Dr. Rod Hoevet

Perhaps people have always been unreasonable. Even if we look back to the origins of humanity, maybe there has never been a reasonable time. Perhaps there has never been a time when people listened to each other, truly considered thoughts and ideas (even when they were opposed to their own) and offered measured or reasonable responses to those disagreements. Maybe it’s always been the way it is now: chaotic, accusatory, blaming, erratic, unpredictable and irrational. [ 1,969 more word ] http://drrodhoevet.com//america-has-borderline-personalit/

Here is my latest: Are Personality Disorders Mental Illnesses? The Legal Implications. http://drrodhoevet.com//are-personality-disorders-mental-/

We are a nation of sheep and lemmings. We seem to suffer a widespread inability or unwillingness to spend the necessary time to gather information that would lead to educated and beneficial decisions. Instead, we settle for easy and often wrong answers. While there are multiple examples, here are a few of the most obvious. Politics: very few Americans truly have any idea what is going on with elected officials. One need only watch a video of college students being interviewe...Continue reading

I'm intrigued by all the speculation that there will be major mental health fallout secondary to the pandemic. Prior to all of this, we were a very disconnected people. Social occasions like restaurants were marked by people "together" but fixed on their respective phones. Although our world was more connected due to technology, true human connectedness was dying. People were "friends" on social media, but were losing the ability to talk and interact in real life with actual ...people. This growing trend makes me wonder why being forced to stay home would be such a hard transition for people. The same technology we had been lost in, that had replaced our face to face relationships, exists during the lockdown. Our "connectedness" didn't really change at all. Has the transition really changed much for most people? Why are we so sure that this isolation and distancing will have such a widespread impact on mental health?

Television shows, news broadcasts and movies - even Disney movies - frequently portray the grossly incorrect notion that mentally ill people are dangerous and prone to committing violent acts. This reinforces the public's perception that we should fear and avoid the mentally ill and that their civil liberties should be restricted to prevent the likelihood they will act out aggressively. This misconception is widespread, but is perhaps most noticeable in the context of mass a...nd/or school shootings. In the wake of these horrible tragedies, one can almost set their watch by celebrity and political figures who are quick to use their platform to misinform the public. They often make statements about how only a 'crazy' person could or would engage in such violence or how the most recent shooting is evidence of the flawed American mental health system. They often use these situations to justify their political position, which invariably involves stripping away some rights from the mentally ill. While it is undoubtedly true that no mentally healthy person would kill others and that the mental health system is dramatically flawed, the destructive, stigmatizing and flatly untrue implication is that a mentally ill person committed the act. In truth, a criminal committed the act and was quite unlikely to have a mental health problem. Crimes are almost never committed by mentally ill people. When they are, it is usually an even smaller percentage of an already very small group that commits the acts. What's more, that incredibly small group almost always has numerous other risk factors that are far more related to their behavior than the mental illness is (e.g. history of violence, substance abuse). The very sad and almost entirely overlooked fact is that a mentally person is more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the perpetrator of one. See this video by my former college professor, Dr. Eric Elbogen, who summarizes the research on this subject. https://youtu.be/wCeFEr5ioqo