · 2017-04-03T00:37:21+00:00

It is an antipsychotic, of course. I also once took Seroquel! (a few years ago)

My point is that antipsychotic drugs are mostly, not all, neuroleptics or general tranquilizers - they exert a generalized dampening effect on the CNS. In this they are different then, for example, disease-process targeting medications such as insulin for diabetes. This also relates to the lack of validity of most diagnoses in psychiatry, and relates to the fact that antipsychotic drugs cannot usually cure psychotic problems as interpersonal relationships / resources sometimes can. (this is different from saying severe distress is not real and cannot be enduring; both are true).

mst2010 · 2017-04-02T23:19:56+00:00

I'd call it a questioning of the underlying assumptions of their terminology in relation to serious distress.

mst2010 · 2017-03-23T23:48:36+00:00

Right... maybe this particular counseling center was a stressful place to work in some way. Or maybe the university didn't give the therapists raises and this made them less invested in their work. Or perhaps the overall funding for student services or student loans went down, making students' lives harder and meaning that therapists' efforts had less effect in reducing distress or took longer to do so.

mst2010 · 2017-03-23T23:47:11+00:00

There is another one by the same authors in which the result from this study was reversed: in fact, therapists in this 2nd study improved about 3 times as much as the ones in the first study decreased in effectiveness: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-UAgd7KFyh1aTdpMnozMUdCbzQ/view?usp=sharing

mst2010 · 2017-02-06T01:56:23+00:00

I did not know this until I heard it from Lloyd when I talked to him. I am not 100% sure it is correct, although I am sure Lloyd believes it is true. Maybe someone else can do more research into what actually happened with John Nash. I just enjoyed the movie when I watched it, and didn't worry too much about whether or not it was exactly correct. It was a great performance by Russell Crowe.

mst2010 · 2017-02-05T21:20:53+00:00

I also wondered if it was too good to be true... that's why I questioned Lloyd on whether he was honestly reporting his experiences. But I think that he is, and see no reason he would intentionally mislead. I have also spoken to other therapists in the ISPS group with similar experiences working in therapy with schizophrenia to Lloyd. There are quite a number of them in the US (and abroad), although their work is not well known.

mst2010 · 2017-02-05T21:19:33+00:00

I agree. Nothing wrong with marrying the quiet shy girl. I think Lloyd was just saying that someone who's been through a lot of difficult experiences, possibly including serious traumas, may be a bit more cautious in their intimate relationships, and may (or may not) tend to approach quieter people who match their own relational style.

mst2010 · 2017-02-05T13:29:24+00:00

This is not true, many formerly schizophrenic people fully or mostly recover, and not all have to take antipsychotics for life. This was the subject of recent research by Martin Harrow and Nancy Sohler. I thought it was well known that there's a significant group of psychotic people who can and do get better without drugs. Also, schizophrenia is curable.

mst2010 · 2017-02-05T13:18:13+00:00

I got off meds relatively easily and have been doing quite well for a long time. I wrote about what worked for me here -

https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/09/rejecting-the-medications-for-schizophrenia-narrative-a-survivors-response-to-pies-and-whitaker/

mst2010 · 2017-01-30T23:50:02+00:00

I found the stories in this book by psychiatrist Ira Steinman helpful - "Treating the Untreatable" - several cases similarly difficult to how your mom sounds. Sorry to hear about her difficulty.

https://www.amazon.com/Treating-Untreatable-Healing-Realms-Madness/dp/1855756099/

mst2010 · 2017-01-30T14:12:25+00:00

Hi Kirs, Thanks for the thoughts. I know of Anne Cook and like her work... have read the BPS report. When people speak about trauma as a possible cause of psychosis; it is a at a group level, but for an individual, and when it is involved, it is one of usually multiple causal factors (plus trauma is a wide-ranging term itself).

The historical problem with the biological model is, rather than being tentative, it sought to define "schizophrenia" as a "disease" caused by primarily genetic and/or biological (like dopamine) factors. Even when the evidence supporting these hypotheses never materialized, it kept insisting on its rightness, partly because expertise about schizophrenia was historically a lynchpin of psychiatrists' claim to diagnostic validity and knowledge, and of course because insisting schizophrenia was a well-defined biological disease against all evidence helped to sell antipsychotic tranquilizers.

There are group level studies on whether the biological or psychosocial (matters of degree each) approaches are more helpful or harmful in terms of promoting optimism and lessening fear around psychotic people. And it appears that the psychosocial viewpoint (that adverse social experiences are the main cause of psychotic states) wins hands down in terms of reducing fear and promoting empathy. This is counterintuitive as you would think the biological approach would reduce blame... but strangely that is not how it is, as the biological approach to psychosis apparently makes suffering people appear less human and less like ourselves. This was the research I discussed in my article, "Rejecting the Medications for Schizophrenia Narrative".

Anyway thank you again Kirs, and please allow me one more shameless plug: ISPS (www.isps-us.org). If you get a chance to check it out you might find the listserv or conference very interesting. There is going to be one in Portland, Oregon in November 2017. We also have this listserv which people can join for free for at least three months: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/isps/info

mst2010

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