Man up, nancy boys.

I don't think it is an "outbreak." I think people (players) are just being more honest these days.

wimps..in my day, we were manic-depressive uphill both ways in the snow

and got pissed every night after the game/.

Wussification of America.

Baseball is a game of failure. Developing a coping mechanism (or plural) is part of the package.

And I do believe there is something to be said for internalizing issues, self-reliance and a fair degree of stoicism.

So while post 5 is meant to be amusing I have my concerns.

It's all the soy in the modern diet.

Maybe it's the way baseball is covered, but it seems like it's pretty ####### hard to find an MLB player who enjoys and is comfortable with being a pro athlete.

10, even 15 years ago, guys like Votto, Greene, and Willis might not have even made it to the big leagues. Modern psychopharmacology has made it possible for a lot of people who maybe before wouldn't have been able to realize their potential to be successful at the highest levels. You see this a lot at the elite universities lately as well. Kids who might have fallen by the wayside due to various mental health problems are now able to go to fancy schools, and now it seems like a surprisingly large percentage of the students at the very competitive school I work at have had mental health problems. It's not that there are more people with mental health issues necessarily, it's just that instead of becoming alcoholics, bouncing from one job to another and dying at an early age, people with some mental health issues can now live relatively normal lives.

it seems like it's pretty ####### hard to find an MLB player who enjoys and is comfortable with being a pro athlete.

I don't think it's that hard. AJ Pierzynski seems to love every minute of being a pro baseball player.

I think you'll find the ones that are pretty content are the ones that have the personality of Jeff Kent.

I think you'll find the ones that are pretty content are the ones that have the personality of Jeff Kent.

And guys like that used to be a lot more common in baseball.

I think that the system is doing a better job of protecting athletes who are more, shall we say, mentally fragile. Along the same lines as #9, thirty years ago guys like Greinke and Snell would have washed out in A-ball, and be working in a factory somewhere now.

Bang your head. Mental health will drive you mad.

You see this a lot at the elite universities lately as well. Kids who might have fallen by the wayside due to various mental health problems are now able to go to fancy schools, and now it seems like a surprisingly large percentage of the students at the very competitive school I work at have had mental health problems.

You missed another explanation: gaming the system. You can get special treatment if you can claim the right sort of problems, and since most psychiatry is as scientific as phrenology, all you need is a helpful doctor and you can 'prove' you have those sorts of problems.

What was that about liberals always thinking the worst of people, David?

(Please note, I have always thought kids were over-medicated, but yikes.)

This is the only way to get amphethamines in the new PED regime.

This is the only way to get amphethamines in the new PED regime.

That's for ADHD, and while yes, there's been a spike of ADHD diagnoses, there's also been a seeming rise in depression/anxiety cases, as well.

You can get special treatment if you can claim the right sort of problems, and since most psychiatry is as scientific as phrenology, all you need is a helpful doctor and you can 'prove' you have those sorts of problems.

I agree 100%. Psychiatrists are negligent evil #######. They are also helpful at inventing problems and telling you you have problems when you are normal so that they can sell you drugs you don't need that will give you problems in the future that can only be helped by more drugs.

Welcome to the new dark ages.

I love me a good Gaelan rant.

Welcome to the new dark ages.

Exactly. Psychiatrists are medievel barbers who want to cut off your arm to heal your humours. Medicalizing behaviour is superstition made flesh.

Gaelen wants something to rant about, he should check out red cap day at Yankee Stadium today. Holy hell those things are ugly, and definitely justify medication from varying mental health professionals.


Also, if you don't want a significant group of people to be well and functional, please, take away their medication. Again, thinking that people in general are over-diagnosed and -medicated doesn't mean that there isn't a large group of people who are actually helped by such medication.

You missed another explanation: gaming the system. You can get special treatment if you can claim the right sort of problems, and since most psychiatry is as scientific as phrenology, all you need is a helpful doctor and you can 'prove' you have those sorts of problems.

TITCR. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but it seems to me that it is also causing a situation where those wealthy enough to get the right diagnosis are then advantaged.

where those wealthy enough to get the right diagnosis are then advantaged.

I think the original comment was about students at elite universities. Any college student can walk in the campus clinic and get a bottle of nerve tonic. College students as a whole are considered advantaged, but the upper crust of that probably doesn't have more pull than the FAFSA kids. They could see their own doctors, but the opportunity to get help or cheat is there for everyone.

EDIT: Everyone but the doctors/engineers/nurses/lawyers/extremely ambitious won't have a job when they graduate anyway, so it's not much of an advantage to do less than bust ass in school.

Finally, something Gaelan, David Nieporent and L. Ron Hubbard can all agree on!

College students as a whole are considered advantaged, but the upper crust of that probably doesn't have more pull than the FAFSA kids. They could see their own doctors, but the opportunity to get help or cheat is there for everyone.

The upper crust probably have a lot more free time, and they simply are aware of opportunities that people who aren't in the right social networks are unaware of.

College students as a whole are considered advantaged, but the upper crust of that probably doesn't have more pull than the FAFSA kids. They could see their own doctors, but the opportunity to get help or cheat is there for everyone.

From my experience, the FAFSA kids generally a) don't know this "trick" or b.) come from cultures where these types of issues are looked down upon.

as someone who benefitted from medication at a difficult time in my life, i have to say 18 couldn't be more wrong. psychiatry and psychiatrists are like all the other disciplines. you have conscientious, competent practitioners and you have incompetents.
depression is the most treatable of the mental illnesses.
as for this year's 'outbreak' or whatever, i imagine it's just coincidental. if there's some trend it will take time to develop.
probably we're just seeing a few more cases where there isn't some effort to keep it hidden.

since most psychiatry is as scientific as phrenology

If you really think this, you must be entirely ignorant of psychology.

as for this year's 'outbreak' or whatever, i imagine it's just coincidental. if there's some trend it will take time to develop.
probably we're just seeing a few more cases where there isn't some effort to keep it hidden.

I tend to think that the problems have always been there, but the tough-guy attitudes (or faking it to fit in) wouldn't allow them to admit that there were mental problems. It's probably a good explanation why so many guys turn to drink (in addition to the stress of the job).

Modern psychopharmacology has made it possible for a lot of people who maybe before wouldn't have been able to realize their potential to be successful at the highest levels. You see this a lot at the elite universities lately as well. Kids who might have fallen by the wayside due to various mental health problems are now able to go to fancy schools, and now it seems like a surprisingly large percentage of the students at the very competitive school I work at have had mental health problems.

Funny. When I think about how modern pharmacology has positively impacted universities, my first thought is the faculty, not the students.

Which makes sense: it takes a particular level of crazy to make it through a PhD program, much less spend your life doing any sort of meaningful research...

Yes, I know a fair number of faculty who are, as one of them puts it, "Prozacked to the gills."

I don't know how I've gotten this far in higher ed on a cup of Starbucks in the morning and a Snickers bar at midday. Yes I do. Baseball.

Modern psychopharmacology has made it possible for a lot of people who maybe before wouldn't have been able to realize their potential to be successful at the highest levels. You see this a lot at the elite universities lately as well. Kids who might have fallen by the wayside due to various mental health problems are now able to go to fancy schools, and now it seems like a surprisingly large percentage of the students at the very competitive school I work at have had mental health problems.

True dat. My wife's experience working at an elite grad/professional school confirmed this, at least for her. The other factor is the shift in admissions. As the admitted class' test scores have become more and more commoditized, and as small differences have made a large difference in upper-level rankings, schools have admitted more high-test-score people who they knew were going to have significant problems keeping their #### together. As recently as 10-15 years ago, schools routinely turned down high scorers who obviously couldn't cut it. Now that's not going to happen. Admitting students who end up being hospitalized or end up unemployable doesn't get a Dean of Admissions fired, but admitting lower-scoring students who go on to good careers will get a Dean of Admissions (and before too long the actual Dean) canned.

I have concerns about psychopharmacology, and there's evidence out there that the effectiveness of various SSRIs has been overstated due to publication biases.

But I think that we can make a distinction between understanding and treating mental illness as real illness - obviously a good thing - and treating mental illness merely through the application of drugs - a problematic thing, worthy of critique. That's at least how I take Gaelan's critique of "medicalization" - it's not that mental illness isn't real or that it doesn't deserve treatment, but that mental illness ecompasses a variety of problems that should not all be approached as problems to be simply fixed by the application of drug regimens.

Or maybe Gaelan thinks that mental illness simply isn't real, or that most of its diagnoses are faked (apparently the DMN position), or that the real things referred to as mental illness should not receive particular and concentrated care and treatment. In any of those cases, I definitely disagree.

My point with regard to the issues here is that the main thing that seems to be going on in major league baseball is that people who have had serious problems (Votto and Snell both talked of suicidal ideation, and Greinke was deeply troubled) are receiving apparently effective treatment and speaking publicly about their problems. Those all seems like obviously good things. One can worry that these good things will be used to bad effect if one worries about the increasing dominance of psychopharmacology in the treatment of psychic problems, but we shouldn't let that worry blind us to the fact that Zack Greinke and Joey Votto are quite obviously flourishing in a way that they weren't before, and that's obviously good.

there's also been a seeming rise in depression/anxiety cases, as well.

If somebody cut off your supply of speed, you'd be depressed and anxious, also.

Is there overmedication going on these days? Yes.

Is that an excuse to the increased stigmatization of people who really are really dealing with serious mental health issues?

Not even slightly.

I was happy assuming the first few comments in this thread for poorly thought out jests. Later on it is clear that some people are just ignorant.

That isn't news, I'm afraid.

Some of those posts above read like the rantings of Super Adventure Club members.

Welcome to the new dark ages.

Requiem for dissent? Not here.

Or maybe Gaelan thinks that mental illness simply isn't real, or that most of its diagnoses are fake

Or maybe he's just Gaelan and has to post "controversial" contrarian thoughts in every single fucking thread in a pathetic attempt at getting attention.

What, is the nanny so doped up on anti-anxiety meds that she doesn't sweat an anti-Gaelan F-bomb anymore?

Reading this thread turned out to be deeply disturbing. And it wasn't reading about Ian Snell and Joey Votto.