Open Letter regarding Dr. Phil

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Interesting... an open letter:

http://sergesblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/ ... to-dr.html

Ah, you take away all my fun! I received the letter from one of my son's school's parent-teacher group this morning. I was going to post it later.

Anyway, I think it's excellent. I think it hits the issues that I saw while watching the program and were later discussed here "right on the head."

Boy. As an Aspie (non-diagnosed, but disturbingly obvious) and as the parent of two autistic children (one low functioning and both diagnosed), I took exception both to the show in general and to those two idiot parents. When I compare what my wife and I work with (and what so many other parents with LFA kids we know deal with), and I look at these two characters and their self-righteousness, victimizing attitudes, and the patronizing response they received, it really gets me going.

I think it was very disengenuous of Dr. Phil to advertise it as a show about AS at all. The child in question has been stated to have a mood disorder. After watching the show I told my husband I thought the boy looked more bp than AS. (I have a child with bp also).

I've never been a fan of Dr. Phil's. I found his conversation with the parents, where he spent more time worried about mom and dad getting alone time then about gettting help for their child, very disturbing.

All that yelling the parents were doing? That alone would drive my poor son with AS nuts. I kept thinking "where is the adult here"?

Not a very representative show at all. Not even an *effort* at showing the broad spectrum it covers. Just going for the *extreme* - might as well have been watching Springer.

Nah. Spring's show is funny.

Looks like the letter that I found on neurodiversity http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/articl ... hil-mcgraw that was sent to Dr Phil show.
I posted it here.
http://www.wrongplanet.net/asperger.htm ... 6&start=45

Yes. That's the version I got this morning from the parent/teacher group. Clearly the same letter.

Folks:

I happen to be the parent of an Aspi and one myself, I happen to understand the outrage. I also happen to understand why Dr. Phil did things the way he did them. (not that I approve). Now the question is, who is mad enough to do something about it?

I'm just trying to get a feel for those who are ticked off enough to work on a solution. I don't watch the posts much, so you can pm me through the site or you can drop me a note at

[email protected]

I'm not talking revolution here, I'm talking activisim.

Best to all
Beentheredonethat
Rafe Serebreny

Its not funny. The noise when someone swears is annoying.

It is to bad a person like Dr Phil just does not really understand it at all enough to make it a positive than to dwell on the negative instead.

Well lets get to the balls of the matter here

In the big wide world of psychology, Dr phil is not taken seriously at all. A show like he does relishes on contraversy to attract a viewing audience, this was one such episode. The best thing the americain asperger community could of done was to ignore him and not react and at any given opportunity humilate and poke fun at him. Here in the UK I think we just burst out laughing at his pathetic attempt to attract contraversy.

My dad calls him "Dr. Phill-of-S*it".

Accurate name.

I posted this as a comment on the blog, but I'll repeat it here. The blog article is excellent, but it unfairly labels Dr. Phil as a CBS daytime show. This program is syndicated and is seen on various television stations across the United States and Canada. Michael Corley, the blog poster, is from New York so he would've seen Dr. Phil on WCBS-TV, which is the CBS affiliate in New York, thus he would assume that it must be a CBS program. In my case, I see Dr. Phil from Detroit on WDIV, an NBC affiliate. Now, there are occasional Dr. Phil specials in primetime, which are aired on the CBS network.

My point is, don't go boycotting CBS over this, because they have nothing to do directly with it.

Last edited by ELLCIM on 18 Feb 2006, 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Carley is quite wrong in making the artificial but comforting distinction between mental illness and neurological condition. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, considered to be the two most serious mental health disorders, seem to have notably differential neurodevelopmental trajectories from the norm. They also may have quite strong genetic loading. Genetic origin hardly makes a condition any less of a disease (e.g., Parkinson's disease).