Tag: psychiatry

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All in the Mind

Phasing you out

How the progressive elites want to eliminate the undesirables and that might include you

Is it just me or does anyone else think the more politicians and celebrity influencers pretend to care about the disadvantaged, the more they justify measures that will quietly phase out the plebeian misfits they want to exclude from their vision of a greener, brighter and fairer world?

By greener the progressive elites mean with fewer useless eaters. Brighter and fairer may also imply the eradication of the unenlightened.

In little more than a hundred days, the new Labour administration in the UK has not only clamped down on dissent, released murderers and rapists to free up space in prisons and denied cash-strapped pensioners winter fuel payments; it is now letting MPs debate the Assisted Dying Bill on a slippery slope to eugenics.

It’s been sold to us as medically assisted life termination for the chronically ill and especially for the growing numbers of dementia patients in care homes, who would not survive without the wonders of modern medicine. To put things into context, the Alzheimer's Society’s Dementia 2019 report showed an increase from 75,000 people with dementia in care homes in 2001 to over 180,000 in 2019. Longer life expectancy, an ageing population and greater reliance on residential care can only account for part of that dramatic rise. While the total number of care home residents in England rose by around 23% between 2001 and 2017, the proportion of residents with dementia grew by nearly 150%, according to a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2020.

The BBC has long softened public opposition to mercy killing with many heart-wrenching documentaries about sufferers of debilitating conditions such as motor neurone disease who want to say their last goodbyes to friends and family before doctors help them transition peacefully to another world. While euthanasia is still, at the time of writing, against the law in all parts of the UK, some affluent citizens have travelled to the Swiss Dignitas centre to end their lives. During the second lockdown of late 2020, the former health secretary, Matt Hancock, announced severe restrictions on travel abroad, except for the purposes of assisted dying, prompted by his colleague, Andrew Mitchell, who argued perversely that new coronavirus regulations could deter people from travelling to Switzerland for an assisted death. This is the same MP who ushered Labour and Tory MPs out of the chamber before former MP Andrew Bridgen began his speech on covid-19 vaccine deaths and injuries and, as a mere coincidence, has had no qualms about being photographed alongside the WHO's largest corporate sponsor, Bill Gates.

If we look further afield to other Western countries like the Netherlands and Canada that have already legalised euthanasia, we see a clear trend. Once the public accepts the need to help the very old and frail die with dignity, well-funded charities lobby the government to expand the service to younger and younger adults with agonizing and seemingly untreatable physical and mental health conditions. In Canada, a woman with a history of depression and self-harm was offered Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAiD for short, instead of better social care. Meanwhile in the Netherlands, 29-year-old Zaraya ter Beek, allegedly on the autistic spectrum, became the youngest healthy adult to be granted the right to seek euthanasia, despite having a boyfriend and appearing in several awareness-raising documentaries.

What worries me most is the toxic influence of disheartening mainstream media narratives about apocalyptic climate change and online cults that prey on the vulnerable without real-life friends, but who identify with one or more existential psychological categories that separate them from general natural humanity. Establishment media outlets have taken great care to disown the wilder advocates of self-harm. Indeed, they often exploit the spectre of online disinformation and radicalisation to justify more censorship and thus to cover up inconvenient truths. The same laws that empower the state to block access to child porn can also deny access to truthful reports of heinous war crimes or corporate malpractice. While Facebook and Tiktok censored posts about covid-19 vaccine injuries, they have allowed countless groups promoting self-mutilation, extreme fasting and assisted dying. All you need is for an online influencer with a large following to announce that he and she is seeking help to transition to the next world.

End-of-life technology is fast evolving from rudimentary suicide pods to brain-computer interfaces that could soon do away with the need for a physical human body or, in a manner of speaking, upload someone’s consciousness to the cloud leaving only a brain in a jar hooked up to a network of computers. If you lack a sense of purpose and self-worth in your terrestrial life, the prospect of transitioning to a virtual existence is very tempting, even if you could easily vanish into thin air in the event of a random network fault or power outage.

The covid scare, with its widespread statistical manipulation and medical malpractice, set the stage for the normalisation of medically assisted homicide by highlighting the distinction between essential and non-essential workers. If you are deemed non-essential, then you may either comply or die. Concepts that would have, prior to 2020, been considered unconscionable have now become thinkable for the greater good of future generations.

Weasel words about cultural alignment and community values often serve to exclude anyone who cannot or will not conform with the emerging woke technocracy. Those who cannot adapt to this progressive Brave New World are being marginalised and guilt-tripped about their personal failings, leading inevitably to the proliferation of mental ill-health among the newly disenfranchised. This is what’s happening to millions of atomised young adults across the Western world dealing with job insecurity and volatile relationships, succumbing to drug addiction and comfort eating. Only this week we learned the government’s solution is to offer the unemployed obese weight loss injections, effectively making further social welfare contingent on their participation in clinical trials for Ozempic or Mounjaro, despite kidney dysfunction, hair loss and suicidal ideation being among their many side effects. The irony is that many long-term unemployed benefits claimants are on antipsychotics known to boost appetite and trigger rapid weight gain.

For decades, millions of us have had to contend with emotional conflicts between our natural bodily and psychological imperfections and media portrayals of shiny happy people performing at the top of their game. Soap operas can have in a similar effect to porn. They both provide grossly unrealistic representations of experiences we desire. We may crave exciting social lives, large villas with swimming pools and superlative bodies as much as the euphoria of erotic performances, but back in the real world few of us will ever approach the exuberance we see on TV or online. By attempting to achieve the unachievable, people can easily fall into despondency and fail to find partners who can live up to their fanciful expectations.

Despite all the technological advances of the last century, we have never been more dissatisfied with our lot in life. In the old world, we treated each new day of life as a blessing and coped with bodily imperfections with great humility. Today even minor disfigurements, without the emotional support of loved ones, can cause severe depression.

With the expansion of artificial intelligence and robotics, growing portions of the once essential workforce will become non-essential without a sense of purpose in life. The introduction of universal basic income will empower the state to link social credits with behavioural and ideological conformity. The scary part is that once you are locked into the corporate control grid with no bargaining power, the managerial classes can control every aspect of your private life and if you are, as George Bernard Shaw put it, more trouble than you are worth to the system, they can coerce you to agree to assisted early life termination. You may be excluded from mainstream society not because you have committed any crimes, but because of your lack of cultural alignment. Once excluded, your house arrest could be so unbearable that you opt for an easy way out.

Dying your own way

Some would argue that we need medically assisted suicide because of the immense success of modern medicine that has kept the chronically ill and mentally infirm on life support. In essence, we intervene to keep people artificially alive and also to facilitate a good death, but at all times medical experts stay in control. Yet many of us prefer to be masters of our own destiny, to live life to the full and then when our bodies or minds fail we let nature take its course.

When my mother retired to a small bungalow after her divorce, she told me repeatedly she wanted to stay there to the end of her days and never fancied ending up in a care home with no privacy or sense of dignity. Alas her mild dementia worsened considerably over the lockdowns and support workers advised us to transfer her to a specialist dementia care home at great expense. We need to ask serious questions about the rise in dementia patients. Indeed, at 88 my mother is among the oldest in her care home, the youngest being in her mid 60s. She is no longer able to make rational decisions about her life. Before moving in late 2022, she told me she didn’t want to bother anyone else and would much prefer just walking the streets alone and dying her own way and I understood her. In times of despair, I have myself considered seeking a way out by travelling to the nearest beach, undressing, swimming out to sea and leaving myself at the mercy of the elements. I never succeeded in this endeavour, because I usually changed my mind long before reaching the destination of my suicide attempt and despite periods of solitude would always encounter another human being giving me a reason to live. On one occasion I reached the River Thames at 3am and decided against diving in because I wanted to see how the spectacle of life would play out. But what if I had chosen instead to see a psychologist who, rather than persuade me to give life another chance, affirmed my despondency? I might not be here today.
Once we empower a legal guardian to agree to assisted death with best of intentions for all concerned, we have opened the floodgates to the extension of euthanasia to other target groups deemed unfit to inhabit the earth.

Addendum

I wrote a letter to my local MP, Graeme Downie, based on a template from Right To Life UK. After initially sending me a stock reply with platitudes about safeguards, I cited the Canadian and Dutch examples above. It later transpired he had blocked me on X. NewLabour do not debate, they only attempt to inculcate ideological conformity.
My message:

I'm contacting you as a concerned constituent of Dunfermline and Dollar to ask you to speak and vote in opposition to Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill.

This is not the same as turning off life support machines or end-of-life care with strong sedatives for the terminally ill in cases where the choice might be between artificially extending someone's life for a few days or relieving excruciating pain.

Judging by developments in countries such as Canada and the Netherlands, the legalisation of assisted dying will set us on a slippery slope to eugenics, open to wide-scale abuse especially with regard to the growing numbers of marginalised people with mentally health issues caused by atomisation. A 29-year old Dutch woman, Zoraya ter Beek, apparently on the autistic spectrum, has already chosen to end her life ( https://www.thefp.com/p/zoraya-ter-beek-dead-assisted-suicide ). Online peer pressure can easily affect vulnerable young people's sense of self-worth and may lead them to believe they\'re superfluous to requirements.

The risks of assisted suicide were movingly explored in the actor and disability rights campaigner Liz Carr’s recent BBC One documentary ‘Better Off Dead’ (https://youtu.be/gEysXRLTG5M?si=g3KFx2umghZyFOnq), which I would encourage you to watch. 

The documentary warns of the dangers of assisted suicide legislation for people with disabilities and living in poverty. As observed in this article (https://labourlist.org/2024/01/euthanasia-assisted-dying-suicide-prue-leith-esther-rantzen/) by Sir Stephen Timms MP, we have seen such dangers sadly become reality in other countries despite the supposedly strict safeguards that were in place when ‘assisted dying’ was first legalised.

And Graeme Downie MP's brief reply:

Thank you for getting in touch with me about this matter. I will only make a final decision on my vote on this issue once I see the text of any proposed legislation but I want to be honest from the outset that, having been very heavily involved in campaigns on this issue in Scotland, I am minded to support a change in the law. 

Successive governments, of both parties, have taken the position that the law on assisted suicide is a matter of conscience for individual MPs. The Prime Minister has confirmed that any change in the law on assisted dying will not happen via a Government Bill. A change can only be made via a Private Members’ Bill (PMB); that is a Bill introduced by a backbench MP or Peer. 

In my view, if the law does change, it is vital that it also includes strong and proper safeguards. Furthermore, any reform should recognise the concerns that many people have, including those who support reform in principle, to try to achieve the widest possible consensus. 

As your elected representative in Parliament, I will monitor developments in this area closely and bear in mind the points you have raised as it is important to generate a wide degree of viewpoints and knowledge ahead of debating such  sensitive matters.  

The implication here is that our learned MPs know best. Judging by the last 5 years of utter betrayal over health matter, with Labour taking even more extreme stances on medical mandates than the Tories, I have my sincere doubts on their integrity to hold powerful lobbies to account. My final reply remains unanswered.

Did you read my email? We are not talking about edge cases where someone is on a life support machine or is terminally ill experiencing excruciating pain with days to live. We are talking about developments across the Western World to normalise assisted suicide for the marginalised long before the onset of extreme old age or frailty, making people feel superfluous to requirements because they are not socially integrated with a sense of purpose.

This is a very slippery slope, but in Canada a woman with a history of depression was offered MAIDs: https://care.org.uk/news/2023/08/canadian-woman-with-depression-offered-assisted-suicide-after-lack-of-hospital-beds .

Is that the future you want for your constituents ? Can you not detect authoritarian trends ? 

Categories
All in the Mind Power Dynamics War Crimes

Parallel Narratives

In an age of high-tech deceit

On almost the same day as Israeli military forces attacked Lebanon and destroyed the 14th century Great Mosque of Khan Younis in Gaza, a knifeman attacked 14 young revellers, killing at least 3, at a Christian festival, celebrating ethnic diversity, in the West German town of Solingen. Within 24 hours it emerged the perpetrator was a 17-year-old asylum seeker who pledged allegiance to ISIS and sought revenge for the German government’s complicity in Israeli war crimes.

The total civilian death toll since 7th October 2023 now exceeds 40,000 and some estimates show that collateral damage to essential infrastructure may have caused 160,000 more deaths. In a parallel timeline, Hamas fighters broke through Israeli defences and killed 1139 military personnel and civilians and took over 100 hostages. Ever since there have been regular protests across the Western world against Israeli war crimes, with reports of attacks against Jewish communities such as the recent firebombing of a synagogue in the Southern French seaside town of La Grande Motte.

This comes only three weeks after riots following the stabbing of 11 young girls, with 3 fatalities, in Southport. Online rumours, labelled misinformation, circulated that the perpetrator was a Muslim asylum seeker, leading some angry local residents to protest outside the nearest mosque. It turns out the perpetrator grew up in Cardiff with Rwandan parents. The official narrative suggests he suffered from a mental illness. Sir Keir Starmer’s administration reacted by clamping down on the alleged far-right with a special focus on social media posts that may incite hatred. It turns out rumours about the Southport killer being a Muslim asylum seeker that spread from the Channel3Now network did not emanate, as initially reported on the BBC and Sky TV, from Russian sources or far-right organisations. The claim actually came from a Pakistani Web developer, Farhan Asi, whose motives may well have been to trigger revenge attacks in the full knowledge that the police would blame anti-Islam protesters. It’s not inconceivable that said operative could have been working for the British secret services, as I doubt normal Pakistanis, many with relatives in the UK, would want to see internecine warfare or more police repression. Western governments are quite happy to play a game of bait and switch between rival ethno-religious groups. The German government has recently arrested the publisher of the right-leaning Compact magazine for publishing official crime statistics as it may incite hatred against new ethnic minorities, while also apprehending leftwing activists, with many from new immigrant communities, for protesting peacefully against Israeli war crimes, under the pretext of antisemitism.

We now have four parallel narratives to explain the breakdown in peaceful coexistence:

  • Extreme right-wingers are spreading misinformation to destabilise society.
  • Radical Islamists want to eradicate infidels and destroy Judeo-Christianity.
  • Israel, along with the Western ruling elites, wants to eradicate Palestinians and subjugate Muslims worldwide.
  • We have an urgent mental health crisis among young males.

All narratives lead us in the same direction, towards a more tightly controlled and militarised society with more advanced surveillance, social engineering and censorship. Of course, the mainstream media is the prime source of fake news and the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is much more nuanced than just a straight battle between good and evil and must be viewed in the wider context of the growing concentration of power in Big Tech.

The last narrative may often seem a convenient cover for more sinister motives, but may also empower the state to expand its surveillance grid to every aspect of your private life. We could soon be required to carry a digital health app on our mobile device. Such a device may be as small as wristwatch or even just an embedded microchip. It could contain data not only of genuine medical conditions or vaccines, but also of any mental health conditions and required treatment. Ingestible sensor technology already exists to track your compliance with medication regimes. The spectre of kitchen-knife-wielding maniacs approaching children’s playgrounds could justify the installation of embedded microchip access control (EMAC) systems around all public spaces, either denying access to non-compliant individuals or immediately alerting the police of their presence. While many may welcome such measures to protect children against predators, administrations can abuse such innovations not only to limit medical freedom and privacy, but to track dissidents. Imagine not being allowed to enter your local pub or café because you have not taken your neuroleptic meds to suppress politically incorrect thoughts. This is no longer science fiction.

It hardly matters if some groups fear far-right racists, while others fear Muslim fundamentalists, Zionists, rabid antisemites or psychiatric patients on the loose. Whichever version of reality you choose to believe, more technocracy will be the solution. Once you’re trapped in the digital surveillance grid, your personal worldview is inconsequential to the powers-that-be, a mere character trait that may need medical attention.

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All in the Mind Power Dynamics

Do 7 million British children need more drugs?

In the recent spat over Laurence Fox’s crass remarks on GB News about journalist Ava Evans, most pundits have completely missed the woke journalist’s most outrageous assertion on prime-time BBC TV and it did not relate to sexual desirability. When asked in a panel discussion with comedian, Geoff Norcott, why she opposed the idea of a Minister for Men to deal with issues that disproportionately affect men such as suicide, Ms Evans, also known online as Ava Santina, opined in her usual condescending manner that it just fed into the culture wars, but we needed a more inclusive Minister for Mental Health, before claiming that 7 million children were awaiting prescriptions for mental health. These words just rolled off her tongue. Was I listening to a radical feminist or a representative of a pharmaceutical multinational? True to form, this weekend the venerable BBC ran a story about the shortage of ADHD medications, rather than questioning why so many youngsters need to be on stimulants or given subjective psychobabble labels at all. The establishment has normalised mental illness in the same way as they are now trying to normalise non-binary gender identities.

Let’s put things into perspective. In the UK as a whole there are around 13.5 million under 18-year-olds. In England alone, that’s around 12 million. Is Ms Evans suggesting over half of children should be on psychoactive drugs? Does she think they best way to deal with naughty boys is to drug them into submission?

Unsurprisingly, Ms Evans bought the pandemic narrative hook, line and sinker, uncritically promoting mRNA jabs for under 11s as a regular contributor to left-branded Joe. When the mask mandate ended, she told her social media followers she would keep wearing a face mask to protect herself against the worst virus of all, men. Seriously, what has happened to the cultural left? Their most enthusiastic supporters are wealthy professionals and corporate executives. Statistically, the richer you are in the UK, the more likely you are to support toxic woke ideology. The Tories may still try to appeal to their socially conservative base by talking tough on immigration or giving petrol vehicles another five years on the roads, but they’ve gone along with World Economic Forum diktats with the same zeal as most other Western countries. In power, the Tories, Labour, LibDems, Greens and SNP are little more than different flavours of the same UniParty. They let local authorities and big businesses roll out socially disruptive policies not because of any groundswell in grassroots support, but because paid experts  wanted them. Your primary school children are not learning about anal sex because the gay couple next door, minding their own business, petitioned parliament, but because lavishly funded transnational pressure groups, such as Stonewall, have infiltrated local and national administrations. The mass medication of atomised children is probably one of the biggest scandals of our times. Yet nobody picked up Ms Evans on her desire to drug over half of Britain's children or dared question the long-term effects of lockdown-era isolation. Children need friends, family, outdoor adventure and, above all, hope of a future worth living independent of busy-body control freaks.

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All in the Mind

Behaviours and Immutable Traits

Genes

A Scottish politician, Karen Adam MSP, triggered a massive online backlash by tweeting paedophiles and predators are people, adding only that they are people who abuse. The statement is factually correct, but this came just days after the Scottish Parliament facilitated sexual abuse by making it much easier for biological males to gain access to female-only spaces in their Gender Recognition Reform Bill. A disturbingly large number of male sexual predators have already gained entry to female-only prisons and changing rooms by identifying as female while retaining male genitalia. Ms Adam’s critics inevitably accused her of normalising paedophilia as a sexual orientation. Then a Scottish superintendent used the neologism MAPs (or minor-attracted persons) in a year-end report on the police’s strategy to tackle child sexual exploitation. This term destigmatises paedophilia. Ironically, both sides of the online debate agreed that sexual attraction is an innate trait rather than a learned behaviour. This may lend weight to arguments against conversion therapy when it comes to same-sex attraction, but is problematic at best when applied to the ideation of child abuse.

Let me go out on a limb here. All men are potential rapists. For sake of argument, I’ll use the definition of non-consensual forced penetration, a basic infringement of bodily autonomy. The question is when should we intervene to stop such immoral acts? The conventional wisdom is still that we should only punish perpetrators after a court of law has proven that someone has committed the crime. The same logic applies to murder and theft. Many of us may contemplate acts of revenge or entertain sexual fantasies that may inflict untold harm on others, but we do not usually act on our nefarious urges, unless we are either psychologically unstable or culturally conditioned to dehumanise victims. Arguably a society that normalises depravity is itself degenerate. As adults we are ultimately responsible for our actions unless we claim insanity and submit to psychiatric surveillance.

Philip K. Dick popularised the concept of pre-crime in his 1956 science fiction novel The Minority Report, which Stephen Spielberg later adapted for film. In the book the police’s precrime division uses precognition technology to predict when suspects are about to commit crimes and thus arrest them ahead of time. This assumes free will is a mere illusion and our behaviours, while sensitive to many inherited traits and environmental stimuli, are pre-determined.

Psychiatric screening is a classic case of a road paved with good intentions that leads to tyranny. While it may seem a good idea to evaluate young children for potential neurodevelopmental disorders, the devil is in the detail. What kind of personality profiles warrant preventive treatment? Whose business is it anyway to intrude on children’s natural development other than their parents and extended family? Until recently, parents only sought professional help if their children were seriously ill or had obvious intellectual handicaps. Now health visitors and social workers monitor the progress of all children and look out for any signs of developmental abnormalities. In Scotland most children, especially those without a stay-at-home parent, attend nursery before starting primary school at the tender age of five, letting external agencies take over pastoral care early on and refer any non-conforming children for psychiatric screening. The authorities now treat parents as little more than temporary carers and have begun to ask pupils to report politically incorrect speech at home. In 2019 a 17-year-old Aberdeenshire student was suspended for simply stating in class that there are only two genders. It’s becoming increasingly clear the authorities are more concerned about non-compliance with new societal precepts than the kind of harmful behaviours we traditionally call crimes.

The concept of precrime has now been extended to the realm of thought crime. Search engines can already analyse patterns in your online queries to predict your likely behaviours. This makes the redefinition of paedophilia as a sexual orientation particularly scary, especially if its diagnosis blurs the boundaries with other non-heteronormative tendencies that were also once considered mental disorders, but now must be celebrated. If a prepubescent child can identify as another gender, the stage is set to encourage such children to consider their erotic desires with each other and adults. At stake is the erosion of childhood innocence, when we can explore the natural world around us inquisitively uncorrupted by the deep and competitive feelings evoked by adult erotic exchanges. Merkinch Primary School in Inverness, catering for 5- to 11-year-olds, issued a questionnaire asking pupils if they identify as gay, lesbian or transgender. What evidence is there that adult sexual preferences can be determined at such a young age?

An alternative way to view the formation of our erotic feelings focuses on the interplay between our natural hormonal development and our social environment. This approach prevailed before the 1980s. The early gay rights movement did not view homosexuality as strictly genetically determined, but as a tendency among consenting adults who could not find happiness in heterosexual relationships. They argued modern liberal societies could more openly accommodate a wider range of lifestyles without changing the fundamental role of natural families. In reality, teenagers and young adults in same-sex environments such as boys’ boarding schools have long experimented with forms of homo-erotic mutual masturbation, but later grew out of this phase when circumstances changed. For decades homosexual practices at British private schools were swept under the carpet as temporary perversions comparable with illicit drugs. Nobody sought to elevate non-heteronormative eroticism to the status of protected characteristic. The idea that gays and lesbians are born that way can both validate the behaviour, if society considers it harmless, and criminalise people for life, if society condemns it.

In my experience, sexuality is not set in stone, but like many other behavioural traits evolves from a mix of environmental factors and genetic predisposition. Comparisons with other less emotive behaviours may enlighten us. Most psychologists believe people are not born muggers or racists, but some immutable biological attributes may shape our moral compass. Some societies, or socio-economic groups, are undoubtedly more prone to violence or distrust of outsiders than others. Likewise, societies may have very different sexual mores with homo-erotic practices much more common in some than others. While few of us can survive without friends, family or at least a circle of acquaintances we can trust, our survival instincts guide our coping strategies in life. We may tend more towards amoral or otherwise socially deviant behaviours if other strategies fail. If we extend the meaning of survival to cover our innate desire to spread our genes and leave our imprint on future generations, we can begin to understand why people may adopt different mating strategies based on a complex set of competing psycho-social and hormonal impulses as well as cultural influences. Undoubtedly, many of our preferences on lifestyle issues as varied as food, drink, exercise, vices and work are deeply entrenched by the time we reach adulthood. Yet when we struggle with our wellbeing, it seems perfectly normal to seek to improve ourselves by learning new skills, adopting a healthier diet, getting more exercise or quitting harmful habits, although we may prefer to laze around at home bingeing on junk food and watching YouTube videos. People suffering from alcoholism or drug addiction regularly undergo rehab and many go on to lead healthy lives. In some deprived areas, teenagers may get involved in gangland violence and end up in jail as young adults. Given the right training opportunities, some learn their lessons and succeed in mainstream society. If we were to conclude that obesity, alcoholism or mugging were immutable traits, we may as well condemn such people to lifelong medical or penal internment before they harm either themselves or others. Thanks to the expansion of the mental health industry, this is more or less what’s happening. Dysfunctional behaviours such as overeating are validated as innate psychological conditions that can only be managed, but never corrected.

If we treat paedophilia as a crime and its perpetrators, often victims of sexual abuse themselves, as psychologically disturbed, we can both protect childhood innocence and make such tendencies socially reprehensible. I see it more as a scourge on society than a lifelong neurological condition. However, reclassifying minor attraction as an immutable orientation runs the risk of either condemning perpetrators for life or normalising the behaviour, leading inevitably to more proactive surveillance and less freedom for those of us who behave responsibly. The same authorities that want to censor the Internet allegedly to protect us against exposure to online child porn and grooming gangs are normalising erotic ideation among prepubescents via RSE (Relationship and Sex Education), literally implanting ideas into children's young minds. Just because some people become very set in their ways does not mean they cannot change bad or evil habits. That’s why society and families matter.

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All in the Mind

A Curious Exchange on Gambling

I belong to the school of thought that views happiness as a state of emotional equilibrium in which one's desires and material expectations are socially and environmentally sustainable. Should one feel unable to attain the required dose of desires in a highly competitive setting, this can indeed lead to too much misery. The broad theme I'd like to develop is that the mass entertainment industry would be more aptly named the misery industry. One does not need access to official statistics to claim that the gambling, booze and video-gaming industries, all growth sectors under New Labour, are responsible for many severe cases of emotional disturbances, in which short term thrills are soon offset by long term compulsive obsessions, bankruptcy, ill-health (lack of exercise, substance abuse) and depression.

I contacted Dr Mark Griffiths, professor of Gambling Studies at Nottingham Trent University, to enquire about the nature of his research. I had read his name in a letter to the Guardian newspaper (praising government policy) and in much Internet research on the psychological effects of gaming (either gambling or video-gaming, especially of the violent first-person shooter kind). Not surprisingly, though in true academic style erring on the side caution, Dr Griffiths works were nearly always cited by those defending the industry.

On 4/6/06 2:05 pm, "Neil Gardner" <neilgardner63@f2s.com> wrote:

Dear Mr Griffin (horror of horrors I used the wrong name and inadvertently downgraded a professor to a mere esquire),

I am writing a book about the psychosocial causes of the new generation of psychiatric labels, chiefly AS, OCD, ADHD and Tourettes. Although there may be genetic markers for the emergence of the traits associated with these new categories, I would dispute that they are primarily genetic in origin, but may develop as a result of chiefly environmental and some other physiological factors.

Childhood exposure to electronic media has increased dramatically over the last 20 years, broadly speaking the same time-frame in which these new mental disorders have gained prominence in the public psyche. I am not suggesting a direct causal link between ADHD and excessive exposure to TV or violent video games, but the latter certainly affect behaviour with dramatic effects in some vulnerable and emotionally deprived individuals. More important recent economic and technological changes have led to new patterns of socialisation with greater emphasis on presentation or smarminess.

Many contend that the entertainment industry merely responds to public demand, e.g. people like gambling, so business responds by offering gambling opportunities. Call me naive, but within 10 minutes walk of my flat in Cricklewood London are 3 William Hills, 2 Paddy Powers, 1 Gaming Centre and a Bingo Hall. Prominent adverts for gambling sites appear on billboards, buses, high-profile news Websites and in my e-mail inbox. As a Java/PHP programmer and database engineer I have been contacted to work on several gambling web sites, something I have refused. So if addiction to gambling had no environmental causes, then why would advertisers spend literally millions on attracting new gullible punters?

I note on your site:

Some of our research and consultancy is conducted in conjunction with and supported by the gaming industry as well as from academic research grants. We can offer our research services to investigate any of the areas outlined above.

Very few organisations (if any) can offer the depth of psychological knowledge on gaming that we can offer. We can carry out primary and secondary research, provide consultancy expertise, and promote staff development and training through helping staff understand the customer and their working environment and through brand development by raising their awareness regarding social responsibility.

Translated into plain English, this means "We will furnish research to support conclusions that serve the PR interests of the gaming industry" or rather if your gaming magazine/website wants some pseudo-scientific evidence to deny the psychological effects of 9 year-old kids playing Halo 2 on their X-Box 4 hours a day, we'll be happy to comply. The usual techniques deployed are:

  1. Downplay the extent ofthe problem (e.g. only late teens play "Kill Your Neighbour 3")
  2. Identify other causesof the psychological side effects associated with gaming
  3. Stress the positive aspects of gaming.
  4. Stress the choice available to consumers (e.g. X Gaming Company also produces a child-friendly ping pong simulator)
  5. Ridicule all research emphasising the adverse effects of addiction gaming
  6. Deny that it is addictive.
  7. Identify other related pursuits or games which may be addictive or psychologically damaging (e.g. fruit machines or online paedophile imagery, the former caserefers to outdated technology and the latter to a taboo almost universally condemned by public opinion, but if imagery of child sex corrupts, then surely imagery of hedonistic violence would do the same)
  8. Pepper your report withpreviously erudite terms that gaming journalists can quote to arguetheir case e.g. Many first-person shooters have been found to have a 'cathartic' effect on gamers (do a quick Google for the word cathartic and you'll find it re-quoted on thousands on gaming web sites).

I would welcome evidence that British academia is not, as would appear from your Web site, for sale.

Neil Gardner

And here is Prof. Griffith's highly professional reply:

On 5/6/06 08:10 am, Mark Griffiths <Mark.Griffiths@ntu.ac.uk> wrote:

  1. My name is Griffiths not Griffin
  2. I am both a Dr and a Professor and definitely not a Mr
  3. I have spent 20 years researching problem gambling and problem computer game playing and have never downplayed potential problems (see attached CV)
  4. Your interpretation of our unit's work couldn't be more wrong.
  5. Type in my name and addiction to computer games or gambling into Google and you will find 100s of hits
  6. Your e-mail is potentially libelous and I am passing it onto our legal department

Well readers can do the Googling for themselves and then do a little discrete research into their funding. A typical comment by the media-savvy professor is his remarks reported on the BBC Website in the aftermath of a school killing by a Manhunt-obsessed teenager:

"Research has shown those aged eight years or below do in the short-term re-enact or copy what they see on the screen.

"But there's been no longitudinal research following adolescents over a longer period, looking at how gaming violence might affect their behaviour."

This basically admits excessive or under-age gaming may cause some adverse effects, but essentially downplays their gravity and passes the buck over to parents or other potential causes. By using terms "longitudinal research" the professor belittles the fears of millions of readers unaware of what he means exactly. Now consider his piece in the British Medical Journal heralding video-games as a form of anaesthetic to distract children suffering pain. This must be an exceedingly marginal benefit, as other forms of hypnosis could also be used, e.g. imagery of a soccer match would have a similar effect in a football-obsessed child. But it convenienty allows the much-quoted researcher to once again downplay the adverse effects of obsessive video-gaming, noting merely that they are "prevalent among children and adolescents in industrialised countries" but without considering the huge disparities in prevalence within the industrialised world, e.g. Compare the prevalence of video game addiction in the UK or Denmark with that in Italy or Spain.

Indeed the CV Prof. Griffiths kindly sent me says it all:

GRANTS/CONSULTANCIES AWARDED

Dec 97 (BMG)£1500Effects of violent video games
Jan 98 (Interlotto)£5000Social impact of online lotteries
Mar 99 (AELLE)£2500Lottery addiction in Europe
Aug 99 (Action 2000)£500Millennium Bug Apathy
May 02 (British Academy)£5000Online multi-player computer game playing
Oct 02 (British Academy)£5000Computer game playing and time loss
Dec 02 (Intel)£1000Online computer game playing/spatial rotation
Feb 03 (British Academy)£5000Online computer game playing/addiction
Mar 03 (Centre for Ludomania)£1500Technology and gambling
July 03 (British Academy)£5000Aggression in slot machine playing
Oct 03 (RIGT)£45000Psychology of Internet gambling
Dec 03 (Herbert Smith)£1500Internet gambling
Apr 04 (Camelot PLC)£30000International Gaming Research Unit (Core funding)
May 04 (UQAM)$2500Slot machine gambling/Interactive technologies
July 04 (RIGT)£16000Coping skills in problem gamblers
Sept 04 (888.com)£1500Transferable skills in poker
Dec 04 (Paddy Power)£8500Social responsibility in Online Gambling
Jan 05 (Wace Morgan)Gambling addiction (Case study research court reports)
Jan 05 (Claude Hornby Cox)£1500Gambling addiction (Case study research court reports)
June 05 (Norwegian Government)£2000Gambling addiction
Jul 05 (Nat Lott Commission)£10000National adolescent gambling prevalence study
Aug 05 (Ultimate Poker)£3500Online poker identities
Nov 05 (Norwegian Government)£4000Slot machie addiction in Europe
Jan 06 (RIGT)£10000GamAid/GamStop evalution
Jan 06 (ALC)£8000PlaySphere evaluation
Feb 06 (RIGT)£240000Adolescent gambling (with Tacade)

Highlighted are organisations that are either in the gaming industry or spurious regulatory and research institutions funded by the gaming industry (e.g. RIGT, Resposnibility In Gambling Trust). It may seem odd for those of us who live in the real world that Prof. Griffiths should dedicate so much time to investigating the dangers of slot machines, when other more modern technologies pose a much more imminent danger to the psyche of millions of young people today. The very fact that such individuals are heralded as experts should ring alarm bells.

For fear of stating the obvious here is my reply:

On 5/6/06 11:18 pm, "Neil Gardner" <neilgardner63@f2s.com> wrote:

Dear Dr Griffiths,

Thanks you for CV and in particular for the list of grants you have received. I am intrigued as to why you would want to seek libel action against an e-mail? In my experience a person would only seek such action if a) they fear losing credibility (and why would you if are prepared to defend your findings intellectually) b) they are being smeared by the mass media. The second option hardly applies. Why not just let your work stand on its merits and let others investigate the funding and bias of your research?

I clearly believe that certain sections of the entertainment industry are at least in part responsible for a good deal of misery and psychological problems. But I would hardly expect the industry itself to fund research that would severely restrict its operations. What would you say if our opinions on the safety of tobacco were informed by research co-sponsored by tobacco multinationals or if the safety of methylphenidate were evaluated by research funded by GSK? (and I don't even support a smoking ban - as a rule I'd regulate big business rather than private individuals)

(1) My name is Griffiths not Griffin
(2) I am both a Dr and a Professor and definitely not a Mr

Is that of any great importance?

BTW did you write a letter to Guardian a few weeks backs commending the government on its new Gambling Regulation Act with key terms such as "responsible gambling" and stressing new restrictions on fruit machines (which IMHO is an extremely marginal problem)?

You may disagree with my assessments, but please don't libel me. The very action, as any psychologist should know, is a sign of weakness.

Categories
All in the Mind

Who Needs Psychiatry?

Most human beings have undergone moments of emotional disturbance and have at times engaged in unwise and irrational behaviour due to inexperience, extreme stress or intoxication. Our unconscious may have created sensory illusions, echoes of past ordeals. Many of us have felt the need to withdraw, if only temporarily, in a world of our own. A sense of insecurity, guilt or just personal fascination can lead us to obsess with actions, issues or objects. We may even sink into a mire of introspective self-worthlessness, known to others as depression. In some of us these tendencies may prevent us from leading our lives in a way that others may consider normal or functional.

If somebody behaves in a dysfunctionally irrational way, there may be two kinds of explanations. The first, and intuitively most obvious, is that something out there, whether a recent occurrence or a distant childhood memory, has altered his or her state of mind. Alternatively the brain itself could be defective. It's not quite that simple because drugs, medicines and food can change our metabolism and alter our mood. More to the point our brains rewire in response to environmental changes, especially during our formative years, but by and large we may seek either psycho-social (also known as environmental) or neurological causes of our troubles. Neither psychology nor neurology can exist in isolation. The former deals with the software and the latter with the hardware, which unlike computer hardware, may be subject to a process of continuous adaptation known as neuroplasticity.

Some behaviours are not only subjectively dysfunctional or culturally inappropriate, but immoral and dangerous to the rest of the community, e.g. If a person became convinced that all red-haired men were evil and proceeded to murder all such individuals in his neighbourhood, it would be perfectly correct to detain the perpetrator and thus protect the wider community. Psychologists may wonder what traumatic events caused the murderer to commit these heinous acts and neurologists may wonder if his brain had an inherent defect or had been afflicted by a physiological disease.

A short definition of psychiatry would be the study of pathological behavioural patterns or according to the Free Online Dictionary, the branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental and emotional disorders. A psychiatrist treats an aberrant behaviour as a disease. A complex of associated behaviours is then classified as a disorder. A psychiatric diagnosis is thus nothing more than a synopsis, albeit in erudite language, of observed symptoms, indeed the word clinical often preceding labels such as depression means just involving or based on direct observation of the patient. Surprisingly few people labelled with behavioural disorders have had their clinical diagnosis confirmed by PET or fMRI brain scans, but if any abnormalities were detected only an experienced neurologist would be able to make sense of the data. Nobody receives a psychiatric diagnosis based on the results of a brain scan and yet confusingly many victims of traumatic brain injuries and epilepsy manifesting conspicuous deficiencies in parts of the cerebral cortex allegedly responsible for reasoning and socialisation lead very successful lives free of psychotic episodes.

Psychoactive drugs rightly attract a great deal of controversy, but surely if they did help alleviate the worst symptoms of emotional distress and prevent extreme antisocial behaviours, the professional category responsible for their administration would be psycho-pharmacology.

Some see psychiatrists as the last line of defence when other law enforcement and social care professionals cannot deal with extremely abusive, dangerous or self-destructive behaviour. Psychiatry differs from psychology in defining aberrant behavioural patterns as endogenous diseases, which may have environmental triggers but are nonetheless inherent to the affected individual. Many parents and other close relatives go along with the psychiatric model because it absolves them of all responsibility. Schools, social services, police, state and corporate entities all tend towards psychiatric explanations for the same basic reason.

Don't Blame the Parents

This has long been the rallying cry of the burgeoning mental health industry, myriad charities, public and private sector institutions very much in the public limelight. Whenever anti-psychiatry raises its dissenting head, its advocates are vilified and often likened with Robert D Laing, and accused often in highly emotive language, of blaming parents. This misses three essential points:

  • Parents are only part of a child's environment and thus cannot be blamed for numerous other factors such as heightened social competition, mass consumerism, peer pressure, pervasive media etc.
  • Parents may themselves be victims of childhood neglect and adult stress, with a serious sense of inferiority, social alienation or addiction to hedonistic pursuits such as gambling.
  • If we stress the psycho-social causes of personal problems rather than endogenous biological causes, parents, and other close relatives and friends, have a greater role to play in rehabilitation. Many become depressed or experience psychotic episodes precisely because they lack full integration with their family and community. Even where neglectful or abusive parents are a large part of the problem, they may, except in the most extreme cases of abuse, be part of the solution.

So let's abolish psychiatry altogether. In some cases we may find answers in neuroscience, but in most we'd better take a good look at each other and wonder what we as individuals or as a society have done wrong to make an increasing number of us go insane.

Categories
All in the Mind

Today’s Hate Hour

"Today we're dedicating our hate hour to an evil man, suffering from a chronic psychopathic sexual disorder. He deserves only contempt and should bury himself under the nearest rock. This man was caught viewing paedophiliac images on the Internet. We don't have any evidence linking him to real-life sex crimes, but are in no doubt that anyone casting their malevolent eyes on images deemed paedophiliac will sooner or later commit such a crime. It is imperative that we apply the preventive principle to avert any repetition of the Soham murders. Indeed as a precaution all teachers who have not been certified as "non-paedophliac" should be witch-hunted out of schools."

This is more or less the tone of media coverage over the Paul Reeve case. As soon as the key terms "child pornography" and "Internet" are mentioned in the same breath, we suspend critical analysis. These key words represent the ultimate evil and any measures, however draconian, should be taken to protect our children from sad depressed lonesome weirdoes glaring at pixelated renditions of underage sex. How could anyone sink to such extremes of depravity and how could anyone forgive such perverts? These are questions we are asked to address.

No doubt in the coming weeks Channel 4's hate season will feature a documentary on a purported paedophile gene, causing some chemical imbalance and remedied by a new variant of Risperidone or Zyprexa. Next we'll hear calls for early intervention. I've already seen posters depicting a teenage male baby sitter and a caption suggesting he's a paedophile. Maybe some of your neighbours are closet paedophiles. Go on, spy on your neighbours, you know just in case!

Then the omnipresence of depravity dawned on me. If child pornography is such a unique evil (and definitions please, lest the police sequestrate photographs of my three year-old daughter playing on the beach), then why not arrest the director general of Channel 5? In depressed moments late at night I have occasionally briefly switched over to this channel, now available to most TV sets in the UK. My random sample would indicate a certain obsession with documentaries on the porn industry including footage of a famous North American porn star claimed to be under 16. Next why not arrest the owners of Wanadoo Internet or the predecessors Freeserve? When I had an account with this ISP and was stupid enough to use Outlook Express with inline images enabled (I've since switched to Firefox and Thunderbird on Linux with most spam pre-filtered into my online spam folder), I was deluged with spam. First it was Prozac, then Viagra spelt in numerous creative combinations of comparable characters, then adult sites, farmyard sex and worse, which I personally find exceedingly distasteful. I tried to delete these unwanted HTML-enhanced e-mails, but often images would briefly appear on my screen. These bitmaps are actually stored in your temporary Internet cache, even if you delete them straight away. I used filters and disabled images, but eventually dumped Freeserve, frustrated that some genuine e-mails had been blocked. Many porn sites can be accessed within two clicks from many high-profile news and sports sites. Just click on any link to a gambling site and chances are it will sport a link to an adult site, which in turn will cater for all tastes, mature, hetero, homo, bi, teen and early-teen and not quite teen yet. With all the media outrage over kiddie porn you'd expect the government to clamp down on the porn industry, but that's not quite the case. In 2004 the UK government granted its friends in the entertainment business licences for the provision of adult content, a euphemism for hardcore anal, oral and multiple-orifice frollicking, on 3G phones and terrestrial digital TV.

That child sex abuse can have severe long-term psychological implications is beyond dispute. It seem a bitter irony that the same establishment promotes the bio-genetic model for personality disorders like schizophrenia rather than looking at environmental factors closer to home, despite a wealth of evidence linking child abuse in various guises with psychosis later in life. But there must be a distinction between gaining pleasure from viewing or interacting with virtual reproductions of depravity and committing such acts. I'd argue that exposure to media trivialising or desensitising us to various forms of depravity, be it sexual abuse or physical harm, does make us more likely to commit such acts in real life, but only if we are otherwise psychologically unstable and believe we can get away with it, i.e. there are no counteracting social forces. Thus it is argued that people can play first-person shooters six hours a day, but never dream of killing in real life. This begs the question as to why such games need to feature blood-soaked murder, rather than other pursuits that test your hand-eye co-ordination and strategic skills. If you like target-practice, you need not fantasise targeting a human being, you can play darts instead.

Likewise one can consume large quantities of porn, of dubious taste and realism, perfectly legally. Rape of over 16 year-olds is still, as far as I can tell, a crime in this country. I suppose rape of an under-16 year-old is a more severe crime, but rape of anyone is a crime nonetheless. Besides promoting the notion that anyone not particpating recreational sex at least twice a week is erotically deprived in need of more partners, sex toys or drugs, the media encourages everyone, especially women, to flirt proactively and be obsessed with their body image so they attract the right calibre of partners. So what happens if someone fails in the shagging race and cannot control his libido, but is exposed to perfectly legal media telling him both gang bangs and first-person shooting are positively cool. So if kiddie porn promotes child abuse, then all pornography promotes rape. And if you think all legal pornography portrays acts between consenting adults, think again! Much shows re-enactments of unrequested penetration with the victim first repelling her assailant and then revelling in it.

We are supposed to believe that someone who has not only been cautioned by Police for the crime of viewing a depravity and admitted such a caution to his employers, would overstep the mark by abusing his position as a PE teacher by actually fondling teenage students in a sexual way! Suppose Mr Reeve had been a Manhunt addict instead, would he want to kill his students? I don't think the grotesque violence portrayed in Manhunt would help stabilise any psychological weaknesses he may have had, but 99.9% of teachers would be in no doubt what constitutes immoral behaviour in a changing room and most enlightened enough to realise that nudity is not, per se, sexual. The harsh reality is that it's getting harder to recruit teachers who can deal with the level of intimidation and defiance exhibited by many students in UK secondary schools and teachers are increasingly targets of false accusations. Indeed in some cases the alleged victims, and we're talking about 14 and 15 year-old girls here, have taken the initiative on male teachers on whom they have a crush, encouraged by gossip in girly mags, peer pressure and fantasies of wealthy boyfriends.

Anyway I'm off to the police to hand myself in as a potential serial killer for having endured "The Terminator II" during a long-distance bus journey. I will then ask to be placed on the sex offenders' register for having viewed multiple-orifice copulations in Playboy at the tender age of 14. I haven't raped or killed anyone yet, but you know just in case!

Categories
All in the Mind

We Care about those who disagree

Samantha Stasy is a loyal Labour MP who genuinely cares about the physical, emotional and mental wellbeing of her constituents. Every week she holds a surgery providing local electors with a forum in which to air their grievances. "I believe it is essential to stay in touch with our electors, listen carefully and help them overcome their problems or refer them to professionals who can."

Samantha: "Hello, Mrs Contrary, I've read your e-mail, taken on board all your comments and fully sympathise with your predicament."

Mary Contrary: "Let me explain my disagreements with your government and your voting record."

Samantha: "I'd love to discuss the hard decisions that we as politicians have to take and fully respect your opinions, but I think I know where you're coming from. I joined CND as a student myself back in the 1980s, attended a few SWP meetings and went on my fair share of demos. At the time I genuinely believed in the righteousness of the cause, but with help and support over the years I've begun to see the error of my ways."

Mary Contrary: "Don't you think that voting for an invasion that has caused at least 100,000 deaths and was as any rational analyst would conclude motivated by oil is one mistake too far?"

Samantha: "I must say conspiracy theories are getting wilder these days. I voted to end a brutal dictatorship and allow the Iraqi people to benefit from the democracy we take for granted."

Mary Contrary: "What about oil?"

Samantha: "This seems to be a common theme among the antiwar brigade. Yes, we hope that the Iraqi oil industry can return to its previous levels of efficiency in line with international environmental regulations, and are putting in place an economic framework in which ordinary Iraqis can benefit from resources in their own land."

Mary Contrary: "Ms Stasy. I don't need to hear this nonsense. You know all oil proceeds pay off debts that Iraq built up in the 1980s and in practice go straight into the coffers of US and Israeli multinationals with lucrative reconstruction contracts."

Samantha pauses to take notes 'Patient may suffer from mild form of antisemitism, consider holocaust awarenesss training'.

Samantha: "The mind boggles. I'll have to check out the exact facts about which contractors are responsible for the reconstruction of Iraq, but I'd compare the current situation with post-war Germany. There we had to temporarily take over some German institutions in a process of denazification, essential in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Only last week a constituent whose grandparents perished in this genocide lamented the lack of awareness in the young population today of these unspeakable crimes against humanity."

Mary Contrary: "Don't you think it's cheap to use the Nazi holocaust to justify crimes committed by your government today? We oppose all tyrannical regimes!"

Samantha: "Oh well, that's what the pacifists said in the run-up to the Second World War. Had we listened to them, we'd enjoy none of the freedoms we take for granted today and you and I might not be talking in this surgery today!".

Mary Contrary: "Look if anyone is appeasing tyranny and genocide, it's not us! It's you guys who support the Bush Junta."

Samantha: "Mary, you seem to be getting paranoid about tyranny in this country. All we want is to work closely with our international partners, NGOs and businesses to bring about a fairer more caring society. We know it's tough and there's a lot of disinformation, conspiracy theories and hate speech on the Internet. Listen there's a group that meets locally for people like yourself who suffer from paranoid delusions. A good friend of mine, Dr Hamish Thotpol, runs the group. Members are encouraged to air their grievances and take part in constructive acts of benevolence, e.g. they organised a bus to the Make Poverty History concert in conjunction with Nokia. They also offer help and support with various therapeutic solutions to make you feel better about yourself!"

Mary Contrary: "Are you suggesting anyone who disagrees with your party line is mentally ill?"

Samantha: "No not at all, just that when we feel depressed about society and paranoid about all these hidden agendas from the likes of John Pilger, we might benefit from talking with professionals who can help us refocus our minds on the things that really matter, like our families, jobs and independent life."

Mary Contrary: "Stalinist b###h!"

Samantha: "I'm terribly sorry I couldn't help you."

Ms Stasy takes a note of Samantha's contact details and calls the local mental health monitoring unit. "Hello, one of my constituents is suffering from an acute form of Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Disorder and I feel she may benefit from a visit from a community psychiatric counsellor. I've recorded our conversation and will forward all correspondence."

"Oh, PCTD. Any hint of antisemitism" asked the friendly helpdesk assistant.

"She did mention Israel in a negative light" the Member of Parliament warned.

"Sounds ominous. And what about oil?" enquired the youthful psychiatric services support consultant, readjusting her headset in a Delhi-based call centre.

"Yes, she seems obsessed with the subject!" remarked Ms Stasy.

The call centre operator confidently uttered her well-rehearsed line "Thank you for passing on this information, Ms Stasy, we'll see what we can do to help."

Categories
All in the Mind

Is AS really on the Autistic Spectrum or are we just redefining Autism?

The overall message we get from the growing AS/Autism support industry is that we are part of the autistic spectrum and we have a psychiatric disorder, even if the language used by professionals when addressing us is much more diplomatic. I agree we have problems with socialisation and manifest behavioural traits that come under the broad umbrella now labelled as Asperger's.

I take issue with this arbitrary extension of the so-called autistic spectrum to include people with a high verbal intelligence quotient and who have very human emotions. It is kind of like saying "You were bullied at school because you're autistic but didn't know it at the time and now you've been diagnosed help is at hand". The truth is most of us were bullied at school because in a highly competitive society obsessed with coolness anyone who fails to conform to such standards is weeded out. As the saying goes "special needs are just weeds". As we are all so different, how could a label help anyone deal with us better. We are just human beings trying to navigate in today's social rat race and often choosing to opt out. I think the problems we experience are shared by a much larger percentage of the population, but to claim that such a reality represents an extension of autism is to misunderstand autism itself or rather to debase its value as a meaningful diagnosis. This term should only be used for individuals with a classic Kanner's autism developmental pattern and with associated cerebral abnormalities. Those who claim that aspies have radically different brains have misinterpreted scant data as most AS-diagnosed people have never had a PET or fMRI scan and recent studies are showing marked difference between the HFA/LFA (traditional autistic) group and the AS group and disproving earlier assumptions about the size of our amygdala (originally attributed to schizophrenics and psychopaths). The latter group manifest varying degrees of synaptic overconnectedness in the orbito-frontal cortex, but this is the most neuroplastic and evolutionarily advanced section of our brain and it is now known that it constantly rewires itself throughout adolescence and way into our twenties and even thirties. So it quite possible that millions could be manifesting AS-like traits not because we were born that way, but because our interaction with the modern environment led us to develop in a certain, with genetic factors only determining relative susceptibility. There seems to be a move to extend the autistic spectrum even further to include ADHD, Tourettes,OCD etc.. In some parts of the UK ADHD diagnosis has reached 1 in 5 children. So if we believe the psychiatric establishment, 1 in 5 kids has a neurological abnormality and will require drugs (they say medication) like ritalin (a commercialised variant of speed) or risperdal (think crack cocaine) for the rest of their lives alongside a support network, with teachers specially trained to deal with challenging behaviour..

This approach, labelling more and more people with one disorder or another, cannot be right. If something is wrong, let's look at the real causes. If we're told our problems are due to a neurological deviation, then we might believe that we need a label and all the stigma that that implies. By contrast if we conclude that society is at fault then we need to change society. Even small changes seem beyond the powers that be. Examples include reducing class sizes (i.e. replacing special needs learning support workers with real teachers and reclassifying all children as having special needs), putting limits on absurd sensory overloads in shopping centres and leisure complexes (loud music) and de-emphasising coolness. Why not? Because such changes would rock too many boats. Teamwork is the order of the day because in reality it means groupthink conformism. Many myths about AS-diagnosed people are spread by ASD evangelisers. We are supposed to lack interest in imaginative play or socialisation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The imaginative play claim comes straight from textbooks that apply to Kanner's syndrome (0.2% of the population according to NAS stats). As for socialisation, just consider why so many AS-diagnosed people get depressed, because we fail to socialise. If we didn't want to socialise, we would not care if others shunned us..

Dyspraxia and hypersensitivity to sounds are very real, but there is simply no magic dividing line between the AS-diagnosed and everyone else, they both represent continua. It may, however, be the case that dyspraxic or hypersensitive children are more likely to be ostracised and develop AS-like behavioural traits. How can one seriously imagine that the enormous lifestyle changes we have witnessed over the last two generations have not led to major psychological changes in a sizable group of adults? Some such as Richard Restak (author of the New Brain) Peter Breggin (author of numerous books on the dangers of ECT, psychiatric drugs and the ADHD fraud) have suggested that ADHD should really be called TV-syndrome. Why? Because it has been proven that excessive exposure to TV (immersion of a virtual reality not just the other side effects of cathod ray tubes) causes the brain to rewire. Remove someone from a high-tech media-obsessed multitasking information-overladen environment and place them in a more traditional slow-paced focused environment and their brains rewires. Of course we are all different, that much should be obvious to anyone who has met more than half a dozen aspies, but we are also first and foremost human beings.

Categories
All in the Mind

AS vs Autism Neuroimaging

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2004 Mar;61(3):291-8. Investigation of neuroanatomical differences between autism and Asperger syndrome.

Lotspeich LJ, Kwon H, Schumann CM, Fryer SL, Goodlin-Jones BL, Buonocore MH, Lammers CR, Amaral DG, Reiss AL.

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

Linda.Lotspeich@stanford.edu

CONCLUSIONS: Lack of replication between previous autism MRI studies could be due to intersite differences in MRI systems and subjects' age and IQ. Cerebral gray tissue findings suggest that ASP is on the mild end of the autism spectrum. However, exploratory assessments of brain-IQ relationships reveal differences between HFA and ASP, indicating that these conditions may be neurodevelopmentally different when patterns of multiple measures are examined. Further investigations of brain-behavior relationships are indicated to confirm these findings.

Functional connectivity in an fMRI working memory task in high-functioning autism.

Neuroimage. 2005 Feb 1;24(3):810-21. Epub 2004 Nov 24.

Koshino H, Carpenter PA, Minshew NJ, Cherkassky VL, Keller TA, Just MA.

Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA; Department of Psychology, California State University, San Bernardino, CA 92407, USA.

An fMRI study was used to measure the brain activation of a group of adults with high-functioning autism compared to a Full Scale and Verbal IQ and age-matched control group during an n-back working memory task with letters. The behavioral results showed comparable performance, but the fMRI results suggested that the normal controls might use verbal codes to perform the task, while the adults with autism might use visual codes. The control group demonstrated more activation in the left than the right parietal regions, whereas the autism group showed more right lateralized activation in the prefrontal and parietal regions. The autism group also had more activation than the control group in the posterior regions including inferior temporal and occipital regions. The analysis of functional connectivity yielded similar patterns for the two groups with different hemispheric correlations. The temporal profile of the activity in the prefrontal regions was more correlated with the left parietal regions for the control group, whereas it was more correlated with the right parietal regions for the autism group.

Semin Pediatr Neurol. 2004 Sep;11(3):205-13.

Imaging data in autism: from structure to malfunction.

Acosta MT, Pearl PL.

Department of Neurology, Children's National Medical Center, The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Washington, DC 20010-2970, USA. macosta@cnmc.org

During the last two decades, neuroimaging studies have improved our knowledge of brain development and contributed to our understanding of disorders involving the developing brain. Differences in cerebral anatomy have been determined in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Morphological studies by magnetic resonance imaging have provided evidence of structural differences in ASD compared with the normal population. This has enhanced our view of autism as a neurobiological disorder corresponding with different stages and events in brain development. Alterations in volume of the total brain and specifically the cerebellum, frontal lobe, and limbic system have been identified. There appears to be a pattern of increased and then decreased rate of brain growth over time. We integrate these observations with neurobehavioral findings to provide a developmental hypothesis of the pathophysiology of autism.

Dev Med Child Neurol. 2004 Nov;46(11):760-4.

Voxel-based morphometry elucidates structural neuroanatomy of high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome.

Kwon H, Ow AW, Pedatella KE, Lotspeich LJ, Reiss AL.

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA. howerk@alum.mit.edu

Efforts to examine the structural neuroanatomy of autism by using traditional methods of imaging analysis have led to variable findings, often based on methodological differences in image acquisition and analysis. A voxel-based computational method of whole-brain anatomy allows examination of small patterns of tissue differences between groups. High-resolution structural magnetic resonance images were acquired for nine males with high-functioning autism (HFA; mean age 14y [SD3y 4mo]), 11 with Asperger syndrome (ASP; mean age 13y 6mo [SD2y 5mo]), and 13 comparison (COM) participants (mean age 13y 7mo [SD 3y 1mo]). Using statistical parametric mapping, we examined contrasts of gray matter differences between the groups. Males with HFA and ASP had a pattern of decreased gray matter density in the ventromedial regions of the temporal cortex in comparison with males from an age-matched comparison group. Examining contrasts revealed that the COM group had increased gray matter density compared with the ASP or combined HFA and ASP group in the right inferior temporal gyrus, entorhinal cortex, and rostral fusiform gyrus. The ASP group had less gray matter density in the body of the cingulate gyrus in comparison with either the COM or HFA group. The findings of decreased gray matter density in ventromedial aspects of the temporal cortex in individuals with HFA and ASP lends support to theories suggesting an involvement of these areas in the pathophysiology of autism, particularly in the integration of visual stimuli and affective information.

PMID: 15540637 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Hippocampus and amygdala volumes in parents of children with autistic disorder.

Am J Psychiatry. 2004 Nov;161(11):2038-44.

Rojas DC, Smith JA, Benkers TL, Camou SL, Reite ML, Rogers SJ.

Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado
Health Sciences Center, Box C268-68 CPH, 4200 E. 9th Ave., Denver, CO
80262, USA.

Don.Rojas@uchsc.edu

OBJECTIVE: Structural and
functional abnormalities in the medial temporal lobe, particularly
the hippocampus and amygdala, have been described in people with
autism. The authors hypothesized that parents of children with a
diagnosis of autistic disorder would show similar changes in these
structures. METHOD: Magnetic resonance imaging scans

were performed in 17 biological parents of children with a diagnosis of DSM-IV autistic disorder. The scans were compared with scans from 15 adults with autistic disorder and 17 age-matched comparison subjects with no personal or familial history of autism.

The volumes of the hippocampus, amygdala, and total
brain were measured in all participants. RESULTS: The volume of the
left hippocampus was larger in both the parents of children with
autistic disorder and the adults with autistic disorder, relative to
the comparison subjects. The hippocampus was significantly larger in
the adults with autistic disorder than in the parents of children
with autistic disorder. The left amygdala was smaller in the adults
with autistic disorder, relative to the other two groups. No
differences in total brain volume were observed between the three
groups. CONCLUSIONS:

The finding of larger hippocampal volume in autism is suggestive of abnormal early neurodevelopmental processes but is partly consistent with only one prior study and contradicts the findings of several others. The finding of larger hippocampal volume for the parental group suggests a potential genetic basis

for hippocampal abnormalities in
autism.

PMID: 15514404 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Cerebellar function in autism: functional magnetic resonance image activation during a simple motor task.
Biol Psychiatry. 2004 Aug 15;56(4):269-78.
Allen G, Muller RA, Courchesne E.

Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.

BACKGROUND: The cerebellum is one of the most consistent sites of neuroanatomic abnormality in autism, yet it is still unclear how such pathology impacts cerebellar function. In normal subjects, we previously demonstrated with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) a dissociation between cerebellar regions involved in attention and those involved in a simple motor task, with motor activation localized to the anterior cerebellum ipsilateral to the moving hand. The purpose of the present investigation was to examine activation in the cerebella of autistic patients and normal control subjects performing this motor task. METHODS: We studied eight autistic patients and eight matched normal subjects, using fMRI. An anatomic region-of-interest approach was used, allowing a detailed examination of cerebellar function. RESULTS: Autistic individuals showed significantly increased motor activation in the ipsilateral anterior cerebellar hemisphere relative to normal subjects, in addition to atypical activation in contralateral and posterior cerebellar regions. Moreover, increased activation was correlated with the degree of cerebellar structural abnormality. CONCLUSIONS: These findings strongly suggest dysfunction of the autistic cerebellum that is a reflection of cerebellar anatomic abnormality. This neurofunctional deficit might be a key contributor to the development of certain diagnostic features of autism (e.g., impaired communication and social interaction, restricted interests, and stereotyped behaviors).

Less white matter concentration in autism: 2D voxel-based morphometry.

Neuroimage. 2004 Sep;23(1):242-51.
Chung MK, Dalton KM, Alexander AL, Davidson RJ.
Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
mchung@stat.wisc.ed

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting behavioral and social cognition, but there is little understanding about the link between the functional deficit and its underlying neuroanatomy. We applied a 2D version of voxel-based morphometry (VBM) in differentiating the white matter concentration of the corpus callosum for the group of 16 high functioning autistic and 12 normal subjects. Using the white matter density as an index for neural connectivity, autism is shown to exhibit less white matter concentration in the region of the genu, rostrum, and splenium removing the effect of age based on the general linear model (GLM) framework. Further, it is shown that the less white matter concentration in the corpus callosum in autism is due to hypoplasia rather than atrophy.