Question of note:
But what does it mean when more than half of a society may suffer "mental illness"?
Who's Mentally Ill? Deciding Is Often All in the Mind
By BENEDICT CAREY
THE release last week of a government-sponsored survey, the most comprehensive to date, suggests that more than half of Americans will develop a mental disorder in their lives.
The study was the third, beginning in 1984, to suggest a significant increase in mental illness since the middle of the 20th century, when estimates of lifetime prevalence ranged closer 20 or 30 percent.
But what does it mean when more than half of a society may suffer "mental illness"? Is it an indictment of modern life or a sign of greater willingness to deal openly with a once-taboo subject? Or is it another example of the American mania to give every problem a name, a set of symptoms and a treatment - a trend, medical historians say, accentuated by drug marketing to doctors and patients?
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I was researching various
I was researching various methodologies of pschological theory over the last year, most recently evolutionary "psychology." I developed the impression that the proliferation of mental "disorders" (which tend to have nation-specific indicators, BTW) reflected an increasingly regimented expectation of human behavior. The declassification of homosexuality as a disease is a rare departure from the trend of identifying more and more distinctive behavior into categories of mental disorder.
My idea that modern life imposes ever-more restictive notions of healthy behavior. This imposes more repression (in the Freudian sense) by people who would otherwise be "healthy," thereby increasing the incidence of mental illness. I further suspect that women are the main victims of this.
A final caveat: beware of a trade association telling you the need for their services is huge, and growing.
It's awful alright, but it
It's awful alright, but it can always get much worse..,
Interesting extra bits reported in Islam-online...,
Pharma has been pitching the desirability of its products and services seductively now for quite some time.