Posted on 01/01/2006 11:38:52 AM PST by oxcart
IT'S JAN. 1. Past time to get your inoculation against seasonal affective disorder, or SAD — at least according to the American Psychiatric Assn. As Americans rush to return Christmas junk, bumping into each other in Macy's and Best Buy, the psychiatric association ponders its latest iteration of feeling bad for the holidays. And what is the association selling? Mental illness. With its panoply of major depression, dysthymic disorder, bipolar disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, the association is waving its Calvinist flag to remind everyone that amid all the celebration, all the festivities, all the exuberance, many people will "come down with" or "contract" or "develop" some variation of depressive illness.
The association specializes in turning ordinary human frailty into disease. In the last year, ads have been appearing in psychiatric journals about possible treatments for shyness, a "syndrome" not yet officially recognized as a disease. You can bet it will be in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, published by the association. As it turns out, the association has been inventing mental illnesses for the last 50 years or so. The original diagnostic manual appeared in 1952 and contained 107 diagnoses and 132 pages, by my count. The second edition burst forth in 1968 with 180 diagnoses and 119 pages. In 1980, the association produced a 494-page tome with 226 conditions. Then, in 1994, the manual exploded to 886 pages and 365 conditions, representing a 340% increase in the number of diseases over 42 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
It's all enough to drive a cat insane!
Later read/ping. And from the LA times, no less.
"Great pair, ain't it? --- The ABA and the APA. Then add the NEA to the trifecta and we wonder why the country's going to hell in a hand-basket."
They know what they're doing. The Teachers detect what they think is abnormal behaviour, the shrinkers diagnose them officially and the judges dispose of them.
Ping
That's not quite true. When they find changes (and they do not find them all the time) they are pretty subtle.
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1986 Jan;43(1):36-42. Related Articles, Links
Postmortem evidence of structural brain changes in schizophrenia. Differences in brain weight, temporal horn area, and parahippocampal gyrus compared with affective disorder.
Brown R, Colter N, Corsellis JA, Crow TJ, Frith CD, Jagoe R, Johnstone EC, Marsh L.
The brains of 232 patients with a case-note diagnosis of schizophrenia or affective disorder who died in one mental hospital over a period of 22 years were weighed, and were assessed in a coronal section at the level of the interventricular foramina. From this sample were eliminated the brains of patients whose illnesses did not meet the Washington University criteria for a diagnosis of definite schizophrenia or primary affective disorder and those brains that showed significant histopathologic evidence of Alzheimer's-type change or cerebrovascular disease. This left a sample of 41 patients with schizophrenia and 29 patients with affective disorder. With age, sex, and year of birth controlled for, the brains of the patients with schizophrenia were 6% lighter, had lateral ventricles that were larger in the anterior (by 19%), and particularly in the temporal, (by 97%) horn cross section, and had significantly thinner parahippocampal cortices (by 11%). The findings provide postmortem confirmation of reports of ventricular enlargement in radiological studies and suggest that such enlargement is associated with tissue loss in the temporal lobe. The changes in schizophrenia were of a lesser degree than those seen in a sample of brains of patients with Alzheimer's-type dementia and Huntington's chorea.
The lunatics have been running the asylum for quite a while now ...
Well ... if one gets upset in public about homosexuality one might find oneself forcibly committed to an institution, thence drugged to the gills and induced into a real and long-lasting, if not permanent, psychosis. And thenupon kept in a secure and expensive institution until your medical insurance dries up, you wife divorces you and your half of your house and household sold to pay the "medical" bills.
Thereafter, broke, destitute, insane you shall then be placed in an inexpensive institution of the louse-iest grade until such time -- shortly, btw -- as your health totally breaks and you die. Forgotten and alone, all friends and family from that part of your life prior to speaking out too ashamed or uncomfortable to visit you. Your cadaver, after any organs and parts of value scooped out, will end up dressed in used linen rags or cheap plastic bag and dumped unceremoniuosly in a common paupers grave, or burnt at the mortuary furnace in a pile of other such destitute, forgotton, unnamed cafavers.
In such death your cadaver's buruing may provide perhaps a few joules of steam-heat for the local institution that had been forced to bear the dismal and paltry care they gave you.
And your redress under the law at the onset is what? Almost nothing. A Doctor's word can inprison, poison and doom you without any due process in time.
Hey, it's good for business! (sarc)
On a non-sarcastic note, this is a picture of a society that has discounted God and His Word concerning human nature.
And the writers of their books don't agree with eachother.
I will agree with your statement with the caveat that this is true of a significant number of therapists, but certainly not all. I need to digest the article a bit more before I respond further, because my immediate gut reaction to the author's statements have me fairly disgusted...and I would like to give the author the benefit of a fair hearing.
But isn't it interesting how the thread had already evolved into a "me too!" collection of commentaries? What place does critical thinking occupy in lives of people? Judging from the knee-jerk reactions already posted, virtually none. < /soapbox>
"Of course it's PC. If it's labeled a disease, then no one must take responsibility for their behaviors."
Well, don't sell these folks short. What is say is all too true, but do not fail to look at the prescription drugs written for these so called ailments. If they had their way everyone would be on them!
Plus the gays are especially rich in other neuroses, and they tend to have money. It is the disease that produces endless doctor's appointments.
I need hangnail aversion therapy.
Oh, I don't know what Birkies are. I must be in deep doo-doo.
Birkenstocks.
Liberal Hippie footwear.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.