Jacob Sullum applies a sheep's-urine-and-staghorn poultice to America's fevered brain.
Reason Magazine
|6.17.05 @ 1:45PM|#
Number 6-
You'll get no disagreement from me on that. Thoreau is (as usual)
correct when he talks about teachers diagnosing kids. That practice
is criminal. Quite frankly, I don't even think that
general physicians should be allowed to prescribe psychoactive
drugs, either. After all, if my FORD has a transmission problem, I
don't take it to the Vespa Scooter dealer to get it repaired.
|6.17.05 @ 1:51PM|#
Media- I agree about teachers and GPs prescribing some pychoactive drugs. I'll also admit that there may be a group of symptoms that can be referred to as ADD. As the good Dr. Thoreau says, it's a matter of degree. I just wish kids who are gifted or inherently individualist weren't so often chemically attacked by the high preists of medocrity(read, school types.)
|6.17.05 @ 1:59PM|#
To continue flogging a quickly expiring equine: I found this in
an abstract of a paper about the misdiagnosis of ADD. Says it all,
I think.
Situational factors are highly relevant to the problem of
mis-diagnosis (Webb, 1993). Intensity, sensitivity, idealism,
impatience, questioning the status quo--none of these alone
necessarily constitutes a problem. In fact, we generally value
these characteristics and behaviors--unless they happen to occur in
a tightly structured classroom, or in a highly organized business
setting, or if they happen to challenge some cherished tradition,
and gifted children are the very ones who challenge traditions or
the status quo.
|6.17.05 @ 2:04PM|#
mediageek, the problem tends to be that by categorizing vague mental conditions as "diseases", it opens the door to compulsory treatments. There's also the burden-shifting issue that if something is considered a "disease", then many people believe that treatments for it should be covered by insurance or paid for by the government.
|6.17.05 @ 2:16PM|#
Jennifer, sorry about your lot in moms. I am apparently the
anti-Jennifer's-mom: When my daughter was in elementary school, she
had a hard time socially, hard time getting her school work done,
always complained of being sick, but wasn't, and frequently
threatened suicide.
I took her to a therapist, and after the first session, she came
outside, put on a fake smile, and in a sing-song voice said,
"hap-py, hap-py, HAP-py..."
I understood immediately that she was perfectly sane, and that we
could work through the issues ourselves, and I never made her go
again.
Now she's well-adjusted, high acheiving, and plans to be
president.
|6.17.05 @ 2:27PM|#
she's well-adjusted, high acheiving, and plans to be
president.
How do you reconcile the first two items with the third one on that
list? ;->
|6.17.05 @ 2:31PM|#
Number 6,
Exactly. Of course, my kid is getting the business and she is in a
Gifted program. Perhaps, as Thoreau says, it is a matter of degree.
From what I've heard, she really tears the place up sometimes.
|6.17.05 @ 2:47PM|#
"Now she's well-adjusted, high acheiving, and plans to be
president."
free form,
Huh?
|6.17.05 @ 2:58PM|#
Speaking of daughters, mine, 14, product of a 9-yr divorce,
spent the last year with a borderline mother...and entirely against
court order. Naturally, she was visibly depressed at the notion,
having previously demanded to my atty's MFT/mediator that she live
with dad rather than a mother with issues. Kids know stuff like
that.
Equally naturally, being a leftwing rad-fem, the MFT/mediator
refused to listen to anybody but mom.
In retaliation for her wanting to live with dad, mom covertly
drugged our child with some powerful psych stuff to conform her,
never sent her back, and filed a false and immediately denied TPO
against me -- standard stuff. Bad lawyering ensued and that's where
the year went. I figured it out eventually, fired the shyster, and
went to court.
Getting back to the mediator, she was corrupt, and had influenced
this entire chain of events in exactly the wrong direction. The
State's representative against the People, acting on behalf of her
own incompetence and prejudice, and in some compliance with the
standard of the psych/pharma establishment. Today the criminal case
is on the AG's desk. We'll see.
The court, amazingly, immediately recognized obstruction (a felony)
and alienation, tossed the mediator and ordered reunification.
Today daughter lives with dad. Not a trace of medication wanted or
needed. Happy like a clam.
So...statist psych is a huge cconcern. This entire series of events
could have easily turned out 180 differently than it did. I'd
recommend not trusting any establishment, especially DC,
with your "mental health."
|6.17.05 @ 3:03PM|#
Free form kind of beat me to it, but here goes anyway:
One of my cousins plagued by mental illness as a young man,
specifically delusions of grandeur. Then he saw a therapist, worked
through it, and today he is a highly successful Galactic
Emperor.
|6.17.05 @ 3:18PM|#
If any of y'all own pharmaceutical stock, I'd suggest you sell
it in the next few years. I for one am DEARLY looking forward to
the time when all those poor kids whose brains are being fried on
unnecessary Ritalin and Prozac prescriptions slap those scumbag
companies with the mother of all class-action lawsuits.
Thorreau-
I don't doubt that ADD is real, but I think the number of kids
falsely diagnosed is far greater than the ones who need it, and as
a result those medications do far more harm than good. It's like
chemo or radiation therapy--it can help if you have cancer, but if
you don't need it it will seriously fuck you up.
Mike|6.17.05 @ 3:24PM|#
Yes, I figured YOU would see through "ODD;" but I'd still
like to know what Russ and Mike think of it.
If a teacher or therapist told me my daughter was mentally ill for
the reasons you described I'd say no thanks and leave.
Yes, it's true that some parents, teachers, whoever just want their
kids to toe the line. Just like some parents, teachers, whoever
teacher their kids to hate black people, jews, and siamese cats.
Those people are idiots. Marijuana isn't bad just because some
people might end up listening to Jimmy Buffet, so too, psychiatry
isn't evil just because some dopes want to drug their kids into
submission.
|6.17.05 @ 3:26PM|#
I also don't doubt that ADD is real, but, like Jennifer, believe
it is WAY overdiagnosed. How many of those kids are just being
BOYS(the liberal community doesn't like a traditional boy)?
And, my question has always been, if that many people have this
condition, is it really a "disorder," or is it just how some kids
are? I think the problem is primarily that teachers,
administrators, and often, parents, don't like active behavior, and
suppress the poor tykes into submission to serve their own "mental
health" ends.
|6.17.05 @ 3:34PM|#
I for one am DEARLY looking forward to the time when all
those poor kids whose brains are being fried on unnecessary Ritalin
and Prozac prescriptions slap those scumbag companies with the
mother of all class-action lawsuits.
I'll repeat what I wrote earlier:
"Big Pharma also has tools in place to make the forced psych of
every American schoolchild a condition of his or her going to
school"
Thanks, Dubya.
Don't doubt it, just look to the States who have just outlawed this
staggering intrusion into the private sector. Big Pharma is
hell-bent to sell black-label drugs into a mainstream of tens of
millions of customers via DC. They'll just call it "mental health"
and "for the children."
People are resisting. Go ye forth and do likewise.
|6.17.05 @ 3:45PM|#
...psychiatry isn't evil just because some dopes want to
drug their kids into submission.
I assume that by "psychiatry" you actually mean psychiatry and not
psychology or talk therapy. The former has included some of the
most horrific practices imaginable and has little sound footing
able to differentiate it from psuedoscience.
No, if it's evil it's because it has such a lousy track record and
demonstrably malevolent intent.
|6.17.05 @ 3:45PM|#
6Gun,
Thanks for your happy ending story... even happier than
Stevo's!
I'm talking of the one about your daughter.
|6.17.05 @ 4:16PM|#
psychiatry isn't evil just because some dopes want to drug
their kids into submission.
No, it's evil because in order to make a buck it has no
compunctions against convincing lazy, gullible or psychotic parents
and ignorant or incompetent teachers that perfectly normal, healthy
children need to be drugged, brainwashed or both. And furthermore,
it convinces gullible adults who experience normal levels of
anxiety or blue funks or all the other things that make us human
that any emotion other than quiet optimism needs to be analyzed and
drugged out of existence.
Mike|6.17.05 @ 4:20PM|#
I assume that by "psychiatry" you actually mean psychiatry
and not psychology or talk therapy.
I'm using "psychiatry" to mean someone who can perscribe drugs.
Psychologists can't, usually. And I'd rather not get into a
discussion about how Freudians have soiled the profession in
general or whatever.
Mike|6.17.05 @ 4:25PM|#
No, it's evil because in order to make a buck it has no
compunctions against convincing lazy, gullible or psychotic parents
and ignorant or incompetent teachers that perfectly normal, healthy
children need to be drugged, brainwashed or both.
I understand you've had bad experiences with them, but I'm just
trying to point out that not *all* psychiatrists (psychologists,
etc.) are evil. And sometimes people *really* do need some
medication to deal with their life.
My point, hours ago, was that it's inconsistent to support
pot/alcohol/grand theft auto as a way to make yourself happy, but
not accept that some people will go to a doctor.
|6.17.05 @ 4:33PM|#
No, Mike, they're not all evil. But so many of them are, that the evil pretty much outweighs the good.
|6.17.05 @ 4:33PM|#
No harm, no foul, Mike. Obviously not all psych's are evil; in
fact, I'd bet 67% or 81% or 96% of them mean well, right along the
norm in society, regardless of profession.
I'd just like to raise awareness. The psych and pharma lobbies, as
distinct, we trust, from their practicioners, is a real s.o.b. of a
force in DC, and it is wrecking the place.
Nor does my personal experience motivate me against psych/pharma.
It's just that my awareness has been raised, and as a
minor activist against government-as-mother, what I've found once I
went looking shocked the shit out of me. Now that I have, I want to
go live in the hills.
Folks, look it
up. Head on down to the legislature. What you find
will amaze you.
|6.17.05 @ 4:34PM|#
Oh, and to repeat what I said earlier--I don't think anybody here has a problem with people who CHOOSE to go to a doctor to get help when they think they need it, but too many unwilling victims are being smashed through the system.
|6.17.05 @ 4:38PM|#
My point, hours ago, was that it's inconsistent to support
pot/alcohol/grand theft auto as a way to make yourself happy, but
not accept that some people will go to a doctor.
While I agree with you that not all psychologist/psyciatrists are
bad (I worked for years with them, some terrible, some amazing), I
think your above comparison is not so strong. People don't usually
smoke pot or drink alcohol or play GTA because a so-called "expert"
recommended the activity as a way to combat a serious health
problem.
|6.17.05 @ 4:39PM|#
Jennifer-
What did your therapist say to you? Did he ever make
recommendations, or concur with your mother's assessment that
there's something wrong with you?
Because here's what I can see happening: This therapist gets a call
from a mother who's upset that her daughter spends so much time
reading. And the therapist suspects that there's something deeply
wrong in this family but the problem isn't with the daughter. So he
asks the two of you to come in. But he takes the soft approach of
letting your mother do the talking and trying to get her to
acknowledge problems by talking through them.
It clearly didn't work out that way, but I wouldn't assume that the
therapist bought your mother's bullshit. The therapist may have
been hoping that a non-confrontational approach would lead to some
of the real problems being addressed.
Or maybe I'm wrong. But from what you've written here I can't
conclude that the therapist bought your mother's bullshit about
you.
|6.17.05 @ 5:09PM|#
I have no problem with what you are saying when it applies
to adults. Unfortunately, as some of us have been pointing out, an
awful lot of children get caught up in this.
I can't believe I'm getting the "it's for the children" argument
here. I'm sort of regretting taking the bait, and I'm somewhat
pressed for time, but I'll try to be coherent.
I feel sorry for kids who get shit foisted upon them because of
someone else's hang-ups. It happens because of parents and because
of other authoritarians (teachers, law enforcement, clergy, etc.).
I'm specifically speaking to Jennifer's hypotheticals and I know in
her case some of them aren't hypotheticals. I'm sure several of us
have stories of fucked-up parents, I know I do. I'll let those go,
they're of little value here.
In those cases, were basically talking about emotional abuse.
Sending a kid to therapy because his dreams and aspiriations aren't
all that "becoming" to the parent(s) is a pretty strong signal to
the kid that he's not very loved. Of course, parents can withdraw
in lots of other ways so maybe the kid's lucky that a therapist is
there. But if the therapist is going to be as mistrustful of the
kid as the parent, the kid's screwed - a somewhat healthy kid is
going to develop some skewed outlooks about other people (and
himself) over time. If the parents withdraw by physically abusing
the child, at least other people can see that damage and possibly
intervene. When the abuse is emotional, it's hard to see.
Unfortunately, those who are trained to see it, or at least those
who become quite aware of it, often want to intervene and get
overzealous in their intervention.
I'm not credentialed, so you can dismiss my opinions if you want.
I'm not sure they're right either. But one thing I've seen after
years of denial in seeing it is that coerced medications and
coerced therapies don't work for mental illness except in extreme
cases - with psychological problems medication and therapy only
works for people who want help. When you start administering
medication and therapy to people who are only there because some
authoritarian in their life wants it, it isn't effective.
It's not the DSM and the classification of mental illnesses that's
the problem, if we could come up with a better term for "illness"
the person would still be in the same condition. I've taken a
cursory glance at the DSM, and I have a sibling who has been in
therapy. I don't think the DSM is the problem, it seems extremely
helpful and accurate especially for my problems which I feel are
mild.
Unfortunately, there's money in that there extremism! In the
extreme, the mild cases don't get overlooked but they do get a
level of harmful attention. Being extreme is to "err on the side of
caution", a favorite phrase of everyone trying to drum-up business
(especially politicans). If the only tool you have is a
hammer...
Call me misdirected if you wish, but a better critic of psychiatry
than Szasz is Alice Miller. She sees most therapy being used as a
support system for other people instead of the patient. And she
singles out therapists as the one's most looking for a support
system. Still, that makes the application of therapies the problem,
not the DSM classifications. That to me makes more sense than
Szasz's straight dismissals.
DSM classifications like "Operational Defiant Disorder" aren't the
problem. The DSM is ever expanding but, like every other
occupation, there are fads where the newest classifications get
mis- and over-applied.
All I can really say to wind things up is that childhood is full of
being coerced. I don't know if that can be avoided, but one thing
the visitors to this site can agree we see happening is the further
infantilizing of people. And that has only created the market for
people to need help with their mental illnesses or whatever you
want to call them.
(Jen, your story sounds eerily similar to mine, except that instead
of paying a therapist "weekly sessions of her listing everything
about me she didn't like", she found lots of willing volunteers.
Church was especially accomodating of her belittlement!)
|6.17.05 @ 5:24PM|#
I can't believe I'm getting the "it's for the children"
argument here
I usually associate that argument with the promotion of coercion
not the opposite.
I don't think that "Doing it for the children" is necessarily bad.
They do occasionally need to be taken into consideration, no? Or
are they just supposed to get their little fists up and defend
themselves?
|6.17.05 @ 5:30PM|#
Uh, 6Gun, if you want to argue that psychiatry and psychopharmacology are a bad thing for society, perhaps your arguments would be a bit more acceptable if they weren't spewed out by A front organization for The Church of Scientology.
|6.17.05 @ 5:31PM|#
This is pretty tangential, but I'll post it anyway.
Vernor Vinge wrote a good science fiction novel titled A
Deepness in the Sky. One of the cultures in the novel is a
group of people called the Emergents, citizens of a tyranny (the
Emergency) that has developed a new form of mind-control called
Focus. (The chemistry and structure of the brain is altered through
a combination of microbe infection and MRIs.)
People who are Focused are able to concentrate on a particular
talent/technical specialty because they enjoy it so much they
won't allow themselves to be distracted. It's an articially
induced form of obsession. Focused slaves neglect to bathe, feed
themselves, etc. unless their handlers make them. They cannot have
anything like a normal social relationship with other humans. (Not
every Emergent becomes Focused, just a few selected by the
government. Emergent society consists of Leaders, Followers and
Focused.)
Unlike all previous forms of slavery, the Focused really are
happiest when working at their assigned tasks. The closest the
slaves come to rebelling is when they are temporarily prevented
from doing their work.
One of the characters observes that something like Focus has always
existed in human history. You have always had obsessed geniuses who
throw themselves into their work, and highly productive people who
don't relate well to others and seem incapable of living a
"balanced life." But Focus is just an artifical form of this,
induced and managed by the rules "for the good of the community."
(It also sounds kind of like Apserger Syndrome.)
In the end (no real spoilers here), the Emergents are overthrown
and the Focused slaves are freed. Except -- surprise! -- at least
some of the slaves don't want to be unFocused -- at least all the
way. At least one wants to continue being a genius at her
profession, even if it means sacrificing human relationships.
Does a Focused person have enough free will to make such a choice?
Should they be "cured" even if they don't want to be? What is a
healthy balanced life, and who decides? These are some of the
interesting questions raised by the book (and this is actually
peripheral to the main plot).
|6.17.05 @ 5:37PM|#
rules = rulers
And I should add, being Focused while on the job and being
deFocused after hours, repeat the next day, isn't an option because
the deFocusing process degrades the specialized native talent the
person had in the first place. In the middle of the book, for
example, older physicist is Focused, then allowed to "retire" as a
maganimous act of the ruler. After being deFocused, he isn't much
of a physicist anymore (although he becomes a pretty good
bartender).
|6.17.05 @ 5:40PM|#
No, Mike, they're not all evil. But so many of them are,
that the evil pretty much outweighs the good.
In my case, I have to ardently disagree.
|6.17.05 @ 5:42PM|#
Stevo,
As someone who just spent an entire day at work surfing the net and
posting here. I find that book's storyline to be amazingly appropo
to my life.
|6.17.05 @ 5:45PM|#
No, Mike, they're not all evil. But so many of them are,
that the evil pretty much outweighs the good.
----
In my case, I have to ardently disagree.
Ah ha! But now we need to make that into sensible and principled
policy (he said, stating the obvious.)
|6.17.05 @ 5:50PM|#
mediageek gets the prize for posting a reply in under an
hour:
Uh, 6Gun, if you want to argue that psychiatry and
psychopharmacology are a bad thing for society, perhaps your
arguments would be a bit more acceptable if they weren't spewed out
by A front organization for The Church of Scientology.
Yep, that would be the risk, wouldn't it, although "spewed" is rank
hyperbole.
Which naturally brings up your opportunity to debunk anything
factual you like published by said "front organization" from a
largely bunk-filled and largely unfactual cult.
Waiting.
|6.17.05 @ 7:39PM|#
I can't believe I'm getting the "it's for the children"
argument here
I propose a Russ D's Law. If you argue, "its for the children," or,
"think about the kids," you lose the argument and you need to
STFU!
|6.17.05 @ 7:52PM|#
Number 6: Stevo-I thought I was the only Vinge fan
here.
Well, you're wrong! :) V. Vinge, along with Neal
Stephenson and Ken MacLeod, helped restore my flagging interest in
reading science fiction. And Vinge is pretty explicitly libertarian
in the novels I've read, and the short story The
Ungoverned.
|6.17.05 @ 7:52PM|#
Thoreau-
This was a long time ago and I don't have too many memories of it;
I remember it mostly the way you'd remember a movie you saw once
(and hated) a long time ago--you can remember a few scenes quite
clearly, but you have no memory of the plot or where those scenes
are in relation to each other. I suppose it's possible that the
therapist was what you say he was, but from what I remember I doubt
it.
The office was in a 1930s-era building that used to be an inpatient
psych hospital but now I guess did mostly outpatient stuff. I
remember spending lots of time sitting in the waiting room while my
mom or both parents (depending on whether my Navy father was out to
sea) were in his office. (I also remember that pretty much every
room had exposed pipes up near the ceiling, and I thought it was
strange that an insane asylum, even from the 30s, would supply
every room with a bar for patients who might wish to hang
themselves.)
I became a serious clock-watcher during this time, because I knew
each session lasted exactly fifty minutes, and every minute I spent
in the waiting room was a minute I did NOT have to spend in the
office.
I only remember a couple of the sessions--the one where he asked my
parents, "So, Mr. and Mrs. _______, why don't you tell Jennifer
what you just told me?" and there followed a litany of complaints:
My room was always a mess. When I was told to clean it I just
shoved everything under the bed or in the closet. I spent more time
reading books than making friends. When my best friend did come
over, Mom would often come into my room to find us sitting side by
side each reading our own separate book. I read the same books over
and over. Blah. Blah. Blah.
And then the therapist turned to me. "So, Jennifer, what do YOU
feel about this?"
And how the hell is a scared eleven-year-old supposed to answer
that? Especially when I knew I'd get in trouble later if I said
anything that made my parents mad. That slimy sonofabitch wasn't a
healer--he was a goddamned psychiatric whore who'd say whatever the
johns paying him wanted to hear.
|6.17.05 @ 8:38PM|#
Yep, that would be the risk, wouldn't it, although "spewed"
is rank hyperbole.
Yeah, well, I'm a big fan of hyperbole in general, rank, foul,
vitriolic, and spiteful being my favorite flavors. :-)
Which naturally brings up your opportunity to debunk anything
factual you like published by said "front organization" from a
largely bunk-filled and largely unfactual cult.
Waiting.
Yeah, well don't hold your breath. I promptly closed the PDF upon
seeing who published it. Asking me to go through and do a
point-by-point refutation isn't necessary, it would be like asking
for a properly cited, MLA-style dissertation on why Janet Reno is
ugly- nothing more than an excercise in foot-noting the
obvious.
In all fairness, the document quite conceivably contains legitimate
critiques of psychiatry, but this would hardly be surprising given
the amount of legitimate criticism of the field.
The problem with the whole thing is that no matter how legitimate
the CCHR's criticism may be, it all just boils down to an attempt
to debunk one group as a bunch of coercive, greedy assholes in
order to later on substitute them with a group of coercive, greedy
assholes that make Sigmund Freud look well-adjusted and stable.
|6.17.05 @ 11:14PM|#
Well, that's largely true, mg. It's obvious that one form of
superstition can't tolerate the other.
I can't quite blame you for not taking a swing at it anyway, or for
your appeal to ridicule. The scientologist folks may be
superstitious freaks...
...but that doesn't mean their "front organization" hasn't blown a
hole thru psych fraud big enough to drive a shock therapy ward
through. I'll give them that.
"The undeniable fact is that basic human rights are granted to
killers and terrorists. Yet those same rights are denied people who
have been accused of being mentally ill and subsequently committed.
Similarly, the 'burden of proof' for any alleged criminal to be
convicted and incarcerated is 'beyond reasonable doubt.'
For civil committal, however, all that is required is
'probable cause,' 'reasonable grounds,' or a 'reason to believe'
there might be a danger to self or others."
If that reality isn't a libertarian's cause, nothing is.
|6.17.05 @ 11:17PM|#
6Gun-
And to make it worse, in many cases nowadays people--especially
children and adolescents--have their very minds altered by drugs
whose long-term effects, especially on developing minds, are
unknown.
|6.17.05 @ 11:24PM|#
Jennifer; precisely. I've seen it happen too.
The pharma emperor is naked but we tolerate it overrunning federal
policy and taking charge of our families. Like I say, the news is
littered with stories of kids harmed, folks dead, side effects of
the worst kind, and multi-million dollar suits against pharma.
Libertarians need to get behind the issue. I can guarantee that the
idiots in your legislature, like mine, are utterly clueless or paid
off, or both.
BTW, I have no idea if it would apply, but have you read Peck's
People of the Lie?
|6.17.05 @ 11:46PM|#
I blame Tony Soprano. If he can spend several years in an often-but-not-always fruitless therapeutic relationship, no one else need feel like a pussy for doing the same.
Matt|6.18.05 @ 6:08AM|#
I'm a libertarian...I have no problem whatever with people who
are unhappy with their lives ingesting chemicals to change their
mood, if they want to. (Duh!)
But that doesn't mean that the current "if you've got a complaint
we'll find or invent a disease for it" model of psychology and
psychiatry makes sense or is good for us.
It simultaneously validates hypochondriacs and invalidates those of
us with divergent views on life priorities.
|6.18.05 @ 12:13PM|#
I usually associate that argument with the promotion of
coercion not the opposite.
I don't think that "Doing it for the children" is necessarily bad.
They do occasionally need to be taken into consideration, no? Or
are they just supposed to get their little fists up and defend
themselves?
I don't disagree. Jacob's article mentioned nothing about children
so I find it amusing that as often as do-gooders get mocked on this
site for defending their coercive measures "for the children" that
the subject changed to coercion of children so quickly when it
wasn't the subject. Like I sid, I took the bait.
|6.18.05 @ 2:20PM|#
I can't quite blame you for not taking a swing at it anyway,
or for your appeal to ridicule.
Thanks for understanding. There are a number of subjects about
which I find it nigh on impossible to rationally respond to.
' For civil committal, however, all that is required is
'probable cause,' 'reasonable grounds,' or a 'reason to believe'
there might be a danger to self or others."
I suspect that this is, to a certain extent, hypebole. My boss has
a next door neighbor who is obviously suffering from paranoid
schizophrenia- delusions of persecution (sitting on the roof of his
house at night, ranting about the Microwave Communists, wearing
tinfoil hats in the rain, moving people's vehicles- the guy is
practically a walking, talking stereotype of mental illness.) Now,
the guy is obviously nuts, horrendously loudmouthed, and they're
not sure if he's capable of violence or not.
If there's a poster child for the concept of 'lock him up before he
hurts someone' it's this guy. However, he's still there, despite
the fact that the police have been called out to his place multiple
times.
As for the development of psychiatry, the whole practice just seems
to be emerging from its "mal humours" and leaches dark-age era. On
top of that, the practice suffers from two major
fundamental problems:
1)Sigmund Freud was a goddamned nutjob.
2)A large percentage of people who go into the field do so with the
hope of being able to figure out why they, themselves have mental
problems.
And then you couple this with the problems of non-professionals
making a diagnosis, and parents who are unwilling to research both
the drugs being given to their kids and the therapists that they
are sending them to, and it's no small wonder that psychiatry seems
to cause more harm than physical medicine.
|6.18.05 @ 8:51PM|#
"And how the hell is a scared eleven-year-old supposed to answer
that? Especially when I knew I'd get in trouble later if I said
anything that made my parents mad. That slimy sonofabitch wasn't a
healer--he was a goddamned psychiatric whore who'd say whatever the
johns paying him wanted to hear. "
Just wanted to say this sounds like an old "impartial" ecommunist
friend of mine nearby, who will pimp himself to justify school
levies and taxes for sports stadiums.
The multiplier effect, etc., and so forth, don't ya know.
He has bills to pay.
|6.18.05 @ 8:53PM|#
I know that in my state involuntary civil committment
of an adult requires a judgment that the person is a credible
threat to harm himself or others. Merely being a wackadoo will not
get you put away if you are essentially harmless, no matter what a
mess you are. These standards must vary from state to state.
Kevin
|6.19.05 @ 1:35AM|#
There are a number of subjects about which I find it nigh on
impossible to rationally respond to.
____
I suspect that this is, to a certain extent, hypebole.
I have no idea how you would expect the latter to flow from the
former.
I wrote earlier in this thread about losing my daughter for a year
to the anti-family family court goons, complete with perjury,
obstruction, two possible felonies, and now a criminal case against
a member of the psych esablishment. I've endured run-up billings
and outright threatening harassment from them too. My daughter was
alienated by the psych establishment. She was even drugged by them
without my knowledge or consent.
Reason has published an enlightening interview with Thomas Szasz,
the very same Thomas Szasz quoted in the CCHR material you
willfully ignored.
Sorry, while the topic calls for reams of easily available
supporting documentation, it really isn't worth it, is it? You'd
find it nigh on impossible to rationally respond to.
|6.19.05 @ 1:39AM|#
Jennifer-
Point taken. Sounds like your therapist was a lousy one.
I have sort of a mixed perspective on mental illness: I share some
of the libertarian qualms about the merger of the mental health
professions with the coercive power of the state. And I'm not a big
fan of touchy-feely stuff.
Still, as a scientist from a family of medical professionals I
really have no qualms about the notion that a brain malfunction can
cause behavioral problems. And diagnosing a disease from symptoms
and situations rather than direct tests of the diseased organ has a
long history in medicine. As long as symptoms are carefully
specified and tested in scientific trials, and behaviors are only
identified as symptoms of illness if taken to extremes, it's a
perfectly reasonable approach to disease.
I don't even object to the notion that talk therapy can play a part
in treating brain disease. For instance, treatments for
neurological diseases that affect motor control frequently include
physical therapy. Recent work shows that even adult brains can be
quite plastic and adaptable, and so it's possible to teach a person
to work through a brain condition. We shouldn't be shocked if a
approach can work for brain conditions that involve behavior rather
than motor control.
What I do object to is over-diagnosing diseases using lax criteria.
Some people actually want to be diagnosed with a psychiatric
disorder (or have their kids diagnosed with it) because a medical
disorder is perceived as "nobody's fault", while plain old
behavioral problems are perceived as a matter of personal
responsibility. My own take, as somebody from a family with a long
history of real mental illness, is that problems are problems and
you have a responsibility to address them. ADD isn't an excuse for
anything. It's a problem to be solved. Depression isn't an excuse
for anything, it's a problem to be solved.
Even worse, over-diagnosis is basically a form of "crying wolf",
causing some people to doubt that these problems exist at all.
|6.19.05 @ 11:07AM|#
Thoreau-
In one class I taught, more than HALF the kids were on some sort of
prescription mind-altering drug. Granted this was a small class,
but eight teenagers out of fifteen needing psychotropic medication?
I say bullshit. I had to waste quite a bit of after-school time in
meetings with the Dean and the school nurse, 'evaluating' various
students' progress, which basically meant saying whether they were
more or less of a difficulty to deal with than they were
before.
I had this one kid for two years, eleventh and twelfth grade, and
around January of his senior year we had a meeting about him. So
everybody's talking about how much better behaved this kid's been
lately, as judged by the number of time he was sent to the Dean or
kept after school or otherwise punished. They seemed to assume it
was the drugs, and I felt like an idiot for pointing out that yes,
I've seen his behavior improve considerably in the time I'd known
him, but he had also aged sixteen months during that time, and at
his age a sixteen-month period is long enough to bring about
considerable increases in emotional and intellectual
maturity.
Y'know, on other threads talking about the disturbingly dictatorial
behavior in many schools today--the way kids have to submit to
metal detectors and wear visible ID and carry clear backpacks and
such--many people would express concern at what kind of society
we'll have when the majority of adults are accustomed from
childhood to being treated in such a paranoid, suspicious way by
the government. I'm surprised I'm not seeing more concern of what
our society will be like when the majority of adults accept being
told, "You know, although you're not hurting yourself or anybody
else, the way you are right now JUST ISN'T GOOD enough, and you're
going to have to either take drugs or overanalyze yourself until
your behavior and attitudes conform with our expectations."
|6.19.05 @ 1:03PM|#
Jennifer-
I also call bullshit on 8 out of 15 kids needing the meds. Unless
it's a class for problem kids or something. Even then, I'd be
suspicious.
Anyway, since your school presumably got special funding for these
kids, did you at least see a little of that funding trickle down
into really good pastries at the meetings?
|6.19.05 @ 3:00PM|#
Thoreau-
We never got any sort of pastries at the meetings, although on the
annual Teacher's Development Day we had many raw-fruit-and-veggie
platters. Crummy dips, though.
This wasn't a class for special kids by any means; one of the
reasons I'm glad I don't teach anymore is that I had to spend
enough time doing up IEPs (Individual Education Plans) for pretty
much any kid declared to have a special need requiring special
privileges; at one English department meeting, the chairman told us
that the State Board of Ed's ultimate plan was for teachers to
prepare specialized IEPs for every single student. Which would be a
good idea if teachers only had fifteen or twenty students in all,
but I had something like 98, and the amount grew by two or three
each year.
My room did have a nice white board, so I didn't have to use chalk,
and each classroom had its own TV and VCR. Maybe that's where the
money went.
|6.20.05 @ 2:29AM|#
True story: In third grade I was sent to see the school shrink
for being "difficult". The shrink chatted amiably with me for about
ten minutes, then asked if I wanted to go for a walk with him
instead of going straight back to class. I said sure. He took me to
the janitor's shack (no, he didn't molest me), picked up a baseball
bat and proceeded to smash every glass object in sight: fish tanks,
bottles, the window. Then he handed me the bat and asked me to
smash a few things, which I happily did. Then he walked me back to
class and that was that.
Does anyone have a clue what THAT was all about?
|6.20.05 @ 4:27AM|#
Psychology/psychiatry has been used to abuse, supress, destroy,
marginalize, discredit, etc. people throughout history. See:
- During Victorian times (also before/after) it was often used so
that wealthy men could get rid of their spouses - the "crazy spouse
in the attic" routine. They could then steal the spouses' property
(they could do this already, but it made it easier) and rodger
various and sundry prostitutes, servants, mistresses, etc. at
will.
- During the Soviet gulags psychiatry was used to abuse the
dissidents. After all, who but a madman would disagree with
communist central planning? (No one is supposed to make references
to Nazis or the gulags, so forget you read this.)
- And of course in our beloved U S of A many times when the
children of wealthy families were willful, disobedient, or
promiscuous some were lobotomized and even sterilized.
- Then you have the tens of thousands of people we also sterilized
in the US for being "lazy", "promiscuous", "criminal",
"simpleminded", etc. (Which had a rather bizarre overlap of often
being a darker skinned minority.)
- Then you have illegal experimentation, etc, etc, etc......
So psychology/psychiatry has always been misused and abused for fun
and profit. The amazing thing is how easy certain parties are
making it - with diagnosis marketing by the drug companies,
allowing more and more professionals and paraprofessionals to
diagnose and prescribe drugs, involuntary and coercive "treatment",
etc, etc, etc.... It's very alarming, to say the least. Not to
mention immoral, a tremendous waste, and a creation of large
amounts of human misery.
|6.20.05 @ 5:15AM|#
Does anyone have a clue what THAT was all about?
Um...Janitor pissed him off? :)
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|6.17.05 @ 11:11AM|#
As someone who works in the Mental Health industry, let me be the first to say that McHugh pretty much nails it. The definition of what constitutes mental disorders has increased, but there has also been an increase in the willingness to self-diagnose. Perhaps because the stigma of mental illness has all but disappeared. Pair that with the soft-hypochondria that many people with too much time on their hands seem to acquire and you have an epidemic in the making.
|6.17.05 @ 11:16AM|#
BTW, I've probably mentioned this before, but giving a hypochondriac a copy of the DSM-4 would be a wicked prank. I challenge anyone to read through that thing and not find a condition or two that would apply to yourself.
Mental Health services are an advertising peron's wet dream, "Think you don't need it, Guess Again!"
|6.17.05 @ 11:33AM|#
I definitely understand the point being made, but I get a little tired of the attitude with which Reason tends to address the topic. Poor mental health is a large problem in this country, and a great many people are getting good help from practitioners in the field and the pharma companies. Sure, there is probably some over-zealous diagnosing and medicating taking place, and at the same time the science of mental health is certainly inexact. This does not negate the fact however, that poor mental health is a big problem that most people ignore, and Reason's writers pooh-poohing that fact, or discounting the effectiveness of anti-depressants and other treatment does little except reinforce poor attitudes toward mental health.
Mike|6.17.05 @ 11:39AM|#
This pathologization of the human condition might be less troubling if psychiatric prescriptions were more effective than Theodoric of York's remedies. But by and large, it's not clear they are.
It seems somewhat disingenuous to claim that the boom in psychiatric treatment (which is surely not all court-ordered) is somehow bad, while the boom in consumerism (and all of the other "relaxants" of modern life) is good.
The reality seems to be, we have more free time and more money, and as a result, more of a desire to treat "the human condition". Some people do it by watching TV. Some smoke pot. Some shop. Some see psychiatrists.
|6.17.05 @ 11:46AM|#
"poor mental health is a big problem that most people ignore"
I don't see it getting ignored at all, quite the contrary.
Several years ago my mother went to her doctor for a routine checkup and left with a perscription for anti-depressants. I asked why and she said, "I don't know, the doctor said I should take them". She'd been a bit depressed that she had just gotten off chemo for breast cancer while her daughter was making a royal mess of her kid's lives, and dumping that mess in my mom's lap.
And that's mental illness? If you ask me it's mental health to be depressed in such circumstances.
OTH, my mother in law is now on anti-depressants and that's made a world of difference :-)
Some people do need these medications and do benefit from them, but they seem way over-perscribed to me.
|6.17.05 @ 11:51AM|#
With the exception of obvious chemical imbalances like schizophrenia and clinical depression from low serotonin, I think most modern mental disorders mean "This person is not behaving the way authoirty figures say he should." When I was in sixth grade my mom dragged me to a therapist because, as she said, "She's pretty and smart but she's not in the in crowd!" and "She reads the same books over and over again! It's sick, reading a book when you already know how it's going to end!" So did the therapist tell her that there's nothing wrong with re-reading a favorite book, or being near the bottom of the sixth-grade social hierarchy? Did he suggest that maybe she needed to stop assuming I was to be a carbon copy of herself at the same age? Nope--he continued to charge who-knows-what per hour so that my mom and I could come in for weekly sessions of her listing everything about me she didn't like.
And when I was teaching, the stuff that made kids get labelled "dysfunctional" was like something out of soome sci-fi dystopia. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World allowed more individualism than that school did. If a big, strong kid doesn't want to go out for sports, is he sick? If a girl wants to read books rather than date her fellow high-schoolers, is she insane? If another girl is depressed because her boyfriend dumped her yesterday, should she be medicated? Apparently so.
|6.17.05 @ 11:57AM|#
Mike brings up a good point. Perhaps a shift in terminology is in order. Move away from a model of mental illness and call the folks wishing to improve their condition/blow off steam through psychiatry the "mentally inflamed" or something.
|6.17.05 @ 12:20PM|#
Jennifer,
Schools are rewarded handsomely by the federal government for finding as many students with "special needs" as possible (or so I've been told by my friends who teach).
|6.17.05 @ 12:21PM|#
Poor mental health is a large problem in this country, and a great many people are getting good help from practitioners in the field and the pharma companies. Sure, there is probably some over-zealous diagnosing and medicating taking place, and at the same time the science of mental health is certainly inexact.
You speak in vague relativities. Like lawyering, pharma/psych is largely make-work, and the strategies routinely found in this nation more than prove that point. And that's putting a pleasant spin on it.
More bluntly, the FDA has already branded pharma drugs with suicide warnings, and the news provides examples of bad psych and bad pharma literally taking lives. Just this week billions were awarded plaintiffs suing one of the big pharmas because their fave psych drug caused other physical disease.
It's really time to wake up: When Big Pharma also has tools in place to make the forced psych of every American schoolchild a condition of his or her going to school, then we have two of the most massive conflicts of our collective interest in the history of this country in play: Orwellian government cozying up to for-profit lobbies, damn the results. Drug em; let God sort em out later.
To say that "poor mental health is a problem in this country" strikes me as simultaneously ignorant (insofar as psych is that proved make-work opportunism as much as anything) and arrogant (insofar as, as a nation, we suddenly all somehow need our heads shrunk just because some feel we do.)
The risk of reckless government ruin of the family at the behest of the massive psych/pharma lobbies far outweighs any imaginary benefit.
|6.17.05 @ 12:24PM|#
jen: dude...your mom was a whore.
i like the flexibility involved in mike's model. however, i am still troubled by psychopharmacology of the offical variety, if only because watching people deal with withdrawlal symptoms from commonly prescribed drugs (especially paxil).
it makes me wonder if, in some sense, some of the field is comprised of people searching for what would have been called "spiritual" or religious solutions to essentially philosophical problems, and attempting to bypass that chemically.
|6.17.05 @ 12:25PM|#
Sulla-
Your friend was (sigh) absolutely correct. So who cares if kids suffer the misery and insecurity of thinking there's something seriously wrong with them--the important thing is, THE SCHOOLS GET MORE MONEY.
Forgive the following vulgar analogy, but it's all I can think of--when my mom took me to that goddamned therapist I was miserable, and certain I must be insane--because if I wasn't the therapist would have said so, right? And I tried to resist the "unhealthy" urges to re-read a passage in a well-loved book, and when I gave in to it. . . well, I imagine it's the same guilty, self-hating feeling of a devoutly Catholic altar boy who whacks off in the bathroom even though he KNOWS it's an affront to God.
|6.17.05 @ 12:26PM|#
FWIW, not everybody in the mental health business is happy with it either. My stepfather is a nurse at a public psych hospital. Some of the patients there are people who checked themselves in or were referred by family or physicians. Those people usually have real problems that could be ascribed to a chemical problem in the brain, and they're usually easy to work with because they know they have a problem and want help.
But because it's a public hospital, the cops and social workers refer to them any person that they don't want to deal with. Those cases are impossible. In most cases they're messed up people, but their problems can't be corrected by chemistry.
|6.17.05 @ 12:29PM|#
Dhax-
Yes, I know my mom was a borderline psychopath, and if some grown-up had had the decency to tell me that when I was a kid I'd've had a much happier childhood. That's one of the reasons I decided not to have kids myself, and also the reason why, except for one stupidly sentimental phone call when I found out my father was dead, I haven't talked to her in over a decade. (Funny anecdote: the day of our Final Confrontation, before I left her life forever, my mom didn't try to persuade me with talk of how hard it would be to go through life completely alone, with no family--she said "All you have to do is kiss my ass for awhile and you'll get a LOT of money in my will!" To which I responded, "Mom, isn't kissing ass a good way to get herpes?")
|6.17.05 @ 12:37PM|#
Geez, Jennifer - could be that our mothers are related and we don't know it? Mine, too, is an absolute Bitch From Hell.
|6.17.05 @ 12:39PM|#
Jennifer,
your story reminds me of something that happened with my kid recently. A therapist asked me if my daughter had ADHD symptoms and I replied that I had seen her read substantial books from beginning to end and then repeat the story (including dialog) to me almost in its entirety. That didn't seem like a kid with ADHD to me. Her response was that my daughter was exhibiting "Hyper-focus" as if that obviously pointed to yet another scary diagnosis of something-or-other.
My point remains that virtually every personality trait that someone has can be found as a symptom of something in the DSM-4.
|6.17.05 @ 12:50PM|#
We here at Brainfart Pharmaceuticals have come out with a new pill. We just need to find the disease. Any of you males find yourself scracthing your balls late at night, early in the morning, or while playing softball with the company team? Yep, we can cure that. Just ask your doctor if Scrotalax® is right for you!
(Warning: If your balls don't need scratching for over 4 hours, seek medical help at once.)
|6.17.05 @ 12:51PM|#
Solitude-
I don't know, but if we were well-adjusted people, we wouldn't be libertarians, would we?
Mk-
Did you ever read the essay "On Being Sane in Insane Places?" It was a study about a bunch of perfectly sane people who checked themselves into an institution and waited to see how long it would take for the staff to notice they were normal. And they never did--EVERYTHING the patients did was taken as evidence of their insanity. Once someone has a certain opinion of you, pretty much everything you do can be viewed as further proof that they're right.
|6.17.05 @ 12:51PM|#
Everything's a fucking "medical" issue now. My roommate went for a facial and the lady that was giving it to her asked her if she wanted to do something about her "hyperpigmentation". My roommate, a nurse, freaked out for a bit while she was trying to figure it out. Turns out the girl meant my roommate's freckles.
|6.17.05 @ 12:55PM|#
Oh, thanks a lot, Mo. Not only do I have Literary Repetitive Disorder, but Hyperpigmentation of the Upper Back? Yeah, I'll sleep well tonight.
|6.17.05 @ 12:56PM|#
I have to agree with Mike here.
When people want to smoke pot because they are in physical pain or because they just want the buzz, Jacob's OK with it. But when someone claims they need some kind of treatment (like smoking pot) because they claim they have a mental illness, he's all ready to put the scare quotes around "mental illness". Yeah, maybe it's sorta silly that people have to find some kind of mental illness for themselves in order to have an excuse to take drugs, but then that's what our system of regulation has driven people to. You can go buy some grass and risk getting busted by the DEA, or you can find a shrink to write a Soma scrip for you.
Fighting the expansion of mental illness is akin to busting doctors for prescribing pain medication.
|6.17.05 @ 1:01PM|#
Russ D-
I think the quotes around "mental illness" come from when SOMEONE ELSE uses that phrase to refer to the pot smoker.
|6.17.05 @ 1:03PM|#
Mike and Russ-
Just out of curiosity, what's your opinion of "Operational Defiant Disorder?" That's the latest illness du jour--it refers to people, especially teenagers, who keep defying authority--y'know, what less enlightened ages called "Typical adolescent rebellion--he'll grow out of it."
|6.17.05 @ 1:05PM|#
Russ D,
I have no problem with what you are saying when it applies to adults. Unfortunately, as some of us have been pointing out, an awful lot of children get caught up in this.
FWIW, as I have said, I work in MH and most of the people I see in the elevator are truly in need of help. The expansion of the term 'mental illness' does these people a disservice.
|6.17.05 @ 1:10PM|#
I feel another ADD rant coming on....
|6.17.05 @ 1:11PM|#
I think many of the disorders described in the DSM are perfectly legitimate disorders if you tack on the phrase "when taken to unhealthy extremes" to the description. Which is admittedly still vague, but makes the point that we aren't talking about a little bit of anxiety here, or a little bit of defiance.
|6.17.05 @ 1:12PM|#
Number 6,
..Then take your Ritalin, Quick!
|6.17.05 @ 1:17PM|#
Jennifer-Oppositional/defiant is a perfect example of the tendency to use pschiatry as a hammer to beat kids into neat little holes. "Johnny questions my (stupid) rules? Johnny must be sick!" I seem to recall that the Soviets took a similar approach.
Before anyone starts busting my chops about hyperbole, I am aware I'm overstating my case somewhat. But I stand by my point.
|6.17.05 @ 1:19PM|#
ADD:
Not every difficult to manage kid has ADD. Some kids can calm down if you work hard enough at discipline. Others have some funky chemistry in their brains and simply don't calm down. In fact, their chemistry is so funky that when you give them a certain stimulant they become calm, while other kids become hyper on the same stimulant.
The proliferation of ADD diagnoses has done nothing to help kids who actually have it, and has in fact contributed to the perception that the problem itself is just as much of a sham as the idiots who insist that their kids be diagnosed with it. Some parents want quick fixes, and some doctors are willing to provide it.
Several years ago there was an interesting study: A large cohort of children was examined using only the strictest ADD criteria (not just "Well, the teacher says he's hard to manage and I can't always get him to calm down, so please write a prescription and absolve me of further responsibility"). They found a significant number of children who were receiving Ritalin yet apparently didn't need it (and yes, they allowed for the possibility that those kids were responding well to the medication and so didn't exhibit symptoms), and a significant number of kids who needed it but weren't getting it.
I wish I could find the link, but I can't. Sadly, I can't answer all of your questions on this study. But I found it interesting. When the criterion for ADD diagnosis becomes "Well, the teacher finds him difficult to manage and I don't want to do the hard work of disciplining him" rather than a much more rigorous set of criteria (which include the frequency and severity of certain behaviors, not just the presence of those behaviors), it's no surprise if some people don't believe that the condition is real.
The false positives piss me off to no end, because I know people who have benefited from ADD treatment. Some people really do have funky brain chemistry that affects their behavior.
|6.17.05 @ 1:19PM|#
To build on MK's statement, if an adult wants to talk to a Life Coach before making any decision, or start every sentence with the phrase "My therapist says," let them do it. But the majority of kids being pushed into the mental-health system don't have anything wrong with them--they're just not what their parents want them to be. Athletic father disappointed in non-athletic son? Therapist. Southern belle mama disappointed in non-belle daughter? Therapist. Intellectual parents disappointed with child who wants to be a mechanic? Therapist. Manual-laborer parents disgusted with child's love of "book-learning?" Therapist. How the hell is THIS supposed to be a good thing?
|6.17.05 @ 1:23PM|#
Number 6-
Yes, I figured YOU would see through "ODD;" but I'd still like to know what Russ and Mike think of it.
|6.17.05 @ 1:31PM|#
Jennifer,
Oddly enough, my daughter was referred to therapy by her school marms for being exactly the way I was when I was a kid. It made for some awkward moments at the meeting:
They: "Autumn sometimes takes 5 or 6 minutes to start her work"
Me: "Really, it takes me about 30 minutes"
|6.17.05 @ 1:34PM|#
I find it rather peculiar that Reason, which seems to champion a lot of ideas that are on the cutting edge of biology/"society" has such a problem with people seeing a shrink or popping Zoloft/Adderall/etc.
For a publication that regularly endorses the concepts of Transhumanism in everything but name, you'd think the writers wouldn't be so quick to jump on the psychological disorder bandwagon.
After all, it wasn't that long ago that Ronald Bailey's reply to this