Posted by alexandra_k on February 23, 2020, at 23:08:25
In reply to Re: patriarchy, posted by ert on February 4, 2020, at 10:54:55
You buy canned carrots? Huh. I only buy fresh or frozen. So many things come in a can that I don't think to buy in cans. Why do you buy canned carrots rather than frozen? Should I give them a try?
I saw the NY times in the library the other day...
I read an interesting article on how it seems that in quite a few hospitals in the US, as well, medical students practice performing cervical examinations (right up to the ovaries) on women who are anesthetised for unrelated procedures without obtaining prior consent.
I did not realise the practice was that prevalent. I did not realise that it would be found in the US. I thought there would be legal protections against it. Apparently there is not. Apparently a woman who drafted her own consent before an operation was told that they would do the operation under those conditons. Consent to medical student participation and helping with their learning was implied in a teaching hospital. I think that might have been... Ohio? Not sure... It surprised me a lot.
The anti-psychiatry article was interesting. I used to be fairly interested in that. I read some of Szasz articles and a book or two. Some of the things he said did sound a bit extreme to me (that there wasnt any such thing as mental illness) but in taking the time to read and think he started to make quite a lot of sense, actually (there are neurological illnesses, for sure, but these behavioral or social problems are more political than anything else.
In the country in which I live we have really really really high rates of child abuse. People abuse their own children. It is fairly standard, normal, typical, for them to be hit and neglected and so on... People treat them like crap, generally. They get the scraps. They are kicked out of the house to get out of under peoples feet.
And of course we don't treat our adults much better.
Business or interactions are thought of as essentially win-lose and essentially exploitative. If you don't have the upper hand they will gain the upper hand on you.
We have very very high suicide rates. Nobody wants to live like that.
There is a psychiatry guy or psychology guy or whatever someplace in NZ and he's forever doing research basically wanting to make chlorpromazine or ketamine or marajuana or whatever free or cheap or generic medication more widely available so people can self-medicate themselves into a state of... Less complain-y.
Instead of fixing the housing problems. The pay structures. The career progressions. The schools. Instead of fixing the social and economic issues.. We can just label 5 per cent? 20 per cent? 25 per cent? Of the people mentally ill and medicate them into... Depression ideally, I guess. A kind of numbness about their situation.
It would be really really really really hard to figure the people who would get significantly better with better living conditions vs the people who would not. Some people... Have severe depressive or manic or whatever episodes in the face of basically okay life.. Seems something neurological, more. Other people... Are driven to insanity by the world around them.
I have come to see / understand my mental illness as being the result of social adn political circumstances.
But I know this isn't the case (or isn't so very much of the case) for others.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1108152
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20191229/msgs/1108665.html