[lbo-talk] uh-oh! too much regulation!!

[Andy]

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Andy wrote:
>>
>>
>> Well, I sort of did, but I was referring to clinical mental illness.
>>
>> --
>> Andy
>
> I missed that. Unless you mean mercvury poisoning or somethng similar
> there is no such thing as a "clinical mental illness." Brain chemistry,
> of course, is involved in the slightest thougt or perception -- it takes
> a chemical change for you to read these words. Hence activity of neural
> transmitters is obviously inseparable from all mental activity,
> including "mental illness." Hence _sometimes_ various pathologcial
> conditons can be changed with chemicals that affect the flow of those
> transmitters. But all that does _not_ add up to a clinical mental
> illness."
>
> That said, the stigma on mental illness is still strong enough, and of
> course stronger in some social contexts than others, that it is absorbed
> by a person suffering from a particular illness (in a process analogous
> I suppose to the "self-hating Jew." It can _help_ some patients, then,
> to be able sto say, to others and to themselves, "I suffer from a
> chemical imbalance in the brain." And putting it that way to themselves
> and others probably even contributes to them controlling the illness,
> i.e., affectng that chemical imbalance or whatever process it is that we
> call a chemical ibalance.

I'm going to pointedly refrain from asking what that has to do with anything.

-- 
Andy