SMU Lecturer Takes Heat For Blog

nasta writes "Houston Chronicle article For most of the past two semesters, nobody knew the identity of "The Phantom Professor." The educator's anonymous Web log, set at an unnamed university "in the South," spun tales of spoiled-rich "Ashleys" with their $500 sandals and $1,500 handbags, eating disorders, plagiarism and drug use, legal and illegal. "At this school it seems like every kid is on multiple medications," the professor wrote, describing her charges as "barely literate," prone to emotional problems and "terrified of displeasing Mommy and Daddy.""

Comments

Southern Methodist University

[__aaitqo8496]

...in case anybody was wondering.

Amen.

[Seumas]

Man, no kidding. I'm surprised by how many people I know who are on one, two or more medications. And we're usually talking xanax, prozac, zoloft and the like rather than blood pressure meds. And not just spoiled little rich kids, though they tend to be the most likely, because they're more likely to get a therapist if they have "problems" and, in turn, are more likely then to be prescribed drugs to deal with whatever lame problem they supposedly have.

I can't even count how many people I know who claim they have "anxiety disorder" and "panic attacks". So they dope up on half a dozen things, instead. I mean, yeah, life sucks - but holy shit.

And then after awhile, they start trading their prescriptions with other people. A few zoloft in turn for a few valium. Or if they have some leftovers (especially stuff like valium and percoset), they hand them off to their friends so they can get off on them, too.

It's just pathetic. And I bet that half the people I know other than at work are like that. Often people I would have never guessed. They'd like you to think that they need it because their life is so terrible, but the truth is lots of peopel have a hard life. These people just have a hard time dealing with life.

And yeah, I know the girls with 400 pairs of expensive shoes who have traveled more by the age of 18 than I could ever hope to travel in four lifetimes. Their biggest concerns seem to be "panties or not?" on any given date for any given night. Oh, such dilemmas.

If I were a professor and I had to deal with people like that for a living on a daily basis, I'd probably vent, too. In fact, I'd probably climb the nearest clock tower.

Re:Amen.

[Hungus]

I am glad you are so knowledgeable in biochemistry and specifically the brain's neuro transmitters. I wish you could have told that to my great grandfather so my grandfather, father and I wouldn't have had top suffer from his obviously not congenital illness.

The fact is while many meds are over prescribed in the form of designer cocktails there are many people who would not be functional without proper medication.

Re:Amen.

[hey!]

None of this -- I repeat, NONE of this -- ever helped her with her depression.

OK, let's assume that your assessment is correct, and that the anti-depressants did not actually help her, and the reason she was obsessed with them was that she had what an earlier generation of psychologist would describe as a neurotic and infantile fixation on them. Can you logically deduce this statement:

My conclusion from this is that antidepressants do virtually nothing real.

The logical bar for such a broad statement is very high indeed; it can only be true if there is no identifiable subset of people with depression for which the drugs are statistically better than nothing. I think what you have proven is that some people do not benefit from any of the anti-depression medications that are available.

Depression is very complex; basically it is a set of symptoms that I think any thoughtful person will conclude could come from multiple causes. It follows that depression is very difficult to treat. If the depression is secondary to some other condition other than the specific organic cause the antidepressant addresses, why would you expect the antidepressant to help in that specific case? For example, if the person has problems with his life falling apart due to substance abuse, the related depression cannot be treated with Prozac, but Prozac might be helpful if the underlying problem is an abnormality in the way his brain uses serotonin.

I only mention this because I happen to know some people who your friend reminds me of. You say she was frantic, but actually seemed better when she was having problems getting medication. It may not have been that the medication was harming her, so much as that the problems were helping her. I am not a psychiatrist, but the people I have in mind also have a tendency to do better when things are going worse. Some of them,after watching them in action, clearly actively seek out chaos, generate emergencies, and incite interpersonal conflicts, particularly when things seem to be going fine. When the emergencies hit, they actually seem to be serene and in control, provided the level of chaos doesn't get too high (which is inevitably does sooner or later). These people seem to need an extra "oomph" that emergencies bring. They also tend to have a pattern of dependency on others for stability and long term direction. But, if you lead the kind of lives these people lead, depression is almost a normal response. You can't expect to treat that kind of depression by monkeying with the mood mechanisms of the brain.

In any case, I don't offer this as advice or diagnosis, which I'm not qualified to give, but to point out how difficult it is to reason from specific to general cases.

Moving on from the specific issue of antidepressants to psychiatric medications in general, even if you grant that antidepressants are useless in every case, it doesn't follow that all psychiatric medications are useless. I know personally, because I have a familiy member with schizophrenia. If you've never seen the difference between a person with this condition on medication and off, all I can say is that it is not something subtle.

Zero sympathy

[Otter]

A point that's made in the article (this happened about a month ago, BTW) but is obscured by the piece the submitter chose to quote is this: she was retelling extremely sensitive stories about easily identifiable students and teachers, including things that students were telling her in private face-to-face meetings.

Sorry, zero sympathy from me. Beyond the fact that she blatantly despises half her students and sucks up to the other half by badmouthing the "rich girls" (which is unprofessional enough), violating confidentiality the way she did is way over the line. A tenure-track professor should have been bounced for doing what she did, never mind an adjunct.

Points off to SMU for weaseling about it, though.

Re:Zero sympathy

[DaoudaW]

she was retelling extremely sensitive stories about easily identifiable students and teachers, including things that students were telling her in private face-to-face meetings.

Did you RTFB? She claims and after reading through some of the blog I would agree that she was very careful to protect students' privacy. As a teacher myself, and former adjunct, her stories sound like the typical mix of frustration and admiration that teachers everywhere have for their students. She certainly makes a better attempt at protecting student anonymity than most faculty lounge conversations. She is not writing vitriolic diatribes, but is simply laughing and crying over human foibles.

URL (for the google challanged)

[yo]

http://phantomprof.blogspot.com/

It is entertaining actually.

The most important statement of them all:

[Stavr0]

The Phantom Professor on term papers:
What they don't realize is that it's just college. These are just little assignments that teachers give so we can figure out what grades to type in next to your name at the end of the semester. They're not life and death, these grades, these papers, these group projects. They're very often little more than glorified busywork. Truth? They're to prepare you for a career of TPS Reports and annual "employee self-evaluations."