From: mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 18:40:37 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.94.960706224526.1124A-100000@gak>
Message-ID: <199607070742.AAA26296@netcom5.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


"Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com> writes:

 > While the psychiatric profession has invented many bogus
 > diseases, that does not mean that the profession has no
 > credibility. Remember that psychology is little more than
 > philosophy.  Abnormal behavior patterns don't necessarily
 > mean that a child has a disorder or disease.  However, if
 > the child experiences physical symptoms, then a chemical
 > imbalance in the brain is not that farfetched.

There are, of course, real mental illnesses with underlying
pathology, like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and clinical
depression.

I'm not sure the existence of genuine mental illness makes the
psychiatric profession credible, however, when they are all too
willing to climb in bed with the latest political fad.

Recall those "experts" during World War I who explained with
prefect seriousness to the American public that the reason the
Germans' heads fit so well into those pointy helmets was that
their brains were missing the part that distinguished right from
wrong.

Adolescent Psychiatric Imprisonment and Insurance Fraud are a
multi-million dollar well-organized business in the United
States, and talk shows are filled with women who split into 1,000
different personalities, some of them alien visitors, after being
traumatized by some sexual oddity.

 > First of all, a child is considered to have "school phobia"
 > when the child refuses to go to school and also has severe
 > anxiety attacks, vomiting, and nausea.

Goodness gracious, you make these people sound almost reasonable.
I remember last year one local TV station did a piece on "school
phobia", and the wonderful drugs that could be used to treat it.
The kid profiled simply didn't like school, and refused to attend
it, and the list of symptoms given to help parents recognize the
disorder were entirely attendance related.

Of course, with enough Mellaril in your system, you can probably
put up with just about anything.

 > Attention Deficit Disorder is hardly nonsense; it's a
 > disorder found to be partly hereditary and strongly linked
 > with clinical depression.

ADD people are simply the upper 5-10% of the population with
regard to behavioral traits which make learning more difficult.
Of course such things can be hereditary and of course people who
can't live up to expectations placed upon them sometimes get
clinically depressed.

The thing to remember here is that we are looking at things which
show continuous normal variation in any population, like height
and hatsize, and the people who are being labeled and treated
here are hardly some huge number of standard deviations away from
the norm.

 > There are real illnesses, and there are fake ones.  Just
 > because the psychiatic profession does attribute certain
 > behavior to some non-existent illness doesn't mean there is
 > any reason to not believe in any psychological maladies.

Which of course is not the issue here.  No one has stated that
legitimate mental illness does not exist, merely that the
profession has a tendency to use creative imagination where a
market or political pressure exists.

 > It's surprising to me that people consider the Unabomber
 > "insane" but yet do not believe that many very real mental
 > illnesses and disorders exist.

Insanity is a legal term which by its very construction, is an
almost impossible set of criteria to meet.  It has nothing to do
with any scientific definition of mental illness.  You can be
completely bonkers and carrying on meaningful conversations with
wall ornaments, and the government will be more than happy to fry
you in the electric chair.

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $