I think cognitive delusions often maintain themselves by being non-falsifiable, and an explicit knowledge of epistemology might help people better use logic to compensate.
I managed to get a schizophrenic acquaintance who had anxiety-causing delusional ideas which originated in mind-body dualism to reject mind-body dualism, after carefully explaining why parsimony is a good way to distinguish between the various non-falsifiable hypotheses and how one can roughly approximate what is and is not parsimonious and why the mind instinctively gravitates to mind-body dualism even though it's not necessarily true. After I finished explaining she kind of laughed and admitted there really was no good reason for her to believe those things. I might be imagining it, but she seemed relieved as well as amused.
We unfortunately lost contact, so I'm not sure if it stuck. This is the most extreme example, but I've seen other, less extreme cases where talking people away from odd beliefs was helpful to them. It's important to be convincing in these talks, and appealing to epistemically sound reasoning (as opposed to just dismissing it as most people do) is a good way to be convincing. Healthy people can instinctively tell that a delusion is silly, but for those whose instincts aren't working properly and take delusions seriously it's important to be able to explicitly explain why it's silly.
For some reason, your first sentence gave me the urge to hug you. I suspect it was a reaction to the fact that someone understood that. I've never been able to explain to anyone why "but it isn't your fault" doesn't let my brain believe it's not my fault.
Interesting. I suspect it did, except in particularly strong attacks (if her schizophrenia was periodic rather than constant).
For a site extremely focused on fixing bad thinking patterns, I've noticed a bizarre lack of discussion here. Considering the high correlation between intelligence and mental illness, you'd think it would be a bigger topic.
I personally suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder and a very tame panic disorder. Most of this is focused on financial and academic things, but I will also get panicky about social interaction, responsibilities, and things that happened in the past that seriously shouldn't bother me. I have an almost amusing response to anxiety that is basically my brain panicking and telling me to go hide under my desk.
I know lukeprog and Alicorn managed to fight off a good deal of their issues in this area and wrote up how, but I don't think enough has been done. They mostly dealt with depression. What about rational schizophrenics and phobics and bipolar people? It's difficult to find anxiety advice that goes beyond "do yoga while watching the sunrise!" Pop psych isn't very helpful. I think LessWrong could be. What's mental illness but a wrongness in the head?
Mental illness seems to be worse to intelligent people than your typical biases, honestly. Hiding under my desk is even less useful than, say, appealing to authority during an argument. At least the latter has the potential to be useful. I know it's limiting me, and starting cycles of avoidance, and so much more. And my mental illness isn't even that bad! Trying to be rational and successful when schizophrenic sounds like a Sisyphusian nightmare.
I'm not fighting my difficulties nearly well enough to feel qualified to author my own posts. Hearing from people who are managing is more likely to help. If nothing else, maybe a Rational Support Group would be a lot of fun.