Dr. Gabor Maté on Democracy Now

[flwyd]

I caught today's Democracy Now show, which collected three previous interviews with Dr. Gabor Maté. If you're interested in rethinking contemporary medicine, the hour-long program is worth a listen.

He talks about how mental and emotional health can't be separated from physical health, but since western medicine (which he also knows and practices) has a better understanding of the latter, chemical-based solutions are often applied to solve primarily social problems. For instance, in post-industrial America, many children don't get much parental attention – many companies give just six weeks of maternity leave – meaning kids miss out on important developmental processes. This often manifests later in life in damaging ways, ranging from ADHD to drug addiction to antisocial behavior.

I've been thinking recently about "ecological thinking," which I hope to write more about later, and these interviews were a good example of what I've got in mind. Short maternity leave makes sense from the short-term self-interest of the company, but a culture where the practice is widespread may, over the course of a couple generations, be significantly worse-off because its children missed out on important development.

Comments

[477150n.livejournal.com]

As I prepare to leave my six-week-old for the first time... literally, about to close my computer and go...

Does he have actual evidence linking number of weeks of maternity leave to all these terrible mental health outcomes, or is that just how he thinks it should work? Everything I have read seems to suggest that it is the quality of care, both by mom and by other caregivers, that matters, more than whether the mom works.

That said, of course corporations are sociopaths, they don't care about the health of society, that's just not how they are set up.

[ihatepavel.livejournal.com]

Eh. I'm not sure about all of this. Seems grossly oversimplified.

On the one hand, I fully believe that we too often approach mental health care and addictions from a medical model, even when it's not appropriate, and ADHD is a great example because

--it's overdiagnosed (easy to meet criteria for)
--many disorders, for example PTSD and anxiety, masquerade as ADHD
--it IS a symptom of a wider macro-level syndrome caused in part, I believe, by our emphasis on multitasking.

That said, there are many, many times when there's a legitimate biological component. I am absolutely not a proponent of overmedicating people, particularly kids. I myself am much more frequently referring clients to psychiatry as a result of client-driven (usually parent-driven) referrals. But there's this trend in mental health, particularly in people like me who may qualify as kind of "crunchy" and idealistic, to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Also, I've seen how resilient kids are. I've seen them thrive and bounce back from really horrific levels of abuse and neglect. I see it every day, seriously. And although overworked parents are indubitably having an effect on their children, I am not prepared to point the finger at them for drug addiction, ADHD, and acute Axis II diagnoses (which is, I assume, what they mean by "antisocial behavior").

[teal-cuttlefish.livejournal.com]

It seems like whatever is wrong, it always comes down to being the mother's fault. As a mother, I tend to object to that analysis.

I'll refrain from a long rant that won't really accomplish anything here -- but I would have loved more paid time off with my daughter when she was an infant. I got 8 weeks because she was delivered by C-section. When I went back to work, I got into trouble for taking time off when she needed me. It actually drove me into some kind of breakdown. So I'm pretty sensitive to blaming the mother. Yes, the doctor here is pointing to the corporations and the Puritan work ethic, but still there is the flavor of "a mother should know better and do what is best for her child." Sometimes that isn't staying home all the time.