Thursday, November 17, 2011

JR - Chapter 10 Summary(with respond to 10 and 11)

Chapter 10 is about the DSM-III, which was made by Robert Spitzer, and how,much like Hare's checklist, was being used to diagnose people incorrectly of diseases -- mainly children who were thought to have bipolar disorder. Ronson looks at a much larger checklist, the DSM's, and realizes the awful consequences that can come from misdiagnosing a person. He expresses to us the HUGE variety of mental disorders and gives instances of real life people when their misdiagnosing has gone terribly wrong. In trying to prove that the world of psychoanalysts were useless, David Rosenhan sent a group of men each to a different mental hospital where they all said they heard voices that only said 3 words, the men then acted completely normal. The men were kept there for some as long as 2 months, all diagnosed with different diseases. This exposed the negatives of psychiatric work to the world. Also Ronson wrote about how children all over are being misdiagnosed with bipolar disease and it has resulted in children becoming overmedicated and in some cases dieing.

Overall I think the book was pretty good; it kept my attention but I felt somethings just didn't really fit together. Bob Hare is probably psychopathic but I think everyone is slightly psychopathic. Well maybe not psychopathic but I am 100% positive that if I looked at the DSM something would be wrong with me. Well something would probably be wrong with everyone, but that's what makes life interesting. I like strange people, they keep the world entertaining. If everyone was normal the world would be a ridiculously boring place to live, and I would rather live with aliens. I am not surprised to learn about the misdiagnostics that come from the DSM. But really you can't blame the psychiatrists, I think the DSM and the people who taught them how to do their jobs and how to diagnose should be to blame.

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