babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Gabor Mate and addiction
April 15, 2008 - 5:14am
I read it last month and was impressed by his description of the horrors of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES), but more than a little disappointed by his faith in recovery. War on Drugs aside, people who use addiction to cope with trauma still have a great deal of hope. The opinion put forward by Mate and the empire he works for - the Portland Hotel Society - is that people with addictions are "palliative" (a word Mate used in a recent interview with Pivot Legal Society). He believes that compassion is the only answer.
I strongly disagree with this view. People can change and yes, they need compassion in order to do it. But Mr. Mate, over-prescribing anti-depressants and over-diagnosing the controversial ADHD will not help your patients. No, it further disempowers them and takes away any hope they may have harboured.
I haven't read the book. I'm not a Buddhist, and am a materialist; spiritual outlooks are foreign to me, but this can be a way of expressing social alienation.
Leifur the Lucky
The Selling of ADHD: Diagnoses, Prescriptions Soar After 20-Year Marketing Effort by Big Pharma
video & transcript
We are joined by four guests: Alan Schwarz, an award-winning reporter who wrote the New York Times piece, "The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder"; Jamison Monroe, a former teenage Adderall addict who now runs Newport Academy, a treatment center for teens suffering from substance abuse and mental health issues; Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician and best-selling author of four books, including "Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It"; and John Edwards, the father of a college student who committed suicide after he was prescribed Adderall and antidepressant medications at the Harvard University Health Services clinic.
quote:
JAMISON MONROE: So, one thing that I want to highlight real quick is, in one of Alan’s previous pieces, he had a great quote from a pediatrician, and this is something that I love that Dr. Maté addresses, as well. And a pediatrician, quote, said, "I don’t have a whole lot of choice. We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment—the school environment, parenting—so we have to modify the kid." So, you know, like we’re saying here, we’ve kind of been pushed into a corner. We need to develop, you know, parenting skills. We need to expand the school offerings, creative arts, creative outlets, things like that.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/12/17/the_selling_of_adhd_diagnoses_pre...