Oh cmon, you haven't engaged in water cooler talk this week with colleagues or friends? Of course I'm not formally diagnosing her. Its a mental health issue and I presumed mental health clinicians would have some thoughts about it.
I would think the word contagion is a tad dramatic, makes me think of the movie Heather's. What I mean is that I don't think someone who isn't already extremely depressed would ever consider suicide, no matter which celebrity kills themselves. That being said, for the person who is already depressed... Who knows. I would also be interested in the research, although I imagine it would be a difficult thing to study.
Really? Haha maybe me and my colleagues are just trashy. Quite the possibility......
If she’s dxing people based on media interviews and twitter feeds I’d totally call her a quack, at least with regard to that behavior.
It's speculation. It's not ethical to truly diagnose people we haven't met. No one had any plans to go on the news or write an article about diagnoses. That was just my thought but I will keep my thoughts about those things to myself from now on.
But people do write articles diagnosing people. See endless hack articles on trump, to say the least. That’s the problem. Just guessing about what someone might have might be a goofy game akin to diagnosing tv characters, if you understand you’re just playing at Dx with the info you have.
You are exactly right. I cringe every time I see someone on the news speculating so I can understand how my post was interpreted, although that was not my intent
I've looked in the lit on this, though I don't have time to pull references right now... give me a couple of days?
The earliest reference to this I’m aware of is a supposed rise in suicides following publication of The Sorrows of Young WertherI've looked in the lit on this, though I don't have time to pull references right now... give me a couple of days?
My take on the literature; I do not think we have strong evidence indicating such phenomena. Though, this is not a consensus statement and you have valid evidence on both sides. We definitely need more research.
I think the best that can be done is allocation of resources toward research on prevention, treatment, dissemination, and implementation of evidence based programs. Want to reduce suicide deaths? The simplest method is to reduce access to lethal means. Let's make sure you have to wait a day before buying a gun or how about not selling Tylenol in large vats. Additionally, let's start suing practitioners that are not well-trained to treat individuals with an elevated risk of suicide. Maybe the APA can stop sponsoring untested CE workshops for suicide treatment. I swear I want to team up with a lawyer to sue practitioners that are unethically practicing out of their scope when it comes to suicide treatment. We would make bank.
I find that to be very unprofessional. If I were in the shoes of Boaurdian's family and friends I would feel even more horrible to know that healthcare professionals are partaking in such behavior.
I actually implore you to not keep your thoughts to yourself if you think they are worthy of expressing. I find it unhelpful to even think about any diagnosis for Spade or Bourdain. They did not die strictly b/c of their diagnosis and I doubt that a diagnosis would explain a majority of the variability in why someone attempts. I wonder more about their history and how they got to this point. Likely somewhere in their history a moment of effective intervention could have changed everything.
Don't want to turn this into a debate 12-step thread as we have already had those before. Just want to say that I tend to recommend abstinence for most of my patients mainly because of the correlations between substance use, depression, and suicide. I saw a few episodes of his show and my thought was that the guy looked like someone who might be a bit too fond of drinking. Find it amazing that another professional would use him as an example of how recovering addicts can successfully use substances.
12 step programs have their place and when broken down a bit, actually rely on many cbt principles. That being said they are extremely black and white and basically reinforce concepts like the abstinence violation effect. I believe it all comes down to confirmation bias/cognitive dissonance. People who have past addiction issues that don't like abstinence based programs pointed to Bourdain as a hero because he kicked harder drugs and appeared to be "doing fine." People in abstinence based programs usually firmly believe the idea "once an addict, always an addict. I have recently begun to think of addiction from a more personality centered framework, linked to impulsivity and other cluster B traits.
I agree it's unprofessional, and at the same time I think some in our profession use dark humor in order to cope with the enormous sadness of what we deal with day in and day out. Not saying it's right, but this work can take a toll.
