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Fad Diagnoses and Personality Disorders

sophists

23:57 / 15.03.04

Everyone has a pet disorder these days. Everyone has a disease. No one has a choice. No one takes responsibility. Everyone lets the pills do all of the work.

Fad Diagnoses and Personality Disorders

Nobody's girl

01:41 / 16.03.04

This person sounds like an under-informed, over-opinionated, nasty piece of work. I quote-

"Depression

Affects 15% of Americans at some point during their lives, and 100 million people are affected on any given day. The age of onset is fairly evenly spread among people. The mean age is 40, but Depression can onset from childhood to seniors. It can come on suddenly in days, or build over years.

The Truth

Waaaah! Waaaaah! Waaaah! Life is unfair. When are you gonna stop crying? I'm tired of hearing it. I have news for you: No one is happy ALL THE TIME. Quit trying to be a boring emotional flatliner."

It's just nastiness, it's not like you'll help anyone with depression by making fun of them.

illmatic

06:52 / 16.03.04

I agree with NG. Also, if you're just going to post a link without bothering to put in any thought of your own, I think the Conversation is a better place. Mods - d'ya wanna move it?

illmatic

07:27 / 16.03.04

Actually, I've just read a bit closer - maybe it is your piece as it's posted to sophist.org. Whatever. It's an ill thought out, stupid, spiteful rant. There may be serious grounds for questioning the legitamcy of something like Attention Defict Disorder but that actually requires basic intelligence and the ability to research and construct an argument, something lacking in this article. Anyone can spend half an hour slinging together a load of sneering, snide comments, rather than actually bothering to think about the issues and the people involved.

I actually cannot believe you are dim in enough to post it here, unless you wanted to cause some upset in which case it counts as nothing more than trolling. Someone remove please.

What next? "New in Headshop today - It's Been the Jews All Along"?

08:11 / 16.03.04

No one has a choice. No one takes responsibility. Everyone lets the pills do all of the work.

In which case, which disorder forced the author to write this, or which pill did the work for sie?
And Illmatic's right, there's a fascinating discussion waiting to happen on the medicalisation of states like ADD. And I'd love to discuss the medical classification of transgender, for instance, or the pros and cons of recognising anorexia as a psychiatric condition.

So we could pretend there was an provocative and interesting first post and continue accordingly. Or move it to a different fora and slap hir from here to eternity. Or let it sink, sink slowly to the bottom of the shallows of the Headshop.
Choices, choices. Oh, I can't decide - let's leave it up to whatever pill we're on today...

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:26 / 16.03.04

Hmm... as far as I can tell, this is a plug rather than a discussion topic per se. In effect, it is a "please read my piece of creative writing" thread, and as such I think it probably belongs in the Creation. I'll move to have it replanted where it gone bloom and grow, bloom and grow forever.

Bear in mind that this is sophists' first post to Barbelith, so he may not be entirely clear on the delineations of the fora, which are after all somewhat fuzzy, so while we may wish to sledge the content of the article and the decision to start out the relationship with Barbelith by demanding that we look at something more interesting elsewhere, the placing of the topic can, I think, be taken as at worst an act of unfamiliarity.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:27 / 16.03.04

However, I *do* think there are interesting threads on the pathologisation and medicalisation of personality analyses - if I Get a mo I'll start one but I doubt I will today, so if anyone else wants to leap in please go for it.

Tom Coates

09:13 / 16.03.04

I think this is potentially too interesting to go into the Conversation, but if no one minds I'm going to propose a change through to the Laboratory.

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