Can YouTube tell you whether or not you are gay?

"If you don't know whether You Are Gay, Lesbian Or Bisexual, you may check [broken url]. The psychotherapist Dominic Davies will tell you the answer." Or so says a comment spammer.

Great, so I've wasted 10 years pondering my sexuality when I could have just spent £70 on a shrink and had done with it.

Obviously.

Katy Perry's Suspect Bipolar Reference

Just when I thought I had zero tolerance for Katy Perry I found it was possible to dislike her on whole new levels. I noticed that in addition to her homophobic lyrics, she's not exactly helping promote tolerance towards mental health problems.

To me, her song "Hot 'N' Cold" says "You're like someone with bipolar disorder and I hate that about you."

She rants about how much she hates a lover being indecisive and then compares his behavior to someone with bipolar disorder:

"Someone call the doctor
Got a case of love bipolar
Stuck on a roller coaster
And I can't get off this ride..." 

Granted, it's used as a metaphor for the ups and down of being in love but perhaps I'd find it less annoying if it was sung in a less angry voice and did not follow remarks like:

"Yeah you, PMS
Like a bitch."

Also unimaginative, trivial lyrics such as:
"We fight we break up,
We kiss we make up." 

don't exactly inspire me to believe that she understands the depth of the problem that she's happy to chuck into her music for the want of a better rhyme for "roller coaster."

Now all she needs to do is insult The Cornish as she'll complete the set.

Stupid things that Katy Perry has said

"All these songs are very personal, they’re straight out of a 'dear diary' situation...[but] my Anne Frank is now being exposed to the world."
Anne Frank? Don't flatter yourself love.

"It [her song 'UR so gay'] is kind of like Alanis Morisette’s "'You Oughta Know.'"
Again with the flattery.

"My closest friends happen to be gay..."
Before or after you wrote two embarrassingly offensive songs?

"Umm… Well, it [the expression 'UR so gay'] is just a saying. It's like calling someone a 'biiitch.' You're like, 'Hey, biiitch!' It just felt appropriate."
And they're really still your friends?

"It's not what good girls do." - her lyrics
So you are saying lesbianism is bad?

"I think gay people have a wonderful sense of humour."
Not a cross section of personalities like the population in general?

"Love it, hate it, [her song 'I kissed a girl'] for me it was about us girls."
Watch Alex Parks sing - she sings to a girl. When you're on stage, you're talking to a man, or rather men.

"My music makes pop-music cool again."
If by "cool" you mean homophobic and knife worshipping.

"There are a few songs that will make you cry."
How about bash my forehead against a wall?

"But nothing beats being up on stage in front of all that energy."

Best make sure you can stay up at your next gig then. I know even the best of us have been foiled by a giant cake.

Sources:
The New Gay
Prefix Mag
Out.com

Sex - Informed Consent and Mental Illness

I've been trying to research the law on people having sex when they are not mentally stable enough to give meaningful consent.

Obviously it can be difficult for a person to accurately assess a partner's state of mind but let's say, for sake of argument, that Person A is definitely aware that Person B has bipolar disorder and would not consent to sex if he or she was not manic. Would Person A be breaking the law to have sex with Person B?

What are your thoughts on the morality of sleeping with a bipolar sufferer in a manic phase?

Is Overdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder Really Worse then the Ilness Itself?

"Overdiagnosis of bipolar disorder may be worse than the illness" says Mark Zimmerman in Taipei Times.

This horrifies me. Whilst I can see that there are far-reaching consequences to being misdiagnosed (the effect of the self-fulfilling prophecy, potential side effects of unneccessary medication) having suffered from agonising, life-threatening depression and mania, I find it hard to accept that not having bipolar disorder could be worse than having bipolar disorder, except in the case that another, equally debilitating illness is not being treated.

Whilst meds can produce potentially significant health complications affecting renal, endocrine, hepatic, immunologic, or metabolic function, this is becoming less and less likely as medicine advances.

Telling somebody with a transient spell of depression that they had a chronic mental illness would no doubt be distressing, but surely it's better to have a good prognosis that you don't know about than to have bipolar disorder.

As it happens, Zimmerman's research is more focussed on the degree to which bipolar disorder is overdiagnosed than an evaluation of exactly how damaging a wrong diagnosis can be, despite the unfortunately misleading title.