Today is my last day of Shakespeare class, and my final day of classes in general is two days away on this Wednesday. I’m once again going to skip a day of blogging and instead post my homework as today’s blog entry, but I should be done doing this in the very near future and will return to blogging normally.

My Homework for Your Reading Pleasure

After reading and watching Shakespeare’s King Henry V, we wrote a relevant essay about how King Henry V started a war and connected it to America’s involvement in the war in Iraq.

I think that regardless of if someone was for or against preemptive war, during our initial invasion back in 2003 when the war began, people did not necessarily see it as a preemptive war. As stated by the Roman Catholic Church, if the “damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations [is] lasting, grave, and certain,” the war is not preemptive and is instead defensive. After the events that occurred on September 11, 2011, most people probably saw the invasion as more of a retaliation than anything else, and they felt as if it was justified because we were inflicting revenge on something that would stay in our history as something that caused great harm to our nation.

Another condition in the Roman Catholic Church’s tradition is that “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.” Back in 2003, some of our main intentions for the invasion were to remove weapons of mass destruction and remove a tyrannical head of government. One could argue that because these two items could potentially cause extremely great harm and evil to people if not disarmed, the amount of force we were using was fully justified and that we were doing this for the better good rather than preemptively just for the greed.

Back in 2003, because people were in the mindset described above, they would have most likely seen Henry V as a good play that closely resembles the success and honor that Americans are going to see in the near future. King Henry V constantly makes references to his Christian God and says that God is on their side. After he is victorious, he says that God was the one who fought the battle for him and gave them enough fortune to make the battle turn out to be a victory. This is very similar to the American’s beliefs when they wanted to overthrow the tyranny; they believed that their practices were unholy and unreligious, and they wanted to make sure that all the evil was eliminated.

However, people have a tendency to apply current-day beliefs, values, and morals to things they think about, and if they were to think about King Henry V today, they would have different opinions that reflect our view rom today. Now that the war has carried on into 2011 and has become the longest war in United States history, people are becoming more hesitant to support it because it appears like we are not making much progress, and the only news we are receiving frequently is the news of soldiers dying during battle.

Now that the war is glistening under a negative light, people are less likely to support it, and will be less likely to be supportive of King Henry V’s plans as well because they will likely see a greater parallel between the violence, destruction, and death rather than the parallel of goodness and religion that they used to see. Those who are against our invasion would probably cite that we do not have a “serious prospect of success,” as stated by the Roman Catholic Church, and that we are only wasting our time by being persistent with our invasion if not all the conditions of war are met.

If you didn’t catch this from a few days ago, I’m working on getting everything done for my summer semester at college, so I don’t have much time on my hands. As a result, I’ll be putting my homework on my blog until I have some extra spare time to blog, which may or may not be of any interest to you.

My Homework for Your Reading Pleasure

This is an extra credit paper I wrote for my abnormal psychology class about Jared Lee Loughner and the issues he has been having with schizophrenia and court appearances.

Back on August 1, 2011, I got a breaking news update via email from CNN: “Rep. Gabrielle Giffords returned to U.S. House chamber to a standing ovation to cast vote in favor of debt ceiling deal.” This updated reminded me of the Tucson, Arizona shooting that occurred back on January 8, 2011 that injured 14 people (one being United States Representative Gabrielle Giffords) and killed six people. Once the constant updates on the news ebbed away after a while, I stopped keeping track of the developments of the story. To get back to date, I went on Wikipedia to read about what ended up happening to perpetrator Jared Lee Loughner, and saw that he was, as expected, having some issues with psychological disorders.

On March 3, 2011, Loughner was indicted on charges of murder and attempted murder, adding up to 49 total counts. Six days later, Loughner pleaded not guilty to all 49 charges. During his court appear-ance on May 25, 2011, he was ruled not competent to stand trial after two individual medical evalua-tions and an outburst during the hearing. The trial was suspended indefinitely until Loughner receive proper treatment for his diagnosis of schizophrenia. His next court appearance will be on September 21, 2011, when he will be reevaluated for competency.

The troubling components of that decision are the indefinite suspension and the reevaluation. What would happen if Loughner is not found not competent to stand trial on September 21, 2011, and this drags on for years without a solution? Would Loughner be held in a psychiatric facility for the rest of his life without ever being convicted for his crime and sentenced to death?

To prevent this, on June 26, 2011, United States federal judge Larry Alan Burns ruled that prison doctors could forcibly medicate Loughner to make him competent to stand trial. A few weeks later, a federal appeals panel reversed the decision, saying, “Since Loughner has not been convicted of a crime, he is presumptively innocent and is therefore entitled to greater constitutional protections than a convicted inmate.” This means that Loughner now has permission to refuse psychiatric medication, and effectively never be considered competent to go on trial. This prompted me to do some research about forcible medication through involuntary treatment.

The whole issue of forcible treatment was introduced into law with Dr. J. B. O’Connor v. Kenneth Donaldson (1975) when the United States Supreme Court ruled that forcible hospitalization and treat-ment of an individual who is not dangerous and can survive safely by him/herself is a breach of his/her freedoms and rights. Four years later, Rubie Rogers v. Robert Okin, M.D. (1979) declared that a mental patient has the right to make treatment decisions in non-emergency circumstances, and in the case of an inability to make a decision, a full evidentiary hearing in court is required to allow substituted judg-ment (doing what the patient would most likely have decided to do without the patient being able to explicitly state so). In Washington, et al. v. Harper (1990), the United States Supreme Court ruled that an incarcerated inmate with a psychological disorder can be medicated against his or her will only in the circumstance that (s)he is a danger to him/herself and those around him/her.

Applying these case laws to Loughner’s situation, the main issue becomes determining if he is a danger to himself or those around him. The fact that Loughner went ahead and shot 19 people in an attempt to assassinate a politician seems like pretty solid evidence that he is a dangerous man, but according to the ruling of the federal appeals panel, they think otherwise. It has been proven and has become common knowledge that those who commit crimes are more likely to commit more crimes in the future than those who have not committed any crimes at all. Even though Loughner is confined, that does not stop him from committing more crimes while being held (such as assaulting and battering fellow inmates and facility staff). It seems vital that Loughner’s mental state and level of dangerousness is reanalyzed as soon as possible to make sure that he does not use a loophole in the law to end up being confined in a hospital for the rest of his life and never face the punishment he deserves.

If you didn’t catch this from a few days ago, I’m working on getting everything done for my summer semester at college, so I don’t have much time on my hands. As a result, for the next few days or so, I’ll be putting my homework on my blog, which may or may not be of any interest to you.

My Homework for Your Reading Pleasure

This is a paper I wrote for my abnormal psychology class about overmedication. The prompt was pretty broad; we were told to read an informational article in our textbooks about overmedication in general, and we were permitted to select a more specific topic on our own. I decided to go with misdiagnoses that result in overmedication.

Medicine is something that I can safely say most people appreciate. It can range anywhere from something as simple as over-the-counter anti-itch cream to relieve the disturbance from mosquito bites, to something as complex as Adrucil, which is used in the treatment of cancer. Not many people can argue that medication does not have a positive effect on our lives.

But sometimes, taking an unneeded medication will turn it from a wonder drug into a toxic substance. For example, the use of Adrucil outside of cancer treatment will not have any positive effects, and instead just cause myelotoxicity (bone marrow suppression), dermatitis (inflammation of the skin), and mucositis (inflammation of the mucous membranes in the gastrointestinal tract). Either way, that’s nothing to worry about, because we would never use a drug that we don’t need, right?

According to research done by Children and Adults Against Drugging America (CHAADA), in the past 25 years, the number of children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has increased by approximately 1200% (one thousand two hundred percent). Are children who are born today drastically more likely to have ADD or ADHD than children born 25 years ago? Or is there something else affecting the rate of diagnoses, and ultimately, the rate of children receiving medication for ADD and ADHD that they might not even have?

A good place to start would be to look at what makes a child eligible to be diagnosed with ADD and ADHD. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, which is part of the National Institutes of Health and a component of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, a child must demonstrate the symptoms of ADHD for six months at a higher degree than other children of similar age. For ADHD with inattention, a child might be easily distracted, forgetful, unfocused, bored, or slow. For ADHD with hyperactivity, a child might be fidgety, squirmy, extremely talkative, constantly in motion, or unable to do quiet activities. For ADHD with impulsivity, a child might be impatient, inappropriate, emotionally unrestrained, or interruptive.

The key problem with this process of diagnoses is that it is relative to other children of similar age. There is obviously an above and below average for everything, but where do these turn into extremes? How does one determine if the prevalence of symptoms is too great to be considered just above average and how do we keep this consistent enough so we do not have situations where some pediatricians would diagnose a child with ADHD while another pediatrician would not?

On top of that, many of the symptoms of ADHD can be considered personality traits or undisciplined behavior. For example, a child with a dull personality might be seen as always bored, and could be misinterpreted as inattentive and distracted. A child who is not disciplined could be restless and interjective, but a little bit of conditioning could turn the child into a socially acceptable person. On top of that, some of the symptoms could be caused by completely different problems. For example, an ear infection could cause hearing problems, which can be misinterpreted as inattention. A child with depression as a result of anxiety or a sudden life-changing event (such as the death of a family member or a parents’ divorce) can be seen as always down and dull, which can be misinterpreted as inattention. From this viewpoint, it is clear that the diagnosis of ADHD is a surprisingly subjective. Unfortunately, there seems to be a relatively objective connection between ADHD and medication – according to data collected by Dr. Gretchen LeFever of Eastern Virginia Medical School, 84% of children diagnosed with ADHD received a prescription for medication.

With the debatable methods of ADHD diagnosis and the shockingly drastic increase of the number of diagnoses, it is clear that there is a problem with overdiagnosis and overmedication. People are very well justified when they express their concern for overmedication, and it is vital to our future generations’ health that we take action as soon as possible and start medicating only those who really need it.