For the record...

[kellinator]

Apparently I am not as clear a writer as I hoped I was. I do not know how people are getting the idea that I think MIT should be dumbed down. Nor am I suggesting that students should be coddled and babied. My points are twofold. Let me spell them out in black and white (or purple, as the case may be in my LJ):

1. Refusing someone a position they are qualified for on no basis other than the fact that they have issues with mental health such as antidepressants or therapy is discrimination, pure and simple.
2. Institutions that provide physical health care (such as employers and universities) should have a moral, ethical, and in my opinion legal obligation to provide mental health care as well.

I would like to add, though this is more of an opinion than a firm belief, that the high-stress pressure-cooker environment so prevalent in our society, especially at the top universities and pretty much any sector that is high-powered, does little to increase productivity or knowledge, probably contributes to the sort of mental problems that cost billions each year in lost productivity, and to boot turns people into insufferable raging assholes.

EDIT: penguinicity makes a powerful point I forgot to mention: Statements like Dean Jones' are only going to discourage students who need help from getting it, creating even larger problems.

Comments

Yeah...

[scarcrest.livejournal.com]

I understood exactly what you meant. Sometimes places like MIT, law school, the workplace are the root cause of the problems that manifest in their people.

[m0usegrrl.livejournal.com]

hear hear!

Tangential

[sempereadem.livejournal.com]

May I be bitchy and point out that if today's youth weren't so damned spoiled and indulged before they got to college, they wouldn't need medication to deal with the fact that they are not a beautiful and unique snowflake?

I'm speaking about the types of kids who can afford to go to MIT. I know not all kids today are like that. And not even all kids that can afford to go to MIT. But when you buy a child an $80k car for their Sweet Sixteen, you are not exactly preparing them for life in the Real World. When you give a child every single thing their grubby little hands seek out without making them earn it, you are not preparing them for the fact that sometimes, you don't/can't get everything you want without any effort. When you focus your entire life on pleasing your child and protecting them from every harsh word, disappointment, and dust mite that is out there, you are not preparing them for the fact that they might fail. Schools that no longer allow field day competitions because not every child can win and they don't want the children to feel bad about themselves is not preparing these children for mistakes or failure. School systems that promote failing children because they don't want to damage their self-esteem are not preparing these children for the fact that they will be unable to cope with the demands of the real world.

I'm pro-mental health and pro-medication, but frankly, unless they are blatantly rejecting people based on mental health problems, MIT has nothing to apologize for other than being insensitive. They should provide the basic care that any university would provide. It is not the university's job to clean up and fund the quivering wreck that the kids' parents have created.

Re: Tangential

[ilexx.livejournal.com]

I'm pro-mental health and pro-medication, but frankly, unless they are blatantly rejecting people based on mental health problems, MIT has nothing to apologize for other than being insensitive. They should provide the basic care that any university would provide. It is not the university's job to clean up and fund the quivering wreck that the kids' parents have created.

uhm, i just wanted to leave a comment and bring out this point. agreed.

Re: Tangential

[assaultdoor.livejournal.com]

Stop me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to guess that neither you nor sempereadem has ever taught at a school like MIT. Therapists at schools like these really don't have time to treat some small group of spoiled rich kids. They have enough to do treating all of the people who were fairly normal until they went to college.

I was shocked to learn how many of my lab assistants had been reduced to tears by our intro programming class. I picked all of these people because I knew they were unusually sharp and had done well in that class. Things have actually been pretty calm these last few years. I think it's been two years or more since my department had its last suicide. We've reduced the pressure since the last student threw himself off of the tenth floor of our math building. It's not that most professors in the department have learned anything about teaching. No, it's not that. It's just that we don't have as many students these days, so we no longer need to make them fight each other. That's just Berkeley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, though.

Schools like MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley are full of professors who have trouble telling the difference between teaching and torture, largely because they don't know the first thing about teaching. It's not really their fault. Very few SMET programs try to talk to their Ph.D. students about teaching, probably because the people in those programs wouldn't know what to say.

Far too many professors believe that placing students in high-pressure situations and giving sadistic exams and nearly impossible homework will make up for incoherent lectures, unhelpful textbooks, and a whole host of other problems. What it actually does is drive out most of the rational students, leaving those who lack the sense or spine to walk out and go somewhere else, or whose parents won't let them.

What Marilee Jones is really saying is, "If we could pick students who can tolerate four years of bullshit and teach themselves, life would be a lot easier."

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

The impression I'm getting from some of the people in the other post is that they think everyone with mental problems is cRaZy and likely to go nuts with an AK-47 or perhaps some kind of biohazard. It's really pissing me off.

[theashifaction.livejournal.com]

thenthere is the alternate impression that all forms of mental illness are treatable and managable.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Your average form of depression, the most common mental illness, *is* treatable and managable.

[theashifaction.livejournal.com]

and your average form of depression ISNT what mit is going to screen out.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

That's not what she said. She was quite vague.

Keep in mind this is the woman who said that women at MIT usually become neither stars nor flunkies, because women have "pheromones or something" (that's a quote) that makes them all stick together and want to be just like each other. I have no idea why she still has a job.

[sertrel.livejournal.com]

Ehh... I haven't yet read the comments on your previous post yet, but...

There are certain jobs where psychiatric history is considered important. For any job involving national security, a psychiatric history or taking psychoactive medication is considered a liability, even if it's no longer current.

I think the problem comes from the gray realm of defining "qualified" and how fuzzy it becomes in the realm of mental health and how it affects functional capacity.

After all, should a psychiatric history that includes in overly aggressive tendencies be considered a disqualifying factor for say, a police officer? What if there is no psychiatric history, but simply in the course of the interview, the interviewer feels that the candidate is overly aggressive and confrontational and lacks personal skills?

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

P. S. The notion that only spoiled rich kids get to go to MIT is patently ludicrous. If I had gone, it would have been on a merit scholarship.

There are certainly schools you can get through solely by being a spoiled rich kid, but I don't really think MIT is one of them.

[sempereadem.livejournal.com]

If you read that far, you'll notice that I qualified it. I know full well that I was generalizing and made that clear.

That wasn't even the point of the comment.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

You weren't the only person who's made comments to that effect; it wasn't directed at you.

[penguinicity.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that such a policy would have a chilling effect on students seeking counseling or medication if they feel it might help them. And we all know that leaving problems untreated to fester is a much better way to deal with them. Wankers.

Out of curiosity I poked around MIT's webpages and it turns out that they don't have a psychology department. They do have a "brain and cognative sciences" department, but it has more of a neuroscience/AI focus rather than anything to do with traditional psychology/psychiatry. Might partly explain the ignorance shown.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

A friend who's a pilot-in-training has told me something similar. It's death to your flying career (unofficially or officially; I don't know) to be on psychiatric medications, even for something simple. So does that mean you have a corps of naturally mentally healthy pilots in our skies? Nope! You have a bunch of people with untreated illnesses, because they're (rightfully) scared of being blacklisted. Oops.

[penguinicity.livejournal.com]

Officially. It's part of the FAA's regulations - taking any sort of psychotropic drug for any reason is medically disqualifying. If you stop, you can get your medical back but the process takes months of cutting through red tape.

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Do you know if there's any sort of legitimate reason for that, or is it just a "drugs are bad, mmmkay?" kneejerk reaction? I'd sure rather have my pilots correctly medicated.

[penguinicity.livejournal.com]

I don't know for sure, but just speculating; the FAA tends to be pretty conservative as far as what it will and will not allow. There's a bit of folk wisdom floating around aviation circles that the medical examiner's job is to try to keep you out of the sky rather than let you in, and to treat them accordingly. For example, they have a list of approved drugs (for all conditions), rather than a list of disqualifying drugs since the approved list ends up being much shorter.

In this particular case, it's most likely an "all mental health conditions are bad, mmmkay?" attitude. For example, just seeing a psychologist is enough to cause a major headache (you can still be certified, but it involves a letter from the psychologist stating that you are fit, and your case has to be reviewed by the FAA chief medical examiner's office).

This has become a fairly major issue in the past couple of years, and there's been quite a bit of lobbying for the FAA to change the rules with regards to conditions like depression.

[ilexx.livejournal.com]

i think "correctly medicated" is part of the issue and problem that's umbrellaed under this generalization. there is a painful number of people out there who are INcorrectly medicated, or medicated instead of taught how to deal with stress and problems. there's a difference between legitimate chemical imbalances and spoiled/underdeveloped psyches, and the whole "drugs are bad, mmmmmkay?" generalization is a (poor, admittedly) reaction to the prozac bandaid generalization. NEITHER ONE IS THE CORRECT APPROACH.

again, the lady obviously has no way with words and should be duct taped at the mouth, but i seriously doubt that a school as huge as MIT is suddenly testing for prozac and turning people away.

[maida-mac.livejournal.com]

My rheumatologist had his father die while he was in medical school. He was treated by a psychologist and medications for depression for the total of one month. TWENTY YEARS later, it's still on his medical school records and follows him everywhere.

Stuff like that is utterly ridiculous.

[rocketmelee.livejournal.com]

Agreed

[gaiagurl.livejournal.com]

right. i agree. the pressure-cooker thing is totally unproductive and actually hurts people, even "mentally healthy" people. and in most sectors of employment it serves no real purpose. and i don't think babying and coddling people is the ONLY alternative to pressure-cooker. i would like to think we could find a happy medium.

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

I agree to an extent. And there's definitely some room for improvement across our country for dealing with health care (physical, mental, etc.)

I think universities should have mental health care treatment solutions for students, mainly for the reason that until they get to the university, they may not have demonstrated any symptoms of any mental illness that prohibits them from being successful in school. Note that there are mental illnesses that are conducive to academic success: control freaks, obsessive compulsives can flourish, anal retentive folks could, too.

But if a student has demonstrated a historical unreliability in maintaining treatment of a disorder that would be counterproductive to his/her academic career, that should be a factor. At places like MIT, you go there for the intensity of it all--to be the best. If you have been unable to maintain your particular mental illness such that you want to kill yourself every so often under the pressure, its not going to be any easier for you at MIT.

The other option is that if a student has a bad mental history, and still wants to subject themselves to MIT's environment, then they should sign a waiver (or their parents), that they will not hold MIT responsible for said student committing suicide.

This is such a hard issue, and I don't think I'm doing justice in expressing my thoughts. Some other thoughts:

1.I don't think students should be excluded from attending a university because of their mental disability/illness, but they need accept some responsibility for it or compensate for it.

2. Universities should have some services available to funnel students who need mental health assistance to the right channels. Sometimes this isn't even a good solution, either, because most people who go into the mental health profession can be nuts, too. And will all mentally ill people who need the care seek it out? What if the person doesn't keep track of their medication properly, and goes out of control. Or, like a friend of mine, what if the student knows they have a mental illness, but refuses to take the medication because they don't like the side-effects?

3. I don't think the University/Organization should be held responsible for stress-induced suicides when they make it more than clear that the environment is extremely stressful. There is a price for such success (unless you're a Bush family member, then we pay the price for their success).

[orfeo517.livejournal.com]

Give it to me in purple, baby! I did just see a Prince concert, after all:)

Okay, I'll stop gloating.

The job I have now is great. My boss protects me from all of these idiots. I took it for granted in the 90's, but now I think it's amazing. I've only been back at Thomas Concrete for a week, and I'm amazed by the low level of stress. I just hope the shock doesn't bring on a heart attack before I have time to relax.