Sunday, April 27, 2014

Justin Bieber: The new face of positive psychiatric labelling

I went for a walk today with my youngest son Taylor around our neighborhood. We looked at the Nantucket style houses that were recently built and we agreed that, while charming, the blue shingles didn't quite fit in with the rest of the houses on the street, and we mulled over  that was a good thing since they did liven the neighborhood up a bit.

Taylor spotted a kid buzzing around the street on a bike with a Justin Bieber style hair cut, and we both laughed and agreed how much we like Justin Bieber, hair poof and all, because he is clueless and fun (remember his happy mug shot -Yo, check it out - I can't believe I've been arrested!), he acts like many other clueless twenty-year olds despite his fame and fortune, and he's generally nice to people.

We eventually got around to to talking about benzos, celebrity deaths, doctors with boring jobs, and psychiatry. "It seems to me that all psychiatrists do is tell people what's wrong with them," said Taylor. "Why don't they instead start describing people by what's right with them?" Taylor began to warm up to his idea. "Take Justin Bieber. Why not call him "wonderfully expressive and enthusiastic (mug shot)? Or, a true risk taker who likes to test his own limits (excessive drunken speeding in a residential neighborhood). How about just plain "boyish"? (Egging of neighbor's house.) This is a whole paradigm shift. I can't even think of what we would call the Bieb's diagnosis because we are so used to negatives."


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