Life In a Song

"What the Hell" -Avril Lavigne
This explains how for most my life I have been who everyone expected me to be, never breaking any rules, doing what was expected of me, and being the "scholar athlete" I was labeled as. But now it's time for me to grow up and move on to the person I want to become, and if that means breaking a few rules to figure it out, that is what I'm going to do.

"I Look so Good without You" -Jessie James
I went through a rough break up and sang this song every morning while getting ready for the day and it helped me remember to stay strong, never take back (excuse my language) dumbass, flousy men who want their "freedom" to sleep around and then come back around expecting you to be there. (little more personal than I expected but I guess I must still be worked up about it(: haha)

"Peacock" -Katy Perry & "Wannabe" -Spice Girls
hahah There is absolutely no way I could not have these on the songs of my life. My six best friends since elementary school and I have choreographed dances to theses songs and performed them numerous times. There is just so many memories when I hear them.

"God game me You" -Blake Shelton
This song refers to all those people in my life who have been there for me through everything. I'm not really an emotional person, I never cry, and for those who are the few who have seen me through those rare days, I appreciate them more then they'll ever realize. My family, who has accepted me through my never-ending tom-boy stage from 2nd grade through high school(: haha , and accepting and loving me through my crazy personality even when I embarress the crap out of them by doing cartwheels in the isles when we're grocery shopping at Walmart.
 For my father, who is my mentor for numerous hobbies and life lessons. My mother, who has shown me how to act like a girl even when I swear I wanted to be a boy;p hahaaa My brothers, who are probably the reason I thought I could keep up with the boys, but for keeping me tough and I must thank them for being less intelligent then me, because it really makes me look like a genius in mom and dad's eyes!

Lastly,
"Orignial Symphony" (song with no lyrics)
I chose a song with no lyrics because my life cannot be summed up into one song. The things I've experienced, felt, seen, and endured are much more than any song could ever protray. The amount of experiences that still lie infront of me are endless and ones I've been through, indiscribable.

Research Articles

Keeton, Carole. (2004). Forgotten children. Texas Comptroller.

“Concerns about the medications foster children receive have been raised in other states. In Minnesota, for instance, a University of Minnesota study for Saint Louis County found that nearly 35 percent of the county’s foster children were receiving psychotropic medication, compared to 15 percent of the general population of children.” Keeton, Carole. (2004). “Forgotten children.” Texas Comptroller, 199.

This book’s main focus is on foster care children in Texas and their lack of importance to receive quality care, including mental care. Though her focus is elsewhere, she touches on the topic of overmedicating our youth, especially foster care children, simply to make it easier to care for them. Keeton says that many Texas foster children are heavily medicated on psychiatric drugs, often not tested for children, which leave them tired and dreary and easier to care for. She also uses a handful of individual testimonies from individuals who have adopted children from foster care and found that their children have been misdiagnosed, and/or over treated for their disorder. This source is not going to help me find a great amount of evidence for my research paper but it does help me gain a different view of my topic and aids in the answer to my research question.

“In just five years, the annual number of children placed on these powerful mind-altering

drugs has increased by an alarming 528%” Statewide Advocacy Council. (2003). The psychopathic drugging of Florida’s Medicaid children. Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Florida, pg. 1.

This report focused in on Florida’s rise in medicated foster care children. It holds useful information backed by research conducted by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. It portrays the massive rise in children on Medicaid receiving psychopathic drugs.  It does throw a lot of numbers and statistics out, which can be relatively helpful for my paper, but it also addresses the negatives of using such drugs and gives it a human opinion as well. Unfortunately the length of this document is not extensive. I will be able to use useful information from this document and use it as another useful backbone to proving my answer to my research question. This article and the prior one also made me think about possibly changing my research topic and focusing more on children in foster care then all children in the United States.

Chapter 10 & 11

Chapter ten uses multiple individuals to provide evidence for how psychiatry is where it is today with an overt number of diagnosis and continually more prescription drugs. The way in which the chapter is structured leaves us wondering if the DSM was guess-work rather then medical analysis and if any disorders hold any validity at all. Ronson meets with Robert Spitzer, once the editor of the DSM, and Spitzer discribes the editing scene as one of chaos and riot. People would shout out conditions and as long as it had a checklist to accompany it, it would be rightfully added to the DSM. This is how many of the disorders came to be. Soon drug companies became dependant on the diagnosis of these disorders and made millions of drugs to "treat" them. Ronson also addressed the overdiagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and the drugs used to treat them. The question is of the validity of these diagnosis or is it a way for drug companies to make a profit.
This book really opened my eyes about psychiatry as a whole. In the beginning I was very intriqued by the thought of psychopaths roaming about around us, but as the book came to a close I found myself more engaged in the thought of psychiatry being a hoax. The realism behind the ways in which the disorders were acknowledged or even created was unprofessional and to have someones diagnosis riding upon an individuals lack of ability to describe or even wrongly describe the disorder is outragous. How could we as a country, so unknowingly, let our population stick labels to people that are not even valididated by evidence or profound research. And then, feed them pills to treat this so called "disorder". I am fairly outraged at the thought of this and particularily in the fact that no body has even brought this to the worlds attention.

Chapter 8 & 9

In Jon Ronson's chapter nine "Aiming a Bit High" he delves further into the Bob Hare Checklist by meeting with Bob and Paul Britton, an advid user of the checklist. During his meeting with Bob, Bob addressed his concerns with the checklists power and it becoming lost in the wrong hands. Ronson decided to seek out the man behind the most unfortunate psychopath hunt in recent histroy which brought him to Paul Britton. Britton had used the list to help identify and explain sexual preditors. He was famous for his work as he was very accurate, often times describing the life and looks of a preditor. But when Rachel Nickell's case came along, and he described the criminal, he was blamed for the locking up of the wrong man, even though his description fit the actualy murderer in just a looser manner. His reputation was ruined.
I especially liked chapter eight " The Madness of David Shayler". I felt it was told just like a story and I found this particular story to be very intriquing. It had depth and it had confussion. I became extremely confused and concerned when learning about the government cover up theories. I had heard of them before but never put any validity to them until now. The fact that the government could pull of acts such as described in this chapter is befuddling and somewhat scary. Also, the fact that M15, a former spy for the United States, came out and shared these things is also reason to freight. He may be crazy and make it up, but he may not be so it is hard to tell what to believe. Chapter nine was less intriquing but helpful in the progression and understanding of Bob Hare's Checklist.