Fat people are mad

It has long been accepted that fat people are stupid. Further progress has been made in the investigation of obesity. It seems now that not only are fat people stupid - they are mad as well.

Sandy Szwarc of the excellent Junkfood Science discusses the treatment of a mad fatty in the USA.

An ‘obese’ man was surgically implanted with electrodes deep inside the hypothalamus of his brain, and for months he was given electrical stimulation at various frequencies, to try to get him to eat less and lose weight. Fifteen months after this experimental treatment, he weighed 1.5 kg more. The researchers blamed the patient for being noncompliant.

That sums up so well the double bind in which the obese find themselves. Because they are fat, they are labelled as stupid and mad - and if they do not respond to “treatment” they are non-compliant.

Karen Stimson is obese and therefore stupid and mad:

The stick used to beat us into submission and pressure us into taking extreme risks to lose weight are the scares that we are a pathology, that our natural size is a deadly disease and that if we don’t do something about it, we will die before our time. This death sentence leaves many feeling so desperate, they’ll do almost anything to lose weight. Those of us who are labeled ‘morbidly obese’ are subjected to probably the most severe pressures.” — Karen Stimson, 390 pounds

Mrs. Stimson’s insights are seen in the accounts of countless ‘obese’ people who’ve been beaten down by the constant berating, come to believe they overeat and eat unhealthfully, and are terrified they’re going to die. Certain that their only chance at life is to get the weight off, not matter what the price, they fall prey to the riskiest diets, pills and surgeries. The popular myths of obesity have added to the stigma of obesity and been used to rationalize the most extreme, invasive and dangerous weight loss interventions, even without basis in good science. One cannot permanently change into a different genetic body type by varying what or how much one eats or does. Hence, dietary and caloric interventions tried for more than a century have proven ineffective. - Sandy Szwarc

Do the psychiatrists really think that the obese are mad? The American Psychiatric Association has “form” on medicalising variants of normality. In 1952 they declared homosexuality to be an illness

For years, though, it was believed that if you stopped having sex and went to therapy five times a week and worked very hard at transformation, you could become a practicing heterosexual, said Martin Duberman. [How many fat people have been led to believe that if they stop eating, get help for their eating issues and work very hard to control their hunger, they could pass for thin?] As behavioral therapies for homosexuality failed (as they have for obesity), people became research subjects and efforts to change their inborn characteristics became more extreme.

With the new sickness branding and homosexuality classified as an illness, psychiatrists developed a whole range of treatments... electric shock... and it got worse, from hormone injections and lobotomies to castrations, hysterectomies and forced incarceration in mental institutions. Really insane attempts to convert people to different sexualities. — Lillian Faderman, Ph.D., A Visible History, February 2008.

It was not until 1973 that the American psychiatrists finally decided that homosexuality was not an illness. It remains to be seen what will happen with obesity.

Read : Electric current ‘lobotomies’ for weight loss?