I’ve talked a lot on this blog about the corrupting effect of big pharma money in the American university, especially in the hard to define and hard to diagnose area of depression. I’ve talked about the mindless defensiveness on the part of some academics to growing evidence of the largely placebo effect of anti-depressant pills for millions of people who take them.
But I’ve never seen anything like what some Israeli academics are doing with these pills when a rabbi brings to their office a haredi Jew who does not conform to haredi culture.
[Professor Omer Bonne sanctions] prescribing antidepressant pills from the SSRI family (most commonly used for the treatment of depression, anxiety disorders and some personality disorders ) for yeshiva students who masturbate excessively, or have sexual relations with other men, yet do not suffer from depression.
Bonne justified the use of these pills by pointing out that their side effects reduce sexual urges; he argued that such medication preempts possible destructive conflicts between the men and their surroundings, and the pills might also preempt conditions of depression.
A prominent psychiatrist cited in the report justified the use of lithium – medication ordinarily used for bipolar disorders – in certain cases where a man or woman suddenly decides to stop observing religious commandments, or to break up the family unit. The psychiatrist said that in some cases, such behavior derives from conditions such as mania.
Bonne and other psychiatrists confirmed that some of the patients come to clinics accompanied by rabbis or various “supervisors” associated with yeshivas. Sometimes, the religious pupils’ families are not notified of these visits. The psychiatrists confirmed that the rabbis or supervisors are on hand when patients are examined.
This article, in Haaretz, is difficult to read. It evokes the world of 1984, and Brave New World, in which closed and repressive cultures enforce conformity with chemicals. A senior psychiatrist interviewed for the article says: “I am stunned that people do that.”
April 21st, 2012 at 10:54PM
There is a saying in our field that the form of psychopathology matters more than the content. So, in some historical and cultural contexts religious delusions abound while in other times and places political delusions predominate. But they are all delusions – that’s the point, just as right wing totalitarianism and left wing totalitarianism are more alike than different.
So, the coöption of academic psychiatry by religious zealots in Israel is of a kind with the coöption of academic psychiatry by corporate marketeers in the USA. The professional corruptions are essentially identical.
April 22nd, 2012 at 5:35AM
I agree with Dr Carroll that these aims are delusional. But I see the prescribing of SSRIs for gays etc as a kind of magical thinking, rather than evidence of totalitarianism. The psychiatric treatments of the moment have always been credited with a kind of shaman-like power, whether using psychoanalysis to turn gays straight or ECT to achieve the same result. But here the practice, wholly deplorable, is even more pathetic, because the SSRIs are not powerful agents, and certainly impuissant, for the most part, in the treatment of serious depression. It is as though these religious fanatics had turned to Hostess Cupcakes to stop chronic masturbators. So the practice is deplorable in regard to (a) some orthodox rabbis, and (b) current psychiatric treatments.
April 22nd, 2012 at 2:05PM
I doubt that there’s an intent to cure here, in either medical or magical senses. We may rationalize what’s going on here in various ways, but I’d guess that the Haredi rabbis see the drugs pretty straightforwardly as a way of administering punishment for the crimes of masturbation and homosexuality. Given, e.g., that modern Israeli society doesn’t permit corporal punishment.