This week’s Song of the Week was recommended by MIA Phil Lane:
“This Paul Simon song reminds me of my time working in an adolescent mental health program. The teens in the program were often pathologized and medicated. So many of them were on varying doses of Seroquel, which Simon mentions in his lyrics. In retrospect, the adolescents often were in a “parade” of sorts, going from group therapy to meetings with the staff psychiatrist to be prescribed medication. The agency I worked for focused on the “census” (the number of clients needed in order to secure funding) rather than on the fitness of the program for the specific client. I believe Paul Simon accurately describes what our current medication model can be like at the community mental health level. I cannot hear this song without remembering and lamenting the agency’s failure to support its young clients and its tendency to medicate and pathologize them.”
-Phil Lane
