Jordan Smoller: "The Other Side of Normal: How Biology is Providing the Clues to Unlock the Secrets of Normal and Abnormal Behavior"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-06-04/jordan-smoller-other-side-normal-how-biology-providing-clues-unlock-secrets-normal-
Psychiatry often focuses on the abnormal. Patients are diagnosed based on a cluster of symptoms, many of which could be defined as mental illness in millions of healthy people. A Harvard University psychiatrist says this approach is misguided. He argues there are no bright lines between normal and abnormal, and that psychiatric disorders are variations of normal brain functions that help us cope with everyday challenges. It could also build a new foundation for defining disorders from autism to depression. Diane and her guest talk about the “biology of normal.”
Guests
Jordan Smoller
associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.
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Read An Excerpt
Excerpt from "The Other Side of Normal: How Biology Is Providing the Clues to Unlock the Secrets of Normal and Abnormal Behavior" by Jordan Smoller. Copyright 2012 by Jordan Smoller. Reprinted here by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved.
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More scientific reductionism for fun and profit in an era of overwhelming social breakdown. How much lint are you finding in the old bellybutton, Diane?
They sends you the list and you checks them off. I consider DRShow behavior socially deviant when it becomes fixated on crackpot means of social control. More people are crazy today because they can't manage the lies and the stress and insecurity of a financially dominated existence. Only an equitable restructuring can fix it.
Pancake Rankin wrote: May 7, 2012 - 7:57 am
"There are better venues for combative arguing than the thoughtful and tolerant Diane Rehm Show. Go there."
Dissociative identity disorder
Prognosis: DID does not resolve spontaneously, and symptoms vary over time. Individuals with primarily dissociative symptoms and features of post traumatic stress disorder normally recover with treatment. Those with co-morbid addictions, personality, mood, or eating disorders face a longer, slower, and more complicated recovery process. Individuals still attached to abusers face the poorest prognosis; treatment may be long-term and consist solely of symptom relief rather than personality integration. Changes in identity, loss of memory, and awaking in unexplained locations and situations often leads to chaotic personal lives.[19] Individuals with the condition commonly attempt suicide. Individuals with dissociative disorders, including DID, frequently have histories of failed suicide attempts and self-harm.
Silly me. I must be making some sort of blunder. I come to this site BEFORE the show is broadcast to see what the topics are for the day. Invariably I find comments that precede the broadcast.
Am I missing the boat by actually waiting to hear Diane et al before blowing my bazoo?
OK, now I get it: Martha Stout of Harvard (Sociopath Next Door) has explained that there is a shortage of genuine sociopaths in our society. Naturally the corporations want to identify and recruit them as early as possible, begin paying them $13 million a year for starters. This will head off a "pain drain" as these potential CEOs and Wisconsin governors might gravitate to other less fruitful careers such as physicians and military officers. How else will we ever attain the death camp efficiency necessary to save Capitalism?
I apologize if minor rhetorical inconsistencies in my out of context words caused such a flaccid spirit as yourself to consider suicide, Arkus. Advice, don't hang on my every utterance like a hungry parrot.
Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people. Thus, projection involves imagining or projecting the belief that others originate those feelings
LibVet: I'll bet Mom had to threaten you to get homework completed. Diane was up reading this worthless book late, I'll bet. I cut a corner and profiled the guest in order to caution the audience.
MD and "Doctor of Science" Jordan W. Smoller is a neuropharmacologist, also of Harvard. He arranges marriages (Catalyst) between big pharma and promising treatment studies. Sounds lucrative doesn't it?
My view is that every human brain is generally the same but individually unique. Any abnormaliities would be properly assessed as staistically insignificant in number when properly categorized. Now if a contaminant or cultural deviation is causing larger numbers of similar neurological abnormalities would it not make more sense to eliminate the disrupter than to treat the similarly harmed population? Yes, except when potential profit is the first consideration. And if an "abnormality" is naturally repeated generation upon generation who is to say that it is abnormal? Might'nt it have some hidden or undiscovered sociological function? Sociological, now there is a word psychiatrists and corporcrats likewise denigrate.
I should like Dr Smoller's assessment as to whether learned add-ons---for example, a very thorough grounding in statistics, and understanding the Monte Carlo fallacy---can ever supervene or even equal our in-built repertoire of patterns of thought and of behaviour.
I'd also like him to speak to the effects of the mædia; back on the Serengeti there were little percentage in distrusting the reality of what we saw and heard---spend too much time wondering 'Is that really a leopard?' and you might get a more definite answer than you'd like---so I'm concerned that at base, we really don't get different effects from real images and sounds as compared to the fictititious.
(I'm more sanguine about being able to viscerally distrust the content of what other people say, since otherwise liars would have developed so high a competitive advantage that we would lie nearly all the ti---wait a second....)
Gerald: He's a digital trephiner, not a philosopher of science.
Do you consult your oil change technician about celestial events?
The author is trying to make it sound like he's making a controversial statement but nobody who knows anything about the brain would say there are bright lines between normal and abnormal behavior.
The distinction of normal vs. abnormal is a sickness model and exists strictly so that providers can get reimbursed by health insurance. It's not a useful distinction in order to provide treatment. Increasingly, mental health services are being eroded because for-profit health insurance pay much too little to mental health providers to the point that providers cannot accept third party payments and stay in business. Reimbursements are the same dollar amount as they were 30 years despite inflation. With just cost of living increases, reimbursements should be double what they were 30 years. Increasingly, people may technically have mental health benefits but not have true access to mental health services because providers cannot afford to accept such low wages and still delivery quality care. The reimbursements in medical/surgical services have increases over the years but not mental health showing that there is still great discrimination in mental, emotional and behavioral health problems. Ironically, at a time when the stigma against seeking mental health services is much reduced, it's becoming harder and harder to get in to see a competent therapist or psychiatrist. No one, in my experience, has ever bothered to seek psychotherapy for a trivial reason. Usually, they have waited longer, and suffered longer than they needed to because they were trying to deal with their emotional distress without a therapist (contrary to the myth that people flock to therapists to have a paid friend).
Has Professor Smoller seen the recently produced film: Kings Park : Stories from an American Mental Institution directed and produced by Lucy Winer? Here is the link. http://kingsparkmovie.com/ I am reviewing it for the magazine Echoes of LBI. It was one of the featured films at the Lighthouse International Film Festival this past weekend. Lucy Winer - a patient there in 1967 - revisits the closed institution and addresses many existing problems in the mental health environment. ie: the new institution is the jail for many mentally ill people.
This fellow seems to be one of the BIGpharma drug pushers interested in personalized drugs to make everyone's mind the same.
I have been drugged into a different person with these mental health drugs - they changed me completely, different personality, different abilities, even different (huge) body.
This was to make me more "normal" according to the psychiatrist.
Drugs are not the answer - to undepress a person it takes a lot of personal work and continued work to keep ones self away from the Pit of Depression.
None of these drugs should be prescribed by anyone who has not taken the drugs for at least 90 days first.
These drugs are dangerous, much more dangerous than learning to live well with mental differences.
Being different is not bad, not knowing how to live well while being different is bad. Society and attitudes are dangerous as well.
Still, drugs are not the answer - even the personalized mind altering drugs bigpharma can create now to alter your mind "better".
I am curious as to your views on PANDAS/PANS?
There is so much controversy about this, it seems, primarily because there is major skepticism that a biological event can trigger new and, in our case, life-altering neurological behaviors. I saw it happen in my son last year. He missed 3 months of school and took most of the year to recover.
We now know that when my son's immune system is triggered (e.g. during the onset of fall/spring allergy seasons), he begins to exhibit OCD behaviors(he does not normally have OCD), wild emotional swings, extreme sensitivity to sound/light, night terrors/walking/talking, handwriting deteriorates and a tic (usually an incessant, life-altering, non-productive cough during waking hours, only).
I pulled the following description from the NIMH website: "PANDAS, is an abbreviation for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections. The term is used to describe a subset of children and adolescents who have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and/or tic disorders, and in whom symptoms worsen following strep. infections such as "Strep throat" and Scarlet Fever. PANS is a newer term used to describe the larger class of acute-onset OCD cases. PANS stands for Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome and includes all cases of abrupt onset OCD, not just those associated with streptococcal infections."
As a parent of a child diagnosed with autism, I find the most recent thought on the increase in autism being due to the mother’s weight(obesity) and/or the father’s (elderly) age absolutely groundless. I was 117 lbs when I conceived my child and gained only 25 pounds the entire pregnancy. There was absolutely nothing irregular about my second pregnancy. So, I wish those who are studying autism would talk to the people who are affected
. Oh, and by the way, my husband was a meager 32 when he became the father of our gifted child. So, his age holds no weight either.
Can Jordan Smoller please comment on the issues of normality and abnormality as they relate to personality disorders?
It has been suggested to me by my psychologist that I have symptoms of bi-polar disorder. She believes that bi-polar disorder, along with other disorders, occur on a spectrum, and any person can experience minimal to extreme manic depression. I understand her explanation of the spectrum of bi-polarity, but "bi-polar" is a very charged term in our society, so I still have trouble telling myself that I am bi-polar. Are spectrums of disorders scientifically backed?
SCIENCE V. RELIGION
It is one thing for science to advance our knowledge, including our medical knowledge.
It is quite another for science to replace religion and become the newest form of "Divine Right" institutional tyranny.
Consider the DSM. As the Harvard professor stated, some speak of the DSM as "The Bible".
The DSM has changed quite dramatically from it's origination in 1980 and is devoid neither of politics nor financial considerations nor tentative science. Yesterday homosexuality was a form of deviant behavior. Today it is and acceptable lifestyle. Tomorrow it may be the subject of scientific inquisition.
It is one thing for science to allow for the possibility that homosexuality be studied and treated according to differing schools of thought until such time as there is irrefutable evidence that homosexual behavior may or may not ever be normal; and then, if it be irrefutably shown that homosexual behavior may be normal, the parameters may become known such that normal homosexual behavior may be supported and abnormal homosexual behavior treated.
The politics of the movement favoring homosexual behavior as normal and to be encouraged is not merely a challenge to our Western historical moral sensibilities and religious precepts, it is a challenge to the ideals, strengths, and very fabric of our society. It is a new form of the age old conflict between monotheistic faith and idolatry couched in the jargons and bureaucracies of science and secular law. We need merely look at the histories of ancient Greece and Rome to see and predict the fullness of our own moral failure and decline. What is called progress today may indeed better be seen as "back to the future" of Sodom and Gomorrah.
As a psychiatry skeptic, the fact that I am halfway in to the show now, and absolutely no mention has been made about the opportunity for growth extreme emotional states, including anxiety and depression, represents is a main clue that a serious discussion is not in the offing. Without such discussions (in depth) this kind of show is just a propping up of the "brain research" currently in vogue that is no doubt going to lead us nowhere. Diane should get someone on her show from Madness Radio.
For a well-rounded discussion. Otherwise, same ole, same ole.