Over in Sweden, one dingbat's bright idea was to fake psychosis to go undercover to 'highlight the treatment of mental patients'. She's now facing criminal charges.
It wasn't the cakewalk she obviously thought it'd be either:
At the hospital she was immediately placed in restraints and repeatedly sedated – something which she has not been able to forget.Perhaps they should have tried ECT...
It is only my opinion - but Letters from a Tory has recently managed to make more a fool of himself than the protestors he enjoys ridiculing and it would be a shame to confuse the actions of an heroic Swedish student in the same context.
ReplyDeleteEven outright condemnation of this woman's motives should not extend to the idea of her deserving unnecessay ECT. It would be in everyone's interest to see the project completed and we must occasionally allow Authorities to stew in their own 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' soup.
Strange business psychiatry.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand they can diagnose virtually anyone as being mentally ill. On the other hand we have being right wing as being a mental illness in itself.
ECT isn't used these days as it is deemed cruel. Pity, coz it did actually work. Patients were anaesthetised too. The brain is an electro-chemical organ. Drug therapy isn't enough.
ReplyDelete"At the hospital she was immediately placed in restraints and repeatedly sedated"
ReplyDeleteAhahahahahahahahaha!
What a glorious example of the type of idiot who thinks they are invulnerable simply because they are swollen with their own benevolence.
"...we must occasionally allow Authorities to stew in their own 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' soup."
ReplyDeleteTrue. But I think there are more sensible ways to go about it!
"Strange business psychiatry."
Profitable, too!
"ECT isn't used these days as it is deemed cruel."
I thought it was still used in some areas, just no longer as routinely?
"What a glorious example of the type of idiot who thinks they are invulnerable simply because they are swollen with their own benevolence."
Yes, one can imagine how it went when she decided she had enough data:
"You can let me out, I'm not mad, I'm filming a documentary."
"Oh, really...? Makes a change from being Napoleon, I suppose, now, on with this nice white jacket with the long straps.."
There is a precedent.
ReplyDeletearticle: A 1970s psychologist caused outrage by faking symptoms of mental illness for a study. But have lessons been learnt?
Times, July 27 2009
Extract:
The publication of Rosenhan’s paper "On Being Sane in Insane Places" in the eminent journal Science in 1973 assured his place in the history of psychology.
The profession reacted furiously, complaining that the fact that they could be tricked did not undermine their methods of diagnosis. It was not their job, they said, to look for hoaxers.
:
But Rosenhan argued that however much psychiatry might want to be viewed like any other branch of medicine, the difference was the lack of further tests to confirm a diagnosis. None of the decisions to diagnose schizophrenia in the pseudopatients was reversed, even for the patient who had been observed for 52 days. Rosenhan wondered how a doctor who could not even tell which patients had mental health problems could ever expect to distinguish between different types of mental illness.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/mental_health/article6726435.ece
As the article makes clear, one of the problems with this area now is that you probably would not get ethical clearance to do it as a psychiatric reasearcher, meaning it's up to journalists - or even artists - to use more populist techniques if they want to show that there is still a huge amount of eye-of-frog and toe-of-newt in our attitude to mental health services.
It was, and remains, a legitimate question to ask.
ECT isn't used these days as it is deemed cruel.
ReplyDeleteI think you'll find that it is still used in refractory depression and depressive psychosis. Much less than in the past but it is used.
Most women need restraint in my experience. And they generally need sedation; gin and tonic seems to be the preferred method.
ReplyDeleteI find that women who do not accept restraint as a requirement of their biological status amusing. They often try to be boys and fail miserably.
It mat well be that women are from another planet and while they hang around with us mere male mortals they are bored. Still, sedation and restraint for all women, good. Anything else is going to cause a mess.
Oh, and burning bras is not very eco friendly now is it?
ReplyDeleteBTW, WOAR, classification of madness is subjective isn’t it?
ReplyDeleteTo be completely sane one must be of no consequence to anyone? I which case, that person might well as not exist.
Mike, the classification and diagnosis of mental illness is supposed to be objective. The thrust of the articles being that in so far as it is objective (which isn't far at all) those standards are increasingly political.
ReplyDeleteTDK's links are important. What happens in the US today is coming to a GP's surgery near you. Thanks for the heads-up TDK.
Is love mad?
ReplyDeleteLove is not mad but the conditional love giver enters a self made asylum, Mike.
ReplyDeleteThe asylum of sanity is a fallacy that people grasp onto. We are all beautifully mad.
ReplyDeleteThis reporter has only proved that it is dangerously easy to be labelled in a negative light.
The consequences of being different are.............................
Sheep or wolf? that is the question.
ReplyDelete