blog

(photograph by Dan Winters)

Πηγή: The New Yorker

Head Case: Can psychiatry be a science?
by Louis Menand

You arrive for work and someone informs you that you have until five o’clock to clean out your office. You have been laid off. At first, your family is brave and supportive, and although you’re in shock, you convince yourself that you were ready for something new. Then you start waking up at 3 A.M., apparently in order to stare at the ceiling. You can’t stop picturing the face of the employee who was deputized to give you the bad news. He does not look like George Clooney. You have fantasies of terrible things happening to him, to your boss, to George Clooney. You find—a novel recognition—not only that you have no sex drive but that you don’t care. You react irritably when friends advise you to let go and move on. After a week, you have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. After two weeks, you have a hard time getting out of the house. You go see a doctor. The doctor hears your story and prescribes an antidepressant. Do you take it?

However you go about making this decision, do not read the psychiatric literature. Everything in it, from the science (do the meds really work?) to the metaphysics (is depression really a disease?), will confuse you. There is little agreement about what causes depression and no consensus about what cures it. Virtually no scientist subscribes to the man-in-the-waiting-room theory, which is that depression is caused by a lack of serotonin, but many people report that they feel better when they take drugs that affect serotonin and other brain chemicals.

There is suspicion that the pharmaceutical industry is cooking the studies that prove that antidepressant drugs are safe and effective, and that the industry’s direct-to-consumer advertising is encouraging people to demand pills to cure conditions that are not diseases (like shyness) or to get through ordinary life problems (like being laid off). The Food and Drug Administration has been accused of setting the bar too low for the approval of brand-name drugs. Critics claim that health-care organizations are corrupted by industry largesse, and that conflict-of-interest rules are lax or nonexistent. Within the profession, the manual that prescribes the criteria for official diagnoses, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the D.S.M., has been under criticism for decades. And doctors prescribe antidepressants for patients who are not suffering from depression. People take antidepressants for eating disorders, panic attacks, premature ejaculation, and alcoholism.

These complaints are not coming just from sociologists, English professors, and other troublemakers; they are being made by people within the field of psychiatry itself. As a branch of medicine, depression seems to be a mess. Business, however, is extremely good. Between 1988, the year after Prozac was approved by the F.D.A., and 2000, adult use of antidepressants almost tripled. By 2005, one out of every ten Americans had a prescription for an antidepressant. IMS Health, a company that gathers data on health care, reports that in the United States in 2008 a hundred and sixty-four million prescriptions were written for antidepressants, and sales totalled $9.6 billion. As a depressed person might ask, What does it all mean?

Διαβάστε τη συνέχεια του άρθρου εδώ…

Έχουμε γράψει και παλιότερα στο blog αυτό για το ‘Hearing Voices’ Network και τη δουλειά που κάνει. Με μεγάλη χαρά είδαμε οτι έρχεται και στην Αθήνα για ένα σεμινάριο που απευθύνεται σε ανθρώπους που ακούνε φωνές, στους συγγενείς και φίλους και σε επαγγλεματίες ψυχικής υγείας.

Περισσότερες πληροφορίες για το Hearing Voices Network εδώ…

Αναχωρούμε για Portland, Oregon. Η Βασιλική Κατριβάνου είναι ήδη εκεί, και αύριο αναχωρεί η υπόλοιπη ομάδα (Λένα Ασλανίδου, Λίλη Βασιλείου, Αλεξάνδρα Βασιλείου, Σοφία Ηλία). Η Νάνσυ Παπαθανασίου θα παραμείνει στην Αθήνα, να ‘βαστάει το φρούριο’. Στο Portland, θα συνατήσουμε και το Γρηγόρη Βέλλιο, που παρακολουθεί το εκπαιδευτικό πρόγραμμα του Portland.

Το πρόγραμμα μας είναι πλούσιο και γεμάτο. Θα παρακολουθήσουμε το σεμινάριο των Arny και Amy Mindell “The Second Training with the Earth’s Viewpoint”, που γίνεται στο Yachats του Oregon. Έξτρα μπόνους, το μαγικό τοπίο του Ειρηνικού Ωκεανού, οι φάλαινες και οι ατέλειωτες παραλίες.

Στο Portland θα γίνουν διήμερες διεθνείς συναντήσεις εκαπαιδευόμενων και αποφοίτων του προγράμματος εκπαίδευσης στο Process Work, καθώς επίσης και το 2nd International Association of Process Oriented Psychology Conference. Το πρόγραμμα του συνεδρίου είναι πλούσιο σε παρουσιάσεις. Μια κλωνοποίηση τριών ημερών θα μας έλυνε το πρόβλημα της επιλογής στο τι θα παρακολουθήσουμε.

Καλή αντάμωση αρχές Μαρτίου!

Πηγή: Έλληνες Ενεργοί Πολίτες

Επειδή πάντα θα υπάρχουν άνθρωποι που χρειάζονται βοήθεια, επειδή πάντα θα υπάρχουν άνθρωποι που θα δίνουν απλόχερα τη βοήθεια τους… Και επειδή πάντα κάποιοι έχουν περισσότερη ανάγκη… Όπως πέρυσι, έτσι και φέτος,

οι Homeless Support σε συνεργασία με τους ΕΛΛΗΝΕΣ ΕΝΕΡΓΟΥΣ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΣ θα διοργανώσουμε εκδήλωση για τη συγκέντρωση υποστρωμάτων και υπνόσακων, τους οποίους στη συνέχεια θα διανείμουμε σε άτομα στερούμενα στέγης που εντοπίζονται στην ευρύτερη περιοχή του λεκανοπεδίου της Αττικής.

Το προηγούμενο έτος, πάνω από 150 υπνόσακοι και περίπου άλλα τόσα υποστρώματα, συγκεντρώθηκαν χάρη στη δική σας ευγενική συνεισφορά. Πολίτες όλων των οικονομικών δυνατοτήτων αλλά και ηλικιών, από μικρά παιδιά μέχρι και ηλικιωμένοι, αψηφώντας το τσουχτερό κρύο δημιούργησαν μια ζεστή αγκαλιά για 150 συνανθρώπους μας που λόγω των δύσκολων οικονομικών και κοινωνικών προβλημάτων της εποχής αδυνατούν να καλύψουν την ανάγκη της στέγης.

Η δράση μας δεν έδωσε λύση, αλλά προσέθεσε μια επιπλέον φωνή στην ανάδειξη του σοβαρού αυτού κοινωνικού προβλήματος. Ελπίζουμε αυτή τη χρονιά η αγκαλιά μας να μεγαλώσει και η φωνή μας να ακουστεί πιο δυνατά ώστε να φτάσει σε όλους τους αρμόδιους φορείς και να συντελέσει στην ουσιαστική αντιμετώπιση του προβλήματος. Οι υπνόσακοι και τα υποστρώματα που θα συγκεντρωθούν, θα παραδοθούν άμεσα, από εμάς τους ίδιους, στους αστέγους που έχουν για σπίτι τους τις γειτονιές, τις πλατείες και τα παγκάκια της Αθήνας.

Καλούμε όλους τους συνανθρώπους μας, οι οποίοι μπορούν και θέλουν, να φέρουν βοήθεια αλλά και να βοηθήσουν στη διαχείριση της ανθρωπιστικής βοήθειας, συμμετέχοντας στην προσπάθεια ανακούφισης των αστέγων. Όποιος επιθυμεί, μπορεί να συμμετέχει την ίδια και την επόμενη νύχτα, στη διανομή της ανθρωπιστικής βοήθειας στους άστεγους που ζουν στην πρωτεύουσα.

Η συμμετοχή και συνεισφορά σας είναι πολύτιμη!

Για πληροφορίες:
Βασιλική Τζανάκου : τηλ. 6977 322 899
Στάθης Διομήδης: τηλ. 210 57 22 034 και 6972 259 600
Ηλ. Ταχυδρομείο: homeless.support14@gmail.com, ellinesenergoipolites@gmail.com

Πολύ ενδιαφέρον, πάρα πολύ ενδιαφέρον το άρθρο των New York Times…

Is There an Ecological Unconscious?
By DANIEL B. SMITH
January 31, 2010

About eight years ago, Glenn Albrecht began receiving frantic calls from residents of the Upper Hunter Valley, a 6,000-square-mile region in southeastern Australia. For generations the Upper Hunter was known as the “Tuscany of the South” — an oasis of alfalfa fields, dairy farms and lush English-style shires on a notoriously hot, parched continent. “The calls were like desperate pleas,” Albrecht, a philosopher and professor of sustainability at Murdoch University in Perth, recalled in June. “They said: ‘Can you help us? We’ve tried everyone else. Is there anything you can do about this?’ ”

Residents were distraught over the spread of coal mining in the Upper Hunter. Coal was discovered in eastern Australia more than 200 years ago, but only in the last two decades did the industry begin its exponential rise. Today, more than 100 million tons of black coal are extracted from the valley each year, primarily by open-pit mining, which uses chemical explosives to blast away soil, sediment and rock. The blasts occur several times a day, sending plumes of gray dust over ridges to settle thickly onto roofs, crops and the hides of livestock. Klieg lights provide a constant illumination. Trucks, draglines and idling coal trains emit a constant low-frequency rumble. Rivers and streams have been polluted.

Albrecht, a dark, ebullient man with a crooked aquiline nose, was known locally for his activism. He participated in blockades of ships entering Newcastle (near the Upper Hunter), the largest coal-exporting port in the world, and published opinion articles excoriating the Australian fossil-fuel industries. But Albrecht didn’t see what he could offer besides a sympathetic ear and some tactical advice. Then, in late 2002, he decided to see the transformation of the Upper Hunter firsthand.

“There’s a scholar who talks about ‘heart’s ease,’ ” Albrecht told me as we sat in his car on a cliff above the Newcastle shore, overlooking the Pacific. In the distance, just before the earth curved out of sight, 40 coal tankers were lined up single file. “People have heart’s ease when they’re on their own country. If you force them off that country, if you take them away from their land, they feel the loss of heart’s ease as a kind of vertigo, a disintegration of their whole life.” Australian aborigines, Navajos and any number of indigenous peoples have reported this sense of mournful disorientation after being displaced from their land. What Albrecht realized during his trip to the Upper Valley was that this “place pathology,” as one philosopher has called it, wasn’t limited to natives. Albrecht’s petitioners were anxious, unsettled, despairing, depressed — just as if they had been forcibly removed from the valley. Only they hadn’t; the valley changed around them.

Διάβασε τη συνέχεια του άρθρου εδώ….

photo by Robin Holland

Έφυγε κι ο Howard Zinn… Πλήρης ημερών και με μεγάλο έργο, πολύτιμο, και μοναδικό. Καλό ταξίδι Howard Zinn, σε ευχαριστούμε για αυτά που μας έμαθες…

Πηγή: The New York Times

Howard Zinn, Historian, Dies at 87

Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose book “A People’s History of the United States” became a million-selling leftist alternative to mainstream texts, died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87 and lived in Auburndale, Mass.

The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said.

Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, “A People’s History” was, fittingly, a people’s best-seller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1 million sales in 2003. Although Professor Zinn was writing for a general readership, his book was taught in high schools and colleges throughout the country, and numerous companion editions were published, including “Voices of a People’s History,” a volume for young people and a graphic novel.

“A People’s History” told an openly left-wing story. Professor Zinn accused Christopher Columbus and other explorers of committing genocide, picked apart presidents from Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and celebrated workers, feminists and war resisters.

Even liberal historians were uneasy with Professor Zinn, who taught for many years at Boston University. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once said: “I know he regards me as a dangerous reactionary. And I don’t take him very seriously. He’s a polemicist, not a historian.”

In a 1998 interview with The Associated Press, Professor Zinn acknowledged that he was not trying to write an objective history, or a complete one. He called his book a response to traditional works, the first chapter, not the last, of a new kind of history.

“There’s no such thing as a whole story; every story is incomplete,” Professor Zinn said. “My idea was the orthodox viewpoint has already been done a thousand times.”

“A People’s History” had some famous admirers, including the actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The two grew up near Professor Zinn, were family friends and gave the book a plug in their Academy Award-winning screenplay for “Good Will Hunting.”

Oliver Stone was a fan, as was Bruce Springsteen, whose bleak “Nebraska” album was inspired in part by “A People’s History.” The book was the basis of a 2007 documentary, “Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind,” and even showed up on “The Sopranos,” in the hand of Tony’s son, A.J.

Professor Zinn himself was an impressive-looking man, tall and rugged with wavy hair. An experienced public speaker, he was modest and engaging in person, more interested in persuasion than in confrontation.

Born in New York in 1922, Professor Zinn was the son of Jewish immigrants who as a child lived in a rundown area in Brooklyn and responded strongly to the novels of Charles Dickens. At age 17, urged on by some young Communists in his neighborhood, he attended a political rally in Times Square.

“Suddenly, I heard the sirens sound, and I looked around and saw the policemen on horses galloping into the crowd and beating people,” he told The A.P. “I couldn’t believe that.”

“And then I was hit. I turned around and I was knocked unconscious. I woke up sometime later in a doorway, with Times Square quiet again, eerie, dreamlike, as if nothing had transpired. I was ferociously indignant.”

War continued his education. Eager to help wipe out the Nazis, he joined the Army Air Corps in 1943 and even persuaded the local draft board to let him mail his own induction notice. He flew missions throughout Europe, receiving an Air Medal, but he found himself questioning what it all meant. Back home, he gathered his medals and papers, put them in a folder and wrote on top: “Never again.”

He attended New York University and Columbia University, where he received a doctorate in history. In 1956, he was offered the chairmanship of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, an all-black women’s school in segregated Atlanta.During the civil rights movement, Professor Zinn encouraged his students to request books from the segregated public libraries and helped coordinate sit-ins at downtown cafeterias. He also published several articles, including a rare attack on the Kennedy administration, accusing it of being too slow to protect blacks.He was loved by students — among them a young Alice Walker, wh

o later wrote “The Color Purple” — but not by administrators. In 1963, Spelman fired him for “insubordination.” (Professor Zinn was a critic of the school’s non-participation in the civil rights movement.) His years at Boston University were marked by opposition to the Vietnam War and by feuds with the school’s president, John Silber.

Professor Zinn retired in 1988, spending his last day of class on the picket line with students in support of an on-campus nurses’ strike. Over the years, he continued to lecture at schools and to appear at rallies and on picket lines.

Besides “A People’s History,” he wrote several books, including “The Southern Mystique,” “LaGuardia in Congress” and the memoir “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train,” the title of a 2004 documentary about Professor Zinn that Mr. Damon narrated. He also wrote three plays.

His wife and longtime collaborator, Roslyn, died in 2008. They had two children, Myla and Jeff.

One of Professor Zinn’s last public writings was a brief essay, published last week in The Nation, about the first year of the Obama administration.

“I’ve been searching hard for a highlight,” he wrote, adding that he wasn’t disappointed because he never expected a lot from President Obama.

“I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.”