Moral steroids? Is this where psychiatry will take us?

[strugglingalong]

I was reading the following article today. I’ve always been suspect, a bit, of psychotropic medications because many times it seems to be aiming to fix some moral disorder or interior difficulty that the person is repressing or rejecting instead of facing. Regardless, the article below is from: blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/gandhi-pills-ps.html .

It is amazing that modern science wants to re-create the human person and to interfere in every way in which they must not…

And I guess the question would be the following: is this where the presuppositions of psychiatry will ultimately take them?

Could the right drug make you a better person?

A British psychiatrist raises and argues for that possibility in a new paper in a prominent psychiatry journal. In fact, he says that in many clinical settings, moral steroids are already being used.

“Within many clinical encounters, there may already be a subtle form of moral assistance going on, albeit one we do not choose to describe in these terms,” writes Sean Spence of the University of Sheffield in the British Journal of Psychiatry."

Performance-enhancing drugs are generally used to enhance performance in competitive settings, like sports. On Wired Science, we’ve spent a lot of time looking at ways to increase cognitive performance. But what Spence suggests is that science should be searching for drugs to make people more “humane” not just smarter.

Spence describes the case of a man with “antisocial personality disorder” – somewhere on the continuum between dangerously sociopathic and just kind of a jerk – who requests drugs to prevent himself from harming a girlfriend. In making that request, Spence says that the man is using pharmaceuticals to exhibit “moral agency.”

“Hence, if we ask the question ‘Can pharmacology help to enhance human morality?’ then we should answer ‘yes,’ that sometimes it can be used as a means to this end,” Spence writes.

What do you think? Do you already use some substance – say, marijuana or a prescription painkiller – not for how it makes you feel, but how it influences your behavior toward other people? Do you consider this “moral pharmacology”?

Spence mentions that drugs could be specifically designed to “target and increase a prosocial feeling and behaviour such as ‘kindness.’” Would you take a kindness pill?

Pax Christi tecum.

 

[bpbasilphx]

Some mental and emotional problems, such as clinical depression and bipolar disorder, have a biochemical basis, and medicine can help fix it.

All this gives is better raw material for salvation and the ability to make better moral choices.

 

[strugglingalong]

Some mental and emotional problems, such as clinical depression and bipolar disorder, have a biochemical basis, and medicine can help fix it.

All this gives is better raw material for salvation and the ability to make better moral choices.

But it is different to take a drug in order to be friendlier, nicer or more moral…

Ultimately I think this is where psychiatry will take us because it denies the existence of the soul, generally, and thus cannot see how the spiritual principle in man can in fact change his biology itself. If the problem is moral, then the issue is spiritual. God does not ask man to do something he cannot do. He would not require us to obey Him, by His grace, if man also needed drugs to do it. All we need is grace.

Pax Christi tecum.

 

[bpbasilphx]

Ultimately I think this is where psychiatry will take us because it denies the existence of the soul, generally,

**The psychiatrists I’ve personally know have been devout Christians.

The very word “psychiatry” comes from the Greek word PsYChE which means “soul”.**

 

[strugglingalong]

Ultimately I think this is where psychiatry will take us because it denies the existence of the soul, generally,

**The psychiatrists I’ve personally know have been devout Christians.

The very word “psychiatry” comes from the Greek word PsYChE which means “soul”.**

Yes, I know there are those in psychiatry who are Christians or who acknowledge the existence of the soul but there are many more who do not. Their fore-fathers - Jung, Freud, et al - were frightening at best. I think those who are materialists will end up advocating for moral steroids…I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the others who do realize man has a soul follow suit, sadly.

Pax Christi tecum.

 

[abucs]

Good question strugglingalong.

Why am i thinking about a contentment pill given to pschiatric patients ?

I think the world is much too complex to have a pill for morality.

For example, some people waste their whole life trying to get rich and are single minded and selfish on their journey. And they seperate themselves from other people, especially anyone who would slow them down from acheiving their goal.

Whether successful or unsuccessful though a lot of them learn a lesson and spend the rest of their life trying to spread goodness and fellowship with the same people they earlier disregarded.
They are extremely unselfish and create foundations or simply spend their time helping others who are unfortunate. These people truly make the world go around.

Would not a moral pill prevent them from ever learning that lesson and stop them from being such a force for goodness to their fellow man ?

Can a pill teach lessons and life experience ?

That’s one powerful pill.

 

[EasterJoy]

Some mental and emotional problems, such as clinical depression and bipolar disorder, have a biochemical basis, and medicine can help fix it.

All this gives is better raw material for salvation and the ability to make better moral choices.

Yes. I think the dividing line is very much like it is in the physical realm. There are clearly cases where medicine can alleviate suffering and restore proper functioning, there are cases when medicine is called upon to medicate everyday life–the desire to put a band-aid on everything–and then there is that fuzzy in-between area. Where is the dividing line between the normal pains of life and disease? Don’t we know from experience that a certain amount of shaking off of aches and pains is spiritually beneficial? It is just harder in the spiritual realm, because the injury or disease is harder to see, kind of like chronic pain problems.

In any case, there isn’t a pill that can make you a virtuous person without your willing it, any more than there is a pill to make you into an athlete. Acts of wills are necessary for proper care of the body and the soul, both, and always will be. What we alone can do is part of what our body and soul need. It is how we are made.

 

[destiny1]

The Department of Psychiatry was established in 1967 by Dr. Nathan Epstein, who was recruited from Montreal to assist Dr. John Evans in the founding of the new medical school at McMaster University . Dr. Epstein served as Department Chair from 1967-1975; succeeded by Dr. Jock Cleghorn (deceased) 1975-1983; Dr. Alex Adsett (Acting Chair) 1983-1984; Dr. Edward Kingstone, 1984-1992; Dr. Alex Adsett (Acting Chair) 1992-93; Dr. Nick Kates (Acting Chair) 1993-1994; and Dr. Russell Joffe 1994-1997. In 1997, Dr. Joffe took up the position of Dean and Vice-President of the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster, serving for three years before relocating to the United States . Dr. Richard Swinson, recruited to the role in 1997, has just completed his second term, and will continue to work at St. Joseph’s Healthcare’s Anxiety Treatment and Research Centre. Effective January 1, 2007, Dr. Robert B. Zipursky assumed the role of Department Chair, and Chief of Psychiatry, St. Joseph’s Healthcare and Hamilton Health Sciences. In September 2007, he was appointed to the position of Integrated Vice-President, Mental Health & Addictions Services.​

Destiny
Clinical Depression

 

[The_Prodigal]

I was reading the following article today. I’ve always been suspect, a bit, of psychotropic medications because many times it seems to be aiming to fix some moral disorder or interior difficulty that the person is repressing or rejecting instead of facing. Regardless, the article below is from: blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/gandhi-pills-ps.html .

It is amazing that modern science wants to re-create the human person and to interfere in every way in which they must not…

And I guess the question would be the following: is this where the presuppositions of psychiatry will ultimately take them?

Pax Christi tecum.

 

[The_Prodigal]

Where is the dividing line between the normal pains of life and disease?

Yes, and who gets to decide?

Most would recognize “harming a girlfriend” in the OP as an instance of antisocial, immoral behavior.

Some Christians would argue that homosexual behavior is antisocial and pathological. (I believe it was categorized in the diagnostic manuals as such until the 1970’s). Is the profession going to argue that we should research and prescribe a drug aimed at making individuals less homosexual? I think not.