academe

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Jun 1 09:36:29 PDT 2001


At 03:55 PM 5/31/01 -0700, Peter wrote:
>There are plenty of reputable psychiatrists who question the
overdiagnosis. There just happens to be an article in this week's "New Times" (Los Angeles) in which quite a few of them are quoted. The article is about a UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute study of the feasibility of giving the drug to preschoolers. Now, since the child brain is not fully developed, it is no surprise to me that many people should question the pharmacological (or pharmaceutical industry) wisdom of dosing children unnecessarily with psychoactive drugs because of "behavior problems."

I can think of myself as being a "victim" of overdiagnosis in my teen years and resultant institutionalization and medication. I was basically a contumacious kid, but the shrink who examined me saw much more ("sociopathy" was the mantra of the day if memory serves) and convinced my old folks that institutionalization was necessary. After six weeks in an institution, the sentence was reduced to medication, which was a welcome change because those six weeks were taken straight from the pages of _One flew over the cuckoo's nest_.

Well, I lived to tell about it, and besides, I hate being identified as a "victim."

I believe, however, it was overdiagnosis, because I was not violent, did not threaten or attack anyone, did not do anything life- or property-threatening - just did a little booze and drugs, openly defied authority figures, flunk a few classes in HS, and grew long hair. Had I been violent or threatening, however, I would not consider it overdiagnosis. Society has every right to protect itself from violent men, no matter how young or old. I just believe that preventive medication is a more humane way of doing so than, say, institutionalization, imprisonment, or capital punishment.

wojtek



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