Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness.(Bush?)

[IChing]

y Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page A01

The 48-year-old man turned down a job because he feared that a co-worker would be gay. He was upset that gay culture was becoming mainstream and blamed most of his personal, professional and emotional problems on the gay and lesbian movement.

These fixations preoccupied him every day. Articles in magazines about gays made him agitated. He confessed that his fears had left him socially isolated and unemployed for years: A recovering alcoholic, the man even avoided 12-step meetings out of fear he might encounter a gay person.



Darrel A. Regier of the American Psychiatric Association favors research but says it is not clear that establishing a diagnosis would be useful. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
"He had a fixed delusion about the world," said Sondra E. Solomon, a psychologist at the University of Vermont who treated the man for two years. "He felt under attack, he felt threatened."

Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis....


The proposed guidelines that California psychologist Edward Dunbar created describe people whose daily functioning is paralyzed by persistent fears and worries about other groups. The guidelines have not been endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); advocates are mostly seeking support for systematic study.


>>>>>snip
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901938.html

I placed this here to say that this reflects this so-called joke and to make a point.

The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning

Lingering Disease

The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about
a new virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is
contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior.

The disease is Gonorrhea Lectim and pronounced "gonna re-elect him." Many victims
contracted it in 2004, after having been screwed for the past four
years.

Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include: anti-social
personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones,

extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to incorporate new information,
pronounced xenophobia and paranoia,

inability to accept responsibility for own actions,
cowardice masked by misplaced bravado, uncontrolled
facial smirking, ignorance of geography and history,
tendencies towards evangelical theocracy,
categorical all-or-nothing behavior.

Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed at how this destructive
disease originated only a few years ago from a bush found in Texas.


Now one is a true story of a mental illness and the other is a symptom of that illness in the form of a joke.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

1. Sounds like good ole paranoia to me

(the first one, that is)

[NoStinkinBadges]

2. He was probably gay.

Sounds to me like the 48 year old man was a closet gay himself.

[IChing]

3. Doesn't chimpy have a fixed delusion also?

"He had a fixed delusion about the world," said Sondra E. Solomon, a psychologist at the University of Vermont who treated the man for two years. "He felt under attack, he felt threatened."

I think they are both mutually inclusive, which explains a lot about both men.

[IChing]

4. I'm kicking this because the orginal had a better title and got sent

to the lounge. Which was the joke headline.
but was trying to make a point.
and of course, the good joke , has foundations in truth

don't know who the mod was but it's ok......

political humorist are needed in GD, not only the visual, but I guess Bill Hicks would see the same.

original post that got tombstoned to the lounge, I was gonna add this bit from WP. but it got moved before I could add it.
amazing ,posts on relationships get to stay here in GD.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x4428929