What's with all these bi-polar people?

[Gandalf]

So Charlie Sheen is bi-winning and now Zeta-Jones has booked herself into rehab because she is apparently bi-polar. Stephen Fry is another one of that is apparently bi-polar. Everyone in the world appears to have some kind of mental problem. Even my own mother has piles of pills for her own apparent issues with depression.

So, my question is this. What is it all about? Are we simply inventing names of mental disorders so that drug companies can sell product or is it simply that we want an excuse for the way we fail to moderate ourselves? Or could it be that these trendy sounding mental illnesses are real and out there?

I have my own emotional swings and roundabouts, but I am never going to go to a doctor just to have him tell me that I am bisexual or bipolar or whatever the buzzword of the day is. I am who I am and I have to deal with my problems my own way. I am a cynic and often look on the bleak side, but does this mean I am a manic depressive. I don't think so. It is just who I am. The whole rehab thing sounds like a cop out a lot of the time. I can understand it for hardened junkies and Ricky Hatton, but Catherine Zeta-Jones might as well book herself a holiday and get away from it all if she is that stressed out. But for every Tom, dick and Harry to be bipolar? It's getting too obvious and seems like a bit of a cop out to me.

What are your thoughts on the growing bi-polar menace?

[CFH]

Mental illness is a very real problem and just because you can deal with your "problems" doesn't mean other people can and it certainly doesn't mean that they don't experience things in a much different way than you do. Honestly, I think your post smacks of ignorance and is typical of the types of attitudes which make it difficult for people with mental health problems to get the help they need.

[Gandalf]

My post definitely contains ignorance because it isn't something I understand particularly well. I just think that everyone goes through stages of being either up or down and that there are also a lot of times when things are quite stable and surely going on that criteria we all have mental problems. It's just life, it seems too glib to trot out the "oh, he's got mental problems" line. It just seems to me an already made excuse for a complete lack of self responsibility for ones own actions. You can look at Charlie Sheen for instance and see that he has issues, but to what extent is it simply a spoiled rich kid who has been able to do what he wants with no checks and balances or is it really a serious mental problem? I just wonder where the line is sometimes. Do we have people booking themselves into rehab because they can't be bothered to look after new born babies? The lines are blurring. Now a good old fashioned schizophrenic is what I refer to as a proper mental case, but depression and all of this? I'm sure there is a lot behind it, but I'm sure a lot more of it is excuse making for not wanting to face up to the cold, hard facts of existence.

I suppose I am quite British in that I believe a stiff upper lip, some moral backbone and a hardened attitude should suffice.

[CFH]

My post definitely contains ignorance because it isn't something I understand particularly well. I just think that everyone goes through stages of being either up or down and that there are also a lot of times when things are quite stable and surely going on that criteria we all have mental problems. It's just life, it seems too glib to trot out the "oh, he's got mental problems" line. It just seems to me an already made excuse for a complete lack of self responsibility for ones own actions. You can look at Charlie Sheen for instance and see that he has issues, but to what extent is it simply a spoiled rich kid who has been able to do what he wants with no checks and balances or is it really a serious mental problem? I just wonder where the line is sometimes. Do we have people booking themselves into rehab because they can't be bothered to look after new born babies? The lines are blurring. Now a good old fashioned schizophrenic is what I refer to as a proper mental case, but depression and all of this? I'm sure there is a lot behind it, but I'm sure a lot more of it is excuse making for not wanting to face up to the cold, hard facts of existence.

I suppose I am quite British in that I believe a stiff upper lip, some moral backbone and a hardened attitude should suffice.

Well, first of all Charlie Sheen is a complete act. I don't buy his shtick (sp?) for a minute.

Second - and I'll warn you right now this is going to get long-winded - I would argue that admitting you have mental health problems and getting help for them is a sure sign of responsibility, not a sign of irresponsibility. Also, people with mental health problems (and I'm speaking in an extremely general way here) don't experience the normal ups and downs of life like a 'normal' person would, that's one of the reasons they're considered mentally ill. Someone with depression can seem to have everything going for them: money, love, a good career etc. and they will still be miserable - that's a medical condition. Many mental health issues cannot be understand rationally because they are inherently irrational in their affects. They're absolutely legitimate medical issues though, just looks at how many people die as a result and how profoundly negative their impacts are on peoples lives.

[Gandalf]

My post definitely contains ignorance because it isn't something I understand particularly well. I just think that everyone goes through stages of being either up or down and that there are also a lot of times when things are quite stable and surely going on that criteria we all have mental problems. It's just life, it seems too glib to trot out the "oh, he's got mental problems" line. It just seems to me an already made excuse for a complete lack of self responsibility for ones own actions. You can look at Charlie Sheen for instance and see that he has issues, but to what extent is it simply a spoiled rich kid who has been able to do what he wants with no checks and balances or is it really a serious mental problem? I just wonder where the line is sometimes. Do we have people booking themselves into rehab because they can't be bothered to look after new born babies? The lines are blurring. Now a good old fashioned schizophrenic is what I refer to as a proper mental case, but depression and all of this? I'm sure there is a lot behind it, but I'm sure a lot more of it is excuse making for not wanting to face up to the cold, hard facts of existence.

I suppose I am quite British in that I believe a stiff upper lip, some moral backbone and a hardened attitude should suffice.

Well, first of all Charlie Sheen is a complete act. I don't buy his shtick (sp?) for a minute.

Second - and I'll warn you right now this is going to get long-winded - I would argue that admitting you have mental health problems and getting help for them is a sure sign of responsibility, not a sign of irresponsibility. Also, people with mental health problems (and I'm speaking in an extremely general way here) don't experience the normal ups and downs of life like a 'normal' person would, that's one of the reasons they're considered mentally ill. Someone with depression can seem to have everything going for them: money, love, a good career etc. and they will still be miserable - that's a medical condition. Many mental health issues cannot be understand rationally because they are inherently irrational in their affects. They're absolutely legitimate medical issues though, just looks at how many people die as a result and how profoundly negative their impacts are on peoples lives.

I look at Charlie Sheen and think "what a cad". I've no idea what he is all about really.

Good points in your second paragraph and I wouldn't say I disagree with any of that. I'm just not sure about it all, I mean I spend my share of time being miserable, but I wouldn't call it a medical condition. It is just a state of existence. It is who I am. Surely it is better to just accept who you are and to deal with it without talking to doctors or taking drugs that affect the balance of your mind. In some respects doesn't doing that mean you are running away from who you are and creating an artificial you? How many people have been depressed in their lives? We can't just medicate everyone when they are having their swings and roundabouts. Where is the line. Do we not rest until everyone is insulated by pharmaceutical companies? Just man up and carry on breathing, ride through the rocky patch.

Now people who cut up their bodies or people who starve themselves, those to me are what I would call obvious and apparent mental health issues. The whole bi-polar and depression area of mental health appears to me all that more murky. Catherine Zeta Jones after all these years is suddenly off to rehab and is bi-polar. It is almost like a celebrity badge or something. Why not just leave it at having a hard year looking after the kids and dealing with a husband with cancer. But no, she is bi-polar as well. It just seems to be all the rage. Life is hard, get on with it. No need to put a label on it so that certain mental experts find their own particular niche within a field.

Maybe I am just too cynical and cold. Obviously there are a lot of people out there going through hell, but at the same time I think a lot of people do simply need to buckle down. Life is not a picnic and that's just a fact of life.

[sonny78]

I have no doubt some people are very ill and need help, but I also think there are a lot of people being misdiagnosed as its easier just to treat everyone

Take a look at this

Link here

How to brand a disease -- and sell a cure

If you want to understand the way prescription drugs are marketed today, have a look at the 1928 book, "Propaganda," by Edward Bernays, the father of public relations in America.

For Bernays, the public relations business was less about selling things than about creating the conditions for things to sell themselves. When Bernays was working as a salesman for Mozart pianos, for example, he did not simply place advertisements for pianos in newspapers. That would have been too obvious.

Instead, Bernays persuaded reporters to write about a new trend: Sophisticated people were putting aside a special room in the home for playing music. Once a person had a music room, Bernays believed, he would naturally think of buying a piano. As Bernays wrote, "It will come to him as his own idea."
Just as Bernays sold pianos by selling the music room, pharmaceutical marketers now sell drugs by selling the diseases that they treat. The buzzword is "disease branding."

To brand a disease is to shape its public perception in order to make it more palatable to potential patients. Panic disorder, reflux disease, erectile dysfunction, restless legs syndrome, bipolar disorder, overactive bladder, ADHD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, even clinical depression: All these conditions were once regarded as rare until a marketing campaign transformed the brand.

Once a branded disease has achieved a degree of cultural legitimacy, there is no need to convince anyone that a drug to treat it is necessary. It will come to him as his own idea.

Disease branding works especially well for two kinds of conditions. The first is the shameful condition that can be destigmatized. For instance, when Pharmacia launched Detrol in the late 1990s, the condition the drug treated was known to doctors as "urge incontinence." Patients called it "accidentally peeing in my pants" and were embarrassed to bring it up with their physicians.

Pharmacia fixed the problem by rebranding the condition as "overactive bladder." Whereas "incontinence" suggested weakness and was associated mainly with elderly women, the phrase "overactive bladder" evoked a supercharged organ frantically working overtime.

To qualify for a diagnosis of "overactive bladder," patients did not actually have to lose bladder control." They simply needed to go to the bathroom a lot.

The vice president of Pharmacia, Neil Wolf, explained the branding strategy in a 2002 presentation called "Positioning Detrol: Creating a Disease." By creating the disease of "overactive bladder," Wolf claimed, Pharmacia created a market of 21 million potential patients.

Another good candidate for branding is a condition that can be plausibly portrayed as under-diagnosed. Branding such a condition assures potential patients that they are part of a large and credible community of sufferers. For example, in 1999, the FDA approved the antidepressant Paxil for the treatment of "social anxiety disorder," a condition previously known as "shyness."

In order to convince shy people they had social anxiety disorder, GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Paxil, hired a PR firm called Cohn and Wolfe. Cohn and Wolfe put together a public awareness campaign called "Imagine being allergic to people," which was allegedly sponsored by a group called the "Social Anxiety Disorders Coalition."

GlaxoSmithKline also recruited celebrities like Ricky Williams, the NFL running back, and paid them to give interviews to the press about their own social anxiety disorder. Finally, they hired academic psychiatrists working on social anxiety disorder and sent them out on the lecture circuit in the top 25 media markets.

The results were remarkable. In the two years before Paxil was approved for social anxiety, there were only about 50 references to social anxiety disorder in the press. But in 1999, during the PR campaign, there were over a billion references.

Within two years Paxil had become the seventh most profitable drug in America, and Cohn and Wolfe had picked up an award for the best PR campaign of 1999. Today, social anxiety disorder, far from being rare, is often described as the third most common mental illness in the world.

It is hard to brand a disease without the help of physicians, of course. So drug companies typically recruit academic "thought leaders" to write and speak about any new conditions they are trying to introduce. It also helps if the physicians believe the branded condition is dangerous.

When AstraZeneca introduced Prilosec (and later Nexium) for heartburn, for example, it famously repositioned heartburn as "gastroesophageal reflux disease," or GERD. But it also commissioned research to demonstrate the devastating consequences of failing to treat it.

If all drugs were harmless, disease branding would be relatively harmless, too. But no drug is completely benign.

For example, Detrol can make elderly people delirious and may cause memory problems. Paxil is associated with sexual dysfunction and dependence. It also carries a black-box warning for suicide in children and adolescents. Side effects like these are a part of every drug. But they are never part of the brand.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Carl Elliott.

[Gandalf]

That was a fascinating read too.

I have started this thread with my own particular assumptions about things, but as I have admitted I am somewhat ignorant on the issue. It was nice to see that my assumptions also appear to have some basis too.

It's insane how you can market a drug for shyness. There shouldn't need to be such a thing, surely such a character altering drug is on a par with cocaine or speed. I was a shy person once and still am when in a group, but my mantra is a simple one. You have to work these things out for yourself. You can't expect miracle drugs to do everything for you. You have problems, then deal with them. You are shy? Then work at it. All these years later am I shy? Yes, a little. Am I as shy as I was? No. Why? I worked on it. You can apply this logic to so many other things.

I also find it extremely bizarre when I am watching Friday night fights and the "I can't get it up" adverts come on. It's downright weird that you can be advertising "hard on" drugs on the TV. Is it only me that thinks this way?

I can see the logic of the "we will invent a solution to a new problem" industry. It's something I am very suspicious of and mental health is something we really don't really know all that much about. Does the person really have a mental problem or is it simply that it is easier to label them as having one and make some coin from it? It's that dividing line that has me arching my eyebrow a little.

[Ghost]

. You have to work these things out for yourself.

Easier to take a pill then try and work it out.

I also find it extremely bizarre when I am watching Friday night fights and the "I can't get it up" adverts come on. It's downright weird that you can be advertising "hard on" drugs on the TV. Is it only me that thinks this way?

Can't have a man, no matter his age going around with the ability to get it up. Was push through the FDA faster than any other drug currently on the market.

And no I do not need it.

[Howlin Mad Missy]

yes and no. It's often easier to hide certain mental illness depending on your profession, if you're an actor it's just you being 'artistic'. Imagine being bi-polar and a butcher with a wife, kids, and a morgage. seems a bit less fancy.

[Ghost]

yes and no. It's often easier to hide certain mental illness depending on your profession, if you're an actor it's just you being 'artistic'. Imagine being bi-polar and a butcher with a wife, kids, and a morgage. seems a bit less fancy.

Does he spend half the year in the Arctic and the other half down in Antarctica?

[Gandalf]

. You have to work these things out for yourself.

Easier to take a pill then try and work it out.

I also find it extremely bizarre when I am watching Friday night fights and the "I can't get it up" adverts come on. It's downright weird that you can be advertising "hard on" drugs on the TV. Is it only me that thinks this way?

Can't have a man, no matter his age going around with the ability to get it up. Was push through the FDA faster than any other drug currently on the market.

And no I do not need it.

Perhaps taking that pill is a cop out though. You are denying what you really are by resorting to products that change your natural mental condition. I can understand somebody wanting to talk to someone, but to need to resort to drugs just seems a bit frankenstein to me. I am shy, "well, don't worry son. Pop this pill and you'll be as right as rain in no time". That's no real way of dealing with the inherent shyness.

The erectile dysfunction thing is just another one of those things that seems strange to me. Fair enough that the product is available to those who need it, but you are able to advertise that on TV. Just seems that naughtiness wrapped up in nice language is completely fine even though what is being sold is totally pervy.

[Gandalf]

yes and no. It's often easier to hide certain mental illness depending on your profession, if you're an actor it's just you being 'artistic'. Imagine being bi-polar and a butcher with a wife, kids, and a morgage. seems a bit less fancy.

I'm kind of on the fence on this. I understand that some have serious problems, but I also wince when I hear of yet another celebrity quite publically coming out as bi-polar. It's like the latest cool thing for the famous to have. I can't control my life, well here is my medical justification.

[Ghost]

Perhaps taking that pill is a cop out though. You are denying what you really are by resorting to products that change your natural mental condition. I can understand somebody wanting to talk to someone, but to need to resort to drugs just seems a bit frankenstein to me. I am shy, "well, don't worry son. Pop this pill and you'll be as right as rain in no time". That's no real way of dealing with the inherent shyness.

The erectile dysfunction thing is just another one of those things that seems strange to me. Fair enough that the product is available to those who need it, but you are able to advertise that on TV. Just seems that naughtiness wrapped up in nice language is completely fine even though what is being sold is totally pervy.

TV is on a down hill slide IMHO. Late night ads can find you calling dating services that are anything but for "dating".

Fit's right into this forum.

[Kev]

I find it weird that the man who doesn't believe God, and therefore a soul keeps talking about accepting the 'way we are'.

How are you exactly? Personality and feelings according to evolutionary biology is nothing more than chemicals in the brain. If somebody is feeling shy, or angry, miserable all it is is chemicals in the brain being released to make them feel that way.

So why are you against giving them pills to alter that biochemistry?

You have a commitment to personhood that is entirely at odds with your world view.

[Andre]

yes and no. It's often easier to hide certain mental illness depending on your profession, if you're an actor it's just you being 'artistic'. Imagine being bi-polar and a butcher with a wife, kids, and a morgage. seems a bit less fancy.

I read that as a bipolar butcher with a knife.

I blame the chemicals in food through farming, combined with the flooding of the airwaves with frequencies not natural to us, thats my excuse,sometimes drugs n alcohol in a system being passed along to fetuses .