--- Eubulides <paraconsistent at comcast.net> wrote:
> Still, Wakefield and Allan Horwitz, a researcher at
> Rutgers University who
> studies the sociology of mental disorders, said
> their study, which was published
> in this month's issue of the Archives of General
> Psychiatry, pointed out that
> sadness has increasingly come to be seen as
> pathological in the United States.
> They have written a book called "The Loss of
> Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed
> Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder."
>
> Pharmaceutical companies, the psychiatric profession
> and patient advocacy groups
> have all contributed to the phenomenon, Horwitz
> added. Companies stand to make
> more money from the one-size-fits-all approach,
> researchers find the
> cookie-cutter model of disease makes it easier to do
> studies, and psychiatry has
> come to think of itself as "the arbiter of
> normality," he said.
>
> Patient groups, Horwitz added, think that the stigma
> attached to mental
> illnesses would be reduced if they were shown to be
> more common.
[WS:] Yup. But it is not just the big pharma or the helping professions. They calls fall on ery sympathetic public ears. There is the popular practice of excuse manufacturing on a massive scale - rebranding anything from casual delinquency, to poor work performance, to criminal behavior as a "medical conditon" can get one off the hook rather easily. So the industry's effort to "medicalize" bad mood - or bad temper - find very eager buyers.
Wojtek
____________________________________________________________________________________ Need Mail bonding? Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396546091