Monday, February 13, 2012
Compulsion
After you have read Lennard J. Davis's article, "Obsession: Against Mental Health," and have memorized three rhetorical figures of repetition, comment below with an idea you have about the readings, an explanation that will help us understand the readings, or a response to another student's comment.
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I have personally seen what Davis is talking about in his article. More and more cases of OCD are being diagnosed every day! A couple members of my family have been diagnosed with OCD, and I didn'tt understand why. I had never noticed anything extremely strange, not normal, or affecting the way they go about their days. They all have different "symptoms" and do different little things. Can these simply be little quirks that a person has/does and have talked themselves and their doctors into believing they have a real problem? everyone has fears, things that bother them, different needs and wants, but that does not give them a mental disease... I believe that a lot of the people claiming to have ADD, depressing, OCD, etc.. simply have talked themselves into thinking they have it because they have a small symptom. Today, its so simple for a student to talk to a doctor, assume they have ADD, and get prescribed adderall with no problem...I think there was an increase in OCD cases because only the most intense cases were recorded... the outrageous ones like something you'd see on MTV's True Life episode of "i Have OCD".. the patients who must do crazy things like turn on and off a light exactly ten times before leaving the room. Today, people who clean too much or are very specific about a situation are considered to be on the OCD spectrum as well. Even if this is considered a small bit of OCD, I do not think something like this should need medication. It is not affecting their lives or health in a detrimental way. If these were considered OCD, then my own mother would have OCD because she likes the house to clean. These people can simply have type A, controlling personalities that are specific about what they want. I believe today that classifying more tiny quirks like this as a mental disorder is what is causing the uptick in cases. I also believe the media, like Lauren T. said in class, is making more people believe they have illnesses when they don't.
ReplyDeleteDavis starts the article off by giving a brief history of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), starting with the 1970s. He then introduces the vast change in the disorder from the 70’s to just 30 years later, describing the disorder as being classified as one of the top four mental disorders in the world rather than being an uncommon and rare disorder with very little cases occurring. Davis questions this large spike in the commonality of the disorder, allowing the reader themselves to take note of the importance of this issue. Shortly after the introductory paragraphs, Davis brings up what I would consider to be his main claim of the article; he states that giving a simplistic or reductionist explanation of this complex medical phenomena would be going against health. He argues throughout the article that knowing the history of the disorder will help with the understanding of the disease as well as recognizing the complex biocultural factors that are associated with it.
ReplyDeleteAs a reader, I appreciated the flow and structure of his claims and arguments. Rather than simply stating his argument along with reasons why we should believe it or outright attacking other arguments, he instead gives many counter arguments and then effectively points out flaws in those and follows up with his own claims. Because the author considered other sides as well as his own, I believe it strengthened his own argument and allowed me to find the piece to be a convincing read.
Some things I found rather intriguing in the Obsession article involve the brain and the factors they seem to not take into account. I was a little outraged only because it made me feel confused and that there is no hope for OCD. This article seems to be struggling with OCD and defining it and finding it in the the brain as well as the causes. I personally have OCD and different variations of it. When I read on page 125, "You can of course argue that a specific area of the brain may be involved in worrying or planning or checking, but to assume that the brain has a specific location or set of locations for something that itself is not fixed or universal is a deeply problematic assumption," I was concerned. I know I am not in the medical field, but I do know that certain part of the brain control parts of the body as well as types of thinking and emotions. I also know that certain specific things make me tick and send me into my compulsive acts, so why won't those specific things not be fixed into certain parts of my brain when they trigger the same thing each time? On the other hand, I do have various OCD components, which could be in different locations in my brain. As far as the causes, I have changed since I was little. Mentioned on page 126, they don't seem to care that past is relevant as well as the present. My OCD has modified and gotten better, but I still have OCD and in medicine, everyone is different from the next. I feel I might be reading this article a little too subjectively or not understanding it, but either way its confusing to me and I feel there is a lost hope for OCD.
ReplyDeleteI interpreted the quote on p125 to mean that the assumption that there is a neurochemical reaction that causes OCD is not correct since there are so many different forms of OCD symptoms. He mentions that it can be argued "that a specific area of the brain may be involved in worrying or planning or checking" and the way he mentions this it makes me think that he is criticizing the behavior people call "OCD" as a behavioral response to the neurochemistry behind worrying, planning,checking, emotions, etc. He does not seem to think that OCD has its own neurochemistry.
DeleteI thought Davis did a very good job in developing his argument while still explaining OCD. I find it helpful when the explanation and background on the topic of the argument are integrated smoothly into writing. I never had to go back and re-read things or look back earlier in the article for an explanation. The author also did a great job of making his work accessible to many different audiences; I feel that someone who knows nothing about OCD and a medical professional who studies it could both find this article informative and interesting. The part of the article I liked best was when the author summarized his whole argument into a metaphor involving cars. It gave the reader another clear example of what Davis was trying to say and was easier to understand than multiple medical terms.
ReplyDeleteThe article wasn't too difficult to read. I felt the author did a good job of providing several reasons why he felt this current idea of diagnosing a disease by categories can be against health. He used OCD as an example, but I find that this is true in many other diseases. This checklist method of diagnosing can be dangerous in my opinion. His argument was persuasive for me. In the very last paragraph, he states "To be against an explanation or a set of explanations doesn't mean that one is against health. Likewise, to be for a set of procedures and diagnoses can be a way of being against health as well. In the end, simplistic and reductionist explanations of complex medical phenomena will always be against health." This statement resonated with me particularly because, as stated before, self diagnoses can be dangerous. Most people who don't have a thorough education in medicine, disease, the history of the disease or of medicine tend to self diagnose via the Internet or other media sources. I felt the argument might have been more persuasive for me because I already had a general foundation similar to what he stated in the article.
ReplyDeleteI understand what Davis was trying to accomplish throughout the article, to let his opinion known that "simplistic and reductionist explanations of complex medical phenomena will always be against health", but his use of OCD as an example did not convince me (130). I feel Davis answers his own question of why the increase in reported diagnoses of OCD when he mentions the definition has been changing over time; the change could be an increase in the symptoms or other things. I also disliked his argument against "an influential book on OCD" whose title he does not even mention, and the "scant" evidence for the 'it's always been around theory' (124). Maybe the evidence is 'scant' because there aren't a lot of records on it from the beginning of time, and what we consider now as OCD was just written off as some crazy person who had too much sun. You never know. Also, when Davis mentions a cross-national study that has leading and repetitive questions, an example would have been nice to read so that I wouldn't have to just take his word for it. And I don't really believe that simplistic and reductionist explanations of complex medical phenomena is against health; reason being so is that those simple explanations get people to ask more questions...to ask their doctors, to ask Google (which doctors do at times as well), etc. Not everyone went to medical school either, so these simple and reductionist explanations may be necessary for the general public.
ReplyDeleteThe article began with a history of OCD and how the term has changed and how many people over time have been diagnosed much more recently. What really confused me was the heading on page 122 "OCD: DISEASE OF DISEASE ENTITY?" So it starts off with a question to the reader and at the end I feel like he didn't answer it or maybe I just didn't get the last lines on page 130 because I felt he was saying the same statement in a different way and not effectively (tautologia). I have to agree with Amanda on this one because I was more confused and felt he introduced more questions than answers. I do feel though that the media does play in part with the OCD and self-diagnosing one's self because after the second page I was diagnosing myself OCD with my until he snapped me out of it on the last paragraph on 128. Basically, from what i took from the entire article on OCD is the metaphor on page 126 that he used about car: "What I'm saying is that trying to understand OCD is more like trying to figure out how a car got to Philadelphia and the approach taken by researches is more like trying to figure out how a spark plug functions."
ReplyDeleteI found Davis' argument to be particularly interesting for a number of reasons. For one, on a personal note, I am pretty sure I suffered some form of OCD when I was a kid. Fortunately, I grew out of it naturally and didn't require any kind of medical attention. Then again, I may have a been a victim of all of the problems that Davis was citing with our medical field today when regarding OCD. Either way, I can certainly relate to his reference that "'the natural outcome of untreated cases of obsession in childhood is good'" (Davis 128). And I think my personal case is direct support for Davis' entire argument. OCD in the 1970s was extremely rare and somewhat severe, and as a result, it was regarded that way. Today, however, society has become so sensitive to the idea of OCD that it has become over prescribed and over treated to extents that are unnecessary and possibly detrimental. Simply from personal experience, I found Davis' argument to pretty convincing since I understand that mild cases of OCD don't need to be treated as chronic cases. As Davis noted, the same can undoubtedly be said for ADD. Children are diagnosed with ADD left and right these days for the exact same reasons. I have personally noticed that the "me-too" process is especially present with the case of ADD. Someone sees that their friend received medicine to focus better and they quickly come to believe that they need medicine to focus too.
ReplyDeleteOn a separate note, I also found Davis' rhetorical techniques to be rather effective. Davis' use of the rhetorical question becomes very persuasive throughout the chapter. After deconstructing an idea that he disagreed with, Davis would ask either one or a series of very leading rhetorical questions that one couldn't help but agree with after the successful argument he just made. The rhetorical questions would serve to further reinforce the idea that the argument he just debunked really couldn't be right in any sense or form.
What I understand in Davis's argument is that scientists trying to box the definition of OCD into a pure medical cause is wrong, since they are neglecting the historical/social/cultural aspects of our society. He proves this by laying out how the definition of OCD as defined by the DSM has evolved over time. Our society in the 1970s were vastly different from our society in the 21st century and this had a hand in shaping people's thoughts about what was appropriate behavior and what was not. In the 70s, people were more conservative than today and this might have shaped the definition of OCD in the DSM. Today, a wide range of behaviors thought of as normal might have been written off as strange and weird 40 years ago. Perhaps this changed the way and the number of people that were diagnosed. Davis also mentioned about how some were less likely to come forward with a "me-too" of society was strict about how to act.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I think Davis’s article about Obsession was really an informative article, he first explained the development of Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was increasing through out the years. I found it interesting when Davis called OCD a “rare disease” on the third paragraph of reading this article. I feel as if OCD shouldn’t be referred as a “disease” but more as a “mental disorder” which later on he quoted the World Health Organization in 2001 categories of the “top four mental disorders in the world”. He did make some good points based on his argument of wanting to understand, “to diagnose a person with psychiatric disorder using available categories might be against health”. I think he focused a lot on defining the different reasons of what other researchers’ define OCD and because he did that It was hard for me to understanding what he was trying to establish to me as a reader. I am not familiar with the parts of the brain so therefore I didn’t understand if the mound function of the brain can be describe as a “disease” causing OCD to develop. I also agree with Abbey that a if you have OCD and is not hurting your health it shouldn't have medical attention for it. She is right people can just have a "controlling personalities that are specific about what they want".
ReplyDeleteI found this article very interesting to read because I believe all of us can relate to it in a sense. I have seen many people who claim to have a type of Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (OCD), yet don't really have a solid definition of the disease. Davis argues that it has become increasingly hard to define OCD due to social and cultural influences. "...it's hard to identify when the kind of obsessive behaviors that might be part of our culture cross over into a disease" (124). We all have obsessions and compulsions but what distinguishes them from problematic obsessions and compulsions that need medical attention is not yet clear. Davis further argues that the tests, surveys, and researches done about OCD in different part of the world are not very reliable because they are usually biased and pertain to the middle-class population of a certain country. Therefore, some of the necessary questions are not asked. He specially criticizes the author of a chapter in a book on OCD, who argues that the basic types of OCD are consistent across cultures and time, basing his evidence only on studies done in Japan and Egypt. Davis' argument is valid because clearly Japan and Egypt do not stand for the whole world. Although the argument might have some truth in it, it is necessary for researchers to extend their research to other countries and societies and to take into consideration every class of citizens when collecting data.
ReplyDeleteIn the “Obsession” article, Davis argues that “Any simple definition of OCD or explanation for the uptick in the prevalence of the disorder is bound to be reductionist” (122). Throughout the article Davis will bring up a definition of OCD or popular explanation for its increase, unpack it, prove that it is misleading or inadequate and then move on to the next explanation. By the use of this very thorough analysis and the use of everyday language, Davis makes his argument very appealing to the audience.
ReplyDeleteTowards the end of the article, Davis brings up a possible relationship between the initial rarity of OCD and its lack of treatability and the proliferation of the disease and its more successful cure rate (130). I thought this was an interesting relationship. Davis thinks that an argument could be made that people who are more treatable are the newer, less serious cases. It could be that once a treatment was found and publication of the treatable disease occurred, more and more people found themselves fitting the symptoms and identifying with OCD. This is different from the past where OCD was relatively unknown and people with severe cases had to seek out help from physicians.