Designing McQueen

I'm not a fashionista but I just learned of a 40 year old white male, Alexander McQueen, decided to take his life today for no apparent reason other than having a grieving soul.

I feel for his his friends and family left behind. Now all that is left is lament for a lost talent and creativity. The woulda, shoulda, coulda folks now wonder what they could have done to intervene and demand that he seek professional help.

Here goes the addition of another benchmark statistic, an easy one for the books. A sad, true loss of a visionary.

The Afterw@rd

Labels, Labels and More Labels

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is being revised and is intended for release in 2013. Be at attention, your mental state label could change. This would be the first revision in a decade and the manual's fifth edition.

Supporters of the proposed recommendation changes indicate that treatment strategies are label dependent and to provide appropriate treatment new categories of disorders must be created or old ones amended. Needless to say, much money is at stake. The pharmas are lobbying their buns off.

Over the last 10 years, and with much controversy, diagnosis of children with bipolar disorder has skyrocketed 4000 percent. Later finding that the label was inappropriate for the observed escalated temper flairs not accompanied by mood swings often experienced by those with bipolar mania or manic depression. The issue is that temper flairs are dealt with behavioral treatment while the other is best treated with anti-psychotic medication. Hence, we end up with the controversy highlighted recently in the Afterw@rd that poorer children were likelier to get antipsychotic medication. When you don't have a voice nor a vote due to a lack of resources for even a second opinion, your kids end up paying the price.

The funny or not so funny thing of it all is that what we do in the United States affects other countries, other cultures, other people.

Diagnostic labels matter, but getting the treatment right matters even more. Sometimes, it's as simple as embracing that person with their idiosyncrasy.

The Afterw@rd