3 posts tagged “psychiatry”

Harry Mount’s column in The Daily Telegraph was a great laugh:

I once saw [Heather Mills] walking down Fifth Avenue in New York and was staggered by the height of her cheekbones and the depth of the groove beneath them.
   But when she opens her mouth—and keeps it open for 11 minutes, as she did outside the High Court—the spell is broken. You forget the cheekbones and drown in the ocean of self-pity pouring out of that pretty mouth.
   During the French state visit, clever Carla Bruni rarely broke the spell by talking. She realised, like the old pro supermodel she is, that all she has to do is look good and say nothing. …
   The real difference between them, though, is in what they say—or don’t say. The answer for Heather Mills in future is to do what John Galliano did with Carla Bruni's cinched Dior outfit—belt up.

   Thinking that was all that Mr Mount had to offer, I was pleasantly surprised by the final segment in his column:

A new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry claims that mobile phone addiction is a mental illness.
   I’m afraid the illness is incurable; it’s related to an addiction that's been around for ever—the addiction to self.
   People aren’t addicted to the phones themselves. They’re addicted to the attention they get from other people via their phones. Obsessive phoners send texts purely in the hope that they’ll get one back. They don’t ring people from the train to find anything out; only to get other people to listen to them saying nothing of any importance. Why is it that the person on the train is always doing the talking, and never the listening?

   I knew there was a reason I didn’t use cellphones.

Another item on Yola Lucire, this time in The Times–Leader in Pa.:

In January, the state medical board in Sydney, Australia, admonished psychiatrist Yolande Lucire for testifying in a court case about her belief that Ritalin and similar drugs had produced residual organic hallucinosis in children that might explain their violence later in life. The board said it disagreed with her and ordered Lucire to make an appointment with a senior psychiatrist for therapy, to help her deal with her problem of making unconventional diagnoses.

   Man, I’d hate to get ill there if all diagnoses had to be in line with what the establishment and probably Big Pharma had to say. What is this? Some psychatric version of the Soviet Union where dissenting opinions are not allowed?

We occasionally Google the term Lucire to check for trade mark infringements, and another Lucire always comes up: Australian forensic psychiatrist Dr Yolande Lucire.
   Yola and I exchanged emails many years ago because she was intrigued by the magazine’s name. I found her personable and genuine—and very smart.
   She is very famous in her field in Australia, and often testifies in court as an expert witness. Her thinking can, from what I understand, fall outside the square, because she is perceptive enough to see beyond establishment lies and the commercialization of her profession by Big Pharma.
   Now there is a case where she testified, and the judge agreed with her, but her own professional committee, the NSW Medical Board Professional Standards Committee, is smearing her and ordering her to get psychiatric help.
   In other words, she’s being reprimanded because she tells the truth, and that truth isn’t something corporate interests and the establishment want to hear.
   Philip Barton writes on his blog, ‘Dr. Lucire testified in court about the direct relationship between SSRI antidepressants and violent crime and suicide amongst young people.’
   The establishment didn’t like that.
   Now, Yola wouldn’t have testified this if she didn’t find this in her own research and unlike so many others, she simply refused to cover it up.
   Maybe the Committee would like to teach her how to fake the results of her own scientific tests.
   ‘Whilst the judge found in favour of Dr. Lucire’s testimony her own organization reprimanded her and ordered her to get psychiatric help.’
   In short: say something Big Pharma disagrees with, and it will say you need help.
   Maybe Ritalin and other drugs help some people, but even as a layman I can’t discount the possibility that Yola’s own research is right.
   Galileo had the same run-in with the Church over that whole “the earth is round” gag, and, in time, Big Pharma might be seen to be backward and pathetic.
   I may know zilch about psychiatry, but I know a malicious smear campaign when I see it. Stay the course, Yola.