Maher cuts through the media circus: “‘If you want to find something in this that’s meaningful, it’s a good time to make the point that people in this country die from prescription drugs, I think that’s what it was. I think that when you’re 39 years old and you turn up dead … it’s probably because of drugs. In this country, as long as your name is on the little bottle, you’re cool. Marijuana has been tested exhaustively over the last 30 years–just by me. I don’t remember anybody ever dying from that. But that’s illegal, and whatever she was doing is cool because it’s a pharmaceutical drug.'” (Chicago Tribune)
Daily Archives: 11 Feb 07
About That Mean Streak of Yours:
Psychiatry Can Do Only So Much: “On the other hand, maybe he was mean by nature, a concept that may sound heretical coming from a psychiatrist because it seems dangerously close to rendering a moral judgment on a patient’s soul, something doctors should doubtless leave to theologians and philosophers.
But if some people turn out happy and good despite a lifetime of withering hardships, why can’t some people be mean or bad for no discernible reason?
There can be a relationship between nastiness and mental illness, and many therapists assume that when patients are mentally ill and mean, the illness is probably the cause of the ill temper.
But human meanness is far more common than all the mental illness in the population combined, so the contribution of mental illness to this essential human trait must be very small indeed.” — Richard Friedman MD (New York Times )
This is one in my continuing series of posts objecting to the medicalization of everyday life, which is particularly rampant in the mental health field. Psychiatrists are taught, as the writer above alludes to, to avoid passing moral judgment on others’ souls, but what if the only other way to validate your perceptions of or reactions to the way someone does business with you is to diagnose them with a disorder?
One of my particular interests in my work is the treatment of irritability and interpersonal violence, some of which is attributable to personality disorders and some to brain pathologies. Some, but not most…
The duty of the psychiatrist is as much to know when not to treat as to treat. We have to be very careful not to contribute to the epidemic of erosion of personal responsibility for behavior in modern society. Giving someone a diagnosis can serve to let them “off the hook”; this is a relief and a service when it is appropriate but a travesty when it is not, as it often is not. How many times have I heard a patient say, “I can’t help it. They tell me I’ve got a chemical imbalance” or the like?
An essay such as Friedman’s is a bold affront to a worrisome facet of the medical status quo, to be heartily welcomed from one curmudgeon to another.
Study: US teens use mobiles to harass partners
‘…[C]ontacting someone that frequently with those kinds of questions is simply about control and intimidation. It’s not a casual conversation: “Jealous teenagers often use cell phones and computers to harass and control their romantic partners, and most victims of the abuse are reluctant to discuss it with their parents, a survey showed.” (Melbourne Herald Sun)
Bill Maher: a lesson in Smith death
Maher cuts through the media circus: “‘If you want to find something in this that’s meaningful, it’s a good time to make the point that people in this country die from prescription drugs, I think that’s what it was. I think that when you’re 39 years old and you turn up dead … it’s probably because of drugs. In this country, as long as your name is on the little bottle, you’re cool. Marijuana has been tested exhaustively over the last 30 years–just by me. I don’t remember anybody ever dying from that. But that’s illegal, and whatever she was doing is cool because it’s a pharmaceutical drug.'” (Chicago Tribune)
