Clearly in need of medication
How Shyness Became a Mental Illness
What’s wrong with being shy, and just when and how did bashfulness and other ordinary human behaviors in children and adults become psychiatric disorders treatable with powerful, potentially dangerous drugs, asks a Northwestern University scholar in a new book that already is creating waves in the mental health community.
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“The number of mental disorders that children and adults in the general population might exhibit leaped from 180 in 1968 to more than 350 in 1994,” notes Lane, Northwestern’s Herman and Beulah Pearce Miller Research Professor. In a book that calls in doubt the facade of objective research behind psychiatry’s revolution, Lane questions the rationale for the changes, and whether all of them were necessary and suitably precise.By labeling shyness and other human traits as dysfunctions with a biological cause, the doors were opened wide to a pharmaceutical industry ready to provide a pill for every alleged chemical imbalance or biological problem, he adds.
“It might be funny,” he says, save for the fact that the DSM’s next edition, due to be completed in 2012, is likely to establish new categories for apathy, compulsive buying, Internet addiction, binge-eating and compulsive sexual behavior. Don’t look for road rage, however. It’s already in the DSM, under intermittent explosive disorder.
OK. Show of hands. Who doesn’t have a mental illness and need expensive meds? No one? You in the back, you don’t… No, I said mental, not metal. Wait. On second thought, we can treat that.
Maybe we can get some comments from TOM CRUISE on this thread? Sounds like he and The Scholar are singing from the same hymnal. Was L. Ron Hubbard right?
ANY belief is mental. Thank about that one. I mean THINK about that one. L Ron Hubbard used to say that the ultimate goal of ANY religion is to be– in what scientology calls– in the “clear”. That state is a state of mental clearness. A state of no thought. For example, there are people who believe the world is evil. Well, keeping that thread of belief in their heads they will distort reality to fit into an “evil world”. Yet, they look healthy from the outside. But the mental world they have created causes them great grief.
I am proof of mental clearness. Look at my smile! All of you need medication. But mostly, maybe, you just need blowjobs. hahaha [I'm jumping up and down on my couch with Siri].
P.S. I AM NOT GAY!
they wont stop until there are enough categories to ensure everyone gets at least one pill a day
p.s. come out of the closet Tom
I used to be shy. Then my friends got me on a neat drug call, “alcohol,” specically, “Tequila.” I am not sure if that name is trademarked so I hope I am not sued for using it.
Anyway, after one dose, I was one with the universe. After two doses, I was God’s gift to women. After three doses, I was nine foot tall, bullet-proof, and out to prove it.
The side effects were horrible but didn’t usually kick in until the next morning.
That stuff cures shyness like no one’s business!
What’s wrong with self-medicating with beer?
I’m addicted to DU. Is that a mental illness and is there a pill for it? What would be it’s medical term?
#4 – Sorry – my morning medication of “coffee in mass quantities” hasn’t kicked in yet.
#4
You are exactly right. I am a shy person who gets distressed at conferences, business meetings, etc…
However, a single glass of wine always makes me feel better and able to cope. Now, what gets me is people will condemn me for using a single glass of wine to handle my problem, but will not condemn me if I spend way too much money to get a pill from the pharmacist to help me cope. They are both drugs. They both alter behavior. Why is one more socially acceptable than the other?
Of course, my other big problem is people who use the fact that a drug works is proof that a problem exists. They assume that they must have SAD because Paxil makes them feel better. Or, even though there is no diagnostic test to prove it exists, their child must have ADHD because the Ritilian calmed them down. Just because a drug alters behavior, doesn’t mean there was a problem. It just means that drugs alter behavior…that’s why people smoke weed, do coke, and slip ecstasy in drinks.
If an illegal drug changes somebody’s behavior, no one jumps up and down and says, “Oh, that person must have had a mental issue.” But when an “approved” drug changes behavior, then we have proof that a mental problem did indeed exist. Doesn’t make much sense to me.
I’ve had a layman’s fascination with mental illness every since my best friend in college sunk into full blown schizophrenia.
My personal belief about mental illness, then, has proven true for me in the many cases I’ve seen since: mental illness is mostly out-of-whack normal human experience.
So, shyness COULD become a mental illness if experienced in the extreme. Agoraphobia comes to mind.
The problem with diagnosing kids with mental illness is that it’s normal for kids to have abnormal forms of emotions and behavior (compared to an adult.)
Think of a child in a mall dancing obliviously to music in their head? That’s cute, right? But when an adult does it, it’s crazy.
Surely, the same goes for the way-too-many ADD or ADHD diagnosis in kids. Isn’t a 15 second attention span and hyper activity NORMAL in kids?
I think I might have been diagnosed as ADD as a child but I’m pretty normal now — maybe a little more distractable than typical.
That’s why I’m here on DU instead of reading the news like I intended!
These are the same people that turned “being a little asshole” into “ADHD”.
A halfway decent parent can help their kid overcome shyness (or being a little asshole). Why admit little Brandon or Brittany is anything less than perfect when you can just throw pills down their throat and say they are “suffering” from an “illness”?
I was at the playground the other day where a young girl, perhaps 7 or 8 years old, yells out to her mom from the jungle gym, “mom, can I take off my coat?”. Her mother’s response, “NO!”.
See where children become shy? The girl was overheating in her coat but she had to ask her mother if she could take it off. The child’s decision-making and reaction to the elements is outsourced to her mother. That child is going to grow up shy because she can’t believe herself. She has no confidence to act on her own feelings because her ability to think on her own was taken away from her.
This is so unreal.When they labor behavior a disease, they are asking to take away our right. Once you become a patience, you lose your right to take care of yourself. This also another way to promote drug that might not work at all for the disease.You know follow the money.
I believe in something natural which is a threat to a drug cartel.
No one can serve both God and money. I serve God.
Medicine by democracy! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
We already know that there are more extroverts than there are introverts. Anywhere from two to one to three to one depending on who you listen to.
I already know I’m an introvert (my MBTI is INTP ffs!)
Just getting put down by the extroverts. Again.
To quote from the old “Fridays” late night sketch show Mark Blankfield’s Drugs ‘R’ Us” – “The Crazed Pharmacist” Just take a pill!!!
see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridays_(ABC_TV_Series)
Isn’t it the US gov’t that maintains that ‘loners” are terrorists in disguise, or at least some kind of problem that must be watched?
What disease do loners have?
#6
“I’m addicted to DU. Is that a mental illness and is there a pill for it? What would be it’s medical term?”
Lack of social life.
#10
“Why admit little Brandon or Brittany is anything less than perfect when you can just throw pills down their throat and say they are “suffering” from an “illness”?”
Because it’s the jobs of the farmaceutical corporations to make life easier to parents by simply drugging their children towards a sheep like trance so they won’t have to bother raising them.
#15: Blue balls.
For years physicians knew about heart disease, multiple sclerosis, strokes, diabetes, cancer, and irritated bowel syndrome. They didn’t know what caused the disease and often treated it with such advanced techniques as leeches, garlic, and mercury.
Today we are still at the stage of treating these diseases instead of curing them. Do they exist? Sure they do. When we have a disease that only exhibits symptoms though, it becomes a lot harder to explain to people that the patient is ill. Some, such as Huntington’s Disease, Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s have no physical test until the person has died. Just because we can’t test for the disease does not mean it does not exist. Just because we can’t cure a disease does not mean it shouldn’t be treated.
So when people start ridiculing those with mental illnesses and suggesting it is all the pharmaceutical industry are just plain ignorant. They know not what they laugh at.
Whatever the behavior, there is the potential for it to become abnormal and deviant. The most severe mental illnesses such as mental retardation, autism, schizophrenia, acute depression, addiction, and phobias often present enough physical symptoms to be noticeable. Others, such as post partum depression and sociopathy, aren’t so easy to diagnose.
Is ADD a problem? Yes. Is it over diagnosed because some teacher / parent / doctor doesn’t know what is wrong? Most likely. I can attest, anecdotally, my nephew went from being out of control to a favorite kid after being put on Ritalin at age 9. Although that neither proves ADD exists organically or Ritalin is a good drug, it does show it helped my nephew control himself much better.
Yeah, too bad you can’t see ADD until a person has died. Wait, you can’t see it then, either. Oh, and even if people couldn’t provide tests for cancer way back when, there were still physical symptoms.
As a psychologist turned antipsychiatry, I laugh at the industry. One day they’ll be illegal.
By the way, I’m a shy introvert.