The New York Times published an Op-Ed piece kind of summing up the whole brouhaha over offensive advertising (pictured). If you didn’t hear about it before, you’ll get the basic picture now.
liz | 8:59 AM | Uncategorized
Liz Spikol was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 20th century. She started writing about her experience as a person with mental illness in 1999, while employed at Philadelphia Weekly as the paper’s managing editor. Aside from serving as that paper’s web editor, music editor, staff writer, senior editor, executive editor and a host of other random roles that she couldn’t make up her mind about, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher, as a Certified Peer Specialist during Philly’s system-wide transformation and as a communications specialist for a prison reform organization. Currently, she works at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and writes book reviews for PW. This blog — named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 and 2008 by PsychCentral — is about medications, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, SAD (and many other acronyms), mad pride, Big Pharma, celebrities, hospitals, stigma and the recovery movement. And other stuff.
The negative reaction to this ad campaign must have been truly overwhelming to cause Harold Koplewicz, the guy behind it, to have it be suddenly canceled. It seems to have been somewhat similar to the ongoing campaigns of NAMI and the TAC in that it portrayed the people it claimed to be trying to help in very negative ways, and focused on their failure to seek proper treatment – or at least on the failure of their parents to do so for them – as the main source of trouble. I think it shows that many people in the so-called “helping professions” don’t seem to realize (or to care) that public perceptions of people thought to be disabled can often be bigger handicaps than the actual disabilities. It also illustrates how the efforts of these professionals can backfire on them when they talk about the people they claim to be helping without first talking to them and acknowledging the importance of their thoughts and ideas.
These ads caused enough pain for parents who know their kids have serious problems… however, I suspect they were aimed more at parents who wonder if their child “might” be ADHD or “might” have a cognitive or emotional problem. The sort of child whom some teacher, doctor or know-it-all neighbor has suggested “might” need to take meds. Apparently Dr. Koplewitz has a dismal history as a coauthor of one of the infamous research studies purporting to show that Paxil worked for childhood depression. The ad agency in question, BBDO, does work for both Pfizer and GSK. Just how “pro bono” an effort is this, anyway?
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