Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Home › Defining "Mental Health"? ›

Reply to comment

kmanning's picture

the ethics of pharmacology

Submitted by kmanning on Sun, 09/14/2008 - 12:03pm.
Many things struck me in "The bipolar puzzle," but one of the most troubling was the following quote about bi-polar disorder: "The tricky part, diagnostically, is that out of those seven symptoms, three — distractibility, activity increase and talkativeness — are also symptoms of A.D.H.D. Which means that a severely irritable child who has A.D.H.D. could be, theoretically, only one symptom away from a bipolar diagnosis."

This article really brings to the forefront many of the issues involved in trying to treat mental illness pharmacologically, while the definition of many mental illnesses is still a mixture of both scientific and non-scientific symptoms. If our treatment plans are scientific but our definition of illness is still in part behavioral - and thus influenced by many non-scientifically quantifiable factors - are we using people - and in many cases children - as lab rats?

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
1 + 18 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.

Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities

Scanning electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2

Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.

Narrative is determined not by a desire to narrate but by a desire to exchange. (Roland Barthes, S/Z)

What's New? Subscribe to Serendip Studio