How to Prove that a Psychologist or Psychiatrist is Incompetent

If you ever want to challenge the competence of psychiatrists (M.D.) or psychologists (Ph.D.), ask them how often they diagnose Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), which is when people think they have a physical deformity, but they really don’t.

According to the diagnostic manual, DSM-5, BDD is more common than schizophrenia, which means that psychiatrists and psychologists who rarely or never make this diagnosis have frequently missed this diagnosis. And if they frequently miss the diagnosis of a disorder that is more common than schizophrenia, they must be incompetent.

Why do most psychiatrists and psychologists miss this diagnosis? There are two reasons. First, BDD is barely mentioned in their training. Second, people who have BDD rarely mention it to their psychologist or psychiatrist. (When they want help with their alleged physical deformity, they go to a dermatologist or a plastic surgeon.)

Psychologists and psychiatrists frequently miss the diagnosis of multiple personality for the same two reasons: little training, and patients who have multiple personality rarely mention it. How common is multiple personality? According to DSM-5, multiple personality is more common than schizophrenia, just as we saw for BDD.

Both BDD and multiple personality are hidden disorders, but the latter is even more hidden than the former. A person with BDD may not volunteer the (alleged) fact that they have a physical deformity, but if you ask whether they do, they will know that they do and readily admit it.

In contrast, if you ask a person with multiple personality whether they have multiple personality, they will deny it, although the host personality and the alternate personalities will say “no” for different reasons: the host personality doesn’t know about it due to amnesia, while the others think they are not alternate personalities, but different people.

So now you know how to prove that psychologists and psychiatrists are incompetent. For if they keep missing diagnoses which the DSM says are more common than schizophrenia, they must be.