July 13, 2011
Newsmakers
ARGUING ANONYMITY: Is the idea of anonymity among alcoholics in recovery still appropriate, or has the stigma lessened such that its no longer needed? Thats the basic question explored by NPRs Neal Conan on the show Talk of the Nation in early July — and he spoke with Marsha Linehan, UW professor of psychology, along the way.
Conan first spoke with writer David Colman, whose recent New York Times article discussed his own alcoholism and said that, “More and more, anonymity is seeming like an anachronistic vestige of the Great Depression … when alcoholism was seen not just as a weakness but as a disgrace.” One caller said he got fired, losing a career, immediately upon admitting he was an alcoholic in recovery.
Conan later asked Linehan — who recently shared her own powerful story of struggling with mental illness as a teenager — what the value of anonymity was to her. Linehan said, “I believe being public about private parts of your life, when the private parts of your life are stigmatized by the public, should be very strategic, and that it’s often a mistake, and many people — particularly people that I treat — are often too public. And so they get rejected before someone gets to know them.”
Conan asked, is the stigma of alcoholism less pervasive than it used to be? Linehan said, “I think it’s absolutely true.” But she added, “We’re way far away from that on severe mental disorders, unless — we live in a culture where if you can’t prove that brain abnormality caused it, our only alternative appears to be to be judgmental of the person with a disorder. And so I think alcohol has gotten past a lot of the stigma, obviously not all of it, as you can tell by the caller who got fired.”
Read and listen to “Reassessing Anonymity in 12-Step Programs” online.
KIDS AND DRUGS: Is drug use among teenagers a mere rite of passage, or is it a stepping stone to substance abuse and addiction? Time.com took up the question in an article in late June. The story was reporting on a new study from Columbia University that shows three-quarters of all high school students have used alcohol, tobacco or either legal or illicit drugs, and that one in five is addicted.
The story quoted Leslie Walker-Harding, UW professor of pediatrics. “What (these) data show is that any adolescent is at risk of using substances, and that its preventable,” said Walker-Harding, who is also president of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. She added that one tends to hear that every teen will at some point try addictive substances, so whats the big deal? “But the data shows that no, we should not accept this as normative for adolescents to use and theres a reason they shouldnt be using, and there are things we can do about it.
“We need to address substance abuse more globally,” Walker added. “For parents, start talking to your kids when they ask questions in elementary school. Talk to them about your beliefs and feelings about drugs — and teach them that they can hurt their development. And most important, continue that conversation throughout their teens. Establish clear guidelines and set clear consequences for infractions of family rules.” Read the story online.
PARKINSONS MEDS: Powerful antipsychotic drugs are routinely prescribed to seniors with Parkinsons disease despite warnings against such use, according to a study written about in a mid-July article in the Wall Street Journal.
The article stated, “The new study, published in the Archives of Neurology, showed that about half of elderly Parkinson’s patients with psychosis were prescribed an antipsychotic” between 2002 and 2008 despite a strong warning that newer antipsychotics “appear to increase the risk of death in older dementia patients. The FDA expanded the warning to include all antipsychotics.”
The article quoted James Leverenz, UW professor of neurology and psychiatry & behavioral sciences and director of the Clinical Research Program at the Udall Center for Parkinsons disease, who said the findings “mean there needs to be more education for the clinicians that are managing this frequent problem in Parkinson’s.” Read the story online.
RAIN FROM THE PLANE: An early-July article in the Wall Street Journal mentioned research done at the UW in 1983 by flight meteorologist Arthur Rangno. Under the headline “Rain? Blame it on the Plane,” the article told how aircraft may produce holes in the clouds and “cause an unusual phenomenon that results in increased rain or snowfall in the area immediately around the worlds major airports.”
Rangno co-authored a paper in which he and a colleague described how their research plane had apparently produced ice while traveling through a cloud. “Many scientists were reluctant to accept our results,” said Rangno, now retired, because the cloud’s temperature was only minus 8 degrees Celsius—far from the minus 40 Celsius at which ice forms in clouds. Read the story online.
EDUCATION ARGUMENT: The folks at the Center for the Reinvention of Public Education took over the Eduwonk.com blog — managed by Bellwether Education Partners — as guest editors for a week in July, and opined on a number of education issues.
Paul Hill, UW professor of education and director of the center, said, “Everyone suffers when policy debate focuses on the extremes. We cant get far when one side claims that schools are entirely to blame for the achievement gap, and the other side claims that the achievement gap is entirely caused by factors beyond the schools control.”
Hill even got in a reference, and link, to a well-loved comedy routine, writing, “Sometimes I fear that Monty Python set the pattern for arguments about education policy.” Follow the link to the great “argument sketch” with John Cleese and Michael Palin, where, frustrated, Palin says, “An argument isnt just saying yes it is, no it isnt!”
Cleese: “Yes it is.”
Palin: “No it isnt!”
