Russ Roberts on Intermittent Explosive Disorder: Mental Illness or Made-Up Malady?
Jun 16 2006

Russ Roberts looks at the economics and science of intermittent explosive disorder—violent rage out of proportion to its cause. Was the recent study that discovered this problem good science or unreliable? Was the media coverage of the study accurate? How do state insurance regulations create incentives for intellectual dishonesty?

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Explore audio transcript, further reading that will help you delve deeper into this week’s episode, and vigorous conversations in the form of our comments section below.

READER COMMENTS

Isaac Crawford
Aug 15 2006 at 10:30pm

Gotta say Russ, that was pretty weak. You obviously don’t like psychiatry, but that has little to nothing to do with economics. You don’t like this study and you don’t like their methods. OK, but why devote an entire podcast to your distaste? Your closing remarks were particularly blind. In the description of the boy that was “out of control” you missed one of the tell tale signs, the parents thought they would have to call the police. Puberty is rough on kids and parents, but it does not normally involve the cops. This podcast reminds me a lot of some of your lectures, you seem to forget that your opinion about something isn’t always interesting, but it doesn’t stop you from rambling about it. At least I didn’t have to pay tuition in addition to wasting my time to hear this…

Hearing you rail against psychiatry by using this dubious study is very much akin to me dismissing economics based on Samualson’s reports on Soviet Russia. Academics perpetuate this kind of fraud all the time, they create some sort of “ism” out of nowhere and spend their lives arguing for it so that they can be published. I could argue that Samualson’s work cost us billions in cold war spending because an economist managed to quantify how far behind the reds we were….

You can be quite good when you stick to economics, but you have a habit of thinking that everything that is dear to Russell Roberts is economics when it is not. I would seriously recommend taking this podcast down. It sticks out like a sore thumb, has little to do with economics, and tarnishes what has otherwise been a fine series. Stick to interviews, stick to the economics, and you produce great stuff…

Isaac

Daniel Haszard
Aug 16 2006 at 2:46pm

Well said,i applaud your blog, mental health consumers are the least capable of self advocacy,my doctors made me take zyprexa for 4 years which was ineffective for my symptoms.I now have a victims support page against Eli Lilly for it’s Zyprexa product causing my diabetes.–Daniel Haszard http://www.zyprexa-victims.com

Geech
Aug 21 2006 at 7:45pm

I must have missed the “rail[ing] against psychiatry” in general. It seems to me that the Russ confined his criticism pretty much to this study with the exception of some pretty questionable regulation.

On the podcast itself, I thought it was interesting but not as much as some of the others, perhaps.

Comments are closed.


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