i'm completely fascinated to learn that schizophrenia turns out to be something from which people used to recover a lot more frequently than they do today. an ex's father was schizophrenic and anyone with whom i've ever discussed this with has indicated that it's this lifelong debilitating condition. i guess that's a recent understanding.
Whitake takes you through a series of long-term studies of schizophrenics that took place both before the development of thorazine as well as after. he then shows that psychiatrists found out that there was disturbing evidence to indicate schizophrenics were getting worse and having worse outcomes when treated with thorazine than when they weren't - when the study ranged 3 or more years. Indeed, the longer the follow up studies went, the more likely people who weren't medicated ended up being mainstreamed - getting jobs, getting married, having children, etc.
i'm sure people who pay more attention to this than I do already know about this situation with schizophrenia. I hadn't, at least not based on my ex-s family and their understanding of schizophrenia and what their father/husband could expect.
don't have the book in front of me to quote, but if you're interested, i'd highly recommend a reading.
At 01:43 PM 8/28/2011, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>At 01:23 PM 8/28/2011, Jordan Hayes wrote:
>>shag writes:
>>
>>>The one thing that is annoying me so far, though, is that
>>>Whitaker seems to be using the "productive member of society"
>>>trope to subtly persuade. In other words, he's saying that
>>>rise in the number of people collecting SSI/SSDI payments
>>>is alarming because there are so many unproductive members
>>>of society who aren't holding down jobs.
>>
>>I've always wondered why the Free Market types don't just forget about
>>this kind of thing (call it, I don't know, a "cost of doing business"
>>...?), because really: if The Market was suffering from a lack of
>>workers, we'd all hear about it. But in this part of the cycle, we're
>>missing about 13M jobs. If anything, those who can't/won't work are
>>helping to keep down the (official) unemployment rate :-)
>>
>>A la toys-for-guns, I'd love to see someone say "I'll give you a good
>>paying job with benefits if you stop taking those wretched drugs" ...
>>then I guess I could take something like Whitaker's complaint seriously.
>>
>>/jordan
>
>
>I know! I was thinking that too! It's a common structural-functionalist
>marxist argument to analyze social problems - e.g., high imprisonment
>rates in the u.s. - and say that they have a "latent function" of keeping
>people off the job market. Similarly for the s-f analysis of schooling:
>the rise of credential inflation keeps people out of the job market.
>Additionally, today, it's a booming industry as well. the demand for
>credentials and retraining is a whole industry in the adult education market.
>
>Whitaker isn't a marxist, of course. He's just using this as a method of
>persuasion, partially because it's extremely compelling to the people he's
>interviewing. The people who used to be on meds for depression, etc. and
>who got off them and use other treatments, are the people who make these
>arguments. *they* think they are slackers who were using their diagnosis
>as a crutch to avoid working and to avoid taking full responsibility for
>work/chores at home, leaving the burden with their partners and children.
>
>shag
>
>
>http://cleandraws.com
>Wear Clean Draws
>('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)