Posted on 12/03/2007 4:19:00 PM PST by neverdem
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During the summer of 2002, The Oprah Winfrey Show was graced by a visit from Ricky Williams, the Heisman Trophy holder and running back extraordinaire of the Miami Dolphins. Williams was there to confess that he suffered from painful and chronic shyness. Oprah and her audience were, of course, sympathetic. If Williams, who had been anything but shy on the football field, was in private a wilting violet, how many anonymous citizens would say the same if they could only overcome their inhibition long enough to do so?
To expose one's shyness to what Thoreau once called the broad, flapping American ear would itself count, one might think, as disproof of its actual sway over oneself. But football fans knew that Ricky Williams was no voluble Joe Namath. Nevertheless, there he was before the cameras, evidently risking an anxiety attack for the greater good—namely, the cause of encouraging fellow sufferers from shyness to come out of the closet, seek one another's support, and muster hope that a cure for their disability might soon be found.
Little of what we see on television, however, is quite what it seems...
--snip--
As for the frequently rocky initial weeks of treatment, a troubling record not just of "suicidality" but of actual suicides and homicides was accumulating in the early 1990s...
(Excerpt) Read more at nybooks.com ...
new FReebie
bump
Would this be a new way to obtain more of the population’s DNA for ulterior motives? I confess, I did not read the whole article.
The Liberal doctrine of victimology dovetails nicely with the economic incentive to sell a cure for victimhood. If the lefties aren’t being duped by hard core Marxists, they’re being duped by Madison Avenue. Their enthusiasm for acting like idiots is inexhaustible.
Key gene involved in Lupus identified
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Psychiatry adopted the biological model for mental illness due, in large part, to medical economics and also because psychiatrists want to be counted among “real doctors.” The biological model allows treatment of all psychiatric disorders with medicine and dramatically increases the number of billings per day. (Medical economics)
If you have prior military service, don't worry. They already got your precious bodily fluids. How else are they going test for adverse reactions with these SSRI antidepressants?
LMAO!
Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Luvox, and Similar Drugs
https://secure25.securewebsession.com/painstresscenter.com/mall/Prozac.html
Thanks for the link. At least the drug approval process has been updated. The FDA now demands to see all trial results.
Like, for example the abnormal EEGs associated with some affective disorders, the ways some drugs can cause clinical depression or greatly exacerbate it, or the remarkable responses (reported, often, not by the patient but by the family, friends, and associates of the patient) to some medications?
Or, on a larger scale, Are all opinions determined not by evidence but by the desire for some kind of gain? And if so, is the opinion that opinions are so determined itself so determined? Certainly the opinion that opinions are determined by economic gain and power would fallunder the genral classification of "Marxism", and while there are many problems with Marxism, the first is the problem of how does Marxism explain Karl Marx?
And what is "Psychiatry" that "it" can adopt or reject models?
Having said all that, I will eagerly agree that medical insurance companies sure wish that all psychiatric problems would respond to medications which are often cheaper (and more effective, maybe) than "the talking cure".
There’s also a huge liberal doctrine of equating mental illness with physical illness. The result is that medication is viewed as much more effective than it really is. The same liberal doctrine decrees that it’s politically incorrect to point to anyone and say they’re crazy, and to deprive them of their “freedom” on that basis. So when someone is obviously crazy, we say they’re “ill”, give them medicine, and send them on their way. The fact that they continue to send up clusters of red flags indicating that they’re suicidal or homicidal is ignored, as long as they’ve gotten pills and “counseling”.
I really think it’s this phenomemon — pretending people aren’t crazy when they really are — and not effects of the various medications, that accounts for the suicide and homicide rates. If the Virginia Tech mass murderer/suicider had been on Prozac, etc, he’d be added to the stats of the drugs correlating with suicide/homicide. But the simple fact is that despite his profound insanity being perfectly obvious to everyone who came into contact with him, he was allowed to continue living unsupervised in a college dorm, coming and going from campus as he pleased, going to classes of his own choosing, ordering whatever he wanted off the Internet and receiving packages without screening, playing violent Internet games all the time, and turning in disturbing and violent writings for his school assignments (and getting passing grades for them, despite their being completely incoherent!). Most people probably assumed he was getting some medication and counseling, but apparently he wasn’t. Not that it would have made any difference.
There are lots of kids on Prozac and other common drugs who are exhibiting similar (though in most cases milder) signs of insanity, who were exhibiting the same signs before they were on the drugs. Sooner or later some of them are bound to snap, and sooner or later — usually at some point before they snap — somebody takes note that they’re “ill” problem and gives them some pills and “counseling”, and lets them go right back to what they were doing. Once upon a time, people who were obviously crazy were locked up. Now they aren’t. The fact that many of them are also given pills while not being locked up isn’t why so many are acting on suicidal and/or homicidal urges — they’re just getting the opportunity to act on those urges because they’re not locked up!
Well, as a psychiatrist (ret) I would use "pursue" instead of adopt. You raise legitimate points and psychiatry has the data you mention and is doing that type of research you mention. It is also abandoning "talking therapy," (too time-consuming) and making unwarranted diagnoses all for the sake of increasing the bottom line. For example, Personality disorders are rarely diagnosed and are replaced with bi-polar affective disorder--why? Because you cannot treat personality disorders with medicine. Virtually all of the research in Psychiatry pursues the "Nature" (biological) side of mental illness while ignoring the "Nurture" (life's experiences and learning) side---that in and of itself is pursuit of the biological model.
As a long time consumer of psychiatry and a pastoral counsellor (who tries to keep a stable of good shrinks for referrals and as an anchor to windward) I'd say that certainly all of us care-givers can get seduced by any number of things, including the curious satisfaction of a fat bank account.
For example, Personality disorders are rarely diagnosed and are replaced with bi-polar affective disorder--why? Because you cannot treat personality disorders with medicine
Humongo 10-4 here. At a guess, I'd suggest that a generally lousy prognosis would also play into the desire to write a scrip, collect the fee, and get it over with.
I was a chaplain a million years ago (1974-1975) at Mass General and the Psych wing then was entering the pursuit of the "organic" etiology of God, the universe and everything, and they didn't think much of chaplains. (Not that I blame them. A lot of us were pretty flakey.)
But I was very taken, when they would allow me to converse with some of their patients, with what seemed to me to be clear signals of organic aspects to some of the illnesses. Untrained as I was, though, I couldn't make much of a scientific case.
However if I had any doubts about the organic aspects of some affective disorders, they were dispelled when I had 3 out of 4 of the suite of bad neuro reactions to lovastatin. - Loss of taste and smell, lost of memory, and depression like unto wading through a universe of pudding. I finally figured it out when I realized that if somebody came to me and "presented" the way I felt, I would drop everything and drive him or her to a hospital.
Now every major decision in my house is prepared for with coffee and prayer. So I went to the coffee maker and, Lo, there was my bottle of pills. And a lightbulb lit over my head as I said to myself,"You don't suppose ...." A few phone calls to some mental health professionals later and I had my diagnosis.
I bet that treatment of some personality disorders would be assisted with some of them thar serotonin re-uptake inhibitors or whatever, but my own personal pet theory is that personality disorders are in the same family as (a lot of) substance abuse and need the same kind of approach -- and that therefore drugs just won't do it.
My philosophy crack was that speaking of "psychiatry" as pursuing something might border on the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness". I would suggest, for discussion and not as a final word, that there is no "psychiatry", there are only lots o' psychiatrists.
Thanks for your response.
However, you might consider the idea that outside stimuli might also have the ability to re-wire the brain.
Anyway, the idea of meds alone without at least SOME kind of "talking cure" or other therapy seems silly to me. If I've been depressed for most of my life (which I have), even if HOW I got that way isn't especially relevant, certainly I have formed, as it were, habits or responses that I could use some help in understanding. And then new behaviors are almost certainly going to make me anxious and perhaps unearth some other "knots" (R. D. Laing - great book) in the old puhSighKey.
But then, I've always liked talking .....
Personality disorders are intractable and, as such, not comparable to addiction. Their long-term prognosis can be good for the very short run; long-term is always "back to square one"--if suicide doesn't intervene. But meds, at times, can bring relief and safety, but only for a short period. Compliance is a huge problem with personality disorders.
Just my opinion — but I’d say talking cure along with spiritual guidance. Again, just my opinion — but the goal of meds in many, many instances should be to not need the meds. Get the person up on their feet with the pills, then address the problem in other ways.
p.s.
Obviously, if there’s some major problem then the meds are forever. But from my observations, there couldn’t possibly be as many major problems as there are people taking meds these days.
If you tested of govt employees, 95% if them would have some kind of personality disorder. And I’m not joking, either.
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