So much for Doctor Phil!

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You don't like Dr Phil because of his chairs? OOOOOOK WHATEVER!! !!

What place is that

Top of the World, with a nice shiny crown?

Lots of people listen to him because he's a huge T.V. figure, not because of his facts anyway. He probably doesn't even know what autism is. From what I heard him say about autism from other aspies here on WrongPlanet sounds like he just watched Rain Man and read a couple of articles about autism, made a script, and made it into a show.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j94/p ... etreal.jpg

They finally played the "extreme disorders" show in Australia today. It's a public holiday here.

So the apsergers kid, they called it Aspergers and equated it to "High functioning autism" which I personally disagree with.

And Dr Phil kept calling it a problem and a "disorder". I can understand why the kid would have a hard time with it if he's always told he's sick, disordered or broken, malfunctioning.

The parents were not any better, I'd be taking bets that both of them have it too. There was one bit where they were all yelling at each other. And Dr Phil is blaming the Aspergers. And yet with his other families "in crisis" he doesn't do that.

And then they introduce two people from "brain matters" and they image the brain and show the one with lots of activity and call it abnormal. Nice work. And say they have a "therapy" to treat the cause of it. I guess that means - something to stop the extra brain activity. Anyone want to volunteer to have half the thinking ability they do now? Not me.

And not one positive attribute of Aspergers was mentioned. This kid was described like a monster who has door slamming temper tantrums for no reason at all the way some kids have epileptic fits.

And no mention of skills training to handle the darker aspects of Aspergers.

I used to like Dr Phil but he's lost a lot of credibility with me on this one.

I agree.

If Dr. Phil screwed up our analysis he must have been screwing up every one else’s only we have been too blind to notice it until now. I always knew he was just another Poser… you know all he really cares for is his pay cheque at the end of his show.

Just to add another perspective... I've never actually seen Dr. Phil but from the sound of it he's made some errors in judgement on his shows. But is he really much worse than a lot of other psychiatrists? Might his beliefs represent those of a proportion of psychiatric staff in general? From what I've heard very little education is given on political/social bias in psychology and medicine, so maybe we should be looking at this from a broader perspective.

This is a link to the "extreme disorders" show,

If you click on the "what Rich has been hiding" link it shows the slide show of transcript of the show from the parents perspective. Interestingly they say theyre living like two friends in the same house, and blame that on their child's Aspergers, but I'd blame it on the parents' aspergers - quite comfortable living without touching.

if you click on the under the photo of "Alex", it links to a slideshow transcript of what was said on the show. It TOTALLY focussed on the temper tantrum and discussed no other traits of Aspergers. It discussed slightly that Alex's friends call him a "ret*d" but not why. Odd - I got called a "brain".

http://drphil.com/shows/show/634/

Dr Phil's list of symptoms
http://drphil.com/articles/article/497/

In fact "prone to temper tantrums" is not on the list - go figure.
I don't agree with this list - I think it describes autism better - especially the traits he links to between 18 months and 3 years old. And it leaves much out. Just like the show.

I think the show would have been more accurate if he'd gotten a kid who was an expert on dinosaurs (or a grid iron team) and Dr Phil couldn't get a word in edgewise. That would have at least illustrated the classic "little professor" trait.

edited to add info about the first slide show

she has too much influence over people. she says the name of a drink on her show and millions of people go out to buy it.

I don't hate either of them its just i don't think anyone should have the kind of power over people that these two do.
I think if she wanted to she could become queen of the world because of this.

The thing I don't like about Oprah is the hypocracy.

She'll do a program about fashion victims or not being obsessed and into debt trying to keep up with the Joneses, or just how many poor people there are in the USA (33 million+ imagine if they organised), and then she will comment on how well dressed you have to be to be in her audience, and plug some "favourite thing" as "you must have this".

Same with diets. She is always looking for the latest new fangled diet, and never quite equates her weight with what she eats. I admit she probably has a super efficient metabolism but her favourite foods - as presented by her, are very high calorie.

And the shoes. She's always commenting on how torturous the shoes are, and then she complains about bad treatment of women. ARGH.

I like Ellen better - at least her clothes look comfy and she's more about having fun than saving the world while stabbing the poor people in the back.

Whats so great about Oprah?

I don't even think the kid on the show had Asperger's. Asperger's > Tourette's IMHO. How could Dr. Phil even begin to put these two disorders in the same sentence?

VF

There was a kid on the show they said had aspergers. If you read the forum that goes with the show, he also has a bunch of other things like mood swing disorder - which explains the temper tantrums better than aspergers. They never said this kid had tourettes.

Then they swapped to a man they said had tourettes, not that he did any word ticks but he did a few facial ones while he was in "The Chair".

So it was a two part show addressing two different people: one boy with "Aspergers" and one adult with Tourettes.

Hardly what I'd call 'extreme disorders'...

That's Crazy