Dr. Singh Diagnosing Hypocrisy

I've been spending most of my last two days at the Marriott Oakland City Center where the Mental Health and Spirituality Initiative hosted a conference on the intersection of Mental Health and Spirituality in crises, intervention and recovery for consumers, families of consumers and service providers. Apparently the committee members are traveling to southern California to host round two of the conference in Los Angeles later this week. Glad to see my state getting its act together on this front. Overall I'd give the conference a B+: the space and food couldn't have been better but some of the sharing bordered on repetitive, too personal and overly drawn out. I also found the apparent mistrust between those investigating "researched based practices" and those promoting "organic/authentic spiritual practices" to be unhelpful and ultimately not in the interest of building bio-psycho-social-spiritual models of care.

The committee put together a packed schedule of key note speakers and break-out sessions. Yesterday (Monday June 1st) LeAnn and I were lucky to witness a plenary session that consisted of an Interfaith Panel reflecting on mental health and spirituality from various religious traditions. I was particularly impressed by Rabbi Elliot Kukla who works at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center in San Francisco and Dr. Meji Singh, a practicing Sikh and Chief Psychologist at the Portia Bell Hume Behavioral Health and Training Center in Concord. Dr. Singh spoke last of the 7 panelists but he got my attention when he read certain definitions of "mental disorders" from the DSM-IV and asked us to evaluate the behavior of our government according to those criterion. Seriously, check this definition for Antisocial Personality Disorder out and tell me this couldn't/wouldn't apply to U.S. socio/political behavior at home and abroad.

...

Diagnostic criteria for 301.7 Antisocial Personality Disorder
A. There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

(1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
(2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
(3) impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
(4) irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
(5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others
(6) consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
(7) lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another

B. The individual is at least age 18 years.
C. There is evidence of Conduct Disorder with onset before age 15 years.
D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia or a Manic Episode.

...

So, Dr. Singh, gets me thinking, again, about the exegetical and hermeneutical exercises at the heart of diagnosis and how such diagnoses reveal the hypocrisy of U.S. political philosophy. Why is it that when some people exhibit the behaviors/symptoms listed above we will observe, perceive, interpret and label them "crazy" (and thereby allow the "system" to lock them up or do worse things to them) but when other people with power and prestige exhibit similar behaviors/symptoms on a much larger scale (which result in dead bodies, lost jobs and fiscal debt of magnanimous proportions) we call it "heroic," and even vote them into office?? Talk about cognitive dissonance. The Bush Administration gives the CIA freedom to torture and murder civilians of foreign countries (against the Geneva Convention) and Obama refuses to a) investigate and/or b) press charges but someone can go to jail for years for getting caught selling weed multiple times? Now that's symptomatology of ass-backwardness if you ask me.