Dark Side To Medicine Chapter 4 Summary

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Allen Frances said it best when he said that normal is a variation of many things, not just one. Not only does he talk about normality but he takes different approaches to it. In chapter one he discusses how the world defines normal and what normal used to be. He also brings up the ideological difference between what philosophy says and what doctors say. This part to chapter one ties in a lot to chapter two’s part about shaman. Also, discussed in this book is what mental diseases are and how psychology rides off it. Chapter two talks a lot about origins to medicine and treatments. This helps us to understand treatments used today and where they originated from. The dark side to medicine is also brought up in this chapter. The issue between …show more content…
Frances points out that although there are issues with psychiatry itself, it is not what makes they system as faulty but rather that there are other people who put their ideas in using money. It was through their motives that there was an expansion in the DSM. Now it has become such a big issue that people are self-diagnosing themselves and it is almost impossible to find someone without some kind of disorder. Chapter four talks about prior fads. In simple terms when an illness starts it will circulate and then it will die out. An example of this that France brings up is demonic possession. It hit especially among younger children and adults and eventually ended altogether. The last chapter we looked at was chapter five. This chapter explains current fads and how it affects society. Things like shyness or childhood bipolar disorder were created. They claimed that shyness was a disease that could be treated and that children who threw tantrums had some form of bipolar disorder. The lesson from these studies from the DSM is that just because it was diagnosed as an issue does not mean that it is, in fact, a disorder that needs to be treated through …show more content…
I found that even people who believe that god created perfect people could see me as a defect. It was interesting to see how people’s behaviors and attitudes can change. People I once thought were great friends became different to follow the social norm. They followed the pattern of cruelty but I learned from this. It was through this experience that a month after recovery of my facial movements I began the creation of the Help Save the Day program where I worked towards building a place for elementary students can integrate with each other no matter how different they may be. I believe that by starting a connection instead of a drift between the younger generation. It is the ideal to create a world of full equality but that only starts with the

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