Tue, Oct 21, 2008 page8

• MOE screening for depression is a mistake

  • By Chiou Tian-juh 邱天助
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  On Oct. 12, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) and more than 100 parents staged a protest in Taichung against the John Tung Foundation.

  This followed a move by the foundation to urge the Ministry of Education (MOE) to conduct screening for depression in university students.

  This not only caused many people to suspect the foundation of cutting deals with the medical industry, but was also a breach of privacy that led to a large number of university students being labeled with the term “depression.”

  For many years, the definition, testing, assessment and treatment of depression have lacked thought into the sociological factors behind depression.

  To some degree, “depression” is a false label. French philosopher Michel Foucault said depression is a type of “discursive formation,” a “statement” and a product of the interaction of the “will to knowledge” and the “will to power.”

  The message sent via the discourse created by “depression” is not subjective, neutral or natural.

  On the contrary, it is filled with the medical community’s will to knowledge and power and it of course also involves huge medical interests.

  As the medical profession gradually started gaining more knowledge and technical power during the 20th century, medical science started to replace traditional religion and law as a tool for controlling society.

  Because professional privilege is self-organizing and self-sustaining, the practical scope of clinical medicine kept growing with the growth of pathological knowledge.

  The number of definitions of illnesses that treated the body as composed of biomechanisms kept growing. The medical community started to come up with an increasing number of symptoms, diagnoses and treatments of problems from structural impediments to various forms of dysfunction.

  Eventually this resulted in the formation of a society where the individual is constantly controlled by medical discourse.

  Medicine’s traditional focus on biological disorders saw clinical medicine become increasingly concerned with biological treatment and made it more correct for doctors to focus on biological problems. Eventually, the medical community could call any syndrome that resulted in social dysfunction an illness.

  Obsessive-compulsive disorder, hysteria, anxiety and depression are all examples of “illnesses” that have gradually been “identified” and documented by the medical profession. These developments resulted in the “medicalization” of our society.

  Under such a social system, patients have a social responsibility to get better by receiving treatment from medical professionals and medical care and treatment have now become necessary for the normal functioning of our social mechanisms.

  The WHO recently issued a report stating that depression will become one of the three main diseases of the 21st century along with AIDS and cancer.

  The Bureau of Health Promotion of the Department of Health once conducted a survey into depression in Taiwan and found that 20 percent of women and 10 percent of men will suffer from depression at some point in their lives.

  It was estimated that Taiwan has almost 1 million people who suffer from depression.

  In order to lower the occurrence of suicide linked to depression in schools, at the end of 2006, the ministry promoted an anti-depression initiative, asking schools to monitor, select and create files on all new students and then conduct follow up investigations each semester on those thought to have a high propensity to depression and giving them treatment when necessary.

  Schools started to monitor the activities of students who were not in a good mood, who did not want to eat, who felt stressed, uncomfortable, disinterested in the things around them and those who lacked self-confidence.

  In effect, our campuses were turned into Panopticons, a type of prison conceived by 18th century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham.

  In medical theory, depression and suicide are often linked. However, right from the start of his philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus stated that whether life is worth living or not is a philosophical question.

  Depression is the physical and psychological manifestation of a life without purpose and it is easy to imagine how people can become depressed when they lose their job, experience relationship problems, lose hope and don’t know what to live for.

  The term “depression” is merely an over-simplification of philosophical and social problems interpreted as an illness affecting an individual’s psychological functions.

  This term is hardly useful in understanding the illness because it covers up the illnesses of our social structure and ignores the need for people to search for meaning and value in life.

  Medical reports show that anti-depressants are not enough in fighting depression and there have been many cases of people committing suicide even while they were on the drugs.

  Therefore, instead of conducting depression checks on students, the ministry should focus on improving education about life and making our school campuses the bright, refreshing places of learning they once were.

  Chiou Tian-juh is a professor of social psychology at Shih Hsin University.

  TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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