[SSRI-Research] Sampling of those who should have been given Psychopharmaceutical treatment as children

[Guest guest]

> JustSayNo

> Mon, 5 Jul 2004 20:55:25 -0400

> [sSRI-Research] Sampling of those who

> should have been given Psychopharmaceutical

> treatment as children

>

> Dear All

>

> In the light of the US Governments plans to screen

> for mental Illness and having just read another

> conference paper entitled " intervening in childhood

> and adolesence to prevent personality disorder " the

> contents of which you can guess, I thought it was

> time to recycle this one...with additions

>

> Incidentally when is the government going to screen

> for malnutition, exposure to toxins and the

> consequences of living in insanitary conditions?

> All still present in 21st century America

>

> A Sampling of those who should have been given

> Psychopharmaceutical treatment as children

>

> The following list of artists, scientists,

> philosophers and statesmen are all believed to have

> had what would now be described as personality

> disorders or suffered from Mental Illness. The

> 'personalities' of these people have provided a

> momentous contribution to humanity.

>

> Joan of Arc 1412-1431

>

> Joan of Arc was born the third child of a farming

> family in the town of Domrémy, France. She spent

> her early life tending the farm animals and at the

> age of 12 while in the field began to hear voices.

> This was clearly early onset schizophrenia and when

> later she decided that these voices were from St

> Michael and St Catherine and were conveying messages

> from God it had manifested itself in to paranoid

> schizophrenia culminating in a delusion that she

> should lead the army of France against the English.

> (Which she did)

>

> After some startling victories she was betrayed by

> the Burgundians and handed over to the English Army.

> Joan was burnt at the stake in Rouen in 1431. If

> she had been given 400mg of Chlorpromazine on a

> daily basis at the age of 13 she could have avoided

> this terrible fate and perhaps England would still

> rule France.

>

> Mary Wollstonecraft 1759-1797

>

> In an age when philosophy was entirely dominated by

> men Mary made the first astoundingly brave attempts

> to establish the concept of women's rights and,

> inspired by Rousseau, advocated the education of

> girls on an equal footing with boys. Mary was the

> founder of feminism and shared a historical platform

> with some of the eighteenth century enlightenment's

> most distinguished philosophers, statesmen, and

> writers. Mary also suffered from periods of

> depression and made a number of suicide attempts. A

> course of Electoconvulsive therapy supported with

> anti depressant medication and incarceration in an

> asylum would have helped to sort out Mary's problem

> and would have also got around the pesky problem of

> female emancipation.

>

> Florence Nightingale 1820-1910

>

> Like Joan of Arc, Florence had had periods in her

> life when she believed she was being spoken to by

> God who was directing her to do his work. Again

> Florence was obviously suffering from paranoid

> delusions brought about by a chemical imbalance.

> After a period of tending the wounded during the

> Crimean War she developed Post-Traumatic Stress

> Disorder indicating an underlying personality

> disorder.

>

> Yes Florence did go on to found the basis of all

> modern nursing but she would have been much better

> off having monthly depot injections of Haloperidol

> which could have suppressed the schizophrenic

> delusions about having a mission in life and left

> medicine where it belonged, in the hands of men.

>

> Ludwig van Beethoven

>

> It is well documented that Beethoven was an

> irascible character prone to fits of severe

> depression and severe mood swings. Some of his

> finest music, indeed some of the finest music the

> world has ever heard was created during those

> periods of " melancholia " which we would now treat

> with mind numbing anti depressants and SSRI's. How

> much more moving would have been the Pastoral

> Symphony or the 'Ode to Joy' had Beethoven had the

> benefits of Prozac or Paxil?

>

> Albert Einstein

>

> Einstein's family were very concerned about the time

> it took Albert to learn to talk. Having learned he

> would practice entire sentences before starting to

> speak. When he attended elementary school his

> headmaster put in his reports that he would never

> amount to anything. Later in his schooling he

> became both introspective and defiant of authority.

> Today Einstein's parents would be able to whip him

> off to a doctor to be diagnosed with ADHD and

> comorbid Oppositional Defiance Disorder and

> prescribed Ritalin. What a wonderful effect that

> would have had on the General Theory of Relativity

>

> Jean Jacques Rousseau

>

> Rousseau had no formal education and was brought up

> by relatives after his mother had died giving birth

> and his father had deserted him. He had an unruly

> life in which he lived with a maidservant who bore

> him five children all of which he consigned to the

> foundling hospital. Rousseau argued that societies

> institutions had corrupted man and pressed for more

> enlightened education. He argued against swaddling

> infants and for the transformation of child rearing,

> children were to be breast-fed and allowed loose

> clothes to enjoy freedom of movement and closeness

> to nature. He fervently argued that a child should

> be treated as a child and not as an inadequate

> adult. The child had the potential to develop

> unlimited talent in this way. Rousseau died

> insane and throughout his life suffered from what

> would now be described as bipolar depression. How

> much more of a contribution to the Eighteenth

> Century Enlightenment would he have been able to

> make if he had been given lithium, tricyclics and

> ECT?

>

> (Swaddling was the practice of tightly binding an

> infant in clothing designed to restrict movement and

> stimulation, to keep the child quiet. We have a more

> scientific approach to this today giving children

> powerful and addictive drugs to keep them in a

> similar condition.)

>

> Winston Churchill

>

> Churchill was perhaps one of the greatest soldier

> statesmen of the twentieth century and in 1940 stood

> defiant of the greatest war machine and most evil

> political system the world had ever seen. His

> defiance had been a constant trait during his life

> and had got him into a great deal of trouble with

> authority. Churchill also suffered from alcoholism

> and bouts of severe depression, which he referred to

> as his 'Black dog'. Had Churchill had this

> condition treated with Antabuse, Tricyclic anti

> depressants and Electro Convulsive Therapy he might

> have thought it more sensible to have surrendered to

> Hitler instead of all that trouble he put people to

> fighting the Second World War. We would now all

> have the benefits of living in world where Eugenics

> was practised even more efficiently than it is now.

> (Like the biopsychiatrists the Nazi's fantasised

> about creating a master race and eliminating all

> those weaklings suffering from 'disorders' that

> polluted the race)

>

> Vincent van Gogh

>

> One of the greatest painters of the nineteenth

> century Vincent van Gogh suffered from terrible

> depression throughout his life and although

> frequently admitted to the psychiatric hospital

> never had the benefits of prefrontal lobotomy, ECT

> or anti-depressant drugs. We will never know how

> much more beautiful Vincent's paintings would have

> been if he had been afflicted with tardive

> dyskenesia, akasthesia and ataxia.

>

> Isaac Newton

>

> Like Einstein Newton had a difficult childhood and

> grew up a strange, irritable and jealous man who

> never married and was obsessed in seeking

> immortality (which incidentally thorough his work he

> achieved). The psychologist F E Manuel suggested

> that his character had a Freudian type explanation

> based on the fact that his mother had left him while

> he was very young and that he had been left to be

> brought up by his grandmother. His father had died

> before he was born. Newton was certainly a

> candidate for 'child psychiatrists' to have had a go

> at. Luckily for him (and modern physics) the idea

> had not then been invented. What would our world

> look like bereft of the calculus, astronomy and the

> fundamental building blocks of all modern physical

> science had Newton been drugged senseless like many

> of today's children are being.

>

> The moral of the story is quite clear. If we want

> to live in a society that is no longer capable of

> giving rise to philosophers, musicians, artists,

> scientists and leaders just keep up the drugging,

> psychosurgery, ECT etc. There will be quieter

> schoolrooms, maybe even less crime, as some would

> suggest. The cost will be less innovation, less

> emotion, less stimulation and a flat sterile world

> of bland conformity, uniform depression in the true

> sense of the word and eventually an end to any

> concept of humanity as we still thankfully know it.

>

>

>

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