Entrepreneur: One who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise, often with an additional connotation of far-sightedness and innovation with boldness and energy. [French, from Old French, from entreprendre to undertake; entre- between (from Latin: inter-) + prendre to take (from Latin: prehendere to grasp)]
The U.S. government funded training for substance abuse researchers in entrepreneurship at Yale, so they could learn how to get more funding for their health care startups about substance abuse.
Scholarly articles have been published about “The Psychology of Entrepreneurship“. One such study we noticed focused on industrial and organizational psychology (it has its own abbreviation, I/O); many of its key conclusions were to plead for more research in that area. We think that one of the primary goals of this kind of psychobabble is to set the stage for getting more research funds, rather than coming up with anything truly useful.
Another news article in the Washington Post “noticed that entrepreneurs seem inclined to have mental health issues.” There are any number of news reports about “the problems entrepreneurs with mental illness often face,” and “managing your mental health as an entrepreneur,” and yet again “the psychological price of entrepreneurship.”
So it seems that psychiatry and psychology have latched onto entrepreneurs as a new category of those needing “help,” a new pool of potential customers. Entrepreneurs have been targeted by the mental health industry both as a new customer pool and a new way to do business. The competition for government funding and grants to address the problems of entrepreneurship is heating up, and the psychobabble is deafening.
Research also confirms that minorities are more likely to be misdiagnosed as having serious psychiatric problems, leading to the psychiatric targeting of entrepreneurial minorities.
And, like any entrepreneur, psychiatrists are looking to the future. Since they have never been required to cure anyone, they continually come up with new disorders, new drugs, and new treatments which they can apply to new communities of potential patients.
The news is full of these “miracle” treatments — marijuana, cannabidiol, electric shock (yes, they still do this, and it is a big money-maker), MDMA (Ecstasy), trauma-informed therapy, Ketamine, cognitive-behavioral therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation, assisted suicide (yes, this is considered a “treatment”), deep brain stimulation, involuntary commitment, vagus nerve stimulation, addiction therapy (ignoring the fact that psychiatric drugs are addictive), and one drug after another — each new one designed to combat the adverse side effects of the one before.
Not to mention the profusion of new mental health related applications for your mobile device and the startups that create these. Not to mention this recent headline: “Entrepreneur Teams Up with Leading Psychiatrist to Address Depression, Anxiety, and Suicide“. Not to mention that the producers of “Shark Tank” mandated that “all entrepreneurs meet with a psychiatrist after giving their pitch, regardless of the outcome.”
The news is devoid, however, of one thing — actual cures for mental trauma.
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