'Just when you thought it was safe to go back to your doctor' would be a suitably apt tagline for the latest promotional push to get children hooked on pharmaceutical drugs.
Hollywood execs are constantly on the look for aspiring writer's of fiction, they should look under their noses.
The latest in a long line of guinea pig science is the Pre Mental Disorder Screening & Drugging [PMDSD]
It's a movie that I'd just love to see, can't for the life of me figure out what genre it would fall into though. A thriller? Possibly. A tale of fantasy? Even more likely. Or a comedy of belly aching proportions? Well, it's made me laugh.
Not so long ago in a place far away, a group of psychiatrists, or big bad wolves, who went by the name of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, recommended that every school child in America should be screened for mental illness. The screening would involve subjective questions based on psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, this manual being a tale of fiction within itself. The questions were designed in such a way that the majority of children would succumb to the big bad wolves.
Not content with roping in children who failed the screening, the big bad wolves decided to create an instruction chart, otherwise known as “prediction algorithms”.
These charts, they claim, can predict if a child can become mentally unstable. So, in essence, if they DO manage to pass the screening in room number one, they have to go to room number two, whereupon they can be assessed to see if they may become mentally unstable in future years.
A bunch of other psychiatrists, led by Australian psychiatrist, Patrick McGorry, have recently designed the ultimate, fool proof, pill pushing program.
Entitled the "Psychosis Risk Syndrome" it is claimed that the big bad wolves from down under and other parts of Metropolis can isolate symptoms that predict the potential onset of psychosis.
It's their DeLorean.
An invention that allows only the big bad wolves a glimpse into the future.
I'm reminded of a festive song here - Do You Hear What I Hear?
Said the night wind to the little lamb
"Do you see what I see?"
...Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy
"Do you hear what I hear?"
...Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king
"Do you know what I know?"
...Said the king to the people everywhere
"Listen to what I say."
...A Child, a Child shivers in the cold
Let us bring him silver and gold
Ironically, the author of that song, Noel Rigney, was inspired to write after he saw two mothers with their babies in pushchairs. "The babies were looking at each other and smiling. All of a sudden, my mood was extraordinary."
One is left wondering at what inspired the "Psychosis Risk Syndrome" program or if indeed it was a moment of inspiration or merely a promotional tool to sell more pharmaceutical drugs to a population that knows no better [Children]
In the movie, Back To The Future, Dr. Emmett Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd, invented the first time machine, which was built out of a DeLorean car. The movie was a huge box office success, panning two further sequels...or prequels, whichever you prefer.
Is this latest 'DeLorean' from the minds of psychiatry fiction or fact? Can they really predict the outcome of the human psych by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing a series of algorithms?
We all know how to recognise the onset of such things as a common cold, a runny nose, shivers etc. We don't need to be told that we may get a cold in 2011 or 2012.
We know if we eat too many fatty foods we will more than likely develop heart problems. If we smoke, chances are we will develop respiratory problems and/or lung cancer.
In fact, we are warned that if we do this or that we may, in later years, get this or that.
The latest DeLorean is an invention that will go on inventing, just as the authors of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM] invent on a regular basis.
There's a great quote from Dr. Emmett Brown in the Back To The Future movie:
"I wish I'd never invented that infernal time machine. It's caused nothing but disaster."
Anyone else drawing comparisons here?
Do you see what I see?
Do you hear what I hear?
Protect your children folks, it's what your God would have wanted.
Fid
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'THE EVIDENCE, HOWEVER, IS CLEAR...THE SEROXAT SCANDAL' By Bob Fiddaman
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