This meme found on Bored Panda:
This week’s most viral mental health professional seems to be Dr. Leslie Dobson, who posted an incendiary Instagram proclaiming her refusal to return her shopping cart; reasoning being the “265 children abducted in parking lots in America.”
“Risk isn’t worth it and our lives are precious,” she has posted in comment sections. “I have seen lives destroyed.”
265? That seems awfully specific.
My dad used to always say:
“Know the difference between Jerry Springer and Dr. Phil? Jerry’s on at 4:00PM and Dr. Phil is on at 5:00PM”
Dr. Phil always holds up his wife as an example of pefect mental health. On his show, she always looks to me like she’s on an awesome cocktail of prescription meds. Like the kind only rich housewives can get. I get kinda jealous.
And vanishingly small relative to all the children in the US.
Something about becoming a parent turns off the part of your brain that rationally evaluates risk.
I’m speaking of course of my husband. His most recent thing was turning the air on instead of keeping the windows open in my son’s bedroom because “it’s dangerously hot in there.”
It was 60F outside.
Dangerously, really? I’d give you uncomfortably hot, but we are not talking about a dangerous level of heat.
That’s how it goes now.
Well, here is where you start: Phil has a PhD in psychology. That is basically the practice of counseling people who have issues that they can work through. Psychologists are not qualified to treat mental illness. They can usually recognize when a person is in a state that they cannot work themselves out of simply through talk and analysis, at which point the psychologist needs to refer that person to a doctor who is qualified to treat mental illness.
From what I can tell, Phil does give decent advice much of the time. In the case that precipitated this thread, however, it seems that he has failed. He has either not recognized that the subject has serious, obvious issues that call for a kind of treatment that Phil is not qualified to provide, or he has willfully chosen to ignore those signs. This makes Phil either incompetent or craven, but certainly not someone worthy of respect.
“You’ve come a long way baby.”
“It’s toasted.”
“Good taste doesn’t change.”
"High country taste. Any way you like it. "
Are you confusing psychologist with psychiatrist? I would argue that psychologists are more qualified to treat mental illness than any other profession. To get a PhD in clinical psychology you need to have extensive training and experience in providing therapy to individuals with mental illness. That’s the whole job description.
Some people do that job badly but still I would pick a randomly selected PhD in clinical psych over any other mental health credential. Well I give them equal weight to psychiatrists, who are a critically important part of the mental health team. Ideally you’d have both working together. But a psychiatrist spends about 15 minutes with a client on average.
If you’re talking about immediate crisis intervention, sure. But we’re not talking about people who are a danger to themselves or others. And many psychologists are skilled at crisis intervention until they can get that person to a hospital or wherever else they need to be. My husband is incredibly, profoundly, almost preternaturally good at handling people in crisis. He did have some hospital experience as part of his training, but I think it’s also the way he’s wired.
Also, while many psychologists try to solve problems with talk and analysis, many don’t. My husband uses graduated exposure and exposure and response prevention to treat anxiety disorders. That’s not about talk and analysis. It’s about forming a concrete behavioral plan and executing it. Which is not to say he’s not supportive and helping people talk through things when he needs to. But that’s not really the part of his job that works.
I think it’s more of a confusion between psychologist and therapist.
I see. Well, psychologists can be therapists, and a lot of them are. Some of them are almost exclusively research academics, but it’s hardly uncommon for a psychologist to be a therapist. There are many types of degrees you can get to be a licensed therapist and clinical psychologist is one of them.
I appreciate learning the term right fighter from him. It has explained a couple of now-former co-workers.
I can’t listen to him talk because he always sounds like he’s straining to pinch a loaf.
I always thought he was what Mr. Mackey from South Park would sound like with a deeper southern accent.
Earlier this year, Dr. Phil was still whining about suspension of in-person schooling during the Covid-19 pandemic, saying children being “not susceptible to life-threatening reactions to this virus means that they suffered more from the quarantine than they ever would have from the virus.”
Never mind the 17,400 child deaths from Covid recorded as of March '23, plus the vastly greater number of severe illnesses, hospitalizations and long Covid. And let’s ignore a major reason for keeping kids out of class and going to remote learning - the risk to teachers and family members from students bringing the virus home.
What a jerk.
I always thought that was the #1 reason for keeping kids out of school since the direct risk to kids was much lower than the rest of the population.
I’m a dad and my youngest is still in elementary school. I can’t count the number of times my wife and I got sick from something my kid got in school. I sometimes affectionately refer to her as my little disease vector.
That’s not to say there is no direct risk to kids, clearly there is, but the risk from kids is huge.
Dr. Phil is not qualified to be an authority on such a thing and he has a huge platform, so his dangerous ignorance is particularly loathsome.
I think it is legitimate to recognize the impact of COVID restrictions on childrens mental health and development. My daughter in law, a practicing psychologist has expressed it.
She has also expressed her great disappointment as an immuno compromised person in the willful ignorance and selfishness of so many of our fellow citizens in their reaction to COVID restrictions.
She is on a leave of absence and mandatory bed rest right now because of impaired heart and lung function. Her last bout of COVID in January dragged on, followed into bronchitis and pneumonia and ended up with her hospitalized. There’s little doubt that the vector was our grandchildren bringing something home from kindergarten / daycare.
I agree. It had a negative affect on both of my daughters and an especially devastating affect on my older daughter. It led to her needing hospitalization for it. It’s real and not something to casually dismiss.
Like many things in the real world every decision we make has consequences and you have to weigh the benefits and drawbacks. Keeping kids out of school is not a perfect solution or our education system would just be built that way. It’s not built that way because such a thing is bad for kids. But it’s a necessary evil when there’s a deadly pandemic and one risk is worse than the other.
This is how rational adults discuss the issue, and don’t pretend that it’s a very simple issue with a good solution and a bad solution. I mean, any kind of Covid restriction is the same. There are other people who don’t like it when things are complicated and simplify things to the point of being complete idiots.
Speaking of negative effects on children:
Cognition and Mental Health in Pediatric Patients Following COVID-19 - PMC.
These problems arguably would’ve been much worse without the temporary suspension of in-person learning.
He wasn’t, really. Well, yeah, his personality was a little jackassy, but what he had to say was totally on the money.
His first book, Life Strategies, was great. Just no bullshit straight up get real kind of advice.
These are the “10 laws” that he wrote about in that book and if you read everything and actually read what it says I think you’ll have a hard time saying it’s bad.
But now? No. No no no no no…