The Standard Review

Medicine for Social Anxiety

In order to market a product a desire for the product needs to be developed. Business today is much more about either establishing that desire or following the already established trend. Marketing practical products by appealing to people's need to have basic security is more difficult and less profitable.

The market driven unhealthy competition encouraged in most social situations creates anxiety that can be very advantageous to the industry that provides the products to help with that anxiety but most people are ultimately hurt by these enterprises. Their welfare is of little concern to these businesses because they worry about money now rather than long term security. What they have now gives them leverage for creating a future and marketing trends are difficult to anticipate.

A commercial on television for psychiatric drugs so clearly describes to me the creation of social anxiety, which then provides the product for the relief. The commercial targets people who are alone and yet not wanting to be by showing the pleasant social interaction in contrast. The voice at some point during the advertisement becomes more monotone as they describe the side effects of these drugs. They of course say nothing about the population of people using the drugs having a 25 year less life expectancy, the lack of research and efforts to make the drugs safer, nor do they mention how the drugs are tested first on the people who are least able afford them.

Using drugs, which lighten the physical and mental distress of social situations that are not directly controlled the FDA are considered by psychologists to be self-medicating drugs. Psychology is an industry who works together with the pharmaceutical industry to define normal vs. abnormal and then treats the deficits they define.

The drug industry, however, is showing no responsibility in association with this control.

This is a very interesting article: The Truth About the Drug Companies

Concerning US health care it says:

Drugs are the fastest-growing part of the health care bill—which itself is rising at an alarming rate. The increase in drug spending reflects, in almost equal parts, the facts that people are taking a lot more drugs than they used to, that those drugs are more likely to be expensive new ones instead of older, cheaper ones, and that the prices of the most heavily prescribed drugs are routinely jacked up, sometimes several times a year.

AND later it says this:


Furthermore, in one of the more perverse of the pharmaceutical industry's practices, prices are much higher for precisely the people who most need the drugs and can least afford them. The industry charges Medicare recipients without supplementary insurance much more than it does favored customers, such as large HMOs or the Veterans Affairs (VA) system. Because the latter buy in bulk, they can bargain for steep discounts or rebates. People without insurance have no bargaining power; and so they pay the highest prices.

AND:

But while the rhetoric is stirring, it has very little to do with reality. First, research and development (R&D) is a relatively small part of the budgets of the big drug companies—dwarfed by their vast expenditures on marketing and administration, and smaller even than profits. In fact, year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States. (In 2003, for the first time, the industry lost its first-place position, coming in third, behind "mining, crude oil production," and "commercial banks.") The prices drug companies charge have little relationship to the costs of making the drugs and could be cut dramatically without coming anywhere close to threatening R&D.

Second, the pharmaceutical industry is not especially innovative. As hard as it is to believe, only a handful of truly important drugs have been brought to market in recent years, and they were mostly based on taxpayer-funded research at academic institutions, small biotechnology companies, or the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The great majority of "new" drugs are not new at all but merely variations of older drugs already on the market. These are called "me-too" drugs. The idea is to grab a share of an established, lucrative market by producing something very similar to a top-selling drug. For instance, we now have six statins (Mevacor, Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol, Lescol, and the newest, Crestor) on the market to lower cholesterol, all variants of the first. As Dr. Sharon Levine, associate executive director of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, put it,

   


             "If I'm a manufacturer and I can change one molecule and get           another twenty years of patent rights, and convince physicians to prescribe and consumers to demand the next form of Prilosec, or weekly Prozac instead of daily Prozac, just as my patent expires, then why would I be spending money on a lot less certain endeavor, which is looking for brand-new drugs?[4] "





The me-too market would collapse virtually overnight if the FDA made approval of new drugs contingent on their being better in some important way than older drugs already on the market. Probably very few new drugs could meet that test. By default, then, drug companies would have to concentrate on finding truly innovative drugs, and we would finally find out whether this much-vaunted industry is turning out better drugs. A welcome by-product of this reform is that it would also reduce the incessant and enormously expensive marketing necessary to jockey for position in the me-too market. Genuinely important new drugs do not need much promotion (imagine having to advertise a cure for cancer).

A second important reform would be to require drug companies to open their books. Drug companies reveal very little about the most crucial aspects of their business. We know next to nothing about how much they spend to bring each drug to market or what they spend it on. (We know that it is not $802 million, as some industry apologists have recently claimed.) Nor do we know what their gigantic "marketing and administration" budgets cover. We don't even know the prices they charge their various customers. Perhaps most important, we do not know the results of the clinical trials they sponsor—only those they choose to make public, which tend to be the most favorable findings. (The FDA is not allowed to reveal the results it has.) The industry claims all of this is "proprietary" information. Yet, unlike other businesses, drug companies are dependent on the public for a host of special favors—including the rights to NIH-funded research, long periods of market monopoly, and multiple tax breaks that almost guarantee a profit. Because of these special favors and the importance of its products to public health, as well as the fact that the government is a major purchaser of its products, the pharmaceutical industry should be regarded much as a public utility.

Autism Speaks is an excellent example of how industry is making decisions about autistics without autistics. The charity Autism Speak's demands are consistent with how the drug industry creates profits. However, with what I am reminded of in this article, the drug industry that is tied to psychology industry is not only deciding who we are and how we should act (along with how we are acting wrong), but they are designing what and how we think in ways that serve the industry's welfare.

Of course allowing industry to design and implement a behavioral modification program such as ABA/PBS in public schools and other institutions where people have been diagnosed as behaviorally unfit would give a great deal of authority to that industry. People need to be very careful before allowing that industry to assume such authority.

We all aren't going to be politicians and political policy is decided by industry profits in ways that will lesson our rights. Autistic people aren't being heard and our exclusion is based on the same standards that have always excluded us. It's impossible to judge each other by mainstream standards that ultimately exclude us and rise above those standards at the same time. Either we change the standards, or we won't fit. The compromises aren't practical.

Determining the Future of Aspergers and Attacking Character

This is the link to a story about the future of Aspergers.

The industry of psychology has been encouraged by parents seeking learning accommodations for their children and adults searching for answers to why people behave improperly.

Society can't be very accommodating when industry and the politics that support it are dependent on showing the worth of products and people at the expense of defining products and people that are worthless.

These comparisons are often justified by claiming that this is instead a competition to find what is best and what is true. Unfortunately, that alone wouldn't stimulate the economy. Therefore, comparisons are made without the necessity for any of them being ethical or good. It is only important that something or someone is described as bad so that something or someone else appears better and can therefore, be marketed.

Thinking as it relates to either pathology, mental illness, learning disability, or neurological impairment has always been described by the degree of impairment as it relates to the fleeting, unrealistic, and unattainable definition of normal and is supposedly used to define whether someone needs nothing but care or is in need of (or able to receive) some type of therapy.

Due to the market driven mentality that creates these comparisons based on nothing more than popularity, different degrees of impaired thinking can only be given so much aid. If the solution to the problem ever becomes too attainable people will see the true goals of the industry and their stock will plummet.

In whatever way that Aspergers is now used to define a higher functioning level of autism a similar word or diagnoses will ultimately replace that word if it's taken away. We who are attempting to better define a social model for autism are fighting against an industry and a mindset that the industry uses to create profits. Politics is an extension of industry so the same exclusionary and discriminatory methods are used there as well.

In order to create a product/person that people will buy a determination must be made of what people don't want and how to get people to invest in preventing or fixing what is considered to be the problem. In psychology this product is basically defined as abnormal.

The two leading industries who make decisions about autism are the must-be-cured/must-be-fixed disease model and the behavioral deficit model defined by ABA/PBS etc. Most of the decisions I see being made in politics will create profits for one of those industries.

Like all other definitions of thinking impairments, it will not be profitable to encourage "treatment"to this population based on their impaired skills. People don't typically buy based on practicality but rather on emotion and impulse. Peoples character needs to be suspected for people to get emotional enough so they will buy something. If people believed that people were being mistreated based on their level of skill, they would see the injustice more clearly and work to end it. Therefore, the marketing campaigns are designed to describe the spectrum of skills as a spectrum of moral character as it can be associated with appropriate behavior.

Claiming that people are diseased and can't help what they're doing, people are misbehaving and need to have that misbehavior treated, and people are too lacking in self-awareness and empathy to be given respect, makes up a lot of how people are characterized and dishonored by the psychology industry, and it provides the justification for the neglect and abuse.

The most important way I can think of to encourage the respect of autistic people is to expose how the industry's are profiting by using the most convenient and effective way they know to assign what they claim is our deficit of skills an association between that and ugly stereotypes about our character.

In order for people to encourage autistic people they/we need to get away from the unfair commercially driven standards which are used as reasons for treating this population so badly.

Conflict of Interest

One myth that causes a lot of confusion and upset is that people are either competitive or lazy, or they are instead being passive/aggressive. Such motivations can only be attributed to people based on their behaviors and behaviors are too often narrowly judged by too few comparisons.

Once these judgments have been made in error they are too often accompanied by undue punishment. This is one reason that behavioral therapy can be so destructive even when it is described as constructive.

Due to the way that society is taught to chase trends based on emotion and impulse, independent thinking and the liberation it encourages is greatly discouraged. The ways we are taught to be consumers is heavily influenced by behavior modification methods.


Once people who for whatever reason are otherwise unable to determine their circumstances has their motivation judged by a narrow set of standards the ways they can be controlled and manipulated have few limitations.

It is very inconvenient to not be chasing what someone else claims that the majority wants (which is typically motivated by commercialism) or to want something so extravagant as safety and individual expression. It is typically fine for people to join in and advocate with others to attain something so that everyone can be judged by the same standard but to individually express what no one else seems to be in control of, even an expression that is an essential need such as safety or human rights, it is seen as aberrant and dangerous.

At the same time, evidence is growing to show the mental health industry as serving as the protectors of the public rather than wanting to provide therapy and rehabilitation to the population they label. The education that psychology provides is also meant to provide a standard of normal behavior that they know will exclude many people who society wants to dispose of. What are described as learning disorders can exclude people for racing thoughts, attention deficit, being overly excitable, and for generally not being able follow directions.

Thinking in specific ways and the ability to chase trends is very important in today's society. It not only determines what we buy and when we buy it, but it also impacts what products are chosen for international trade, what employers are looking for, and therefore, how we judge intelligence and even character.

The combination of quick prejudicial and unreasonable judgments about what people think along with a growing demand for a mainstream consciousness allows autistic people to be very vulnerable to abuse and neglect along with warehousing for the disenfranchised or for when all else seems to fail.

The best way I know for including more people and changing the thinking that leads to so much oppression is encouraging people to think independently and express independent thoughts. The narrower our judgments become about what people want and what their motivations are the more dependent we are on people who can make our decisions for us. Including more people who think different things or think in different ways is an important part of what will turn that around.

Normal Magic

In a market driven society people are labeled as either someone that models what purchases others should make or someone who has deficits that purchasing something will correct. This focus on consumerism is justified by how it supposedly stimulates the economy. For that justification to be accepted people need to ignore how this unrealistic marketing campaign demoralizes the majority of people by keeping their expectations beyond their resources.

If people who designed treatments and aids for the deficits autistic people are described as having were truly concerned with the future of these people they would not be emphasizing the same types of fashionable goals which are set by unscrupulous sales representatives.

The first step to making the goals of aiding autistic people practical is admitting what is unrealistic about the goals which are being set now for this population and why people have chosen them in the first place.

Before the DSM IV that is used to diagnose autistics can be considered as a method for labeling people so they can be better served, people need to look at the low rate at which aid is being provided for people with these disorders in comparison to the increasingly high rate at which people are being diagnosed.

To understand this inconsistency I think about how many of the agencies who are being funded to diagnose people are also directly supporting and supported by the pharmaceutical industry which is also involved in the research for cures which the increase in diagnosis helps to fund. The biggest problem with this is the false claim that people are being tested so they can be aided.

With autism specifically the diagnosis mainly provides for a demand to cure the one with a diagnosis or treat them with behavioral therapy (behavioral therapy which is designed to make them "normal").

The focus on the cure is void of any attempt to understand the nature of "who" autistic people are outside of how their deficits represent the need to fund more research.

Behavioral therapy begins with just as many falsehoods and misrepresentations of the people being diagnosed as autistic. The violent behaviors that ABA claims to target with their advertising are not found in the majority of those who have the diagnosis and the normalizing that the therapy claims to help with can't identify how this determination of the normal person was even made.

One method of marketing a product that is often used is to make it elusive and mysterious. By appealing to our reactionary impulses, we are further trained to be reactionary and impulsive, and as long as we are kept unable to attain security we can be completely controlled by our reactions to stimulus as well as our appetites. (The definition of humans as predominately reactionary is how ABA therapy is made so marketable.)

It takes time and effort for a society to become responsible and secure in the same way it does for individuals to become that way. If the mainstream society is based on the commercialism that encourages insecurity and then uses that insecurity to control us then we need to embrace our uniqueness and encourage that in each other rather than demeaning each other with standards that only serve to prevent our independence and empowerment.

Once we can see the purpose of our goal more clearly that can be incorporated into policies that better serve us. Many of the compromises and alterations we make on ourselves without a change in the standards by which we are evaluated ultimately leads to encouraging a system that discourages us.

Responsibility and Sanity

Just as necessity is the mother of invention, the way that modern society demands conformity serves as a reminder to some people of the need for neurodiversity.

The quick and simple way that modern psychology often defines insanity is by the claim that repeating an action and expecting a different result is insane. This broad simplistic view supports the demand for the public to adhere to many unreasonable conventions.

With each unreasonable demand of the public comes an equally hostile revolt from the public. This leads to the public demanding harsher treatments of oppressed populations by showing the hostility in people who have fewer opportunities to make planned responses. Their rush to judgment is described by those who  judge them as irresponsibility.

The commercial view of autism is geared toward generating charitable funds for research. The goal is to promote impulse buying (or impulsive contributions to charity and impulsively looking for ways to "treat" autistics). An impulse buy is what you see closest to the cash register at the supermarket. The products there are meant to encourage intense emotion that will override the customer's rational sensibilities.

The same type of emotional marketing is used to sell extreme autism treatments and build dramatic autism organizations. Due to some people's relationship to how autism is marketed, they encourage the dramatic market itself and their dramatic role in the market. Acceptance of autism makes life much less dramatic and therefore, autistics who are accepting, and their accepting families are excluded from the popular realm where autism is defined. Acceptance just isn't as marketable.

An autistic speaking or writing about civil rights is treated by this public as someone frivolously ranting who doesn't know the "real" problem. Keeping these autistics silent about the way they are treated allows for even worse treatment by those who are promoting the popular marketing campaign.

The statistics that describe how many autistics are being diagnosed clearly shows that civil rights is a major issue but again the mainstream marketing campaign falsely uses those statistics to redirect the focus.

To further complicate the problem this campaign includes having schools focus more of their attention on behavior by demanding statewide PBS in all schools. This program places the most intense focus on those described as having a behavioral disorder (which of course includes autistics).

Unfortunately, within the political environment this creates, autistic rights advocates and the disability rights advocates who support autistic rights are not able to hold a position that is contrary to the political campaign that promotes the negative stereotypes which are causing the problem.

Even when the mainstream media reports on how an autistic person has been abused, instead of focusing on the social factors that promote this abuse, the story is used to promote more funding for extreme treatments and/or research funding for "disease" cures.

As a resident of the United States I am well aware of how finance obstructs justice. I am aware of how marketing campaigns don't need to be practical or even responsible for how they conduct business.

Just as politicians are promoting normalizing ABA treatments by describing them as medically necessary, the pharmaceutical industry has redefined psychology as the treatment of medical disorders so that psychiatric medicine can be further used to restrain and subdue this population.

In the same way that psychology can teach a person more rational responses to inappropriate situations, the furthering of the agenda to make autism a medical disorder or to try to normalize behavior using inappropriate and irrational means of doing that is irresponsible. The psychology/psychiatry industry isn't being held accountable for these misdeeds as they should be.

The elimination of disability is impractical. Unrealistic expectations lead people to chase dragons. Once their expectation is not met in the way or in the time frame that they expect they feel betrayed. The feeling of betrayal leads to hostility and hostility promotes more irrational and impractical behavior.

There is a worldwide campaign to eliminate disability, which has and does lead to the elimination of disabled people. Many people outside of the disability community as well as those who are attempting to eliminate autism or normalize autistics seem to be unaware of the dangers of these unrealistic ideals.

People whose responses are seen to be the result of a learning disability, a mental disorder, or a neurological malfunction are often mistreated in the same way. The inappropriate ways that people respond to this combined population remind me that responses that are glorified as "appropriate" are often only described that way because the people who have the power to do so are involved in this as a means of self promotion.

Insanity defined as doing the same thing over and expecting different results cannot be effectively treated with insane methods. Being irresponsible will cancel someone's ability to teach responsibility. The groups that are involved in creating impulsive emotions to aid autistics need to step away from the commercial drama they are involved with in order to find creative practical methods for making their life better along with the lives of those around them.

Where Everybody Knows their Place

One of the themes I often write about is how the U.S. mental health care system is too often misinterpreted. This system was designed to protect the public rather than aid the recipient of the care.

The attitude that has been developed from this original design still compliments the goals of many of the enterprises that provide this care and that continues to greatly influence how that care is given.

Many modern Americans who got involved in attempting to change the government at one time or another were misled (or rather betrayed) because they were raised to believe in an unattainable status of middle class citizenship that they hoped to secure. In such a world of unattainable ideals there will be chaos, which demands uncreative minds to seek better methods of control. The more chaos they see the stricter they make their methods of control.

A corrupted system causes people to feel betrayed. Feeling betrayed leads to more erratic emotions and chaotic situations, which can again lead to the lack of inspiration and creative thinking where people again seek inappropriate methods of control. Of course inappropriate methods of control are how people again feel betrayed and how systems are further corrupted.

Psychiatric medications are advancing at a much slower rate than other medications with the same high level of demand due to how the population of people who take these medications are respected (or rather disrespected) in society.

The number of people receiving these medications is increasing and the age at which they begin taking these medications is decreasing.

The health problems these medications causes which are described as side effects are revealed in how the lifespan is shortened (this study says by 25 years) in mental health patients.

You will also find many school systems now describing a type of restraint known as chemical restraints. This is of course psychiatric medication.

One of the safety measures that is used for these medications is known as a "therapeutic dose." While such a therapeutic dose is written on the labels of medication bottles these standards do not apply when authorized by a physician in a mental health facility as a type of restraint.

Furthermore, in a mental institution a patient is given more privileges due to their lack of what is considered by the staff to be misbehavior. Of course not only are these privileges taken away when someone is seen to be misbehaving but force that is justified by the claim of needing to restrain is often nothing more than physical punishment.

With more children being diagnosed with psychological problems at earlier ages, more police officers being used in classrooms, and children being tried as adults at earlier ages, the public school systems are merging with mental health systems and corrective institutions.

As I said earlier in this post, the mental health system in the United States was designed for the safety of the public rather than the aid of the client/patient. (the term mental health consumer which is often used indicates choice where there isn't any) In addition to this influence today more than ever we have industries that are dependent on the misbehavior of children as well as adults.

Practically all commercial developments related to autism depends on the mainstream media negative stereotype of autistic people. A public institution will grow to rely on the demand for the services they provide and corporations align themselves with public institutions so that both entities are strengthened. With such alliances all programs involved are given even fewer incentives to change their policies that don't work.

No revisions to the medicare and medicaid programs will be made until the abuses are correctly attributed to the medical profession rather than continuing with the false accusation that the problem is due to the recipients.

Placing the blame on those who don't obtain an education or vocational training justifies a lack of new standards set for the public systems that claim to be providing that.

The reasons mental institutions provide control rather than aid for the patients is because that's what they are designed for.

NAMI (National Alliance for Mentally Ill) describes itself as:

For three decades, NAMI has established itself as the most formidable grassroots mental health advocacy organization in the country.

Over half (56%) of the funding for NAMI comes from the pharmaceutical industry who of course expects them in return to promote their political agenda.

NAMI supports Kendra's Law, which provides more power to parents as well as state and federal authorities to force someone into a mental institution against their will.

They also support this:


A major concern is forced outpatient drugging, which is legal today in 37 states.  Last summer, a similar bill in California, AB1800, was defeated through the help and work of a coalition of human rights organizations and people against forced psychiatry.   Under these laws, a person can be court-ordered to take psychiatric medications, and in fact in 6 of these states it is enforced through dose drop-in visits to verify that the person takes his meds.   This program, named the Program of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT), has been supported by NAMI, something that many local NAMI groups, and this reporter, object to. The National Empowerment Center has put together a program called PACE to promote the recovery model and provide an alternative to PACT.  The approach of forced drugging has also been introduced in prisons, where the prisoner can be both physically and chemically restrained, creating a chemical prison.


Their reasons for not supporting deinstitutionalization are described here:

*    failure to properly invest in community-based housing and services,
*    lack of accountability in ensuring that public mental health agencies focused limited resources on people with the most severe illnesses
*    inability of states and communities to follow and adopt best evidence-based practices in their public mental health systems, and
*    legal barriers that prevent the most severely ill individuals from accessing needed treatment.

Each of these reasons is the result of pushing for other agenda's. The wording doesn't clearly state what those agendas are at all. The needs that are expressed for this population can't be based on a broad set of ideals. Instead laws must reflect the acceptance of the type of system that is already in place in order to be passed.

Of course NAMI also endorses statewide PBS (Positive Behavioral Supports) in public schools.

Ten Best Practices for Mental Health and Schools by NAMI states this for #2

2. Training school professionals in effective research-based teaching methods and behavioral interventions including positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS).

The need for this PBS in schools is based on the misbehavior of students that is now out of control. Someone who is seen to be misbehaving is labeled as having a behavioral disorder. Once labeled a person is in a category where misbehavior is suspected.

Public institutions want stricter authority on a wider group of people with a staff trained to control behavior. They would claim that this is in the best interest of education. However, in cases where such programs have been implemented an increase in the participants becoming more educated and better trained for vocations has not been shown.

What the US government does not want to admit is that it uses public institutions to label and warehouse misfits. Whenever training is seen as a priority the type of thinking that goes with typical labeling and warehousing becomes a method of exclusion rather than inclusion.

If the United States was truly interested in including a broader majority of the people into the society that is respected, the employment rates would go up, the population of educated people would increase, and the public systems that are already in place would show how they are empowering more people.

Since all the indications are that this is not a government priority it must be understood that government officials will not favor any program that radically shows that any previous inappropriate motivations.

At this point, it is too important for the government to show that the fault with the programs is in those who were receiving them rather than in the providers. This is why when you see the support of government officials for more training in public programs you will see how that training provides more control rather than more motivation and empowerment for a broader group of people.

If it were just a matter of people not doing enough to alter the systems that are already in place you would already see a majority of people benefiting from them. If the majority of people aren't benefiting (which is now the case) you can expect that the public who is being served are those within the minority who have the most influence on public policies and laws.

If a policy or program is introduced to make the system better and doesn't demand a radical change in the attitude that created the faulty system in the first place, you can expect that the goal is to hang on to the old system in a way that the unsuspecting public still views what's happening as improvement.

Restraint By Any other Name

Sometimes people are so eager for liberation they unknowingly provide too much power to a source that ultimately reverts to oppressive measures to control them. Solidarity in this case appears to be the solution but ends up adding to the problem.

Once it is really understood as to just exactly which freedoms are real and which ones are exaggerated for national/commercial promotion, there is more opportunity to make the real changes that are needed.

When there isn't a clear understanding of what real liberation is and yet the need for it is recognized people are often too eager to trust people and programs that are unworthy of trust, and they end up being even more guarded and even more hostile due to being betrayed.

In the US psychology is more of a tool used by the government to reform, restrain, or further exclude its citizens. Mostly, it just restrains and excludes and the rare cases of reform are ultimately used to further exclude others.

Just as your doctor or auto mechanic will discourage you from knowing what they do by treating you in a condescending manner, your psychologist/therapist is likely to do the same.The common view is that, unless you know what they know you shouldn't speak about it (that way you never know what they know, and they retain control over you). This makes people without sophisticated knowledge feel more vulnerable to manipulation and therefore, more distrustful.

Before psychology can help anyone, people need to be able to trust psychologists. If people are taught by psychologist committed to behaviorism, that how they act is simply due to their animalistic demand for pleasure and aversion to discomfort, they are likely to feel less empowered with fewer options.

With the normalizing pressures that behaviorists can create people may also believe that any view they have that is uncommon to mainstream society (and uncommon to their standards enforcement squad) is overly emotional and therefore, incorrect. People who want to know how much someone cares before they care how much someone knows may be seen as simple, dull witted, sentimental and silly.

Psychology is used by the US government as a means of controlling the less desirable citizens.

The DSM IV is having more types of psychological disorders added to it all the time and often those diagnosing these disorder's are mainly putting a name (any name) on societal misfits.

The determination of a psychological disorder is said to be based on the services that they need. However, there are many indications that very few people within the population of Americans that are diagnosed with these disorders receive any services that help them become more included in society. Even less of them help them do better within their chosen environment when that isn't as social.

That means the psychological labeling is used as more of a method of further discrimination than of helping to decide who needs what type of aid. This makes it more of a method of reform. That reform is most often expressed by different types of restraint. The "terminally unique" as they are referred to by the conventions of psychology, are ostracized for choosing the discomforts of dysfunctional behavior rather than accept the work of their suggested program.

Very few of the people considered to have severe mental illness seek psychological therapy beyond that of medicine. It's important to remember that therapy for the mentally ill was designed for the protection of the public and NOT for the aid of the patient. This attitude is still the guiding principle that teaches practitioners to restrain rather empower their patients.

Much of the writing that has been done by psychologists has been used politically in ways that are seen by other psychologists and academics to motivate the public. However, what is often ignored is that while these writings claim to encourage enlightenment, they do not acknowledge how societal standards and the prejudices that support them will be even more excluding of people who aren't "enlightened".

Once society has identified the unwanted members, there are many tools that are used to keep them locked into the lifestyle they have been assigned.

People who take psychiatric medications that can afford to take ones that have been through a trial and been approved by the FDA. Who are these drugs tested on? Why of course on those who can't afford them otherwise and are seen by society as needing to be subdued and restrained. People who can't afford them are "given" these medicines as part of their medical insurance benefits. It is expected that if there are health problems that result from the drugs this population is less likely to complain and less able to file a lawsuit.

Often the people who run public school systems are prone to the same mindset. Many behaviorists (and the politicians who support and protect the corporate interest of behaviorists) would now have you believe that restraints are misused in the public school system because trained behaviorists aren't the ones administering those restraints.

If that were true why haven't behaviorists got a reputation for preventing the abuses of restraints? In the cases where abuses are attributed to behaviorists, why aren't they claiming that the people responsible are no longer associated with them? Since they are interested in teaching children to be accountable for their behavior, what accountability are they showing? Certainly, they could shut down a place like Judge Rotenberg Center to show their disapproval of the abuse that continues to occur there.

People who are supporting ABA don't want you to believe the myth that PBS is a more reasonable form of ABA because they don't want to admit that ABA needs to be made more reasonable. However, it would serve their purpose for people to disregard the abuses of PBS and their association with ABA while they are trying to get bills passed to ensure statewide PBS is practiced in all schools. It can easily be assumed that such mandates can eventually result in parents being considered criminally negligent for not "providing" ABA to their children.

Too often academic settings are where people learn to learn rather than learn to think. The tests that evaluate competence show little recognition for creativity and neurodiversity because the system people are being trained to enter is designed to encourage the support of people who are already in power and further glorify the skills that these people have.

Corporate welfare doesn't provide jobs for people who would otherwise collect personal welfare checks. Public vocational training programs provide the fewest opportunities for the people who need them the most. Crimes within the communities where the people with the least financial resources have the fewest number of investigations when the crimes are against them. Public defenders are paid the least and have the least amount of experience so those people with the most financial resources can escape punishment while those with the least can be wrongly convicted.

A judge can sentence a person to behavior management programs. If you can pay for them, you are treated much better than if you have to depend on public programs. The claim is that a person who is involved with public programs for any reason lives in a less sophisticated environment and needs to have stricter programs to force them to obey.

With the same mindset is a public agency claiming to protect disabled people from abuse. This agency is called Protection and Advocacy. Without the resources to secure any other defense (or without wanting to deal with the emotional chaos of a court trial) this is the agency provided to help with abuse of public programs. This agency is funded by the same money that is allocated to fund the agencies that they claim to be protecting people from, and they have the same bosses. Of course who they protect are those other agencies rather than the public.

Statewide PBS is a program designed to make behavior a higher priority in the school system. This is similar to some school systems who have trained policemen in classrooms for little children. It also fits with court systems lowering the age of accountability so that younger children can be tried as adults.

A person with the fewest resources in a courtroom will have a very similar experience when trying to defend themselves against the abuses of a public program for people with disabilities. You will have even fewer opportunities with Protection and Advocacy because with them, you will have no chance of having an impartial judge or jury. This agency is always completely partial.

If statewide PBS is implemented, an ABA corporation that will provide the training for the teachers will form a bond with the US government that will be very difficult for people to defend themselves from.

When Walmart or Target department stores open a new location and provide the locals with lower prices, the smaller companies that can't compete are driven out of business. Once those department stores have given you fewer options of where to buy those products by canceling the competition, they can raise the prices and become the oppressor of the same group they originally claimed they were liberating.

This is how a monopoly operates, and of course it is how the US government uses agencies like Protection and Advocacy to make the US more oppressive.

The US government often deceptively promotes incentive programs within bureaucracies that reinforce the way that misfits are excluded and mistreated.

Vocational Rehab specialist are given financial incentives based on how many people they are able to place in jobs. This means that not only will they take less time with helping the least qualified but they often choose the reward of placement even when they know the person won't be able to do well enough to keep the job.

A school teacher who has financial incentives based on how many people do well may choose to spend less time with those who need it the most and provide the main resources to the most likely to succeed.

The policy of the public school system is based on a similar view that oppresses adults. The view is that some people don't want to go to school and don't want to succeed. The idea that supports their oppressive ways claims that due to the scarcity of funds (which of course is false) the resources must be used to educate the most likely to succeed.

So when a child is diagnosed with a behavioral disorder (which is how someone trained in ABA will see an autistic person) how do you think they will be treated in relation to how the other members of the class are treated? The 3 tiers of behavioral problems according to how the standards of PBS will be implemented says that the most problematic (which of course includes autistics since autistic's by ABA's definition have a behavioral disorder) will be handled by the police.

So we have more people being considered to be neurologically predisposed to lack of empathy and prone to violence, and we have behavior modificationists trying to make it a law that children be "treated" by the same trained specialists who are protected from having to evaluate their own misbehavior. What message does that send?

Becoming aware of how the systems of government are run in the US can encourage some people to be afraid of their government and some to assume many conspiracies.This of course goes beyond healthy skepticism and is not what I'm trying to encourage.

What my blog posts are designed to do is influence people to think about how disabled people may be empowered by understanding better how this empowerment is being discouraged. I am living proof that you don't have to be smart to think. You just have to be willing to do it in spite of how it may appear threatening to those who are comfortable with following mainstream expectations.

The focus on behavior has always been to me the biggest threat to original thought. This type of restraint alone makes the US not a free nation. Don't give behaviorists or their politicians the authority to restrain you or your children this way.

The campaign claiming to help reduce restraints and seclusion in the public schools is designed promote  statewide PBS being implemented in all public schools.

Find out where political groups who represent autistic rights stand when it comes to ABA and the laws that are being encouraged that will give behaviorists more power and control over you and your children. The mainstream political system is mainly influenced by the biggest corporations and the mainstream media.They have an invested interest in not working to provide more opportunities for autistics so it's imperative that no one claiming to secure rights for autistics create these political alliances.

If you are not a part of the chosen and the privileged and are needing to be fighting for your rights, you don't have the luxury to simply follow an already established path. No group of people and no government will do well without being challenged. People who are leaders depend on you whether they know it or not. If you see people or the systems people create as being designed more to restrain than to encourage people, remind them of how necessary you and your thinking is to their future.

Systematic Mistreatment

Much of what is said to be advantageous for society is at best said to be that way because alternatives are seen as too complicated and expensive.

For instance, of course it is best for a nation to have a strong military but the reason there is such a need for this strength stems from the inappropriate lust for power that has caused so much trouble since the beginning of time. The reason for the need of it is important to remember.

Nations who are competing to be the strongest academically and the most technologically advanced are only encouraging a very small part of the population to be competitive. The others are seen as excess surplus that require too much effort and expense to educate and train. This is clearly seen in the U.S. where the statistics show how very few people are actually being educated and trained. You will see how clearly the population who is excluded in this way are discouraged by how few actually vote or are a part of what is deceptively known as "the democratic process".

It is rarely reported in the mainstream media that there is actually this kind of exclusion happening within schools and jobs that discourage people from wanting to pursue a better position in life but such articles and news programs have an audience that would not support them if they did. Their advertisers would support them even less. Therefore, it's easier to dismiss the population that reports such things as radical extremists and conspiracy theorists.

When the U.S. originally "settled" in their new land, there were some who were eager to use their church as their governing purifier and the label of witch was an all-inclusive title that allowed those who were seen as undesirable members of the community to be expelled. Today in the U.S. religious groups don't have that kind of governing power, so they have adopted psychology as a means of behavioral reform. Psychological branding of learning disabilities and other "abnormal" thinking patterns is now the most efficient and widely used method of societal exclusion. Just as it was then prohibited in many ways to not attend your local church and be judged by that authority, there are many modern systematic methods for demanding unwanted community members  to be psychologically profiled.

If you have met one therapist or agency worker, you have met only one. Many may have the best of intentions, and they will make life better for some people. However, those who are seen by them as overly problematic won't be seen that way because of what is truly the severity of their symptoms. That will instead be based on how their "symptoms" differ from what society has decided (both subtly and overtly) are welcome.

The claim that the radical desires of the mainstream autism movement can easily support a movement that encourages inclusion for this diverse population doesn't account for the systematic exclusion that I've described.

Behavioral modifications for autistic people will be similar to how prisoners are treated if the public perception of them includes them being seen as violent, self-absorbed, and having no regard for others. Making treatments mandatory will be exposing autistic people to mistreatment that is justified by the public opinion that is now being promoted by the mainstream autism movement. Even how autistics on the internet are treated will impact the public perception of how this population is understood and respected.  How you promote or criticize this mainstream movement and their systems will have either a positive or negative impact on everyone's future.

Commercially Infected

It's hard to deny that emotional distress can result in psychic pain and it's not wise to believe that denial isn't an important part of life. We all have limits for what we can accept and how much time, patience, effort, and support from others are required to recover from an emotional crisis.

Someone who seems to be dealing with a similar crisis to that of others may receive pressure from them to deal with it as quickly or in the same way as they did. Since there are too many diverse factors to consider, this can cause extra upset and delays in healing.

It helps to remember that we are all courted by marketing strategies geared to provide us with the comforts of escape. People don't typically gear marketing campaigns toward appealing to someone's responsible sensibilities. People have been conditioned to buy based on emotions and those who are selling too often don't care which ones. Human involvement and interpersonal relationships take time and effort. The stock market moves too quickly to acknowledge these factors.

It is unfortunate but true that modern medicine would place profits above principles and use marketing ploys aimed at our appetite for escapism. This is how corporations dictate how we see ourselves based on the standards of medical models.

Although the social models that we create are dependent on unnecessary politics and commercialism also, they have a better chance for being empowering to the majority because they are more directly involved with personal relationships rather than corporate interest. The social model meets us where we live rather than where we are taught we should live.

When corporations design anything, they do what will best suit the financial (and often temporary) interest of their company. Following these models (like the medical models) teach us that what can be bought and sold should determine our values.

The more the convenient medical values teaches us to honor commercial escapism and avoidance of reality rather than acknowledging our responsibility to create our own best situations from what we have available, the more we tend to get away from our personal asperations and lose our way.

Inside the Elephant's Cage

The elephant in the living room is used as a metaphor for how a large problem can present itself in a family or social group and yet be ignored and gone around rather than dealt with.

In a similar way we have issues (an elephant) within a broader society based on people not meeting social expectations. The belief is encouraged that we need to expect certain social behaviors from people and they must meet those expectations in order for them to be considered productive and worthy of respect. This restraint is unnecessary.

 

Once an appetite for a product or service has been defined as an economic staple, that which provides the feeding of the appetite is often seen as an absolute bonding agent that society cannot live without.

Unfortunately, when we fail to find ways to encourage people to follow the paths necessary for their security or when people don't all fit in our narrow definitions that preserve the validity of our expectations, the goal becomes the search for a method to encourage  people's efforts and ability in an isolated way in order to preserve our commercialism.

To justify preserving the economy first, it is said that what will ultimately trickle down from opulent banquets this philosophy creates will then in turn feed those who get labeled as unnecessary and obsolete.

Of course the problem is that this sort of limited pragmatism only addresses an immediate goal and doesn't account for how the societal attitudes affect individuals self-respect which inspires them to see how they have valuable assets and can attain them in order to provide for others.

Once a person or group of people has been stripped of their dignity and described as a category of insignificant societal elements which add to the greater burden on society, the problems they present are often fed with more ignorance so that the elephant (metaphorically speaking) grows larger and more inconvenient.

In the United States I have seen how a label of being deficited in one way or another is encouraged as a method to attain commercial provisions for that deficit. The possible problem with this of course is that if the deficited label often brings more exclusion from negative stereotypes than it does the kind of aid that would accommodate them and encourage their inclusion, then the label was nothing more than a trap.

Until we find a way to provide for each according to their need, many so-called methods for attaining "treatment" or "help" can become a massive inconvenient set of traps.

There are many ways to encourage the potential of someone without first defining what they can't do or will never become. The same is true for how we approach behavior problems. An over emphasis on rewards and punishments for how people act (often in ways that are benevolent) leads to an over emphasis on determining the worth of the individual by the nebulous ever-changing standards of behavioral leaders.

The United States has a long and ugly history of warehousing people. People are warehoused due to their behavior or perceived behavior based on what is seen as their impairment. The government institutions called public schools will best serve as a means to encourage children to be creative and strong as well as helping them to have an education, so they can serve the interests of their community in their own way.

No school system has best achieved those goals by first focusing on behavior in order to achieve academic success. If our school system has worse behavior, creating a one-size-fits-all behavioral program in academic settings will teach us to pass or fail at an earlier age and by narrower judgments and will ultimately exclude people's creativity along with the people who have the potential to create.

In regard to spending, it can easily be seen that we spend more money on ways that ultimately exclude and hide the less than welcome people and their undesirable traits than we do on accommodating and encouraging this group in ways that will ultimately motivate and encourage everyone else as well. All this leads to a larger deficit of resources and a detrimental taxing of our humans which is our greatest resource.