I probably should not have made assumptions about the email that I refered to in Scientology Translation Email. I should not have assumed that it was my brain that was causing me all the confusion. What ever the case he didn't seem to get the fact that I don't understand him. He made no effort what so ever to change his wording in his email replies. I have decided not to respond to him again since he and I don't seem to be speaking the same language.
Here are his 3 different email replies he sent me last night:
1. "ADD / ADHD Support Mentor and Coach"
A mentor is supportive, no? What are your qualification? Are you part of the clergy of the church of mental health, or, are you merely an acolyte?
2. Is saying that my own ADHD might be getting in the way some kind of veiled ad hominem comment? Is your mission that of transforming moral values into medical values? After all, you obviously have both feet firmly planted in the reductive take on human conduct, no?
3. "I still aren't sure?" Well, for one, I am not sure how you can make the comment about ADHD being so poorly understood, yet, if such be the case, is the involuntary poisoning, and other therapies wrought on children, for (mis)behavior, then justified? The latter has nothing to do with medicine; this is psychiatry and state conspiring and complicit in altering the individual so as to alter the social! Are you aware of the operative defintion of the term "disorder", as an open-ended, provisionally defining term? It seems that such a term gives the Utopian, do-gooder, medical-statist types, a lot of wiggle room, no? Moreover, the tactical nature of labeling so many troublesome and troubling acts and utterances as forms of "disorder" also diminishes the responsibility and rationality of those so labeled. And so your mission, as it is with psychiatry and its allied fields, is about restoring human dignity and removing the stigma of mental illness? Really? I think you are a mental-illness mongerer, and at best, amoral.
3 replies to "Clergy of the Church of Mental Health"
(Sorry this is a long email, but I think this person is hilarious)
This person sounds like they are looking to start an argument with somebody/anybody that will pay attention to them and unfortunately they chose you. Aren’t you lucky?
To Answer their questions:
1. Read the About section on your website. It’s to the right, click on it and take a gander.
2. You never said THEY had ADHD. And as far as transforming moral values into medical values, your About section did not mention anything about you being a medical doctor. So, that could’ve been answered by 1 as well. You don’t diagnose people, you help them after they’ve been diagnosed by a medical professional (physician/psychologist/psychiatrist). That’s what an ADD coach does, you have to already have ADD inorder to be coached. That’s just how that works.
3. Well now, Psychiatry IS medicine. You have to go to Medical School to be a psychiatrist. They probably meant psychology, however this could’ve been solved by reading the ABOUT section as well. Only psychiatrists and medical doctors can prescribe medication, psychologists and coaches cannot. If they have a problem with children taking ADD/ADHD medince, yelling at an ADD Coach with a blog is barking up a flower garden when they need to find a tree. Who makes these drugs? How thoroughly do they test them before they’re approved on the market. Go talk to those people. You’re doing absolutely nothing for your cause by ranting at us. Mental-illness mongerer and amoral because you don’t like our definition of “Disorder”? This person has problems and needs to have his thesauarus taken away, he’s abused it. Replace it with a dictionary and an DSM-IV.
From my knowledge (which I consider pretty vast), ADD coaches main job is to help clients who ALREADY have been diagnosed develop social and behavioral skills inorder to manage their ADD/ADHD so that they can live their life to the fullist (with or without medication). Your job is more social and behavioral training than medical diagnosing and prescribing.
“this is psychiatry and state conspiring and complicit in altering the individual so as to alter the social!” If altering individuals to put their keys in the same place everyday and to throw their junk mail away before they set it down and forget about is a conspiracy then it’s not a very good one because I still can’t find my keys half the time and I have a never ending pile of junk mail building up on the surfaces of my kitchen. Psychiatry and the state need to step up their game a bit, cause this individual no where near the point of altering the social. I can’t find the social, I lost it somewhere, it’s disappeared in a pile of junk mail…
I also love this comment “the tactical nature of labeling so many troublesome and troubling acts and utterances as forms of “disorder” also diminishes the responsibility and rationality of those so labeled.” Ok so if a person gets diagnosed with ADD, it WOULD BE very easy for that person to blame all of their acts on their ADD and not take responsibility for themselves. However, that’s up to the patient not the ADD coach. That’s also up to the Diagnostician (medical professional not coach) to determine the best diagnosis for the patient. Diagnosing a 3 year old with ADD IS amorale, all 3 year old children have limited attention spans. However, The role of the coach is to help the patient become more responsible and more rational in their day to day lives so that they can move past their “disorder” and live a more functional life. Not diagnose and prescribe drugs to children. Again, About section and dictionary, they come in handy.
Next time they email you, tell them to contact the FDA and go talk to them. They’re the ones that approved the “involuntary poisoning” of our youth. You’re here to make sure we’re able to handle our day to day lives while we’re looking for crap we’ve lost while we’re late to things we totally forgot we had to do today. No prescription drugs needed.
Oh and it gets better: In August, you stated this in one of your blogs. “As an ADD / ADHD Coach I educate my clients and help them develop effective skills and systems. I am not a trained medical professional and I can not and will not give out any advice about medication. I am able to let people know about ADD / ADHD medication resources though.”
So yeah, not only did they not read your About section they didn’t even look at your previous posts ON MEDICATION.
Their previous post said, “As an interesting aside, I did pain myself to count the number of book titles at my local university library, where “AD(H)D” was part of such title. I counted exactly 105 titles! This, of course, does not constitute the total number of titles, including such titles that would “merely” mention this putative disorder in passing.”
I’m sure it was very painful for you, however, if you’re going to debate with someone, do your RESEARCH on the person your arguing with. Counting the number of ADD/ADHD books at your university library is not research. You have to take them off the shelf and open them up too. That’s how books work!
Where in the world do people like this come from?? The only thing better would be if their rants rhymed like in Dr. Seuss!!! That would be utterly FANTASTIC!!!
I’m sure some creative ADD person could reword this to sound like a Dr. Seuss book. We could publish it and donate all the proceeds to the FDA just to tick this person off! Anybody got any good ideas of the title?
It’s probably best not to engage this person. Scientology is a cult and one of their MOs is to suck money/labor out of vulnerable people. Vulnerable people who would be better served by the practice of psychiatry… thus their hostility to it.
He’s using a lot of big words but using them wrong. It makes me think he’s a relatively uneducated person who recently had a dictionary shoved down his throat.
A little sad, a little scary, but not worth your time.
(thanks for the blog, btw.)