Comments on: All Things Depressing

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 15:03:55 +0000

Tom, with all due respect, you’ll get more of a hearing if you begin by actually presenting arguments rather than offering one-liners accusing people of committing fallacies. Your comment in response to ADM was extremely rude, and you didn’t supply a jot of evidence in support of it. In fact, what it seemed to do was imply that the connection between changes in school funding and behavior problems isn’t even worth studying, which is every bit as fallacious as anything anyone else has said on the board. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy, but it doesn’t mean that correlations aren’t worth looking into. Now, maybe someone has debunked the correlation, but I certainly don’t learn that from anything you say. Still, if you’re interested in discussion, you could start by being less condescending.

By: Tom Doyle

Tom Doyle — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 17:57:00 +0000

I live in CT Landsman!

By: maurinsky

maurinsky — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 17:17:36 +0000

My kids go to public school, and they have PE and art and music. But I live in CT (that’s Connecticut, not Crooked Timber), where thus far we have managed to stave off the anti-civilization crowd who would rather have $15 bucks more a week in their paycheck than have a high quality public school, with well-paid and mostly really terrific teachers.

By: Tom Doyle

Tom Doyle — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 07:21:34 +0000

With all due respect to those quoted below: “Wait until you have a young teenager writing stories about suicide and self-mutilation, and see if you don’t try just about anything that might work to make your child better, starting with therapy and ending with anti-depressants. And one year later, my teenager was happy and well. “post hoc ergo propter hoc. i agree with the sentiment, tho im not sure the risk/benefit analysis would work out with current information.” In my opinion, the argument above (in italics) isn’t based on the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy. The arguments below, almost entirely, are so based: “On the Zoloft story: Damn! All of what people alredy said, plus Damn! again. What are people thinking? Is it any surprise that behavior problems (or problematic behavior) is on the rise when we’ve just about removed all art and music (and PE, for that matter — another perfectly healthy outlet for self expression) from our schools? What would happen if we took the huge amounts of money spent drugging our children and instead spent it on schools — bringing back education in the arts, home ec, shop, PE, etc., as well as smaller class sizes and more teacher-time per child?” “ADM is noting that behavior problems rose when schools cut back on art/music/PE. According to your canons of inference, it’s not likely that that’s a coincidence. As a friend in college said, “When 40% of the class has been diagnosed with ADD, maybe it’s a social problem rather than a personal one. There may be some research that casts doubt on ADM’s thesis, but nobody’s brought it up here.” ——————- “i don’t know, which is why it’s important to consult an expert about the side effect and outcome stats for similar patients against the potential positive effect.” I agree, and I don’t read anon’s post as arguing to the contrary. The following statement, however, appears to dismiss in advance any expert judgement, in favor of personal, lay observation and opinion: “No doubt someone with reams of medical data will disagree with me. But in my experience as a parent, 4 times out of 5 the drugged-up kid you see doesn’t really need it; she just needs time and attention. Unhappiness and stress rarely lead to murderous and suicidal rampages. Sometimes they lead to growth.”

By: Jay Conner

Jay Conner — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 06:58:57 +0000

It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that all 5 of my grandchildren will probably be educated in private schools. I am a believer in public education, and tried really hard to put my children there, but after a while we realized that it just wasn’t working, and sort of eased out of it. Parents who are really concerned, like my children now that they are parents, would rather put their time, energy and money into real schools, with art, music, PE and libraries than fight the uphill battle with the public schools.

By: Shai

Shai — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 06:06:46 +0000

“Wait until you have a young teenager writing stories about suicide and self-mutilation” [...] “And one year later, my teenager was happy and well.” post hoc ergo prompter hoc. i agree with the sentiment, tho im not sure the risk/benefit analysis would work out with current information. i don’t know, which is why it’s important to consult an expert about the side effect and outcome stats for similar patients against the potential positive effect.

By: anon

anon — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 05:24:46 +0000

Wait until you have a young teenager writing stories about suicide and self-mutilation, and see if you don’t try just about anything that might work to make your child better, starting with therapy and ending with anti-depressants. And one year later, my teenager was happy and well.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 04:36:40 +0000

I too think the Kerry story is meant to sucker listeners.

By: bleachersnot

bleachersnot — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 04:26:50 +0000

‘people get the government they deserve?’ we’ll be finding that out again very soon wont we?

By: JPed

JPed — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 01:37:35 +0000

Dude, no need to worry. Let’s just take up a collection and buy Kerry some Red Bull (I would link to it, but it has really annoying audio I can’t turn off)! And on the other point, I think medicating yourself for head problems is completely stupi…. DOH!

By: Emocrat

Emocrat — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 01:17:07 +0000

I’ve stopped listening to NPR all together now. That’s after 30 years of listening, and giving, to it. Your post only reminded me why I chose to do so. The Zoloft story is just depressing, if not maddening (I’m lucky I had better parents than that!) The Kerry story is INTENDED to depress Democrats. The Fundie piece…well, perhaps that’s ol’ Mr. Ahmanson’s influence further flexing it’s muscles. So, after a few years of routinely feeling increasingly insulted, depressed and outraged AT NPR’S ever worsening “reportage,” I’ve gone cold turkey, and no longer need the Zoloft!

By: paperwight

paperwight — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 23:16:08 +0000

people get the government they deserve? And if the Rapture fundies were the only ones who got that government, that would be fine, leaving aside the pesky problem of nuclear weapons in the hands of religious fanatics who look forward to Armageddon and think I’m a lesser species because I don’t. However, I and a lot of others are also getting the government that the Rapture fundies deserve.

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 22:10:53 +0000

Thanks, Matt— Tom, what Matt said. I wasn’t really that explicit, though. Also, I was speaking as a parent and as a teaching person and also as someone who has done a lot of reading on SSRIs and how much research seems to have been either bypassed or ignored in bringing them to market.

By: Arthur D. Hlavaty

Arthur D. Hlavaty — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 21:30:53 +0000

Kerry is getting tired? Where is Dr. Max Jacobson when we need him?

By: ruralsaturday

ruralsaturday — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 21:14:17 +0000

There are probably more traits in common that go unremarked-on among the ADD/SRI “cohort”. I’m guessing intelligence, skepticism, inchoate hunger for the uncontrolled and new… Swirling in all this near-random info is the odd thing, when you think about it, that government decree removes children from most homes for most of the day and then inoculates them with “facts” that are only commonly accepted because the community itself was inoculated with them in childhood. (…a brief aside to salute the valiant minorities working to enlighten that process…and a passing mention of the equally interesting, economic-necessity-driven granting of commercial corporate access to that captive audience of children) Then, in that context, the behaviorally unfit and unwilling are drugged into submission, strike that, the brain-chemistry-challenged are chemically readjusted back into the flock, the herd, whatever. Some of us were saying watch out for those fundamentalists back when the more comfortable intellectuals were content with sneering and ridicule, because who would take that nonsense seriously? Well lo and behold. It doesn’t matter you know, about the morality of it, they will write their own morality to fit their situation, the way people always have. It was a life and death struggle, from the get, it never was anything less, or more. Nonsense, especially “spiritual” nonsense, is like Zoloft that way, it adjusts the working mind, erases anxiety, allows the subject to ignore unpleasant truth, and promotes the acceptance of consensus reality. “Our God is a mighty God!” It doesn’t matter whether He contradicts Himself, or any of those trivial “logical” complaints. Bush is a great example of what I mean. He’s deluded, hypocritical, rivaling Vlad the Impaler for heartless cruelty and blood-guilt, and he runs the world, literally runs the world; inasmuch as any public figure could, he does. It doesn’t matter that he’s bizarrely disconnected from his actions and their consequences in a moral sense, he does the work of the spirit. The spirit doesn’t care about right and wrong anymore than a virus does, or a termite hive. It doesn’t matter, and it never did. It only matters that He wins.