Medicalization
This article in the NY Times is what got me started:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/health/02essa.html?em&ex=1167973200&en=8eab6866ab9bd19d&ei=5087%0A
January 2, 2007
Essay
What’s Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses
By H. GILBERT WELCH, LISA SCHWARTZ and STEVEN WOLOSHIN
Medicalization. I get it. The success of the modern allopathic medicine is awe inspiring - from syphilis to yellow fever. But our minds - by which I mean thoughts, feelings, visions, judgments, maybe even sensations, etc., that arise out of and beyond our bodies/brains - is not reducible in the same sorts of ways our spleens are. It is normal - both average and normative - to feel sad and elated. We can even grieve and not be accurately described as having depression. Not everything is an illness. Not everything needs to be treated or cured. Some things simply have to be lived. And life IS painful. It is the absence of life which is numb to pain.
I cried this morning reading a saccharine story about a busboy with Downs Syndrome around whom a Truck Stop community gathers in support during a time of crisis. The sweetness and the pain make the story real - even if it isn't.
Sure I'm glad I've got Ibuprofen, Loratadine, etc... but I'm also feel blessed to know the sadness of loss, the pain of neglect because it means I am alive. I am not those experiences - any more than I am Hodgkins Lymphoma - but they have all shaped my experiences and responses to the my family, the world, to you. To "cure" any of those pains would be to eliminate those moments of my life as well as the richness of my future.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/health/02essa.html?em&ex=1167973200&en=8eab6866ab9bd19d&ei=5087%0A
January 2, 2007
Essay
What’s Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses
By H. GILBERT WELCH, LISA SCHWARTZ and STEVEN WOLOSHIN
Medicalization. I get it. The success of the modern allopathic medicine is awe inspiring - from syphilis to yellow fever. But our minds - by which I mean thoughts, feelings, visions, judgments, maybe even sensations, etc., that arise out of and beyond our bodies/brains - is not reducible in the same sorts of ways our spleens are. It is normal - both average and normative - to feel sad and elated. We can even grieve and not be accurately described as having depression. Not everything is an illness. Not everything needs to be treated or cured. Some things simply have to be lived. And life IS painful. It is the absence of life which is numb to pain.
I cried this morning reading a saccharine story about a busboy with Downs Syndrome around whom a Truck Stop community gathers in support during a time of crisis. The sweetness and the pain make the story real - even if it isn't.
Sure I'm glad I've got Ibuprofen, Loratadine, etc... but I'm also feel blessed to know the sadness of loss, the pain of neglect because it means I am alive. I am not those experiences - any more than I am Hodgkins Lymphoma - but they have all shaped my experiences and responses to the my family, the world, to you. To "cure" any of those pains would be to eliminate those moments of my life as well as the richness of my future.
posted by Daniel Morse at 7:49 AM
1 Comments:
It is great to see you blogging again. I checked everyday and missed you.
Great post. I was just talking to one of my college students yesterday about the same thing. She was saying she wanted to feel life and know it was real. Profound for an 18 year old!
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