Things I was wrong about

1. It's not only the good that die young - if you disagree, just wait, you'll change your mind in a few years;

2. All of the people who voted for W really do have organic brain damage, they just do;

3. Taco Salad is not a health or diet food;

4. Cats....

this list is by no means intended to be exhaustive

It's No Secret

Welcome to the 21 century where nothing is private. Your health information, not really a big secret - why have you got something to hide?

The Last Psychiatrist has an excellent piece on google and privacy and these folks, Patient Privacy Rights, are trying to do something to improve the situation.

I've thought about providing my health care providers with this form, but I'm a little chicken, I mean what if it goes in my permanent record and I get bad health care because of it. Still the form is pretty cool.

Thoughts, Questions, Concerns?

Ain't that America?

I got this first story, the story of immigrants being forcibly drugged from the ever charming Liz Spikol, and the second one from the good old New York Times. It just makes you think, at least they didn't forcibly drug the firefighters who came in from Mexico to help put out the California fires, well, I don't think they did.

Lack of Insight

Anti-science fear mongers like the Treatment Advocacy Center advocate forced medication and confinement of people labeled as having mental illnesses based on the claim that people so labeled lack insight, however, this argument is specious for numerous reasons one of which is the notorious lack of insight of clinicians who assign psychiatric labels to humans:

"Clinicians, even well-trained ones, often have excess confidence in their own perceptions, are sometimes influenced by biases and agendas that they themselves do not fully appreciate, and are frequently resistant to the base rates of dangerousness for the populations they are evaluating."

Profiles, Probabilities, and Stereotypes by Frederick Schauer

Crazy Love

We just keep going and and it keeps getting better.

It's a battlezone out there in blogland

Still it's worth it. Gianna at Bipolar Blast has the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote that keeps so many of us going in these interesting times.

When rich people are tired, they're sick. When poor people are tired we're crazy and dangerous.

Yesterday I mentioned that it's the working poor, the lowest paid people in our society, who suffer from depression the most.

This morning I awoke to Oprah's low energy dilemma as reported on Good Morning America.

Turns out, when Oprah or Leslie Stahl from 60 Minutes have low energy, they've got thyroid problems or anemia. When poor people get tired, they've got depression that's costing our nation 36.6 billion per year. In other words, when the rich get sick, they're victims of illness, when the poor get sick, we're stealing, oh, uh, and setting fires too.

If Oprah goes to a doctor and complains of tiredness, yet not depression, they check her thyroid, and diagnose thyroid problems. If a poor person has a thyroid problem, he or she gets labeled bipolar.

So the question is, why aren't Oprah and Leslie Stahl labeled bipolar? After all, they just reported the symptoms of both clinical depression and bipolar disorder/mixed episode on Good Morning America?

I guess the answer is, they don't want to be bipolar even though they have the symptoms.

But then, aren't rich people who get tired crazier than poor people who get tired? After all if Oprah is tired, she can go to a spa or get a massage. If a food service worker is tired, they can call in sick to work, get fired, get evicted and become homeless, and thus the poor have much more incentive, and many more sane reasons to work when tired, uh depressed.

What is society really doing with these psychiatric labels?

Do you have one, and if so, has it helped you, or hurt you?