Monday, 20 January 2014

The problem with psychometric testing of the mental ill

One element is their validity and reliability. I apparently did well on psychometric testing done almost twenty years ago when I was trying for graduate jobs. My life today shows my scores didn't predict my life now: a sad, unemployed, crappy down-and-out junkie who wants to die. They may not have predicted my contribution to mental health either.

I don't know if psychometric tests will correctly quantify the qualities of the various human types poorly identified using psychiatric diagnosis.

Take IQ. This is a timed test if I remember right so it won't measure well people who think slowly but can solve problems quick thinkers can't. Therefore is the iq test really measuring intelligence? It may be possible that a person with a learning disability might actually have an excellent ability to solve problems which people with higher iqs can't.

I wonder if other psychometric measures are similarly flawed and the mentally ill will score lower than their actual real world capability.

- sent from my smartphone

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We It comes in part from an appreciation that no one can truly sign their own work. Everything is many influences coming together to the one moment where a work exists. The other is a begrudging acceptance that my work was never my own. There is another consciousness or non-corporeal entity that helps and harms me in everything I do. I am not I because of this force or entity. I am "we"