When Talk is Dangerous

Tehillim 73:15 אם אמרתי אספרה כמו הנה דור בניך בגדתי
"If I said, "I shall tell it as it is," behold I have made the generation of Your children into traitors."

Rashi: Said Asaph, “If I said in my heart to tell everything as it is, all that His people say about this, I would make them into traitors and wicked men."

Metzudas Dovid: If I say it the way it is, i.e. whatever it is that I think, then the talking will incite even those who are your children, i.e. those who believe in You, for when they hear what is thought, I will make them into traitors which is why I won't talk much.

I heard someone say, based on this verse, that the trend to discuss all our frum society's ills out in the open is the modern day version of "es iz shver tzu zayn a Yid" - it's hard to be a Jew.  How many Jews are being turned off to frum life when they hear about all the crises and social ills we are suffering from?

Back in the early 1900's, when shomer Shabbos Jews sighed over the hardships of being religious, they lost their children who were not interested in living a hard, religious life.  These days, why would someone want to belong to a society which has a shidduch crisis, tuition crisis, parnassa crisis, housing crisis, drop-outs, those who keep "half Shabbos," Kiddush clubs and alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, shalom bayis problems and molestation problems? Sounds quite unappealing!

Some editors and askanim pat themselves on the back for "breaking taboos" and (supposedly) dispelling stigmas by airing issues that used to be kept quiet.  Are we gaining or losing thereby, that is the question.  What would they say if they knew that just one person was turned off to Yiddishkeit because of this openness?

a related post

Making a Mentch

I've heard of giving a child's teacher a gift for Chanuka and/or for Purim but today I heard something that goes way beyond that.  A mother of a 6th grade boy said she sends money (she did not specify how much) and a specially worded card every rosh chodesh!

I referred to it as a bribe and she unabashedly agreed, it is definitely a bribe.  She thinks the rebbi deserves it and needs it to handle her not so easy child.  She also said that her father-in-law used to do this and although it's not the "mesorah" on her side of the family, with only one son, she can afford to do it.

On a related note, she said that this child's English teacher is not frum, although Jewish.  He is a retired public school teacher.  Surprisingly, after so many years of experience, he asked in the beginning of the year whether her child is normal! Now, her child can be silly as 12 year old boys can be, but other than that, he is quite a normal and bright child.  She worked hard with her son over the school year and that, together with the fact that the teacher was really quite good and taught interesting things, made the child into quite a good student.

She had her son write this teacher a thank you note at the end of the year, in which he wrote about all he learned and how he became a mentch.  This was given to the teacher with a gift.  The teacher called and asked the mother, did you put your child on medication?

She said, not on your life! She would be the last person to do so, being quite opposed to even more ordinary medical practices.  He asked her several times, because he could not believe that the change in her son was due to parental involvement, hard work, his good teaching, and the child maturing.  I was surprised that a teacher with so much experience could not recognize a normal child from one who is not normal and couldn't believe that improvements can be made without drugs.  When I said so, the mother explained it by saying he is coming from the public school system so his frame of reference is different.

Positive Psychology - An Oxymoron?

Two days ago there was a news item which said: Medication to treat mental health disorders is soaring among U.S. adults.  20% of all adults said they took at least one medication to treat a mental disorder. Among women, 25% said they took such medication and 20% said they were using an antidepressant.

The number of children under 10 taking antipsychotic medication, which is reserved for the most severe mental illnesses, doubled from 2001 to 2010.

In short, we are either getting crazier and sadder or the psychiatric and pharmaceutical companies are doing a great job convincing us that we are. 

The crying shame is that the voice of psychologists like Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of “positive psychology” who was called “the Freud of the 21^st century” by Newsweek, is drowned out by the doom peddlers.  Seligman shocked the world of psychology by focusing on what makes people mentally healthy instead of what makes them mentally ill.

Forbes had an article last week about the upcoming DSM V with an intro that said, "The new manual of mental disorders coins bizarre new psychological disorders, lowers the threshold for diagnosing old ones, and has some critics pulling their hair out."

We are a generation that wants to be victims, that wants to be able to blame our parents, our environment, our genes, our so-called chemical imbalance, anything but ourselves, for our problems.  If you as much as suggest that someone who has truly suffered at the hands of evil people can move past that and have a good life, you are vilified and accused of not understanding the depths of the person's trauma. 

In their sincerity to help molestation victims, they push those hapless individuals down and seek to keep them down.  I suspect it's because they believe that if the person goes on to lead a happy life, it demonstrates that what happened to them was not that egregious.  That's like saying that a Holocaust victim who was stripped of his dignity, who was robbed and beaten, who was a hairsbreadth away from death thousands of times and who lost his parents, spouse, children, extended family and community, could not go on to marry and live a good life.  But thousands did! And they are heroes of the spirit, particularly if they retained their faith and raised religious, upstanding children. 

"Positive Psychology" may seem like an oxymoron but it doesn't have to be.

Imprinting the Positive

R' Abraham J. Twerski wrote an article called "Speaking about the Unspeakable" in which he says we should talk to our children about drugs.  He asks, "how will our children learn about the evils of drug use if we don’t talk to them about it?" As for those whose children are sheltered he says, "The greatest danger is not being aware that one exists." 

“Li'Shichno sidrishu u’vasa shama” - seek His Presence and come there (Re’eh 12:5). The Ponevezher Rov asked why is it that when the Torah tells us to build a Bais HaMikdash, the location is not clearly stated, i.e. the pasuk never refers to Yerushalayim?

He contrasts this to the Arei Miklat (Cities of Refuge) where the Torah tells us “tachin lecha ha'derech”, and Chazal explain that the roads should have signs at every junction pointing in the direction of the Arei Miklat. The reason for this, he explains, is that the accidental murderer, in his flight to safety, should not need to stop and ask directions because we don’t want everyone to know that a murder took place since it will desensitize the people to murder.  Sins, even unintentional ones, should not be discussed.   On the other hand when a person is going to the Bais HaMikdash we want him to stop everyone along the way to ask for directions to awaken in them the desire to go to the Bais HaMikdash too.

The Chinuch Malchusi says that we learn from here that you should not teach your children through negative examples. Do not point out the wrongdoings and teach them its evils and how they must avoid it. In a sense this will open up their thoughts and teach them all sorts of bad things that they would have surely avoided had they come upon it themselves.

A distinguished mechanech once related that when he was a young boy many years ago (before drugs were a huge problem) in school in the Bronx, they brought in an officer from the Drug Enforcement Agency who brought in many kinds of drugs and gave them a lecture about avoiding each one. This mechanech said that it was very educational to the bulk of his class who ended up on drugs!

Good education means monopolizing the mind with positive lessons, examples, and stories. Just like the questions on the way to the Bais HaMikdash, this attitude will help the children find the Shechina after a longer but very successful journey.

As a community, online or otherwise, we should speak about all the good that Jews do and there is so much good!  It is very demoralizing and a spiritual downer to read and hear, time and again, about sins and crimes that are committed.  Highlight the positive!

Psychiatry part 3

In Mishpacha magazine's supplement "Calligraphy" from Pesach (which usually has fiction but this time had non-fiction), there is a very disturbing story about a third grader in Israel who was doing wonderfully in school until he began speaking less and less and was diagnosed by a pediatrician with selective mutism (which does not explain anything, just describes the fact that the child isn't talking).

He began to withdraw socially and then stopped speaking altogether. A psychologist had him draw on a paper, asked the parents whether the child had experienced any trauma, and when they said they no, the psychologist said she thought he was reacting to a severe trauma or was psychotic and to bring him back in a week.

Rather than explore what might be bothering the child who had been 100% normal till then, a week later the same psychologist recommended that they take him to a psychiatrist because she decided that his condition was dire.

Based on this, they actually picked up and moved the family to Yerushalayim! (yes, they asked a shaila and sorry to say, the psychologist's opinion was adhered to like it was the word of G-d).

Unbelievably, this poor child was enrolled in a special needs school. Interestingly, he still sang zemiros at the Shabbos table but otherwise, he was doing worse.

They took him to a pediatric psychiatrist. Their child was 10 and a half and the change had begun three months before. Without interacting with the child at all, this rasha of a doctor declared that the boy was either experiencing clinical depression or psychosis and he wrote out a prescription.

Around the third visit, the child went over and touched the fax machine and this doctor yelled at him, stood up and forcefully waved his hand and said, "Get away from there! You're psychotic, yes you're psychotic!" And he wrote out another prescription.

This is a pediatric psychiatrist!? Why, oh why, did this evil person specialize in working with children when he hates them? And by what did he write out a prescription without thoroughly examining the child?

The story goes on. They administer drug and after drug to the child who gets worse and worse.  He had terrible side effects from the drugs, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was confined in a psychiatric hospital, was severely beaten and abused by the Arab driver of the van that took him to his institution, and then a particular drug was credited for helping him get back to normal.

The parents did what they thought was best. I feel sad for them and the miserable experience they had, uprooting their family and everything that happened, but it needs to be said: Nobody bothered trying to find out what made a previously normal 10 year old withdraw. These medical doctors are trained to diagnose pathology.  Mental illness is nebulous, usually with no physical evidence of a physiological problem and as in the case with the "Girl in the Green Sweater" and the woman in the "True Healing" post, drugs and mental illness labels were not what was needed.  A person reaching out in kindness with the way to the person's heart is what was needed.

This reminds me of an article I read about a year ago about a man who came to the US to collect tzedaka so he could pay for a wedding.  Once in America he was unable to get himself out of bed.  A friend took him to a psychiatrist and you'll never guess how the MD treated him .... Are you ready? Have you guessed? Yes! He wrote a prescription for an anti-depressant!

Now tell me, if the doctor had written out a hefty check for the person, or if the fundraiser had unexpectedly won the lottery, would he be depressed? Nope.  Would he need drugs? Nope. So why are we, as a society, allowing our fears and sadness to be treated with drugs?

Psychiatry part 2

I recently read another two things (in addition to my "True Healing" post, two posts ago) that have reinforced my strong feelings about psychiatry. 

I am almost finished reading "The Girl in the Green Sweater" by Krystyna Chiger about how she survived the Holocaust at age 7 by hiding in the sewers beneath the city of Lvov for fourteen months.  After many months underground and enduring horrific living conditions (swarming rats, for one thing) the usually cheerful girl became silent, sullen and sad.  She did not feel like eating, talking or doing anything.  It's what a psychiatrist would diagnose as childhood depression.

Her mother was desperate about her, thinking her temperament was changed forever and so she told the Polish man who was their protector about her concern.  The Pole led her through the pipes and said, "Let me show you something."  She crawled through and then climbed a ladder which led to an opening to the street where she could see sunlight through the grate.  It was the first sunshine she had seen in over a year.  She heard children playing outside.

He said to her, "You have to be strong, little one.  In just a few days, you will be up there playing with the other children.  You will smell the same flowers."

And she writes "And in this way I became whole again," thanks to him.

What would a psychiatrist have done for her? Without a doubt, reached for his prescription pad and drugged her.

(more in the next post)

True Healing

Rachel Naomi Remen is a medical doctor who opened a practice where she speaks to seriously ill and suffering people and through her wisdom and caring guides them towards emotional healing.  In "Kitchen Table Wisdom" she describes a woman who was intensely grieving the loss of the love of her life.  Her grief was so acute, way beyond the norm, that a psychiatrist diagnosed her as having "reactive depression" and he treated her with progressively more powerful antidepressants which did not work.

She had several sessions with Dr. Remen in which she opened up about her pain which enabled her to move forward.

That's the chapter in a nutshell.  I won't repeat what the woman's thought process was and how Dr. Remen's suggestions broke through her numbness.  What outraged me about this episode is how the medical community, psychiatrists in particular, seek to label symptoms and drug us rather than heal us.  What the grief-stricken woman needed was not drugs to mask her symptoms (and give her numerous side effects to suffer from) but someone to truly listen to her and show her that she had the choice to move on.

We have numerous statements in Torah sources about the mind-body connection and yet we too, in the frum world, have fallen prey to drugging symptoms in children and adults.  We need wise people amongst us whom we can turn to; people who don't view coping mechanisms as medical illnesses; people who can listen and provide wise guidance within a Torah framework to those who are suffering; people who will talk about emuna and bitachon and simcha rather than diagnose syndromes and disorders.