The myth of normal, p.52
The Myth of Normal, page 52
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
Chapter 16: Show of Hands
Vincent J. Felitti et al., “The Relationship of Adult Health Status to Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 14 (1998): 245–58.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
Vincent J. Felitti and Robert Anda, “The Lifelong Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences,” chapter 10, in Chadwick’s Child Maltreatment: Sexual Abuse and Psychological Maltreatment, vol. 2, 4th ed. (St. Louis, MO: STM Learning, 2014), 207.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
Gene H. Brody et al., “Parenting Moderates a Genetic Vulnerability Factor in Longitudinal Increases in Youths’ Substance Use,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology Association 77, no. 1 (February 2009): 1–11; among other studies, such as, for example, Marcello Solinas et al., “Prevention and Treatment of Drug Addiction by Environmental Enrichment,” Progress in Neurobiology 92, no. 4 (December 2010): 572–92.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
I first cited this statement by Dr. Perry in my book on addiction, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
Gail Dines, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), 57.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
Jaak Panksepp et al., “The Role of Brain Emotional Systems in Addictions: A Neuro-Evolutionary Perspective and New ‘Self-Report’ Animal Model,” Addiction 97, no. 4 (May 2002): 459–69.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
Louis Cozolino, The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 115.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
Chapter 17: An Inaccurate Map of Our Pain
Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1994), 193.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
I dispensed fully with this issue of twin and adoption studies in an appendix to my book on addiction. In short, I argue that these ostensibly pristine cases of “different environments, same health problems” are so blind to the environmental factors contained in their experimental design—maternal stress during pregnancy and the trauma of separation from birth mother, to cite two obvious examples—as to be invalid, no matter what mental or physical condition we are talking about. A link to that appendix is posted at this book’s website, https://drgabormate.com/book/the-myth-of-normal, for the benefit of the curious or unconvinced. The professional reader may further consult the psychologist Jay Joseph’s comprehensive work The Trouble with Twin Studies: A Reassessment of Twin Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Routledge, 2016).
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
“Because the troubled mind has been perceived in terms of diverse religious, scientific, and social beliefs of discrete cultures, the forms of madness from one place and time in history often look remarkably different from the forms of madness in another,” notes Ethan Watters in his book Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche (New York: Free Press, 2020), 5.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
Cited in Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (New York: Broadway Books, 2010), 274.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
American Psychiatric Association, “Chair of DSM-5 Task Force Discusses Future of Mental Health Research,” press release, May 3, 2013.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
For example, by the psychologist Irvin Kirsch, recently associate director of the program in placebo studies and a lecturer in medicine at the Harvard Medical School. “It now seems beyond question that the traditional account of depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain is simply wrong,” Kirsch wrote in his own extensive review of the scientific literature, The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth, cited in Marcia Angell, “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?,” New York Review of Books, June 23, 2011. (Dr. Angell is the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.)
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
Richard L. Morrow et al., “Influence of Relative Age on Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 184, no. 7 (April 17, 2012): 755–62.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
“Oppositional Defiant Disorder,” Mayo Clinic, https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/oppositional-defiant-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20375831.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
J. E. Khoury et al., “Relations Among Maternal Withdrawal in Infancy, Borderline Features, Suicidality/Self-Injury, and Adult Hippocampal Volume: A 30-Year Longitudinal Study,” Behavioral Brain Research 374 (November 18, 2019): 112139, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2019.112139.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
John Read et al., “Child Maltreatment and Psychosis: A Return to a Genuinely Integrated Bio-Psycho-Social Model,” Clinical Schizophrenia and Related Psychoses 2, no. 3 (October 2008): 235–54.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
Thomas Bailey et al., “Childhood Trauma Is Associated with Severity of Hallucinations and Delusions in Psychotic Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Schizophrenia Bulletin 44, no. 5 (2018): 1111–22.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
Richard Bentall, “Mental Illness Is a Result of Misery, Yet Still We Stigmatize It,” Guardian, February 26, 2016.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
Martin H. Teicher and Jacqueline A. Samson, “Annual Research Review: Enduring Neurobiological Effects of Childhood Abuse and Neglect,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 57, no. 3 (March 2016): 241–66.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
R. C. Lewontin, Biology as Destiny: The Doctrine of DNA (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 30.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
W. Thomas Boyce, The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Some Children Struggle and How All Can Thrive (London: Allen Lane, 2019), 11.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
E. Fox and C. B. Beevers, “Differential Sensitivity to the Environment: Contribution of Cognitive Biases and Genes to Psychological Wellbeing,” Molecular Psychiatry 21, no. 12 (2016): 1657–62.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
Louis Menand, “Acid Reflux: The Life and High Times of Timothy Leary,” New Yorker, June 26, 2006.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
Chapter 18: The Mind Can Do Some Amazing Things
A. H. Almaas, The Freedom to Be (Berkeley, CA: Diamond Books, 1989), 85.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
Douglas F. Watt and Jaak Panksepp, “Depression: An Evolutionarily Conserved Mechanism to Terminate Separation Distress? A Review of Aminergic, Peptidergic, and Neural Network Perspectives,” Neuropsychoanalysis 11, no. 1 (January 1, 2009): 7–51.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
Noël Hunter, Trauma and Madness in Mental Health Services (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 5.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
The psychologist and research scientist Stephen Porges posits the concept of neuroception, the brain’s unconscious assessment of security. “This automatic process,” he writes, “involves brain areas that evaluate cues of safety, danger, and life threat.” “The perception of safety,” he suggests, “is the turning point in the development of relationships for most mammals.” This is particularly true for human beings, with our long formative period of helpless dependency. Stephen W. Porges, The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017), 19; and Stephen W. Porges, The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, Self-Regulation (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), see especially chapter 1.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
Helen Knott, In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience (Saskatchewan, Canada: University of Regina Press, 2019), 96.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
This quote by Robin Williams was reported to have been sourced from a video interview I have not been able to view directly. But he reveals much about his childhood loneliness and inner torments in almost similar words in this YouTube interview with James Lipton: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x64ojf8.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
In a Swedish study looking at hundreds of thousands of subjects, the risk of Parkinson’s disease was nearly three times as great in those who had experienced depression, and even greater in those with severe depression. Helena Gustafsson et al., “Depression and Subsequent Risk of Parkinson Disease,” Neurology 84, no. 24 (June 16, 2015): 2422–29. Another review concluded that chronic emotional stress also elevates the risk for the disease, possibly by damaging dopamine cells in certain parts of the brain: Atbin Djamshidian and Andrew Lees, “Can Stress Trigger Parkinson’s Disease?,” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 85, no. 8 (August 2014): 879–82.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
Schizophrenia Working Group, “Biological Insights from 108 Schizophrenia-Associated Genetic Loci,” Nature 511 (2014): 421–27.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
“Dissociation,” writes the psychiatrist Mark Epstein, “offers immediate protection from the traumas of life.” Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Everyday Life (New York: Penguin, 2014), 84.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
Knott, In My Own Moccasins, 24.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
Theo Fleury, Playing with Fire (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 25.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
A recent study showed that prolonged use of antipsychotics in adults results in a diminished thickness of the cerebral cortex, the brain’s executive apparatus. “The prefrontal cortex doesn’t get the input it needs and is being shut down by drugs,” a leading researcher told the New York Times. “That reduces the psychotic symptoms. It also causes the prefrontal cortex to slowly atrophy.” Aristotle N. Voineskos et al., “Effects of Antipsychotic Medication on Brain Structure in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder and Psychotic Features: Neuroimaging Findings in the Context of a Randomized Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial,” JAMA Psychiatry 77, no. 7 (July 1, 2020): 674–83.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
Russell A. Barkley, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Handbook for Diagnosis and Treatment (New York: Guilford Press, 1990), 103.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
Jaak Panksepp, “Can PLAY Diminish ADHD and Facilitate the Construction of the Social Brain?,” Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 16, no. 2 (May 2007): 57–66.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
For example, Liliana J. Lengua et al., “Pathways from Early Adversity to Later Adjustment: Tests of the Additive and Bidirectional Effects of Executive Control and Diurnal Cortisol in Early Childhood,” Development and Psychopathology, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579419000373; also Jens C. Pruessner et al., “Dopamine Release in Response to a Psychological Stress in Humans and Its Relationship to Early Maternal Care: A Positron Emission Tomography Study Using [11C]Raclopride,” Journal of Neuroscience 24, no. 11 (March 17, 2004): 2825–31.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog (And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook): What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 51.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
The study by Nicole M. Brown, M.D., and her colleagues analyzed data from the 2011 National Survey of Children’s Health and was presented on May 6, 2014, at the Pediatric Academic Societies’ annual meeting in Vancouver, B.C. It was reported in ScienceDaily, May 6, 2014: “Study Finds ADHD and Trauma Often Go Hand in Hand.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
Stanley Coren, “Can Dogs Suffer from ADHD?,” Psychology Today, January 9, 2018, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/canine-corner/201801/can-dogs-suffer-adhd.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18
John Bowlby, Attachment, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 377.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 19
Bruno Etain et al., “Childhood Trauma Is Associated with Severe Clinical Characteristics of Bipolar Disorders,” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 74, no. 10 (October 2013): 991–98.
The study does not imply, and neither do I, that childhood adversity “causes” bipolar disorder. It is, however, a contributing factor, especially to the condition’s severity.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 20
Chapter 19: From Society to Cell
János Selye, The Stress of Life, rev. ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), 370.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 1
Zachary M. Harvanek et al., “Psychological and Biological Resilience Modulates the Effects of Stress on Epigenetic Aging,” Translational Psychiatry 11 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01735-7.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2
E. R. De Kloet, “Corticosteroids, Stress, and Aging,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 663 (1992): 357–71.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3
Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2014), 314.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4
BBC interview, “Blair Calls for Lifestyle Change,” 2006, cited in Ted Schrecker and Clare Bambra, How Politics Makes Us Sick: Neoliberal Epidemics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 29.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5
Phillip Inman, “IMF Boss Says Global Economy Risks Return of Great Depression,” Guardian, January 17, 2020.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6
David Lao, “Almost 9 out of 10 Canadians Feel Food Prices Are Rising Faster Than Income: Survey,” Global News, December 16, 2019.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7
Vancity, “Report: B.C. Women Are Financially Stressed, Stretched and Under-Resourced,” press release, March 17, 2018, based on the province-wide survey “Money Troubled: Inside B.C.’s Financial Health Gender Gap.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8
Schrecker and Bambra, How Politics Makes Us Sick, 42.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 9
John Ralston Saul, “The Collapse of Globalism,” Harper’s, March 2004.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 10
Ashild Faresjö et al., “Higher Perceived Stress but Lower Cortisol Levels Found Among Young Greek Adults Living in a Stressful Social Environment in Comparison with Swedish Young Adults,” PLoS ONE 8, no. 9 (September 16, 2013), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073828.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 11
Sonia J. Lupien et al., “Child’s Stress Hormone Levels Correlate with Mother’s Socioeconomic Status and Depressive State,” Biological Psychiatry 48, no. 10 (November 15, 2000): 976–80.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12
Tara Siegel Bernard and Karl Russell, “The Middle-Class Crunch: A Look at 4 Family Budgets,” New York Times, October 3, 2019.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 13
Wade Davis, “The Unravelling of America,” Rolling Stone, August 6, 2020, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 14
Morris Berman, The Twilight of American Culture (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 64–65.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 15
Bernard and Russell, “The Middle-Class Crunch.”
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 16
William T. Gallo et al., “Involuntary Job Loss as a Risk Factor for Subsequent Myocardial Infarction and Stroke: Findings from the Health and Retirement Survey,” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 45, no. 5 (May 2004): 408–16; and W. T. Gallo et al., “The Impact of Late Career Job Loss on Myocardial Infarction and Stroke: A 10 Year Follow Up Using the Health and Retirement Survey,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 63, no. 10 (October 2006): 683–87.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 17
Matthew E. Dupre et al., “The Cumulative Effect of Unemployment on Risks for Acute Myocardial Infarction,” Archives of Internal Medicine 172, no. 22 (December 2012): 1731–37.
BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 18
Louis Uchitelle, “Job Insecurity of Workers Is a Big Factor in Fed Policy,” New York Times, February 27, 1997.
