The Doctor's Educational Blues
Helpful pamphlets
Come in the mail
Primary care
Diagnosis and treatment
For bipolar disorder
Is particularly popular
Right now
An article or journal
Arrives nearly every day
I read one
Sponsored by a helpful
Grant from Astra-Zenica
They happen to make
A drug
FDA approved
For treatment
The pamphlet says
1 percent
of the population
Is bipolar
Using the DSM IV criteria
For diagnosis
(Developed by psychiatrists
Experts in mental health)
But it says
If we use a broader definition
Than the DSM IV criteria
Then 2-8% of the population
Is bipolar
They have a questionnaire
For me to use
On patients
To diagnose
This disorder
They fail to mention
If they used the strict
DSM IV criteria
Or the looser criteria
To make the questionnaire
I can see that Astra-Zenica
Will sell more drugs
If we loosen up the diagnosis
I sit and wonder
How helpful it is
To change the diagnosis
And put more people
On medicine
Helpful to Astra-Zenica
No doubt
The pamphlet has a chart
Showing the range of feeling
Normal to manic
Normal is listed as
Happy and joyous
I sit and wonder
How many of us
Would feel that we are normal
Looking at that chart
Not me
5/19/06
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2 comments:
For sufficiently small values of "normal", none of us is, I think.
Some people may look normal from the outside, but I think it's just the air-brushing effect of distance. Proximity brings back the pores.
I was arguing with a family member and her comment was "I think of myself as a good person." I was amazed because she used it as an argument about something that she'd done that I had concerns about. Wasn't legal. She didn't believe me and I was the bad person for bringing it up. I don't think of myself as a "good person". I like to keep track of all my evil impulses so that I don't project too many or act on them unconsciously. Besides, what's good for me may be bad for someone else.
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