You’re Mad, Experts Say

March 28, 2013 Longrider Civil Liberties, General News, General Rants, misanthropy, Political 13

Whenever I see a report that has the phrase “experts say…” I know I’m about to read twaddle, and this is twaddle indeed.

Smoking may be a sign of psychiatric illness, experts say. Doctors should routinely consider referring people who smoke to mental health services, in case they need treatment, they add.

So, that’s both of my paternal grandparents, my aunt and my wife all off their collective trolleys (although Mrs L is the only one still alive, so the only one likely to be referred). And any attempt to refer her to the shrinks will be met with derision. Look, it’s really, really simple… She smokes because she likes it. She went cold turkey for about six months or so once but decided that, actually, she wanted to smoke her roll-ups after all. Obviously mad. Well, according to those experts.

Most rational people would look upon this latest little wheeze from the tobacco control lobby as yet further encroachment into peoples personal and private lives. Not Jeremy Laurance, though. He thinks it isn’t daft at all.

But the argument is not as daft as it seems. It is a matter of statistics.
While smoking has declined overall it has not declined among those with mental disorders. Hence they account for a growing proportion – at least one in three – of the smokers that remain.

Faced with those figures doctors would be remiss if they did not consider whether a patient’s fag habit disguised an untreated mental disorder.

Er, no. They should mind their own bloody business. If someone is displaying signs of mental illness, fine diagnose and recommend treatment. The patient having a drag on a fag is not a part of that diagnosis because it is not evidence of mental illness. Correlation and causation are two different things.

How soon before these evil bastards take the next logical step and recommend sectioning smokers? All for their own good, of course.

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13 Comments

  1. “Routinely considering whether someone presenting with a lung disease, or indeed any patient who smokes, might benefit from referral to mental health services, could make the key difference for many individuals,” Professor Spiro said.

    Oh dear. I think the old buffer actually meant to sound helpful. This report is another good reason why all taxpayer funding of fake DOH charities and medical pressure groups such as the Royal College of Physicians should end tomorrow. It is vile, arrogant, thoughtless and inhumane, a description that can and should be applied to the Royal College of Physicians too. None of those forced to pay for this nastiness would shed a tear if the British Lung Foundation and the RCP disappeared tomorrow.

  2. After some basic research I withdraw my conciliatory comment about Spiro. I believe that he really is as unpleasant as the quote suggests.

  3. “Pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment of human affairs.” Albert Einstein.

    So it’s Professor Stephen Spiro or Albert Einstein. Tough call.

  4. I too, LR, come from a family of smokers. Middle class people (not the chavscum the DM corner outside the courts having a puff), and in the case of my grandfathers and father, brave warriors, unlike, say, Jeremy Laurance, who looks like he has a fag habit himself, if you ask me. My maternal grandmother did not smoke – she was the only one who succumbed to the big C.

    As a psychopath, I hope that Professor Spiro endures every agony life has to offer. You see, I’m quite loopy – he said so himself! I’m a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle, I must kill and my alarm clock will reward me with pretty colours and nice music*

    * pinched from Viz

    😛

    • Neither of my parents smoked as they didn’t like it. My mother’s father was a pipe smoker, but her mother abstained. Guess which grandparent was carried off by the big C?

      I and none of my siblings smoke. One of my sisters tried it for a while much to my mother’s annoyance. Having tried it she decided not to continue. So addictive is tobacco, that she smoked for about a year and then stopped. She has never gone back to it.

  5. The constant desire to control people and interfere in their lives, is a sign of psychiatric illness, experts said today. ‘These people need help and should be referred to the mental health services’ said Professor Lemmi. In the words of Marcus Aurelius ; “The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

  6. Smoking is an addiction.
    Whatever it is, it is not a “mental illness” – assuming that there are such things – I suspect all mental illnesses have physical causes, myself (another day, perhaps, for that one?)
    So, yes … it’s bollocks.

  7. ‘How soon before these evil bastards take the next logical step and recommend sectioning smokers? All for their own good, of course’.

    And how long before they find evidence that smoking actually causes mental health problems?

    It’s also ironic that the ‘New Normal’ is actually an outbreak of paranoia that’s been deliberately engineered by ASH et al.

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