Town Square

Post a New Topic

Is The New Addition Really The Internet? Or Are Psychiatrists "Excuse Addicts"?

Original post made by anonymous coward, Evergreen Park, on Oct 19, 2006

PA Online just posted this article about yet another addiction identified by the busy "addict-discovery" bees in the psychiatric community
Web Link

Below find a funny, cogent response from a website that perhaps more psychiatric researchers should visit; it might help them understand the real world a bit better, and further realize that just because someone likes something with great passion, it doesn't indicate additiction.

Was Tolstoy, a compulsive writer, a writing addict? Are young skateboarders who think of nothing else addicts? Please! It's time for the pssyciatric community to perhaps spend some time on how *boring* most expected everyday activities are, and try to understand why activities like Internet use, gaming, instant texting, etc. are activities that people gravitate to.


Here's the quote, from
Web Link

"The psychiatric community could be rife with "excuse addicts" who are as clinically ill as alcoholics, according to psychiatrists involved in a nationwide study.
The study, carried out by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine in California, US, indicates that more than one in eight US shrinks show signs of "problematic blame shifting".
The Stanford researchers interviewed X shrinks in a nationwide survey. Because excuse addiction is not a clinically defined medical condition, the questions used were based on analysis of other blame-oriented disorders.
Most disturbing, according to the study's lead author Elmo Thorkmorton, is the discovery that some shrinks hide their blame-gaming, or go online to cure foul moods - behaviour that mirrors the way alcoholics behave.
"In a sense, they're using the blame to self-medicate," Thorkmorton says. "And, obviously, something is wrong when people go out of their way to hide their blamesmanship."

Comments (2)

Posted by Guest
a resident of Midtown
on Oct 20, 2006 at 3:48 pm


We should all help the Citizens Commission on Human Rights - on offshoot of the Church of Scientology - to clean up the psychiatric profession.

Web">Web Link Link


Posted by Guest
a resident of Midtown
on Oct 20, 2006 at 3:50 pm

Web Link

Web Link


Don't miss out on the discussion!
Sign up to be notified of new comments on this topic.

Email:


Post a comment

On Wednesday, we'll be launching a new website. To prepare and make sure all our content is available on the new platform, commenting on stories and in TownSquare has been disabled. When the new site is online, past comments will be available to be seen and we'll reinstate the ability to comment. We appreciate your patience while we make this transition..

Stay informed.

Get the day's top headlines from Palo Alto Online sent to your inbox in the Express newsletter.