taking fire

A ‘true’ story from a US newspaper. Yeah, right.

DEPRESSED MAN DIAGNOSED AS ‘SCOTTISH’

Alistair McGregor, an expatriate Scottish man living in America,
was recently diagnosed as clinically depressed, tanked up on
anti-depressants and scheduled for controversial Shock Therapy
when doctors realised he wasn’t depressed at all ……… only
Scottish.

Mr. McGregor, a Scottish man whose characteristic pessimism and
gloomy perspective were interpreted as serious clinical
depression, was led on a nightmare journey through the American
psychiatric system. Doctors described McGregor as suffering from
Persuasive Negative Anticipation – a belief that everything will
turn out for the worst, whether it’s trains arriving late,
Scotland’s chances at winning any international sports event or
even his own prospects to get ahead in life and achieve his
dreams.

‘The satisfaction Mr. McGregor seemed to get from his pessimism
seemed particularly pathological,’ reported the doctors.

‘They put me on everything – Lithium, Prozac, St. John’s Wort,
Ginseng’, said Mr. McGregor. ‘They even told me to sit in front of
a big light for an hour a day or I’d become suicidal. I kept
telling them this was all pointless and they said that it was
exactly that sort of attitude that got me here in the first
place.’

Running out of ideas, his doctors finally resorted to a course of
‘weapons grade MDMA,’ the only noticeable effect of which was six
hours of speedy repetitions of the phrases ‘mustn’t grumble’ and
‘not too bad,
really’. It was then that Mr. McGregor was referred to a
psychotherapist.

‘Suicidal?’ Dr. Isaac Horney explored Mr. McGregor’s family
history and couldn’t believe his ears. ‘His story of a childhood
growing up in the drab back streets of a windswept grey town with
treeless streets of identical run-down houses where it rained
every day, passionately backing a football team who never won,
seemed to be an idealised depressive memory . I thought it was all
a myth…’.

Mr. McGregor had six months of therapy but seemed to mainly want
to talk about the weather – how miserable and cold it was in
winter and later how difficult and wet it was in summer. I felt he
wasn’t responding to therapy at all and so I recommended drastic
action – namely ECT or shock treatment’.

‘ I was all strapped down on the table and they were about to put
the rubber bit in my mouth when the psychiatric nurse picked up on
my accent,’ said Mr. McGregor. ‘I remember her saying ‘Oh my God,
I think we’re making a terrible mistake”.

Nurse Alice Sheen was a big fan of Scottish comedy giving her an
understanding of the Scottish Psyche. ‘Classic comedy characters
like Chuck Murray, Will Fife and The Crankies, all hopeless cases
with no chance of ever doing well or escaping their
circumstances,’ she explained to the baffled US medics. ‘In
Scotland, being depressed to the point of suicidal is considered
the norm and is not seen as pathological at all.’
Identifying Mr. McGregor as Scottish changed his diagnosis from
‘clinical depression’ to ‘rather quaint and charming’ and he was
immediately discharged from hospital with a selection of brightly
coloured leaflets and an ‘I love New York’ T-shirt.