Source: http://www.sabinabecker.com/images/intermittent-explosive-disorder.jpgRemember that time you were sitting in traffic for 45 minutes, cars barely moving, people cutting each other off and honking their horns, and all you wanted to do was get home and relax with a cup of herbal tea? You sit there patiently, radio blasting Enya to soothe your emotions, and finally the cars head of you start to move. As you put your foot down on the accelerator, a slick sports car somehow manages to maneuver three lanes over and cuts you off so quickly that you have to slam your breaks. Anger literally boils your blood and you swear that your windows fog up with steam from your ears. Your mouth opens and a string of profanities in three different languages spills out and your hands go up, middle finger waving around as you tailgate that inconsiderate idiot. You are blind with rage. But fear not, because what you are going through isn't your fault. It's the chemical activity in your brain that causes you to feel this way because you have Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED)... or you're turning into the Hulk. (I digress)
Intermittent Explosive Disorder is a behavioral disorder that, according to MayoClinic is, "characterized by repeated episodes of aggressive, violent behavior in which you react grossly out of proportion to the situation." At the bottom of the IED definition it says, "If you have this anger disorder, treatment may involve medications and psychotherapy to help you control your aggressive impulses." (MayoClinic, 2010) I don't disregard that people do suffer from symptoms of IED like road rage or domestic violence, but I don't agree with the idea to medicalize just anything and prescribe medication to it. In recent times, more news articles have come about describing new behavioral disorders and the preventative or curative measures people can take, mostly involving pill-popping and psychotherapy. A few years ago, I heard on NPR that road rage was now considered to be a medical problem that needed to be treated. I found an article on ABCnews.com that conveyed the same message about IED but added more disorders to the list such as:
- Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder
- Sibling Rivalry Disorder
- Mathematics Disorder
- Caffeine-related Disorders
- Oppositional Defiant Disorder
- Dissociative Fugue State
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
- Seasonal Affective Disorder
In Margaret Talbot's article, "Brain Gain" Adderall and Ritalin are introduced as neuroenhancers for those who are not diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. These people take Adderall as a means to be able to focus and stay awake longer to be more productive. There are many ways to boost cognitive function as Talbot's interviewee Anjan Chatterjee mentions. He says that with regular exercise and intellectual stimulation, people are more apt to enabling their cognitive function. However, "... maybe they want something easier than sweaty workouts and Russian novels: a pill." (Talbot, pg. 4) This leads me to believe that society dependence on biomedicine has caused an almost addiction-like state. People are not aware that pills are not simply a magic drug that will eliminate your sorrows and make you happy. In fact, many of the pills taken have adverse side effects, most common in anti-depressants which ironically raise the risk of violence and suicide. Counterproductive much? The important message conveyed is that "...we are a society that so wants a quick fix that many people are happy to take drugs." (Talbot, pg. 4)
Nikolas Rose's article, "The Politics of Life Itself" really hits the spot when discussing the psychoanalysis of patients suffering from mental disorders. No visible defects were particularly found in the case of madness and "... psychiatrists often found that their own diagnoses of madness were unable to meet legal criteria of evidence and proof" and , "... psychiatric diagnoses were a 'category mistake' illegitimately translating difference, disruption, and deviance into disease." (Rose, pg. 4-5) But this brings me to another point. If there are no visible evidence or proof of madness, then how do we characterize a person who is sane and one who is mad? Does that mean that an angry driver has a disease because of his outburst or is it just his personality to be slightly short-tempered? In our society today, we have the need to always fix the human body and we saw this in the earlier readings pertaining to biomedicine ethics. We are a machine that is striving for physical, and now mental, perfection. But because people are so unique and experience life and disease differently, how is it that we can form a pill to treat a, "... potentially correctable, error or anomaly in... aspects of the organic brain"? (Rose, pg. 3) Perhaps what is being treated is our ability to be different and abnormal. But then again, who constructs the idea of what is normal and abnormal and who falls into these categories?
I do believe that people experience symptoms of extreme sadness (depression), high stress (anxiety), or road rage (intermittent explosive disorder). I do not believe that we should treat people with medication in order to end whatever ails them mentally because the adverse side effects can ultimately harm the person in the future (in the case of addiction to amphetamines, anti-depression medications, etc.) There are alternative methods to coping with life, but life isn't supposed to be simple. It's a challenge and a pill should not be used just because it's the easy way out. At the same time, psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies should not continue to diagnose people with disorders and prescribe medication because it only will increase the dependency on pills and believe that something is mentally wrong with them. We are unique creatures with the ability to vary from one another because of our personalities. Just because some of us are sadder than others, happier than others, or angrier than others doesn't mean that there is a mental deformity. If these personality traits get in the way of living one's life, then there are methods to lessen the traits' impact on an individual's life without the use of a magic pill.
Source:
"Brain Gain", New Yorker. Margaret Talbot, April 27, 2009.
"The Politics of Life Itself" Nikolas Rose, 2007.
"Intermittent Explosive Disorder" MayoClinic, 2011
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/intermittent-explosive-disorder/DS00730
"Is Your Bitterness a Medical Condition?" ABCnews, 2010
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdandFluNews/story?id=7688631&page=3
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