This is why psychiatry is important.

I am infuriated by the "all in your head" school of denial of mental illness, or the "just get over it" approach. My very simple response to these sorts of crashingly ignorant attitudes is to point to a line which occurs, as far as I'm aware, in basically every definition in the DSM, and which says "Causes signifcant impairment in school, work or social functioning." For there, you see, is the rub.

A mental illness is not just behaviour we don't like or aren't used to, it's behaviour we aren't used to and which seriously fucks up the sufferer. We lump them together in diagnoses based upon shared patterns of symptomatology not because we have the definitive proof that they actually are related (physiologically, we don't), but because this allows us to talk about patterns of behaviour that respond in a similar fashion to certain treatments, and therefore guides us in which treatments we should be using.

Over at Science-Based Medicine, Harriet has written the best post I think I've ever seen which summarises these matters and explains why psychiatry is important and needs our research dollars. If you want a more in-depth look, Steven Novella links to a five-part series he wrote on Neurologica about mental illness denial.

The problems discussed by Harriet are the usual problems which will always plague any school of medicine which can't show you before-and-after X-rays, and are ones which even I have made reference to over the years - flawed studies done using the inherently difficult-to-research subject matter of people; the inability to do a blood-test for mental illness (can't do one for migraine, either); the problems with the DSM, an inherently political and cumbersome document (which, incidentally, contains shifting diagnoses that have lead to a large part of the hysteria about the so-called and completely fallacious "autism epidemic") and so on.

Psychiatry remains like many other fields of medicine - the practitioner is important, the relationship between the practictioner and the patient is crucial, and just like your GP when they don't have access to blood tests and want to play on the safe side, medication is an inexact science.

But people who deny treatment because they deny the existence of psychiatric disorders, or are terrified about suidical ideation, are firmly in the same category as people refuse other forms of medical treatment - they are dying basic human rights, and perpetuating abuse through neglect.

Link to entry "Psychiatry Bashing" on Science-Based Medicine

Random headline wool-gathering and commentary

I was lying in bed last night, too tired to sleep or concentrate, and squinting at the screen of my phone as I scrolled through page after page of news, scanning the headlines for anything interesting or relevant and tagging it to read later.

Suddenly I realised that my brain had been digesting a headline it had read five items ago, and that it read "NZ man finds US military files on MP3 player" (ABC News Online). Wait, what?

The Nasca lines in Peru are one of the more tiresome of Erik von Daaniken's bits of "evidence" that aliens visited Earth and fostered human civilisation. What he fails to acknowledge, of course, is the strength of commitment that common-or-garden religious belief can engender in all societies, primitive or (apparently) otherwise, and the lengths that a people who built the Sistine Chapel without powertools will go to when a powerful enough leader holds a whip over their heads.

Now it seems that the Nasca/Nazca (wikipedia) lines (Skeptic's Dictionary) may have been the result of endlessly repeated ritual, as the "Peruvians walked walked their prayers into the earth" (New Scientist).

In order to belabour the obvious, the not-new and the tiresomly status-quo, ABC News Online tells us that a Social Service provider says support programs struggling.

The Courier Mail, perhaps unwittingly, vastly strengthens the case for a Parenting Licence or mandatory Parenting Training, as it tells us Parents panned as kids not toilet trained in time for school.

Yet more stating-the-bloody-obvious from the Courier Mail, who trumpet that Mr Risky is aggressive on the roads, survey reveals. This was going to be a complete post by itself, but I really can't be bothered. I don't want to discuss potential procedural issues with the research, so I'll just point out that I don't ignore speed limits at all. I may choose to disobey them after checking the road conditions, my own mental and physical state and what other drivers are doing, but I always know exactly what they are.

I am thinking of the children. That's why I think you're an idiot

What's going on with politics at the moment?

I tend to be more Labour than Liberal in Australia, and decidely not National. This isn't due to any sort of Union tendencies, blue-collar sense of camaraderie or anti-bourgeoise sentiments - it's because, when social policies are discussed, the Liberals tend to sicken and disgust me, and only Labour (of the major parties) has a history of being progressive and supportive, even if they're still sort of living off Gough Whitlam's reputation there.

I also have a great deal of respect for Kevin Rudd. Not necessarily like, not necessarily always agree with, but the man is highly intelligent, and survived the Bjelke-Petersen era as an extremely tough, clever politician.

So how come I'm cheering a Liberal politican and wanting to use Rudd as a blunt instrument to beat one of his ministers to death?

A quick background on the proposed Compulsory Internet Filter:

• Claim: We need to filter pornographic material in order to Protect The Children
• Counterclaim: This won't work beause no filter is intelligent enough to do this reliably, and there are more websites than it is possible to block.
• Claim: We need to filter pornographic material in order to Protect The Children
• Counterclaim: Also, it will severely limit Internet speeds, and Australia is already a bit of a laughing stock internationally.
• Claim: We need to filter pornographic material in order to Protect The Children
• Counterclaim: Also, it's ethically reprehensible
• Claim: We need to filter pornographic material in order to Protect The Children
• Counterclaim: Also, people sharing child pornography don't even use the bits of the network that the filter will filter, so it's useless.
• Claim: We need to filter pornographic material in order to Protect The Children
• Counterclaim: What happened to parential monitoring and responsibility?
• Claim: We need to filter pornographic material in order to Protect The Children

And so on. No, I'm not making this up. The debate really has gone like that. At one point, Minister for Fucking Up The Internet, Stephen Conroy, was asked an intelligent, comprehensive, informed question about the filtering trial, by a National MP who is on record as supporting a filter, and his response was

• Claim: We need to filter pornographic material in order to Protect The Children

He did not answer one single part of the question asked - not how the trial will be conducted, not who will be assessing the results, not what the requirements will be, not what how the results will be judged.

• Strike: Can't answer a straight question
• Strike: Fails to communicate important parts of government policy to the voting public
• Strike: Is going to keep the list of filtered sites secret. See point two, above
• Strike: Is not engaging in dialogue with experts in any of the fields of technology or criminal behaviour who might be able to inform this policy
• Strike: Is a smarmy-looking git
• Strike: To return to being serious for a moment: Is being referred to internationally as a sign that the fight over freedom of speech is being lost.
• Strike: I think I'll pass out now.
• Strike:
• Strike:
• Strike:

Sorry, just had to slip in a little Red Dwarf joke, there.

To return: Why am I cheering a Liberal politician?

Because, damn my eyes, I'm agreeing with him.

Senator Simon Birmingham has replied to a letter from a member of the Australian Whirlpool Internet forum-about-the-Internet (Somebody think of the Children!):

• "I believe the right to free speech is fundamental to the Australian way of life and to Australian values." (So did you speak up about Howard's anti-sedition legislation?)
• Whilst I acknowledge the need to protect children from undesirable elements on the internet, the proposed compulsory filtering risks being flawed in both ideology and practice.
• ... would potentially dramatically slow internet access ...
• ... the absurdity of Senator Conroy’s bizarre remarks on this issues and his refusal to address the conflict between his competing goals ...
• Placing responsibility in the home is the best way to ensure that children do not access inappropriate material online, through both voluntary access to filters and closely monitoring the internet use of children.
• Of paramount concern to me is the risk that parents may become complacent in monitoring their children’s use of the internet if a mandatory filter is introduced. If Senator Conroy thinks that blocking access to child pornography will make the internet safe for children, he is severely misguided. There are many dangers for children online, ranging from chat rooms to sites about drugs, legal pornography, racism etc.
• Furthermore, the technological capabilities of current filters make accurate filtering impossible

Maybe he just has good advisers, but give that man a gold star.

N.B.: Somebody think of the Children! is a website and blog which monitors censorship and moral panic in Australia, and is well worth keeping an eye on, at http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com

High-octane kelp

I'm torn.

On the one hand, I don't believe in using ethanol for fuel. It's really great for drinking, cleaning optics and sterilising skin, but fuel? No. Bad. It's harder to build an engine that can cope with the corrosive powers of ethanol than one that can cope with petrol or diesel. And where does it come from? Food stocks, mostly. So, no: We need better electricity production and usage, and we need biodiesel as the intermediate step, not bioethanol.

On the other hand, science like using seaweed to generate ethanol faster, simpler and cheaper (New Scientist) is really cool.

Seaweed grows faster. It's a better, and faster, carbon sink. I'm not sure about this "avoid taking up land altogether" - the ocean is important too, you know - but this is a great lateral-thinking approach which can lead, potentially (and somebody has to actually do this on a commercial scale, so don't cheer just yet) to higher-production ethanol that doesn't mess with food prices. And if I owned a vehicle I was prepared to put ethanol into, I'd cheer.

Instead, I'll just cheer the science being done.

Link to New Scientist article Invention: Biofuels from the ocean.

Yes, religion really is child abuse

This may well be the most disgusting thing I've read about any apparently modern democracy, in a lifetime of being cynical and disgusted by other apparently human beings:

"About 300 children have died in the United States in the last 25 years after medical care was withheld on religious grounds, said Rita Swan, executive director of Children’s Health Care Is a Legal Duty, a group based in Iowa that advocates punishment for parents who do not seek medical help when their children need it. Criminal codes in 30 states, including Wisconsin, provide some form of protection for practitioners of faith healing in cases of child neglect and other matters, protection that Ms. Swan’s group opposes." Trials for parents who chose faith over medicine (New York Times)

I can understand when the uneducated and otherwise ignorant, the frightened and the confused seize hold of bullshit told by the charismatic and refuse to vaccinate children - I will tell them to their face that they're being ignorant and conned, but I can understand it.

But the degree of blind faith that sees people chose prayer which continues to fail as a cure when their child has reached the point of "“Kara laid down and was unable to move her mouth,” the report said, “and merely made moaning noises and moved her eyes back and forth.”" - that is child abuse of the highest order.

"We knew that once we went to the doctor, we would be cut off from God."

That, to me, is a God it is not worth being connected to, not worth believing in, not worth paying any sort of lip-service to. That God, who consistently fails to act when petitioned through prayer and lets children die in frequently horrible circumstances, is deserving only of condemnation and hatred. If you must believe in God, then be angry at this God's conduct.

I don't really have the energy right now to say what I really think, so I'll close with the fervent wish that the people who claim that the neglecting, murderous little family are being "persecuted for praying" burn for all eternity in the hell they believe in.

Link to New York Times article

You'll be eight alive.

Just a short note, because I think everyone should read this, but I really can't add anything to it:

Explaining the Curse of work (New Scientist).

It's wonderful. Finally, Science(tm) explains: Parkinson's Law (Work expands to fill the space avaialble); Why big decision-making groups are bad; Why Terry Pratchett and Chinese numerology chose 8 as the most evil number (I'm extrapolating here, but I think I have a good reason - read the article) - why small teams get more, high quality, work done.

Everyone stuck in a bureaucracy, or cynical about them, will get a good laugh out of it.

The idiocy that is Centrelink

This is going to be an ongoing series, you see if it doesn't.

Centrelink, as the Australian Federal Government agency which administers a range of services and programs that fall under the banner of "social services" has a nightmare on its hands trying to make them all work together, and deal with a population of clients who are more likely than most of the population to be stressed, frayed, frazzled, and with various medical, psychiatric and drug-related issues.

But that doesn't excuse the more ludicrous and blatantly unfair aspects of Centrelink policies and processes. And if they get handed down from the Government Departments responsible for the payments - DEEWR, say - I don't care. I'm still going to blame Centrelink.

This, then, is a nascent list of the Things That Are Wrong:

• If you earn money while on a Centrelink payment, you lose a portion of that payment. Fair enough - this is intended to be a needs-based system. If your partner earns money, you lose payment, which is fair enough if you live together and share expenses. The problem is that while you are told exactly, to the cent, what you're allowed to earn, and how much you lose, across several thresholds, they don't publish the same information on your partner's income. Nada. You don't know how much they're allowed to earn before you start losing money, and you don't know how fast it happens. The only justification I can think is that they're concerned that people may turn down work because it will impact upon their partner's payment which is, of course, exactly what happens anyway.
• If you receive Ausstudy, which allows you to complete further schooling without having to work to support yourself at the same time (theoretically - just try it) you don't automatically qualify for a Health Care Card. WTF? An HCC gives you a range of discounts on things like public transport. So does a Student Card, okay. But that's hardly an excuse. An HCC gives you very cheap prescription drugs. A Student Card doesn't. Let's look at some of the conditions that don't incapacitate you from studying, aren't uncommon among younger people, and which are relieved or controlled by prescription medications: Diabetes. Asthma. Chronic pain (resulting from accidents, arthritis - quite possible while young, etc.) Various psychiatric conditions. Once-off bacterial or yeast infections. My partner finds that the contraceptive pill controls migraines which would otherwise cripple her a couple of times a month. If you have to pay $16 (minimum!) rather than ~$4 per script, it starts to add up a bit.
  
• Ausstudy recipients have only been eligible for rent assistance for about a year now. I'm not giving them credit for fixing that - it wasn't bloody good enough. Students sometimes have to live away from home due to distance (there's an extra allowance - which is pitiful) or due to family problems. I knew a girl who made social workers cry every time she had to justify her living-away-from-home status. She shouldn't have needed to.
• If you are on a Disability Support Pension, or are eligible for one but need to (re)prove it through medical reports, you will probably need to make several medical appointments in order to have the relevant professionals fill out the relevant paperwork. Some of this paperwork (yes, I've handled it during a previous life) advises you that you may, due to the time necessary (for a form), need to make a double appointment, and that this, regretably, cannot be claimed on Medicare. Not. Bloody. Good. Enough.
• You are expected to declare income earned up to the day you declare it, each fortnight. How the hell am I supposed to know? Unless, and sometimes not even then, you are on a cash-in-hand job or a regular but low-paying job and have already received your first pay-check, you don't. My partner works strange agency nursing hours and, although she has the pay rates for each time of the day and week, we can never work out exactly what she earns. I have just started a job with three different components, paid at different rates, dependent upon the time of day or week. Can I work it out? Can I hell! (And repeated requests to pay-roll have not resulted in an email containing details of just what those pay rates actually are, but that's a separate whinge).
• The other part of this is that while Centrelink pays you the evening of the day you put your form in, no other organisation that doesn't pay by cash, does. In my case, I have to wait 10 whole freaking days from the end of my pay period, to receiving income. Which means that I can, theoretically, be penalised on my Centrelink payment two weeks before I receive the income I just got penalised for. This does not bode well for things like, ooh, I don't know, rent.
  
• You declare income pre-tax. All of which, including the part you don't get because the government takes it, affects your Centrelink income. How is that fair? How does that encourage honesty?
  
• For some payments, you have to submit fortnightly forms in person. Which means travel, which is an expense that is most emphatically not directly related to job searching, and is also time out of your day (considerable amounts, when travel is added to the time spent standing in line) where you are not searching for jobs. Or, whatever.
• If you sign a contract for a permanent, full-time job that pays several thousand a week but which, unfortunately, doesn't start for four weeks and you won't get your first pay for another two weeks after that, which means six weeks from now... Centrelink can't cope. You need to live, so you need money, so you need the Centrelink income. But, on Newstart, you need to look for (doesn't necessarily mean apply for, which is something) ten jobs per fortnight. Which can theoretically mean that you have to turn down interviews and waste hundreds of hours because "Well, I've actually got a job, I just have to go through these hoops so that I don't get evicted and starve to death before it starts." There needs to be something in place here. In my case, I couldn't get paid for the shifts I did before Christmas because the HR department were on holiday and didn't create a payroll identity for me, so I lost Centrelink payment for income declared then, and that was a fortnight ago and I won't actually receive the money I worked for until this time next week!
  
• Each office has different arrangements for whether they take appointments pre-booked or walk-in for assessment interviews, which does not help.

Further suggestions welcomed.