Nature / nuture

There is no conclusive scientific evidence that mental illness is of a genetic, brain chemistry, biological or hereditary nature. I challenge anyone to present such evidence. Conversely, there is no evidence to prove the environmental factors are entirely the cause. We simply don't know, and anyone who tries to tell you they know is selling you snake oil, or a new pharmaceutical drug.

How could we assign cause to a human condition for which we can't even devise an objective diagnostic test for? There is no blood test, brain scan, X-ray or other such diagnostic tool that can determine the existence of a mental illness. The current North American psychiatric paradigm views mental illness as a 'disease' - which is part of the problem. How can we have a disease for which there is no diagnostic test? Does this mean mental illness doesn't exist, as cults like Scientology would have us believe? Of course not. It simply means this is a very complex question, likely involving many variables. Another part of the problem is our tendency as laypeople and parents to seek out simple explanations for complex problems, i.e., reductionist thinking. I can see why parents with mentally ill kids would want to seek out such simple reductions. Unfortunately, which such thinking may satisfy their conscience, it does not get them any closer to a factual, scientific understanding of their child's disorder.

Yes, mental illness can be related to environmental factors, but that does not necessarily imply bad parenting. My educated guess is that mental illness involves a complex mix of nature and nurture, further complicated by cultural and political factors. You need only turn on the TV and see the parade of drug ads float across the screen to understand the political factors at play. The DSM has gone from mere pamphlet to epic tome in a span of just a few decades. Driving this is the pharmaceutical industrial complex, which has devised a system through which drugs are viewed as the first line of defence against mental illness 'diseases'; a system in which people are advised to take drugs for 'diseases' that may not even exist.

I also don't like the grouping of disorders into one convenient basket. Schizophrenia and clinical depression and OCD are distinct disorders, and each requires a separate diagnosis, analysis and discussion.

To Miguel, there is no definitive "gene test" or any other test to diagnose bipolar or depression. You are perpetuating a dangerous social myth, which ends up hurting and labelling people, not helping people with mental problems.

In spite of the author's

In spite of the author's rant about feminsts, she continues to perpetuate the myth that children only have mothers and that fathers are seemingly out of the picture. Not once does she mention a father having concern about his child with mental illness. The closest it gets is using the word "parents". As long as I read and hear rants like this, the more I will ignore them until woman start realizing that they are one of th reasons that men feel alientated from their families and children.

Why on earth blame feminism, for goodness sake?

Feminism surely is no more the cause of serious mental illness or available treatment options than parenting, for goodness sake!

Much of this argument is nothing more than further evidence of the global cultural habit of misogyny and, frankly, I'm tired of it. If the truth be told, and it rarely is, women are far better in every way than men have any right to expect under circs that would crush most guys, so let's just put paid to that old bugaboo.

Happily, scientists like Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain and, most recently, The Male Brain, are making great and fascinating connections between brain chemistry and a variety of mental disorders, which suggests strongly that nature rather than nurture controls human behavior.

Breaking bad on women for all the ills of the poor, old world, quite simply, makes no sense at all.

Nature/Nurture

warbler; My comments are based on personal experience. What position are you speaking from?

Wow

Your story is both sad and amazing I read it twice and shook my head.

I feel this is more of societal issue than a feminist issue but either way, you are bang on the money.

I spent 10 yrs with a partner with a serious mental illness. Her mother was her sole support and the only person who could reason with her on some level when she experienced an episode.

Shortly after we separated, her mother died. While she will no longer speak to me, I worry about her daily.

Thank you for this piece.

Science is not intrinsically apolitical

I suspect the problem here is that the author expects her notion of "feminism" to equate with "pro-family." The family is always right in this author's view, and the state and "feminists" (whoever they are) are always in the wrong, being uniformly anti-science. There are a slew of logical inconsistencies in this article, but a few stuck out for me:

The issue of labelling in my view, seems particularly misunderstood here... Once a person is labelled as mentally ill, an ill-informed public will make all sorts of judgements as to how fit they are to participate in society, let alone support themselves. I haven't seen any studies, but I would be interested in seeing the number of job-seeking with a history of mental illness who acknowledge their condition to their employer who find work. Not all of the mentally ill have families, or at least, supportive ones, and we need to remember that there is a very real financial element involved in treating mental illness, even in Canada. So when feminists argue that the term "mentally ill" is one that can have negative effects, they may be referring to economic circumstances that have nothing to do with the science of treatment itself.

Further, the author neglects to mention the fact that BC engaged in a mass de-institutionalisation in the early 90s in response to the fad for family-based care. Many people who had been institutionalised hadn't got families that could support them, and as is now well known, a large number wound up homeless in the DTES. Housing and other amenities are expensive, and not all families can afford them (and we have a succession of government who have been unwilling to provide where private individuals may not all have equal resources). A lot of critiques (some feminists included) of the current approach to treatment of the mentally ill operate on this political, rather than scientific, axis - where families (which I would emphasise are historically vehicles of patriarchy) cannot provide, it is the role of the state to step in.

But the author's refusal to advocate for state-based solutions is unsurprising, as she only seems interested in hearing the viewpoints of "families, especially mothers, [so that they can] be the powerful advocates for their children that they need to be." Many scientists claim political objectivity to all their work when they're trying to disparage other fields, and it's tiresome and disappointing in people who are supposed to excel in rigourous thought. In short, this author needs to decide, is this science or politics we're talking about?

@ Kaz

I had some follow-up thoughts to my initial comment, most of which were nicely addressed by Kaz.

The author makes many vague references in the article to the "overwhelming" research to support her bio-psych position, yet offers few citations, only to say that feminist critics of this model have not done their homework, or are ignoring the research. The mention of a study on pet scans to epxlain human schizophrenia is almost laughable. I'd love to see the Tyee offer a counter-point article on this topic, because I know that Inman does her best to misrepresent her critics in building up her own position.

I think Inman is a passionate fighter for her daughter, but she is not a scientist or a psychiatrist. Kaz's last question (is this science or politics we're talking about?) is apt. Obviously the two (politics and science) are often intertwined, especially in psychiatry when so many billions of dollars are spent by big pharma in Washington every year on lobbying/PR/advertising alone!

Further, Inman's scope is a very personal scope, and her emotional investment in the personal seems to have skewed her understanding of the social, scientific, political aspects. She says "psychiatry helped my daughter and countless others" without telling us about the even more countless others who psychiatry has hurt or killed over the years. It was not long ago (1949) that Egas Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy [lobotomy] in certain psychoses". This is the same paradigm that used to institutionalize women for the diagnosis of "hysteria." Is it any wonder a segment of feminist thought is not running to the defence of the APA, the DSM and its proponents?

I want Inman to have a look at the countless children who have been forced to undergo drug therapy as early as 2-years-old for diagnoses such as ADHD, childhood bipolar and depression, among other disorders. Are these the countless patients psychiatry has helped - that Inman is referring to? In any other context, this would be considered child abuse. I know parents who, with the help of psychiatrists, have put their kids through one dangerous drug cocktail to another (without child's consent), only to inflict permanent irreparable damage on their kid's young, still-developing brain; and their arguments and rationalizations sound eerily similar to Inman's. If you are going to enter the political ring of mental health, at least offer a fair, balanced opinion of the stakes involved. This is not all about you, your kid and a group of "feminists" who, much to your frustration, do not align with your own skewed, biased thinking on the topic.

Family

Is very important and family support is everything. And telling any prospective employer about an illness is always a bit cagey because of the concerns you may not always be able to do the job. Why do you think the author picked on mom to be the advocate?
How many dads are staying home to take care of their mentally retarded children? How many dads take their mental disturbed children to institutions each day where they get care? The list goes on if dad has been excluded is to often dad has excluded himself and those who do engage are treated like they have done something special when it really should be the norm. And you know what is kinda sad is sometimes mom is all the family these kids have as mental illness is considered a taboo.

A More Balanced Perspective is Needed

As a social worker and a human rights advocate I have a mixture of academic, experiential and theoretical knowledge on the topic of mental illness, working with children, youth, adults and families with mental illness. Amongst other foundations to my practice, I count feminist and deconstructivist theories as important to my work with individuals and families.

Having worked with many, many people with various mental illnesses and spoken with, or worked with their families, psychiatric illness is not a socially constructed state of being. I would suggest any person reading this sit by while a trained MH professional completes a psychiatric/mental status assessment of an individual who is in a psychotic state. There are objective observations, behaviour and self-reported psychotic phenomenon that individuals often can articulate that are consistent across cultures, times and places. The impacts on global functioning are very apparent and lead to a general diminished quality of life.

I would encourage the author to get to the heart of some of the arguments of some of the anti-psychiatry feminists and others. Substantial evidence exists that women have been and continue to be diagnosed and pathologized in numbers far disproportionate to men, often by male psychiatrists. As mentioned, Freud's labelling of women as possessing "hysteria" likely caused significant harm (and covered up the likely sexual abuse of many girls in Victorian times) and this is a legacy women still live with (see Borderline Personality Disorder). Labelling does create stigma and there is substantive research in the area of disability and employment that demonstrates that people with mental disabilities are much more likely to suffer discrimination in the workforce and elsewhere.

In saying this though, accurate diagnosis, multi-model treatment, including medication and effective holistic recovery and rehabilitation can save lives, I've seen it firsthand and been part of treatment of clients who quite likely would not be alive today if they didn't get the help they needed. There is a reason the suicide rate is higher for individuals with schizophrenia, other psychotic and other classes of disorders.

One of the most important and pressing issues that was not mentioned in this article is the profound failure of the federal and provincial governments to fund and create an accessible, integrated, and effective continuum and system for mental health care. Since 2008, the BC government has failed to follow up, or create a plan for mental health and addictions. Instead, they have sat by and allowed their Health Authorities to gut MH and addictions community and hospital services and programs around the province.

To read more comments please see my blog, Advocacy BC.

God Bless You, Susan Inman

My wife was diagnosed mentally ill in 1985 and remained so until her death in 2006. She heard voices and told me A Beautiful Mind was a good depiction of what she experienced, save that she only head voices and did not see things. A number of people thought her bi-polar problem (she also was diagnosed as schizophrenic) was caused by a character defect. Others blamed me, her husband, for it. Only extremely heavy medication kept her out of permanent residence in Riverview. Towards the very end of her life our son and I discovered your organization, and only then did we get any assistance whatsoever in living with her problem. Anything you can do to combat the ignorant (I can you stronger words, but I don't want my post deleted) attitudes so common in our society is deeply appreciated. More than just mothers are harmed by feminism, as currently practiced in Canada.

Feminism?

Further, Inman's scope is a very personal scope, and her emotional investment in the personal seems to have skewed her understanding of the social, scientific, political aspects.

All you can really say here is that her personal angle is just that - an expression of how she personally has been impacted by these social, scientific, and political powers of which you speak.Nothing 'skewed' as long as the scope is kept in mind.

To me, the maneuver of picking on a bunch of historical gripes that happened a century ago and then co-opt whatever is on the table today and try to fit that into the historical gripe is just as skewed. Of course Psychiatry has made gross mistakes, seeing much of what it deals with is of an airy-fairy nature and difficult to approach in controlled double blind sets of conditions, which serious science requires. It has nevertheless done a few good things along the way. A friend of mine has one child with polar disorder, and certainly she is now functioning seriously better with the help of 'psychiatry', such as it is. One of the major steps in her improvement was her own acceptance of her illness being real, and chronic, and always requiring some form of management. I think that here, as in any other affair of life, insisting in cramming one's own evangelium down the throats of other people is insupportably self-serving. Let the feminists fight over the things that have actually hit women in ways that could be called discriminatory. That is their fair jurisdiction. But keep the hands off other people and their struggles, instead of applying some kind of self-serving absolutism.

My apologies

for not setting the first, quoted paragraph in quotation signs. I am sorry for any difficulty of understanding this may have caused.

Susan Responds

I appreciate the time that responders took to share your perspectives.
These comments may make some things clearer:
>I am as angry as anyone about the practices of pharmaceutical companies. They definitely try to convince the public in a variety of ways that ordinary human experiences need medications which can have awful side effects. However, people with psychotic disorders (3% of the population) really do need medications in order to have a chance to lead a decent life.
>Academic feminism has made important contributions to understanding how oppressive gender roles negatively impact the mental health of women. I'm arguing that's it is their response to serious mental illnesses that's the problem.
>Better understanding of serious mental illnesses can lead to better political actions including improved funding for much needed services for people trying to recover from these disorders and for the families who are trying to help them.
>I think many fathers do a spectacular job in responding to the unique challenges of being the parent of someone with a serious mental illness. However, it's much more often mothers who end up being the primary care providers.
>I know that I will never convince many people that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are neurobiological disorders. It might be helpful to go to www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org and search for Fuller Torrey's article on "What Is Wrong with the Brain in Schizophrenia? Studies of Individuals Who have Never Been Treated". He summarizes 107 peer-reviewed studies documenting significant problems in people whose brains haven't been exposed to medications. These difficulties don't mean that people with these illnesses can't be treated; most people's illnesses respond to medications even if those responses and the medications are far from ideal.
>Genetic factors are a large but are not the only factors in the development of these neurobiological disorders. Unfortunately, the fact that environmental factors are involved leads too many eager parent (especially mother) bashers to fill in the gaps. Environmental factors supported by the research include prenatal difficulties, birth complications, and head injuries. Research is showing that marijuana is not a benign drug, especially in its current high potency form, in these situations; it can be the catalyst for triggering the development of schizophrenia when there's a genetic predisposition present. Most important is for women who do have a family history of serious mental illnesses to learn that many studies have linked the flu during pregnancy to later development of schizophrenia in a child. A simple flu shot when considering pregnancy could make a big difference.

And finally, I want to thank the people who wrote in and shared your own struggles with mental illnesses. It's your courage that will help society begin to have a more humane response to these disorders.

Still frustrated

Thanks for responding to the comments, Susan. I do think you're still tarring with a rather broad brush "feminism" as a whole. And feminist bashing has become a major problem in this province's mediascape (not to say on a broader level). I hope you'll take my critique less in the spirit of a disagreement with the substance of your argument - I do agree that drugs are important in treating serious mental illnesses such as those you describe - than out of a concern that your rhetoric participates (deliberately or not) in what I see as a pernicious trend in Canadian media towards uninformed ad hominem attacks on an incredibly diverse school of thought. If you're interested in developing a more nuanced appreciation of feminism, particularly as it approaches science, you might consider reading Sandra Harding's Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?

When you write, "Academic feminism has made important contributions to understanding how oppressive gender roles negatively impact the mental health of women. I'm arguing that's it is their response to serious mental illnesses that's the problem," I would counter that the evidence of two academic conferences and your personal experience is all you present in defence of your latter claim. I have to say that those certainly do not prove that scepticism of using drugs to treat serious mental illness is a widely held view that can be attributed to all "feminists."

AdvocacyBC and warbler I think both touch on what feminism has to offer science effectively in earlier posts. I would only echo that I hope most of us would agree that science is on balance enriched by feminist critiques, and that medical practitioners are better when they can reflect critically on issues such as gender.

Fuller Torrey

If Fuller Torrey is Inman's poster boy for good, objective psychiatric research, I think the debate ceases to be much of a scientific debate and more of a political, ideological argument.

For those of you who don't know, Dr. Torrey is one of America's most notorious proponents of forced (involuntary) psychiatric treatment, whose ideology is so charged, ethically and politically, that it's almost impossible for his research on severe mental illness to be taken with anything more than a very small grain of salt. He spends more of his time lobbying politically against funding for groups he deems "anti-psychiatry" and writing opinion pieces than he does doing real psychiatric research. And as for his research, it's far from definitive, some might say far from credible. Inman and other parents look to Torrey, not because of his science or data, but because of what he represents, which is an ideology that takes blame off parenting/environmental factors, and puts it exclusively on biological determinism. I have not done the full background check on Torrey, but it would not surprise me to learn his "research" funding comes in big waves from big pharmaceutical companies.

It's important to note Inman's failure to distinguish between Torrey the researcher and Torrey to political advocate, because in Torrey's case, the two have become so intertwined that any credible scientific merit produced by Torrey has been counterfeited; what Torrey does is self-fulfilling prophesy research. And at the end of the day, Torrey still has no diagnostic tool to prove severe mental illness is biologically determined. That's one of the problems - the black & white simplicity of his ideology. He's a biological determinist, which is the flip side of the dogmatic coin that sees extreme anti-psychiatrists on the other side.

I have no problem with the politics, ideology of psychiatry; I take a stance myself. What I have a problem with is when people cloak their ideology in science and try to pass off opinion as scientific truth. And it ends up being somewhat ironic that Inman laments the "failure" "feminism" to come to her defence. Inman's argument mischarcterizes feminism and the psychiatric research on severe mental illness, thus her position amounts to little more than one big straw-man fallacy.

Torrey actually makes some very interesting observations and policy suggestions for treating mental illness, but they are so mired in his decades-long quest to prove an ideological point, that they get lost in the toxic bafflegab.

Disappointed

I have to say that this is one of the most disappointing and biased articles I have read on the Tyee. While I certainly feel for Ms. Inman and agree with her that the perception and treatment of those with mental illnesses is poor (and worsening), I feel that her explanations and solutions are just as lacking and one-sided.

On the flip side, I think she has opened a very important discussion to which many of the comments have added great value.

Warbler - Re: Fuller Torrey

Your description reminds me of this article from Harper's Magazine:

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/09/0083100
The war on unhappiness: Goodbye Freud, hello positive thinking

Excerpts:
- In 1926, less than two decades after Freud’s visit, the doctors of the New York Psychoanalytic Society declared their independence from their European forebears by decreeing that only physicians could practice psychoanalysis.

- A psychoanalyst trained this way was bound to have the wrong idea about psychic suffering: that it was an illness to be isolated and cured by the doctor. This was a form of piety that Freud could not tolerate. “As long as I live,” he wrote, “I shall balk at having psychoanalysis swallowed by medicine.”

- Over Freud’s dead body, this is exactly what has happened, to the financial benefit of virtually everyone at the Anaheim conference [Anaheim Convention Center for the Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference]. The New York Psychoanalytic Society’s marriage of therapy to medicine secured us a place at the health-care trough.

Mental illness & feminism

Ms. Inman is entirely entitled to the anger and heartache she has experienced over her child’s catastrophic illness, but no useful purpose is served by generalizing feminism as unscientific and suggesting it is a contributor to the troubles of mental illness.

Feminism is not about certain people or groups; it is about an approach to life and to knowledge. Several years ago Margrit Eichler, writing on feminist research in Canada in a leading feminist journal, Signs, pointed out that feminism is a point of view that does not treat men as the norm and women as deviations from the norm. For medicine this meant that feminists insisted that more studies be done using female subjects and studying specific female diseases.
Another Canadian feminist, Nancy Adamson wrote in 1988
“The women’s movement. . . always has been, politically, ideologically, and strategically diverse”. . . .In short it refers to the combined efforts of countless women working to combat sexism in all walks of life.

Looked at in this light, the fundamentally important contributions to medicine, science, society and culture which feminists have made and are making should not be dismissed.

Bipolar illness

Much of this strikes a chord with me. In the late 1950s my mother had a post-partum psychosis - recently recognized as an indicator of bi-polar tendencies. My son is bipolar, currently in an excruciating manic phase. It is a great relief to have names for these illnesses and for the lesser degree of bipolarity that I suffer myself.

Despite the fact that in my 40s I managed to get a Ph.D., my only income is a disability pension. I try to imagine what life could be like if I and my son were not cursed with this miserable illness.

Those of you who are among the fortunate well, have the decency to respect us in our fight against something that you - through no virtue or superiority of your own - have been spared.

Mental Ilness & Drugs

While I appreciate the frustration many feel about the pharmaceutical companies' efforts to medicate nearly all unpleasant experiences out of existence (I have my doubts about restless leg syndrome, for example, but am trying to leave an open mind), I am equally frustrated by well-meaning aquaintances who doubt the necessity of drugs in the treatment of "simple" disorders such as depression. As someone who was diagnosed with this illness in my early teens I feel I owe my current life and state of well-being to antidepressants. Not that getting the treatment I needed was easy. I was hospitalized after a suicide attempt and promptly assigned an psychiatrist who believed all I needed was to talk about my family. I tried to explain that our conversations were not addressing my most distressing symptoms -- the inability to taste the food I was eating, the buzzing energy I felt coursing through my body like the swarm of angry insects and my nearly constant insomnia. The talk therapy was continued. I finally had to do my best to act "better" so that I could get a day pass, go to the library, do my best concentrate through my symptoms and research what was happening to me. Armed with knowledge I approached another doctor who finally prescribed the antidepressants I needed. A day later I was able to sleep for five hours straight and taste my breakfast.

I have learned to appreciate therapy and therapists over the years and value the insights they have helped me discover. I also have no desire to medicate myself into any kind of emotional numbness. I have been accused of being overly pedantic in correcting those who tell me I look depressed, forever explaining that depression is different and that this is just sadness. I also try to explain that I value this sadness, or grief, or regret -- all the real emotions that the numbness of depression had robbed me of. I will always be grateful to the drugs that returned these feelings -- and the rest of my life -- back to me.

Antipsychotic Drugs..

Only few people understands those who have mental illness. People are blinded of what they can see when they know nothing about the patient's history. On Kyle Warren's case of Opelousas, La., Antipsychotic drugs were given to him when he was 18 months old. This was designed to help with the outbursts he was having. When he was three, he was then identified as having autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia and oppositional defiant disorder, says the New York Times. Even his mother admitted he was “a drooling, sedated, overweight zombie” due to the treatment. Kids getting antipsychotics is something experts are now looking into because of things like this.

Screening for physical causes of mental illness?

When will physicians and the Mental Health Commission of Canada promote screening for physical causes of mental illness?
http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/causesofschizophrenia.htm
http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/stradford.htm
http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/fieldmanual.htm
http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/genesis.htm
http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/diamond.htm

warble, you have no experience

Warble, you probably don't even know someone with a mental illness. I know first hand what it is to have a mental illness. Thank God for medication and counselling. I know where I would be without it and it's not pretty. There is plenty of scientific evidence out there to prove mental illness. There are scans that show the difference in the brains of healthy people and those who are suffering but I doubt you would be willing to look at it because it doesn't fit your predjustices. However, there is so much more like how can so many people have the same traits. How come so many people with the illness have family members who have been also? I have bi-polar and I was glad that I finally had a label because I was able to get treatment. However, mental health is very underfunded. You have to spend money to save money. Many people with mental illness can go to lead successful lives if they have to right supports. It costs us much more as a society to sweep it under the rug. I don't believe in institutions because I worked with people who had been in institutions for years,they ould not do anything for themselves. There was untold amounts of abuse in these institutions and I know this for a fact because I worked in the institustions and saw for myself. I wouldn't put a dog in an institution. As far as feminists go I have experienced first hand from feminits there biases. When I was studying to be a social worker, in my socialogy book there was a doctor who said mental illness was a myth. My feminist teacher agreed and in turn treated me like a freak. I say to you Warble that you get out around people who have mental illnesses and get some experience before you talk.

My concern is that so many

My concern is that so many labels, like ADHD, have more to
do with societal demands than logical development of a person with certain skills, talents, and "imperfections".

In my experience, demands of fathers, church, and control freaks can drive potentially wonderful mothers to babbling and despair and base trickery. The catastrophe continues.

I hear it all the time in supermarkets, and in a publicly used play area behind my house. Nervous over-parenting is rife. Parenting is still unhealthily competitive.

The old safety valves used to be grandmothers, really gifted teachers, and funny old neighbours who "got it". Many children now have little or no contact with grandmothers, many are being very restricively home-schooled, and contact with eccentric neighbours is often forbidden. Many children escape the box in ways that are far from nurturing.

I forget who suggested that children and grandparents get along so productively because they have a common enemy.

I had neighbours who were worried about break-ins because they had five TV sets. When I asked what on earth two people did with five TV sets, I was told that when the grandkids come over, they all want to watch different programs.

Even music, to nourish heart and soul, has largely been reduced to the Hz range and fidelity of wasps behind a curtain. Pianos are furniture and guitars are a bad sign. Singing at family and neighbourhood gatherings has become nodding and bobbing to the "music" in the background, of course there has to be background music. Silence is freaky.

Given the truly antagonistic divide, truly, severely, even deadly, I can relate to my mother's insistence, for the last twenty years of her life, that my life would change for the glory, if only I'd take Ritalin.

She was president of a slightly less than zealous ADHD parents' association. They sent me their newsletter, which they should have had her edit for spelling, syntax and general grammar. Hell, maybe that was part of its appeal. Every issue had something about children who couldn't or wouldn't tidy their bedrooms, until they went to ADHD camp or took Ritalin or whatever.

She really figured, on Ritalin, I would take Jesus into my heart, have smoother legs, wear flowery dresses, keep a tidy house, stop arguing with men who really knew what they were talking about, do something with my hair, and marry a dentist. Never too late.

My mother was as intelligent as I am, and encouraged me, before she got religion, to be what I believed in. RIP.

Predictably, given the barrage, I have often been mildly depressed. I think I understand why people blame mental illness and refusal to take some if not all pharma on feminism. Had I succumbed to my father's wishes and her advice, everything would have been ducky, right.