I belong to a forum on Pentax DSLR cameras and one of its members asked a
series of questions hoping to discover a membership profile. The largest
number are old and retired, for example. One of his questions asked what
sort of work Pentax photographers had done. It seems that a high-percentage
are retired engineers. A relatively new member said he is a retired Social
Epidemiologist.
Never having heard of that specialty and knowing nothing more about it than
his title, I asked him if he worked on the Anders Breivik phenomenon. The
Moderator (whose forum name is the name of a shark) deleted my question and
some messages that followed it. Apparently my question resulted in an
argument which occurred after I had signed off and gone to sleep.
I invited the Social Epidemiologist to log onto Lit-Ideas for whatever
happens with this subject, but I don't know if he will.
Subsequent to my asking my inflammatory question, I looked up "Psychiatric
Epidemiology" in Wikipedia. This specialty apparently explores "the
mechanisms behind how exposures to risk factors may impact psychological
problem and explore neuroanatomical substrate underlying psychiatric
disorders."
"As an example, in an attempt to measure the prevalence of mental illness in
the United States, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Robins> Lee Robins
and Darrel A. Regier conducted a study called the Epidemiological Catchment
Area Project which surveyed samples of the general population at five sites
across America. In the study, it was found that about a third of all
Americans suffer from mental illness at some point in their lives. This
statistic is often referred to as lifetime prevalence." [from Wikipedia]
Apparently specialists work from statistics, that is the identification and
quantification of causes underlying psychiatric problems, but they are not
permitted to introduce stressors that might cause a psychiatric disorder,
but that is what I find most interesting. Goethe's The Sorrows of Young
Werther, for example, was a stressor in the rash of suicides that occurred
after the book's publication in 1774.
And so, while I haven't read anything that describes Anders Breivik's
exploits as a symptom of a psychiatric epidemic, I did read of an Australian
who killed some people in Christchurch New Zealand. Journalists were
attempting to see Breivik as this fellow's stressor: "Ranstorp told Swedish
radio Friday that the New Zealand shooter, who killed at least 49 people in
two mosques in Christchurch on Friday, claims to "have been in contact with
Breivik's sympathizers." [From
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-15/nz-manifesto-resembles-no
rway-mass-murderer-s-text] But whether or not Brenton Tarrant contacted
Breivik's followers isn't necessary in order to speculate that Breivik may
have been the stressor to Tarrant's actions.
And then also, we might see a stressor, perhaps one that inspired Breivik in
the asymmetrical approach to warfare devised by the Islamists.
Does anyone have a better description of Social or psychiatric epidemiology?
Or a better explanation for the social pathology epitomized by Anders
Breivik?
Lawrence
