I think this post has helped me be less confused on this matter. In my life, I have been seriously mislead by people close to me with mental illness about traumas that they have faced—people who had experienced significant abuse, telling me that they experienced different abuses which they had not experienced.
I think previously I would’ve expressed it in a more confused way, that their being mentally ill was not evidence against their having experienced abuse. But I would now phrase it that both my prior on them having experienced severe trauma is higher, and also the standard of evidence I require to believe a particular instance of abuse is also higher.
I guess there’s a desire that these two things would cancel out. One might hope to say that it doesn’t take more effort to discover abuse in the life of a person with severe mental illness than otherwise, but I think that the truth is that it just does take more effort to help prevent any abuse in this situation. I’ll phrase it this way: if I am taking care of / in a significant relationship with someone who is severely mentally ill, while I might not trust their direct reports as much, I will increase my prior that there is, and increase my desire for evidence for the lack-of, abuse in the various parts of their life.
I think this post has helped me be less confused on this matter. In my life, I have been seriously mislead by people close to me with mental illness about traumas that they have faced—people who had experienced significant abuse, telling me that they experienced different abuses which they had not experienced.
I think previously I would’ve expressed it in a more confused way, that their being mentally ill was not evidence against their having experienced abuse. But I would now phrase it that both my prior on them having experienced severe trauma is higher, and also the standard of evidence I require to believe a particular instance of abuse is also higher.
I guess there’s a desire that these two things would cancel out. One might hope to say that it doesn’t take more effort to discover abuse in the life of a person with severe mental illness than otherwise, but I think that the truth is that it just does take more effort to help prevent any abuse in this situation. I’ll phrase it this way: if I am taking care of / in a significant relationship with someone who is severely mentally ill, while I might not trust their direct reports as much, I will increase my prior that there is, and increase my desire for evidence for the lack-of, abuse in the various parts of their life.