[Chris] We had a seminar about this stuff today, and people were to give their input on insanity and the difficulties of diagnoses in a historical perspective etc. It amused me, because just as you say it kept returning to this culture/nature thing, and apart from my input, the consensus seemed to be that this problem was something that could not be escaped.
It seems to me that the area of psychiatry/psychology is the area where MOQ input could be made most efficiently. [Krimel] I am no fan of clinical psychology in general or the DSM in particular. The DSM as I understand it is a book full of labels to attach to symptoms and its purpose is mainly to allow for efficient billing. But if you think that mental illness is just some cultural hoax to put down "religions of one" you obviously have not met anyone with a serious mental illness. One of the problems in classifying these diseases is that they affect the most complex bit of matter in the known universe, the human brain. They often involve chemical imbalances that are not well understood. And the symptoms that people report lend themselves to a wide variety of interpretations. But people who hear voices demeaning them and urging them to injury themselves are seriously ill. People who are so depressed that even suicide seems like futile waste of effort have something medically wrong with them. These illnesses have yielded to medical treatments, specifically medications in ways unlike anything tried over the past 2000 years. As far as psychiatric hospitalizations are concerned, in this country in order to be institutionalized a person has to be a threat to themselves or others. This is not done lightly and there are court hearings to insure that the rights of citizens are upheld. If anything in the US there are neither the facilities nor the legal mechanisms to help or provide treatment for a great many who desperately need it. The idea that this is some hoax or that all these people need is a little bit of philosophy is indeed amusing. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
