Author Archives: ss034343

Medicalization of deviance refers to the growing trend of categorizing deviance as medical conditions. This means that socially deviant behaviors are opted to treated by a medical professional through the administering of drugs rather than socially-interactive outlets that seek to adjust the behavior.

This article points out a study which shows the longer-lasting effect that cognitive therapy, a type of psychotherapy, has over antidepressants in treating depression. The study “challenges the American Psychiatric Association’s guidelines that antidepressant medications are the only effective treatment for moderately to severely depressed patients.” The greater success of cognitive therapy as a treatment for depression should cause us to look into de-medicalizing depression; because if the treatment is non-medical, isn’t grounds for the cause being non-medical as well?

But towards the end, the article also points out that a patient’s reception of and response to treatment is key. This, to my mind, may signal that once something has been medicalized, it may always remain that way in the minds of some of those people who are exhibiting the deviant behavior. I wonder whether it would make a difference if the institution which labeled the deviance was the State only (through its laws). It may be the case that people respond differently to their case of deviance based upon which social institution labels it as deviant. Maybe because these people believe that other sicknesses or disorders of the body are very much tangible, and that anything given a similar medical label deserves that label, and therefore, needs a very tangible bio-chemical cure to be administered.

I came across this article about testing the reliability of child witnesses. The article acknowledges the well-known fact that young children are very suggestible, and that this causes a dilemma when children have to questioned by an adult who is trying to find out evidence in a case where the child is the only witness. A professor at Cornell has proposed that there should be a way of testing the suggestibility of a child witness and assigning a suggestibility rating.

This article relates to what happened in the “Witch Hunt” film where the parents were victims of a witch hunt and their children recanted their stories way after the intensity died down. Wouldn’t a test have been helpful in that situation?

Although this test addresses a problem in justice system, I still wonder about its feasibility and reception.  The test was conducted over a four-week period. This may be viewed as too long to establish a baseline and may be seen as just as contaminating. Asking questions about an unrelated scenario that’s being played out may bring in elements to confuse or weakens a child’s memory. But then, it may also serve as a test to how susceptible the child in question is. On another note, if a traumatic event really occurred, how closely should the scenario be allowed to mimic it without compromising it? But then again, coming that close to the actual event might help to show how much fidelity a child would show to events of that nature, even after being traumatized.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/spotlight/wgcjs/summary.html

This article points out that crimes committed by females have traditionally been considered to be less of a problem that crimes committed by males, but statistics show that there is a rising trend, and therefore an area of concern. It is quick to point out that most female crimes are instances of “running away from a problem” as opposed to creating one, and that most of the crimes committed by them are non-violent.  This comment makes me think of the difference in the biology between men and women. Women and men are wired differently, and the presence and level of hormones contribute to that fact. It is generally understood that testosterone is a source of aggression-fueled behavior, and the fact that males have more of it accounts for the difference in the statistics.

In the reading for this week, LaFarge repelled her husbands advances during their honeymoon. The article points out that 92% of juvenile female offenders have been subjected to some form of phyiscal, sexual, or emotinal abuse. LaFarge saw her husband’s  advances as a problem and decided to run from it. But as serious a crime that murder is, LaFarge, in keeping with the traditional view of womanhood, poisoned him instead of violently killing him.

The present statistics do reveal a changing trend and bring more questions to the table. Should rehabilitation be more gender-specific in order to deal with the factors that lead women to commit crimes? And will there come a day when crimes will no longer be perceived as gender-specific?