Guest post by Joe Hoft at JoeHoft.com – published with permission
DNC Convention Protesters. “Joyful Warriors” or Crazy Mental Patients?
The following is republished with permission from AbleChild.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for President, recently began referring to the Democratic ticket as “the glad soldier.” The phrase was coined from a comment made by his teammate Tim Walz who praised Harris during a rally saying, “thank you for bringing joy.” It’s an interesting phrase to represent the Democratic ticket when one considers that study after study has determined that liberals enjoy poorer mental health than conservatives.
According to a study reported in Columbia Magazine“American adults who identify as politically liberal have long reported lower levels of happiness and psychological well-being.” And a group of Columbia epidemiologists found evidence that “the same pattern holds true for American teenagers … while depression rates have risen among students of all political persuasions and demographics, they have increased dramatically among progressive students…”
The authors speculate that the reason for the increasing mental health problems may be that “teenagers on the left may have been affected by the election of Donald Trump as president, the US Supreme Court’s subsequent shift to the right, increasing socioeconomic inequality, and worsening political polarization.”
This is an interesting hypothesis because it reflects the lack of medicine and science related to psychiatric mental disorders. It is hard to imagine that a medical doctor would diagnose cancer or any other disease based on the current political events. Try and picture the absurdity of it…”yeah, Congress just passed the Highway bill so you might get diabetes.” But this is exactly how mental disorders are diagnosed, and Harris is a big supporter of mental health parity – mental disorders are covered by the same insurance companies as medical conditions.
The 2022 Democratic candidate’s record at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC reflects what he knows about mental health. The Vice President explained that “in mental health issues, you know, one way to think is: If you know someone who has a broken arm, you will help them. You will make sure they go to the hospital to get a cast…”
The problem with the Vice President’s understanding of mental illness is that it is not based on science or medicine. Every mental disorder in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM) is made up of a list of behaviors … not objective, confirmable, abnormal.
Using Harris’ broken arm scenario in a real medical emergency X-ray will be taken (objective), see the broken bone on X-ray (confirmable) and the broken bone should be repaired (abnormality). There is no test known to man to objectively diagnose a single mental disorder. And, worse, depending on the doctor, some psychiatric diagnoses can be made because there are no objective tests (X-rays, blood tests, urine samples, etc.) that can diagnose known psychiatric disorders. So, based on the list of behaviors in the DSM, voila, you have a mental disorder.
And while polling people about mental well-being is interesting, what is never part of the equation is whether the person polled has taken psychiatric medication, what medication and for how long. Drug intake will make a difference in the behavior in question. After all, remember that antidepressants carry a black box warning, the most serious warning from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for suicidal ideation. And most depression medications carry side effects that include mania, psychosis, abnormal behavior, agitation, aggression, hostility, and depression.
It is reported that tens of thousands are going to protest various issues at the DNC Convention in Chicago this week, including those protesting for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, abortion/”Reproductive Rights” and LGBTQ+ rights.
While it was still early in the Convention, small protests had taken place outside, and one could not help but wonder what part mental illness might have played. Considering the studies that show liberals suffer from greater mental health problems, one might conclude that liberals will be the ones protesting the DNC. If that’s true, and many protesters are unhappy, angry, and on drugs, what can we expect when larger protests begin this week. If it’s an unhinged free-for-all, does mental health status play a role? It’s anyone’s guess.
One thing is for sure. The Vice President supports the support of mental health services. For example, last January Harris announced an additional $285 million in funding for schools to hire and train mental health counselors. When announcing the increased funding, the Vice President said “the #1 killer of our children is gun violence…” This is inaccurate.
The No.1 killer of children in the US is abortion by the majority. In fact, according to Pew Research, the latest data on child gun deaths for 2019-2021 is 2,590, and at the same time Pew reports that in 2021, there will be more than 625,000 abortions performed in the District of Columbia and 46 states.
However, everyone can agree that one child’s death from being shot is too many and help to deal with the trauma of gun violence should be available to all. The issue, of course, is whether mental health “treatment” in the form of mind-altering prescription psychiatric drugs can be helpful, since it does not “cure” known disorders.
Maybe Vice President Harris will make a new mental health policy part of his convention platform and talk about it during his nomination speech. Maybe Harris’ mental health policy will make a difference among depressed liberals and become the “joyful warriors” that Harris envisions.
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