Week 8 - Andrew Wong

The textbook discussed how mental health has become a very fashionable topic for corporations and the politically conscious. I agree with the author’s assertion that this is not a great benefit, to the cause. I remember being in school sometime after the peak of that phenomena, and having something wrong with you was in. A lot of my friends were reading ‘Prozac Nation’ and other memoirs from the clinically depressed. I had one friend in particular that loved to read about drug addicts and she would always talk about having ADHD. She ended up getting a ritalin prescription, and she stopped taking it because it really affected her. My suspicion was that she didn’t have ADHD at all. I’m sure that this is the case with many parents that have their children hopped up on medication. Medication should be an absolute last resort, and in my opinion drugs such as caffeine are much less harmful. Before we knew about these diseases though people would use marijuana and nicotine, which is probably more harmful in the long term. It would seem to me that if we embraced eastern solutions we wouldn’t have a toss up of what is harmful in the short term versus the long term. Some behaviors could be treated with acupuncture and massage therapy, which have no drawbacks.