28 November 2010

Shrinks push drugs in prisons

A shrink called Susan Young has said that almost half the prison population could have avoided a life of crime if treated as children for ADHD. Doc: how d'you know that then?

ADHD, as far as I can see, is a made up condition used by shrinks to label naughty kids. So, the doc's saying that if you drug kids early enough, they wouldn't be criminals and the prisons would lose half the current population.

The doc thinks that "...up to 45 per cent of youth offenders and 30 per cent of adult criminals have the condition that causes hyperactivity or inattentiveness." How d'you know that then?

As with any mental disorder, it's a case of 'in my opinion', 'studies suggest', blah blah. It's all made up. You can't see ADHD under a microscope. You're just going to have to believe the shrink. Let's face it, for those prisoners who get the diagnosis, they're getting 'kiddie-cocaine' drugs according to the Sunday Express last week. Loads of security is set up in prisons to prevent drugs being taken in, and what d'you know, the shrinks then give them the green light.

Brattish kids are a pain in the proverbial, but it doesn't mean we have to drug them. Don't listen to the doc and her mindless science.

25 November 2010

Thinking outside the box

I'm more than willing to be corrected on this, but why do shrinks have anything to do with brains? As far as I know, the cerebrum is the central point for the nervous system. And as far as I know, neurologists practice neurology and are experts in things to do with neurons and the nervous system, which would probably mean they're experts in things like brains.

That means psychiatrists must be real experts in things to do with psyches. According to current definitions... oh, there isn't a current definition for psyches. There are verbs for psyche but there's only one noun listed in the online dictionary for psyche and that refers to psychology. You can probably see where I'm going with this. It begs the question: what are psychiatrists doing playing around with brains? Does this mean psychiatrists are now neurologists?

This line of questioning started when I read the story in a London paper called the Ealing Gazette about a psychiatrist Dr Michael Maier who has a collection of 6,000 brains coming at him. The collection was started 50 years ago to try and unlock the causes of mental illess.

Fifty years later, I guess psychiatrists are still trying to find the answers. The report says the collection is still being used worldwide to try and combat current illness so that means they haven't worked it out yet. I don't have a degree in the bleeding obvious, but could it have something to do with the fact mental illness doesn't have anything to do with brains? Again, I'm not an expert and I repeat, I'm willing to be corrected on this.

I know it's asking alot, but it might be worth it if psychiatrists started thinking outside the usual parameters. They might realise they're talking aload of boxes.

22 November 2010

Home, Sweet Home

It's been reported that Oregon State Mental Hospital is reopening. Yes, the movie set for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is going to be opening for business once more.

The report on www.ctv.ca said the hospital was a place where real psychiatric abuse occurred. What a brilliant journalistic description. It got me thinking. If I'm reading that correctly, that means unless a psychiatric hospital was featured in a movie like Cuckoo's Nest, then it was or is a hospital where real psychiatric abuse took place or takes place.

Apparently, a hospital designed to facilitate modern theories in mental health treatment will be put in place of the old one. As far as I know, modern theories in mental health treatment still rely on drugs, shock treatment and a bit of brain-digging now and again, just like Cuckoo's Nest all those years ago. Here's the new modern theory: walking round an imaginary town inside the hospital. That's the new stuff shrinks are trying to pass off as treatment. That got me thinking too: isn't that the sort of thing shrinks normally accuse their patients of doing? Hot-footing it off into the land of make-believe? That normally gets a label banged on it followed by a bit of 'treatment'.

So now, when it suits the shrinks, going to the land of make-believe is being called 'treatment'. Beats me.

On a lighter note, I wonder who'll be the first to emulate Mac. Anyone got a yellow bus?

18 November 2010

No more porridge for Mummy Bear

A psychiatric nurse, involved in a ménage à trois, has been struck off the nursing register. Jayne Reed got up to all sorts of seedy shenanigans with a 46-year-old and an 18-year-old patient. The Nursing and Midwifery Council heard that during the shenanigans, Reed would be "mummy bear" while the 46-year-old man... I wont go into details but daddy bear and baby bear were involved if you get my drift.

What struck me in the report in The Sun was that Ms Reed said: "I am angry at the mental health trust who failed to notice the decline in my practice and professionalism." Talk about passing the buck. This lady is off the scale. It's a bit like saying, "I drove at 120mph and lost my license. I'm now angry at the police who failed to notice my rubbish driving." She crossed the boundaries and she knows it.

She should be angry at herself for using patients for her own sexual gratification, angry at herself for thinking she could get away with it by blaming the Trust, and angry at herself for not thinking about the effects of her actions.

No more porridge for you Mummy Bear.

08 November 2010

This sounds like a Benny Hill episode

It sounds more like something out of a Benny Hill skit, or something from one of those top shelf products you find in the local video store. As far as I can see, this story has nothing to do with medicine, or nursing.

The Shropshire Star covered the story of Anne Rogers-Hughes, a psychiatric nurse who had a four-month affair with a patient. During that time, she provided topless massages and described him to colleagues as a “stud”. I thought this kind of activity went on in seedy back street 'establishments' where participants usually need the NHS for the treatment of STDs.

Rogers-Hughes' bosses also got to hear the tawdry details of how she had sex with her patient twice a week at his home, and how she took him to see a GP to ask for Viagra while she sat in the waiting room.

I don't think it took much deliberating to decide to strike her off. The Nursing and Midwifery Council found Anne Rogers-Hughes "... guilty of engaging in a sexual relationship with Service User A between July and October 2007 and failing to notify managers of the affair."

So the nurse isn't working anymore. Big deal. I reckon she should be in jail, guility of a sex crime. Apparently the sex was mutually consensual. It seems like patients are only vulnerable when it suits the docs and nurses.

05 November 2010

Don't worry, shrinks have found the 'worry centre'

Desperate people take desperate measures. Shrinks at the Institute of Psychiatry in London have apparently found the 'worry centre' of the brain for the first time. MRI scans of people deliberately made anxious by the threat of an electric shock have identified the hippocampus - the brain's memory centre - as the source of the anxiety.

Like all the other psychiatric hot air that's full of weasel words, I don't buy this. It begs the question of whether those under threat of electric shock were 'worriers' or not, or whether they were average Joes taken off the street. So there's some activity in the brain when you threaten them with being shocked. Goodness me! I've a theory about this. I reckon it means the subjects are alive. That's about as much as you can deduce from that.

Unscience aside, I'm getting to think like shrinks now, because the next step in this story is to 'discover' an expensive chemical, give it a name, patent it, sell it at inflated prices, and finally shove it down the throats of the worriers. When they're drugged up, and they stop worrying because they can't think straight, the shrinks will say they've solved the worriers of this world.

I'd like to take the worriers of this world, change a couple of letters and turn them into warriors, who then fight back against the shrinks who attempt to ruin their lives with chemicals.

04 November 2010

ADHD is 'genetic', honest guv

Back in September, a shrink from Cardiff University in Wales, United Kingdom, shouted all over the media that ADHD is genetic. Professor Anita Thapar said, "Now we can say with confidence that ADHD is a genetic disease." How d'you know that then? Yes, there's probably a bubbly-babbly sickly-psycho answer that's supposed to wash over me and people like me, so we don't keep asking how d'you know that then?

But I don't buy the bubbly-babbly sickly-psycho answer. In fact, I thought the doc's nemesis Oliver James had a pretty good argument when he said in the Guardian, "Although she claimed to have proved that ADHD is a "genetic disease", if anything, she proved the opposite."

Fergus Walsh, the BBC's medical correspondent, waded in to the argument as well. He said of Prof Thapar's statement, "...those bold claims do not seem to be borne out by the actual research paper." And after doing his sums, he concluded, "That also means that seven out of eight of the ADHD group did not have the genetic variant - which hardly justifies Professor Thapar's confident assertion that ADHD is a genetic disease."

ADHD isn't scientific. It's a psychiatric obsession about badly behaved kids, based on the psycho-bubbly-babbly 'chemical imbalance' theory. There's no way to measure an imbalance, so the rug that ADHD is sitting on gets pulled every time someone says it's an imbalance in the brain. Or am I being unfair? There are parents out there who'd probably like to ask me whether I've ever had to live with a kid with ADHD. I'd say with complete confidence, no I haven't, because ADHD doesn't exist!

I'd follow that by saying I have lived with a kid who's badly behaved and yes, I know what that's like. It's tough and I couldn't wait to leave home. The badly behaved kid though didn't get drugs stuffed down his throat and now he's doing pretty good, thank you very much. I'm proud to call him my brother.

Doc Thapar should be ashamed of herself. I'm going to answer the question posed to her: she doesn't know it's genetic, and she can't prove it's genetic, but I'll bet she made a bucket load of cash from it.