Friday 24 June 2011

Are the americans truthful about mental illness and language?

At least in a small way.

Mad. Over there it has the main association of anger. I think. No American would say the weather's mad unless it was stormy. A brit would say the weathers mad because its unpredictable.

However...dementia praecox - the original pathologisation using pseudoscience and the paradigm of medicine (along with a few other proto-diagnoses) - is treated in modern times by an anti mad drug. The chemical cosh. The antipsychotic.

Some geezer wrote a book about the americanisation of mental illnesss. I think he forgot something. The antipsychotic in terms of language and concepts isn't in the uk. It is in the us. The americans associate madness with anger. The antipsychotic removes the problems of anger in a society where those externalisations aren't allowed because of social norms (the reason for the prognosis whenfitting behaviour of types to life outcomes using pseudoscience).

But the british hold a different set of ethics. They felt bad about killing old people because their anger was a problem. The uk in the strength of its wisdom, lead by the royal college of psychiatry of course, decided that it was ethical to kill fewer old people because of their behaviour.

In practice the uk keeps on killing black men because of their behaviour and using the antipsychotic. I wonder if the policy changes for dementia made any impact either?

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We It comes in part from an appreciation that no one can truly sign their own work. Everything is many influences coming together to the one moment where a work exists. The other is a begrudging acceptance that my work was never my own. There is another consciousness or non-corporeal entity that helps and harms me in everything I do. I am not I because of this force or entity. I am "we"