Category: Psychology

CDC Teen Suicide Rate on the Rise

Well I believe this bad news. I see extraordinarily troubled teens and dysfunctional families.
I became concerned many years ago when I saw young kids on big time psych meds. My pediatrician and psych colleagues say it’s frightening how sick some of these kids are. My teacher friends say it has changed the nature of their work–they are required to devote a lot of time to unsociallized feral children.
This is a pretty decent review of the latest CDC assessment of teen suicides and suicide risk.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/sad_truths_about_teen_suicide.html
One must consider that the suicide rate or thoughts of suicide are symptomatic of a deeper and wider problem–we have a lot of kids who won’t ever be functional adults. A lot of parents who are clueless on how to make a child into an adult, because, they may be of that generation i saw many years ago that didn’t get it, and never grew up themselves.
It is terrible to see. Some families are completely torn up by mental illness, and have multiple members with serious mental problems.
It is no surprise it wipes out families–we are social animals, dependent on the family as a place of safety and succor.
Some families have multiple children with mental health problems at a very young age, already recieving for social security. Imagine your life as a parent if you have a child who has required hospitalization for a mental illness.
The oppositional defiant, ADHD, emotional disorder children have become a big problem that will overwhelm our schools and may create a major problem in our healthcare system.

Dddddrruuuugs IV Cocaine

I practiced in Florida when cocaine was worth 10 or more thousand dollars a kilo (2.2 pounds) back in the 80s.
Big business supplying idle Americans, and very violent dealings. In that time anybody with a cell phone was assumed to be a cocaine player, how times have changed.
Continue reading Dddddrruuuugs IV Cocaine

Thomas Nagel Identifies the Problem

You think that David Gelernter presented some troubling considerations for modern science? You might recall he mentioned Thomas Nagel and his new book that created such a furor on the academic left, since he is–or was, an icon of the left.
Continue reading Thomas Nagel Identifies the Problem

Clarice, 1984, and a Salute to Milloy.

JunkScience.com asks questions and challenges assumptions on matters of scientific inquiry that impact public opinion and political policy making.
Pretentions of establishment funded and designated “experts” are evaluated with a skeptical eye.
Continue reading Clarice, 1984, and a Salute to Milloy.

Wake Up Researchers

This is a little essay from a person who is clearly conflicted about the problems of psych research, a very unreliable area of research.
I thought her anxieties about the research well worth the consideration.
Continue reading Wake Up Researchers

Boys to Men–or Not–Kay Hymowitz

You might say–well what does junkscience.com have to do with social sciences and child rearing?
OOOOOhhhh, I don’t know, except that anyone committed to good inquiry and sensible, well informed policy making can’t help but wonder about the social sciences and what will we do about raising a generation that might be able to be competent adults. That means we have to look at the issues and the studies in the soft social sciences. What could be more intriguing for hard science aficionados?
Continue reading Boys to Men–or Not–Kay Hymowitz

YU got ADD? I Do Too

The psych nonsense has been most apparent in the excessive effort to diagnose and suppress male energy.
In some places male energy is just not acceptable. You know, like the energy of Aristotle, Alexander, Caesar, Cicero, Augustine, Des Cartes, Voltaire, Einstein, Bohr, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Washington, Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, Louie Armstrong, and Churchill as just a few of the many who were energetic and assertive.
Continue reading YU got ADD? I Do Too

Babblegate Revisited

Some time ago we introduced Anthony Daniels, Brit psychiatrist, polymath, great essayist on the culture, with a unique insight into Brit cultural pathology. Daniels, who writes as Theodore Dalrymple, was expounding on the problems of modern psychiatric practice at the City Journal site. Daniels is merciless as a psychiatrist on the specialty and the new DSM V which is their cookbook for diagnosing troubled/crazy/unhappy/problematic people of all ages.
He was talking about one of my concerns in the junk science work we do, and Psychiatry at its worst.
The title is “Everyone on the Couch” and it places the nuttiness of psych practice gone amok in a good perspective, particularly the problem of pushing pills for unhappy people.
http://city-journal.org/2013/23_4_otbie-psychiatry.html
Here is another fine commentary on Daniel’s essay and his efforts to warn people about medicalization of behavior and the danger of creative diagnosticating (maybe that’s not a word, but I like it to describe the problem of finding a diagnosis for human foibles and bad habits and cultural/lifestyle problems).
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12 the_psychobabble_bubble.html
Recall again my recommendation of Elaine Showalter’s book Hystories about the hysterical epidemics and the work of Paul McHugh and Sally Satel, two very insightful and prescient psychiatrists–who have common sense.