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Incapacitating Mental Illness: The mind-expanding drugs, such as LSD, are only the most dramatic manifestation of the overall drug problem, evident in the increasing use of caffeine, nicotine, aspirin, tranquil-izers, sedatives, stimulants, antidepressants, and other mood changers. As psychopharmacology progresses, it may become possible to alleviate not only incapacitating mental illness, but also such states as everyday anxiety, which often serve useful psychological or social purposes. The mass of men may no longer have to lead what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation," but their liberation may be quite different from his hopes.
There is growing evidence that some of the serious mental disorders are in part biochemical, not illnesses of the mind as such. Watson (131, 1956) stated that the nutritional displacement caused by psychological stress is itself a contribution to the biochemical aspects of mental illness.
Thanks to sulfa drugs, antibiotics, vaccines, and numerous other pharmaceuticals, quarantine Signs that once warned of scarlet fever have disappeared, polio epidemics no longer blight summertime for children, and the scourge of smallpox is gone. Tuberculosis, high blood pressure, mental illness, diabetes, and arthritis are but a few of the many other common afflictions that can now be treated successfully with new drugs. |
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