ADHD - Wot, no illness?

Prescriptions for methylphenidate drugs, such as Ritalin, which are used to treat children diagnosed as suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), have soared by 56% in the UK, from 420,000 in 2007 to 657,000 in 2012. Such "psychostimulants" are thought to stimulate a part of the brain that changes mental and behavioural reactions.

 Dr Bruce D Perry, one of the world's leading neuroscientists and a senior fellow of the Child Trauma Academy in Houston, Texas, has suggested ADHD is not "a real disease" and that "It is best thought of as a description. If you look at how you end up with that label, it is remarkable because any one of us at any given time would fit at least a couple of those criteria," he said. Children were being labelled as having ADHD when that merely described the symptoms of a range of different physiological problems. The symptoms that lead to a diagnosis of ADHD include inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsiveness over a sustained period.

Clinicians were also too readily prescribing psychostimulants to children when the evidence suggested there were no long-term benefits. Animal studies have raised concerns over the potential for damage that can be done.

"Taking a medication influences systems in ways we don't always understand. I tend to be pretty cautious about this stuff, particularly when the research shows you that other interventions are equally effective and over time more effective and have none of the adverse effects. For me it's a no-brainer. There are number of non-pharmacological therapies which have been pretty effective. A lot of them involve helping the adults that are around children," he said. “Part of what happens is if you have an anxious, overwhelmed parent, that is contagious. When a child is struggling, the adults around them are easily disregulated too. This negative feedback process between the frustrated teacher or parent and disregulated child can escalate out of control. You can teach the adults how to regulate themselves, how to have realistic expectations of the children, how to give them opportunities that are achievable and have success and coach them through the process of helping children who are struggling.”

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/30/children-hyperactivity-not-real-disease-neuroscientist-adhd

Re-defining the rat race

Rats display human-like empathy and will unselfishly go to the aid of a distressed fellow rodent, research has shown. Rats opened a door to free trapped cage-mates. No reward was needed. There was no other reason to take this action, except to terminate the distress of the trapped rats. Rats still prioritised their cage-mates when offered the option of ''freeing'' chocolate chips. They could been lured away by the distraction and have eaten the entire chocolate stash if they wanted to, and they did not.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8943567/Rats-display-human-like-empathy-and-will-help-rodents-in-distress.html

In 1925 the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss in “The Gift,” argued that contrary to the textbook account of primitive man merrily trading beaver pelts for wampum, no society was ever based on barter. The dominant practice for thousands of years was instead voluntary gift-giving, which created a binding sense of obligation between potentially hostile groups. To give a gift was not an act based on calculation, but on the refusal to calculate. In the societies Mauss studied most closely — the Maori of New Zealand, the Haida of the Pacific Northwest — people rejected the principles of economic self-interest in favor of arrangements where everyone was perpetually indebted to someone else.

David Graeber argues those once-prevalent relationships based on an incalculable sense of duty deteriorated as buying and selling became the basis of society and as money, previously a marker of favors owed, became valuable in its own right. Graeber’s point is that we ended up enslaving ourselves by thinking of ourselves as fully autonomous. As anyone who works a 9-to-5 job knows, the “right” to sell one’s labor hardly feels like privilege. Graeber thinks it’s a mistake when unions ask for higher wages when they should go back to picketing for fewer working hours.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/books/review/anarchist-anthropology.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&nl=books&emc=booksupdateemb3

just a matter of luck

"Capitalism is an extremely unfair and unjust economic system. It is unfair and unjust because, in order to do well in a capitalist system, a person must have a good mind, health, energy and enough emotional maturity and interpersonal skill to perform effectively in the workplace. And, in order to have those qualities, a person has to have had good parents, parents who have provided him or her with the nurturance, support, guidance, affirmation and discipline that people need in order to grow into healthy adults. If you had that kind of parents, you are lucky and you will be able to do well in our capitalist system.

If your parents abused or neglected you, if they discounted you, ignored you, if they were too busy, sick, self-absorbed, dysfunctional, overwhelmed, etc., to provide you with a good upbringing, you will not do well in our capitalist economy. You will not have the brainpower, health or emotional maturity to be able to do well. And whether or not you had good parents is a matter of luck. You didn't have anything to do with it. You are either the beneficiary or victim of something you had no control over."

Al Galves retired psychologist at
http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-opinion/ci_18539080

oh , to be young again

College students after 2000 have empathy levels that are 40% lower than those who came before them, according to analysis presented to at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science by University of Michigan researchers.

Today's children play outdoors much less--and they spend far less time in unstructured activity with others than prior generations.Without unstructured free time with playmates, youngsters simply don't get to know each other very well. And you can't learn to connect and care if you don't practice these things Free play declined by at least a third between 1981 and 2003--right when the kids who hit college in 2000 and later were growing up. Worse, much of the time that used to be spent playing outdoors is now spent in front of screens. Television, obviously cannot teach empathy. Even nonviolent kids' TV, research finds, is filled with indirect aggression and linked to increased real-world bullying. Though social media is an improvement on passive TV viewing and can sometimes aid real friendships, it is still less rich than face to face interaction. This is especially important for the youngest children whose brains are absorbing social information that will shape the way they connect for the rest of their lives.

Another factor is the "self esteem movement" and its pernicious notion that "you can't love anyone else until you love yourself." Today's kids grew up with parents who were taught by therapists and self help groups attended by millions that caring too much for other people or having your happiness tied to theirs was "co dependence,"--and that people should be able to be happy on their own, needing no one.
In reality, we need each other to be both mentally and physically healthy. Solitary confinement, in fact, is one of the most stressful experiences someone can undergo: this wouldn't be true if most people were happy without social contact. Normal people kept in complete isolation can become psychotic in as little as a few days.

Perhaps an even larger factor is the merging of the liberal's "do your own thing" individualism with the right's glorification of brutal competition and unfettered markets. You wind up with a society that teaches kids that "you're on your own" and that helping others is for suckers. A country where the mystical new age "Secret" is that the rich deserve their wealth and got it by being positive and good--while the poor, too, get what's coming to them because they didn't try hard enough.

Empathy requires an ability to understand others. Economic inequality, however, by radically separating the rich from the poor and shrinking the middle class, literally physically isolates us from each other and provides few opportunities for connection or understanding. If you spend your time in limos and gated communities and first-class travel, you aren't likely ever to meet poor people who aren't there to serve you; outside that context, you won't know how to relate to them. And then, if you know nothing about someone's real situation, it's easy to caricature it as being defined by bad choices and laziness, rather than understand the constraints and limits the economy itself imposes. Seeing yourself doing so well and others doing poorly tends to bolster ideas that "you deserve your wealth," simply because guilt otherwise becomes uncomfortable, even unbearable.
In reality, self esteem doesn't come from thinking positive or telling yourself that you are special or worthy--though telling kids they are rotten and selfish can surely destroy it. And, sadly, you can be optimistic all you like in an economy with 20% unemployment and still not get a job through no fault of your own.

If the split into "us" v. "them," "haves" v. "have nots," continues the empathy decline will undoubtedly continue and it will be a meaner, nastier world in which ideas about humans being selfish and competitive rather than caring become a self fulfilling prophecy by crushing the tendency toward kindness with which we are all born.

In another study of 500 Norwegian schoolchildren between the ages of 11 and 19, researchers from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration found that children start out as strict egalitarians, preferring to divide resources equally among peers. But as they grow older, by late adolescence, they come to prefer a more meritocratic method of resource distribution — based on individual contributions or performance. used a modified version of the dictator game, a classic experiment used to measure attitudes toward fairness. Children were randomly divided into pairs by age-group. One member of each pair was assigned an amount of money to distribute between him or herself and the partner.
Alexander Cappelen, one of the authors of the study, says it's not clear what triggers the change in philosophy, but he believes it may be the result of increasing exposure to achievement-based activities, such as sports and standardized tests. "Young children are rarely rewarded for individual achievement. There is an extremely egalitarian culture in their school life. But as they get older they are exposed to more meritocratic institutions, and that might change their views on equality," he says.

It begs the question: Are we all born communists? After all, the finding seems to suggest that people's innate inclination is toward income equality, a view that changes only when they are influenced by market-based values. Is strict egalitarianism our state-of-nature preference?
"I don't think so," says Cappelen. "You could turn it around and say that people who have a communist view lack maturity and hold a childish view. Maybe communists lack the cognitive ability to make the distinction between different types of equalities."

But Cappelen acknowledges that a society's values can have a profound impact on the formation of fairness view — and, hence, economic beliefs. Mainstream economic theories are predicated on the principle that people always act in their self-interest. But the pure version of the dictator game disputes this: in a variety of settings and among different ages and groups, people almost never take all the money for themselves.

Oliver James and Capitalism

I won't go down the road of saying that there are two types of capitalism , selfish and unselfish , but Oliver James does have some interesting points to make as a clinical psychologist about mental health .

He says


Selfish Capitalism stokes up relative materialism: unrealistic aspirations and the expectation that they can be fulfilled. It does so to stimulate consumerism in order to increase profits and promote short-term economic growth. Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish Capitalism, because needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism.

The real wage of the average English-speaking person has remained the same - or, in the case of the US, decreased - since the 1970s.The top 1% of British earners have doubled their share of the national income since 1982, from 6.5% to 13%, FTSE 100 chief executives now earning 133 times more than the average wage (against 20 times in 1980); and under Brown's chancellorship the richest 0.3% nobbled over half of all liquid assets (cash, instantly accessible income), increasing their share by 79% during the last five years.
Mental illness in both children and adults since the 1970s as reported by World Health Organisation and nationally representative studies in the United States, Britain and Australia, reveal that it almost doubled between the early 80s and the turn of the century.

What does the damage is the combination of inequality with the widespread relative materialism of Affluenza - placing a high value on money, possessions, appearances and fame when you already have enough income to meet your fundamental psychological needs. With overstimulated aspirations and expectations, the entrepreneurial fantasy society fosters the delusion that anyone can be Alan Sugar or Bill Gates, never mind that the actual likelihood of this occurring has diminished since the 1970s.
A Briton turning 20 in 1978 was more likely than one doing so in 1990 to achieve upward mobility through education. Nonetheless, in the Big Brother/ It Could Be You society, great swaths of the population believe they can become rich and famous, and that it is highly desirable. This is most damaging of all - the ideology that material affluence is the key to fulfilment and open to anyone willing to work hard enough. If you don't succeed, there is only one person to blame - never mind that it couldn't be clearer that it's the system's fault, not yours.

Depressed or anxious, you work ever harder. Or maybe you collapse and join the sickness benefit queue, leaving it to people shipped in to do the low-paid jobs that society has taught you are too demeaning - let alone the unpaid ones, like looking after children or elderly parents, which are beneath contempt in the Nouveau Labour liturgy.

Unfortunately , Oliver James doesn't quite grasp that it is Capitalism per se that is at fault and his comparisons between "selfish" and "unselfish" capitalism is just a debate about degree and perhaps particular historic social developments of capitalism in various parts of the world .

His hope of " a passionate, charismatic, probably female leader who advocates the Unselfish Capitalism " that will reduce consumerism and inequality and create a sustainable ecologically sound world is a forlorn doomed hope . He still has a lot to learn about Capitalism . There is no nice or bad capitalism .

The basic theme of Fromm’s The Sane Society is that capitalism, because it encourages competition between individuals, pitting them against each other in a rat race for power, privilege and prestige, is a society that is incompatible with human nature. It is an “insane society”, a “sick society”. Only a society based on co-operation and community is a sane society as one which properly meets the psychological needs of human beings for a sense of belonging; not just a sense of belonging but a state of actually belonging to a real community. Only socialism can offer that . Although capitalism continually seeks to reduce us to isolated social atoms who only collide in the marketplace as buyers and sellers, the basic human need for community still expresses itself even if in distorted and perverted forms - racism, nationalism and religion. Capitalism can try to suppress the human need for co-operation and community but will never be able to succeed.

sex research

As it has been said , a thick wallet is the best aphrodisiac for a woman and now it appears to have been confirmed .

An Indiana University team looked at the behaviour of 46 people taking part in a speed-dating session. They found women opted for those who could give the best financial security. The report said men sought the more attractive women and the women were drawn to material wealth and security.

"While humans may pride themselves on being highly evolved, most still behave like the stereotypical Neanderthals when it comes to choosing a mate. Evolutionary theories in psychology suggest that men and women should trade off different traits in each other and when we look at the actual choices people make, this is what we find evidence for." - Lead researcher Peter Todd said

Psychological torture

What type of ethics do some psychologists possess .

We have the War Against Terror using mind control techniques on its captives .

Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty talking about the interrogation methods used on Jose Padilla .

"What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind," said Dr. Hegarty. "Padilla's personality was deconstructed and reformed."

We have the refusal of the American Psychological Association to bar its members from participating in interrogations at military and CIA prisons.Unlike the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association allows its members to participate in detainee interrogations.

"...the APA has not said one single word of concern about the role of psychologists, the role of psychology in abusive interrogations, in torture..." said Dr. Stephen Soldz , professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis.

They now follow a long tradition where we had , in the name of science and research and progress , kids being mentally tortured by so called members of the caring professions.

A secret study was conducted during the 30s where orphans in state care were tormented for six months and subjected to prolonged harassment to try and induce stuttering by Iowa University researchers.

The purpose - to test the theory that children develop speech impediments because of psychological pressure. None of the children became stutterers but some became self-conscious and reluctant to speak . The experiment had left them with psychological and emotional scars.

Easy for some so-called psychologists to treat the human mind as something to manipulate without care for the consequences . We are , after all , just disembodied specimens .

A New web-site

Socialists For Free Access Just an exercise in web design but some of the articles may be of interest and some have been posted here or elsewhere so no real surprises but good to have them all on one site for easy reference