Thursday, November 24, 2005

On Salon, I found an article that annoyed me in its factual errors. This paragraph really bothered me:

But at the same time the definition of treatable depression was watered down -- renamed as social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and, my personal favorite, generalized anxiety disorder -- to include a seemingly endless demographic of adults and children

Anxiety disorders and depression are not the same thing. Social anxiety disorder is a disorder in which you are so frightened of people you can barely function. Panic disorders involves panic attacks frequently, and sometimes involves acrophobia- in which the person barely goes outside, and what's so good about generalized anxiety disorder? Jumping at small noises, and having back pain so bad you think you have a kidney stone for no good reason is not the same as lying in bed wishing you were dead because of your worthlessness.

If a senior psychology student could notice that he's lumping two separate, although slightly related disorders together, why couldn't his editor do the same? He could have even checked out online what these disorders were. And for his well it's not really that hard, just man up advice?

I'm sorry, but that's not going to work. When you could get a decent job with a high school degree(OK, if you were white, but if you weren't,well, you were screwed) , maybe not being able to write 20 pages a week of papers wasn't really a big deal. The bar for success is higher now. College is now the key- back in the day, it was high school. I'm trying to apply for a master's degree, but even with that level of education, I'm not going to be able to make much money.

I could have achieved more if I was not wary of taking study drugs. Often my studies are impaired by the fact that I require more sleep than normal people(about 8 hours a night, and sometimes ten). The human body has limits. All of us come with different ones. We have no safety net. They are cutting food stamps. We have no national health care. Republicans have circled Social Security like sharks. I don't blame my classmates for taking drugs. Sometimes it's that or become part of the despised underclass.

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