Donna Gaines article Teenage Wasteland evolves about the 1987 Bergenfield suicide pact and the question why the four friends decided to end their lives in a collective suicide. The author passed a 2 year period of time with suburban 'burnouts', like the kids form the Bergenfield incident, to study their lives and motivations. She decided to pick up the case, as suicide amongst suburban teen agers seemed to become what Mill's calls a 'public issue' as their number continually increased. The author mentioned that 12% of youth mortalities were linked to suicide at the time of her writing, in 1999-2006 the rate remained at 11%, and was named as the third most frequent cause of death in 12-19 years old. (Center for Disease Control and Prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db37.pdfpersonal trouble - public issues)
During her research, Gaines explored the reasons why teenagers involve in self-destructing behavior. Her first observations concerned the social environment that pictures a "upper poor" white ethnic suburb, with its fine lines of distinctions between the ‘haves-some’ and therefore privileged and the ones in the bottom of the ranks. She finds that there is a predominant hegemonic culture in place that is transferred in families and especially schools, and does not take into consideration the economic realities of this community. While the education system continues to make the children believe that they have a future in a 'particular' career, many have already to some degree discovered that the realities of their parents look quite different from these ambitious promises, and that they might not fit the categories of those with a promising future. These children rebel by turning against themselves, as they rather would live a short life in 'what they consider' fun, than work for 30+ years in boring and exploitative jobs. Their 'fun' is all kind of self destructive habits, like drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, and in some cases self-inflicted injuries leading to suicides.
Generally, the most endangered amongst them seem to be those who had a recent bereavement or suicide in their immediate environment. The overall feeling of these youths can be considered a feeling of rejection from their society on many levels. They are labeled and socially shunned, and pushed around in their own hometown, they are economically excluded, as the only jobs they can find are the lowest perspective and lowest paid ones, and they are abandoned by their educators, as they do not fit into the range of promising and specially gifted students.
The self-destructive behaviors resulting from social rejection continues to our days and added to its sad list phenomena like choking games, self cutting and pacts on teenage pregnancies.
In On Being Sane in Insane Places, David Rosenhan explores the question of what we consider normal and abnormal, sane and insane in a society, and how we define mental illness. Anxiety and depression do exist in individuals, but the question is, at what point do they render people insane?
To answer the question, if the seemingly detected 'abnormality' of a person is determined by his or her inner being or by the setting and the circumstances in which they are observed, eight pseudo patients had themselves admitted to various mental institutions in different states. Rosenhan’s experiment showed that the 'sane' patients went undetected in these institutions, and were all labeled 'schizophrenia in recession' when released, after not even being thoroughly observed during their stay to confirm such a statement, which obviously carries with it numerous social, legal and personal stigmas.
When he reversed the experiment by telling hospital staff to expect a number of 'faking' patients, the hospital staff reported numerous persons as 'suspects', even though not even one 'faking' patient had actually been sent to them during this period. His conclusion demonstrated the readiness of medical caretakers to diagnose the sane as insane, often for the protection of not overseeing an illness; while only reversing this tendency when threatened with loss of their professional prestige.
In the following, Rosenhan shows in examples how the misinterpretation occurred during their stay, because of the setting the patient was in: a mental hospital. He shows various examples how 'normal' behavior is misinterpreted as 'abnormal', when seen through the lens of a care provider towards a supposed mentally ill patient. One cannot help but mentally cringe, when reading, the part about the assumptions of the staff that irritability of the patient must be exclusively linked to his mental illness or other outside factors. The inability to see that the conflict could have been caused by the behavior of one of the staff must create an atmosphere where a sane person might turn into an ‘insane’, through a treatment that completely negates his identification as a human being through his interaction with others - how surreal must this person be made to feel and what kind of loss and abandonment might this cause to a fragile mind. It would highly irritate a 'sane' one already.
The author argues that the 'sane' sometimes acts insane and vice versa. However, for the once diagnosed with schizophrenia the label stays for the rest of his life, as he can at best be ‘in recession’. He is labeled for life and often trapped in a self fulfilling prophecy, where he acts according to the expectations of those who consider him schizophrenic. Rosenhan reminds us that the implications of these labels are significant: for some they mean to lose the control and power over their lives, for others they mean that they can escape their responsibility and punishment by pretending to be 'insane'. Overall, the labels do not seem to be helpful, especially if it can be shown how easily a wrong diagnose can occur, - and that they have considerable life-long impact on someone's life.
However, it seems like there is a fundamental need of society to point out and label deviant or potentially 'abnormal' behavior, - why else would we stick with a system that has such a high rate of error. On the other hand, the article also demonstrates how arbitrary the definition of 'abnormal' behavior can be in a society, which might be highly impacted by its cultural views, but also by more trivial factors, like setting, circumstances, and situation at the time.
In Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia, the authors explore the social reasons that lead to these eating disorders. They point out that there are three important stages in the development of the disorder: At first a general tendency towards a conformist attitude towards conventional goals leads the women to strongly desire a positive body image, which is primarily determined by the visual objectification of their culture. These women are striving towards some kind of perfectionism in their lives, which includes a family background that titles them expected achievers, as well as close knit family ties that try to project the perfect family image through suppressing conflict and being overprotective towards the child or children of the family. Within these families often an unhealthy pattern of weight competition prevails, which suggests to the child that slimness is a condition for belonging to the family.
The authors explain, that after the time of conforming behavior, a primary deviance occurs, where the child begins to follow one of the two eating disorder types to maintain or lose enough weight to gain recognition by those around, who only slowly start to realize, the real reasons behind the weight loss. Lastly, in a secondary deviance stage, the affected person begins to see bulimia or anorexia as part of her identity. As it becomes a known fact to people around her, she and her actions are watched and treated through the bulimia/anorexia-lens only. Consequently, and in an eternal circular move, the person suffering bulimia/anorexia begins to act accordingly to the expectations of those around her, and to accept a role engulfment course as a result.
This example shows again how deviation from the norm is realized and immediately labeled and stigmatized by the social surrounding. The once exemplary student becomes 'the anorexic' or the 'the fat, who cannot control herself', and the social perception and behavior towards the person fundamentally changes. As a result, the person, who got herself into this situation, because of an initial socially confirmative attitude, tends to adopt the label and conform again - to the new label, this time. The problematic issue is that as humans we tend to live up to the labels given by our environment and this is most dangerous in the case of a bulimic or anorexic woman, who is in dire need to escape the cycle of self-abuse for the sake of the image that others might have of her. This article was especially enlightening, as it clearly showed why it is so hard for these women to stop and regain control over themselves and their lives.
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