Eeee! He's got some good titles this fella, whatever is he going to be talking about today?
Definition of automata: "self-operating machine, or a machine or control mechanism designed to follow automatically a predetermined sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions".
What got me to thinking about today's Bank Holiday Blog Post was hearing the discussion as I dozed ont radio about Mental Health, the nature v nurture debate and the amount of funding that goes into research.
"A simmering row over the underlying causes, and best approaches to treatment, of mental illness has broken out into open warfare after a leading academic accused the Medical Research Council of bias. Today’s Science editor Tom Fielden reports and we speak live to Dr Rob Buckle, head of Regenerative Medicine at the Medical Research Council, and Professor Dame Til Wykes, professor of Clinical Psychology and Rehabilitation at KCL".
The discussion wasn't that inspiring but the debate behind it is fascinating. As you know I am no scientist and I favour the nurture side of the debate as to the causes of mental distress. It is too easy and too convenient for Her Majesty's Scientists to lay the cause at 'Chemical Imbalance & Brain Disorder'. This abrogates society from any responsibility in causing anguish, distress and mental ill health in its citizens. "It's their fault, their family history, their genes and genomes" and here's a tablet and the keys to the local mental health facility. They will be blaming garden gnomes next. You have to have an artistic bent to see that social inequality, poverty, austerity and all the other 'ity' are implicated in fragile, delicate, vulnerable human beings' distress. If we perceive something to be unfair and unjust, then it upsets us. If we are particularly sensitive then all of the worlds ills pumped into our living rooms via 24 hour news can make us seriously unwell, can make us mentally ill. This combined with a number of unfortunate personal life experiences, trauma, bereavement can cause a cocktail of toxicity in our holistic systems that the Medical Research Council funded by Tory Policy can call 'Brain Disorder'.
My non-scientific hypothesis is "If you are not affected by these things, then you must be automata". If you do not experience extreme sadness, nay, despair, at the state of the world's plight in light of recent bombings, killings and climate change, then you must have a clockwork mechanism going on behind that fizzog of yours and you must have a wooden heart". Yet I am the one who has been given a Mental Health Diagnosis and you are the one who is allowed to wander around Poundland unaccompanied. Now how is that fair?
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