Benefit and belief

[Ben Finney]

alex23 <wuwei23 at gmail.com> writes:

> On Oct 18, 6:52 am, Ben Finney <ben+pyt... at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> > A belief that doesn't match reality is a delusion. That doesn't change
> > when someone thinks it's an epiphany: it's still a delusion.
>
> Apparently there was some talk about removing delusional as a
> classification from the DSM due to its definition being, in part, that
> it was an _unshared_ belief (which seems to be a loophole for not
> locking up the religious).

Does the DSM define delusion dependent on who shares the belief? I
thought that was, rather, part of the definition of delusional disorder.

In other words, some delusions don't count as disorders because plenty
of people share them, but are still delusions. Just as most people's
vision has some imperfection, but visual disorders would be diagnosed in
some smaller subset of those people.

I don't have access to the DSM, though, so can only speculate based on
indirect sources <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion>
<URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_disorder>.

-- 
 \     “For myself, I am an optimist — it does not seem to be much use |
  `\              being anything else.” —Winston Churchill, 1954-11-09 |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney