THB some (non-)sciences should be ousted from universities for not living up to their name
Week 6
“What made me apply to a university in the first place…? Entitlement? Sense of achievement?”
Date: 13 Feb 2021
Motion: THB some (non-)sciences should be ousted from universities for not living up to their name
Role: MP (gov.)
There is a clear rationale behind removing some sciences from universities, due to their disregard for what they are supposed to be about. They are about something people can resort to as a guiding light, something younger generations can build upon as left to them by older generations; precision, falsifiability, reliability, verifiability and such criteria of science. And, it is clear that there are candidates for non-sciences not only in the humanities but also in behavioural, social and natural sciences, plus philosophy, as a dangling university-status carrot is equally enticing to any quarter of activity who is looking for a more permanent “foothold” in society.
Our previous speakers focussed on Archaeology, Gender Studies and Regional Geography as their choices for removable subjects on an academic, college or university level, and I cannot argue with them much. (Nor am I supposed to.) They, too, have striven for plurality in their choices, not choosing the Humanities as their scapegrace, as that would be too biased and simplistic. Other fields are equally culpable. I, for my own part, choose psychiatry as my target to be removed. In the next, I want to present my view as to why psychiatry would not deserve to be a major to be chosen or a specialty of medicine to get sidetracked to.
Antipsychotics And Other Psychopharmaca Are a Form of Chemical Lockdown
I have an acquaintance, who has been treated with antipsychotic medication after he finished his treatment at a mental institution for different acts of antisocial behaviour. Observing him, I have come to understand how the medication works. He takes his meds once a day, which induces a kind of stupor in him. He becomes dysfunctional and cannot, for example, write SMS’s that make a lot of sense. He cannot sleep either. By the early morning hours, he climbs to bed, exhausted by the onslaught of the pills. They seem to strip their users of higher mental functions but leave basic animal-level behaviour intact, such as eating, urinating, execrating and watching the TV. After his sleep, which ends in the afternoon, he is at his most coherent and social and can, for instance, mind his manners, read a newspaper and read some French. He is fun to be around with. He has lately been allowed to schedule the use of meds on his own, provided that he does not skip them, ever. He does not want to take them later, for then his circadian rhythm would again be postponed by a few hours, as messed up as it is already. It’s a great tragedy that antipsychotics do not allow their users to sleep. It could be that their chemistry reminds of amphetamines or ADHD meds, which typically have, I have read, the same effect. A lot of these meds were devised as early as the mid-60’s, when the rate of schizophrenia peaked at least over in my country, possibly elsewhere, too, to taper off later. No matter how you look at it, psychiatric medicine is a form of a chemical lockdown, building up chemical prison-cell walls around the one who is forced to take them. And any psychiatrist would just be singing their praise…. “what a tool!!”
One-Size-Fits-All Is Offensive to Those Who Are Afflicted
I also read recently a letter-to-the-editor by a woman who complained how the treatment of alcoholism is organised in the metropolitan area that she reluctantly decided to apply for after fearing for her health, safety and sanity. It turned out that she would be treated with the same set of remedies as the lowest quintile of alcoholics, complete with antabus regimens and DUI checkups. Her profile was different, as she is an educated white-collar alcoholic who was perfectly capable of juggling the demands of social and work life with her tipsiness and relapses. She would possibly represent the middle or 2nd highest quintile in the profile of alcoholics and require an entirely different set of remedies and therapies as a road to rehabilitation. I can relate to how health professionals, along with other officials, usually try to offer a One-Size-Fits-All solution to everybody, without ever stooping to admitting that it actually does not work. You can read the letter-to-the-editor here (Not in English, but translatable.)
Time-Limited Therapies Cannot Function Either
A third kind of popular “treatment” is locking people up in camps, rehabilitation centres and different kinds of therapy facilities for a specific amount of time, expecting them to recover to full functionality within the time limit provided. Sometimes this is due to the therapy being expensive, so in order to recoup the money the inpatient is supposed to make progress, preferably to the state (s)he was in before one’s troubles began. Even so, a human being seldom responds to these kinds of limits that are typically days, weeks or months. Recovery from all kinds of acquired afflictions, grievances and shocks amounts to years and decades, and that may be an understatement. And even then it won’t happen if some kind of mental (b)lock is not un(b)locked. It’s detective work not for the average minds. It may be that the “speedy-route” alternative was born as a response to drug afflictions, from which abusers typically can recuperate within weeks and months thanks to their somatic resilience. Sanity problems, for all that, are an entirely different matter, and that physically based modus operandi just does not work with them.
My point of view here is that psychiatry is effectively without working practises and even working theories as to how it could cure the patients that are entrusted to the care of MDs in psychiatry. It is true that someone has to take care of people who fall through the “cracks”, but it could be handled without the fuss and theatre of “psychiatry”. Mental asylums, rehabilitation facilities and therapeutic centres could instead be a mix of soft and hard care, meaning that different kinds of nurses and guards, both female and male, would take care of the inmates, complete with handing out the drugs, usually sedatives, that actually work, without there being a presumption that they were treated and cured by “psychiatric professionals”. The docent/doctor level would simply be cut out, and the care results might actually remain the same.
I can see that psychiatry would not have to be punished for having been elevated to a science status, even if it did not live up to its name. It’s understandable. The understandability comes from the facts that once upon a time there were people who were severely psychotic (as opposed to neurotic, which is the less severe, urban form), helping them was seen as a civic duty and social responsibility and the rambling of the science tree at that point provided an opportunity to include psychiatry as a science among all the other sciences, with all the adverse effects that it had. That, however, does not prevent us from stripping psychiatry of those trappings and demoting it again to the level of “studies”, that is, “psychiatric studies”. It would stay on that level, not being eligible for a major or a branch of specialisation, until it again had paid its dues, discovered something positively, trailblazingly new, and earned its place among real, recognisable sciences.
Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Edustajan puheeksi tämä käy hyvin siksi, että kunkin puhujan odotetaan ottavan jokin yksi esimerkki epäkelvosta tieteestä tai puoskaroivasta oppiaineesta. Ja kandidaattejahan riittää. Luonnontieteilijät ovat aina suhtautuneet nuivasti humanismiin, mutta humanisteillakin on epäluulonsa, eivätkä he jää käsitteellisellä tai verbaalisella tasolla hiljaisiksi. Opposition taas tulee antaa ymmärtää, että “kaikki on hyvin tiedelaaksossa”.
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