Fear destroys curiosity and playfulness. In order to have a healthy society, we must raise children and adults who can safely play and learn. There can be no growth without curiosity and no adaptability without being able to explore, through trial and error, who you are and what matters to you. Currently, more than 50 percent of children experience incarcerated family members, depression, violence, abuse, or drug use in the home, or periods of homelessness. People who feel safe and meaningfully connected with others have little reason to squander their lives doing drugs or staring numbly at television; they do not feel compelled to stuff themselves with carbohydrates or assault their fellow human beings. However, if nothing they do seems to make a difference, they feel trapped and become susceptible to the lure of pills, gang leaders, extremist religions, or violent political movements—anybody and anything that promises relief.  Deviance often becomes a master status, a status that overpowers and in many cases supersedes any other statuses an individual holds that might run counter to it. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8

People often become so absorbed in their deviant identity that it shapes virtually all their subsequent behavior, and they repeatedly fulfill expectations associated with the deviant roles. Treating a person as generally rather than specifically deviant produces a self-fulfilling prophecy. Child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease cancer, stroke, and suicide. D.L. Rosenhan, professor of law and psychology at Stanford University, designed and participated in a study on mental illness that resembled a Hollywood film plot. What is a perfectly normal person were diagnosed as being crazy and locked in a mental institution against his will? Would doctors and nurses recognize the mistake and release the misdiagnosed person immediately? Or, as some movies suggest, could a sane person languish for years in a mental institution, unable to prove his sanity? #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8

Professor Rosenhan and his research team of four men and three women, including two psychologists, a graduate student, a psychiatrist, a pediatrician, a homemaker, and a painter, visited 12 mental institutions in five states on the East and West Coasts, reporting to hospital admissions staff that they heard voices. All eight pseudopatient were admitted to the hospitals. Except for giving a false name and faking the initial symptoms, each pseudopatient gave an accurate history and made no additional attempts to fool hospital staff. In fact, all acted as normal as possible. Despite their normal actions, once admitted to the hospital, none of the pseudopatients was detected by hospital staff. The length of hospitalization ranged from 7 to 52 days. On release, all but one “manic-depressive” were discharged as schizophrenics “in remission”—a label that stays with an ex-mental patient for the rest of his or her life. Professor Rosenhan concluded that once someone is diagnosed as “mentally ill,” the structure and environment of the hospital serve to maintain and confirm the original diagnosis. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8

While in the mental hospital, the psychological stresses associated with the hospitalization were considerable, and all but one of the pseudopatients desired to be discharged almost immediately after being admitted. They were, therefore, motivated not only to behave sanely, but to be paragons of cooperation. That their behavior was in no way disruptive is confirmed by nursing reports. The normal are not detectable sane, however. Despite their public show of sanity, the pseudopatients were never detected. And the fact that they were diagnosed with schizophrenia and discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia in remission should in no way be dismissed as a formality, for at no time during any hospitalization had any question been raised about any pseudopatient’s simulation. Nor are there any indications in the hospital records that the pseudopatient’s status was suspect. Rather, the evidence is strong that they were not sane. However, some of the patients in the hospital suspected that the pseudopatients were either journalist or professors. Yet, the fact remains that it is strange that some of the patients recognized the fake were sane, but the staff did not.  #RyanPhillippe 4 of 8

Failure to detect sanity during the course of hospitalization may be due to the fact that physicians operate with a strong bias toward what statisticians called the Type 2 error. This is to say that physicians are more inclined to call a healthy person mentally ill, than a sick person sane. The reason is because it is more dangerous to misdiagnose illness than health. Better to err on the side of caution, to suspect illness even among the healthy. Also, psychiatric diagnoses carry with them personal, legal, and social stigmas. It was therefore important to see whether the tendency toward diagnosing the sane insane could be reversed. The staff was actually aware that there that pseudopatients would attempt to be admitted into the psychiatric hospital. Each staff member was asked to rate each patient who presented himself at admissions or on the ward according to the likelihood that the patient was a pseudopatient.  The staff said most patients admitted were suspected as highly likely to be insane. Social learning theories contend that all behavior (including deviance) is learned through social interaction. Some people learn to become deviant through the complex process of socialization. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8

Differential association theory provides a sociological explanation of the individual-level and marcolevel differences in crime and delinquency. Deviant behavior is learned through interaction with other deviants in a social context where deviance is viewed as acceptable. The greatest hope for traumatized, abused, and neglected children is to receive a good education in schools where they are seen and known, and where they can develop a sense of agency. At their best, schools can function as islands of safety in a chaotic World. They can teach children how their bodies and brains work and how they can understand and deal with their emotions. Schools can play a significant role in instilling the resilience necessary to deal with the traumas of neighborhoods or families. If parents are forced to work two jobs to eke out a living, or if they are too impaired, overwhelmed, or depressed to be attuned to the needs of their kids, schools by default have to be the place where children are taught self-leadership and an internal locus of control. Primary relationships, such as those with our parents, siblings, and close friends, have the greatest impact on our behavior. At least moderate support for differential association theory has been found in studies of delinquency. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 8

Many people believe that the crew from Stanford University deserved to be punished because they abused the system. Suppose a teenage girl shoplifts a computer. If she is not caught, she may immediately experience a sense of gratification by getting something she wanted for free If her friend praised her deviant behavior, she is likely to shoplift again. On the other than, if her friends are outraged by her behavior and threaten to withdraw their friendship, she is much less likely to repeat the deviant behavior. What keeps everyone from breaking the rules? The reason most people do not commit deviance is that they have developed a strong social bond, consisting of an attachment to parents, school, church, and other institutions aligned with conformity; a commitment to conventional norms; an involvement in conventional activities and a belief in the validity of social norms. The stronger a person’s social bond, the less likely his or her involvement in deviant activities. Conversely, the weaker the social bond to conformist groups and institutions, the easier it is for the individual to violate society’s norms. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 8

Basically, a bond is what employer use to protect against employee theft, and this is known as a fidelity bond. Fidelity is faithfulness to a person, cause, or belief, demonstrated by continuing loyalty and support and obedience.  It insures the fidelity between the employer and its employee and pays for any dishonesty the employee may commit. If you have a criminal history, you cannot be bonded because large-scale embezzlement by company officers can bankrupt a company, fidelity bonds may provide the necessary capital for the company to keep operating. So no one wants to bond a dishonest employee because then it could cause them to lose everything and mess up their business relationships. In the hood, you often hear people say, “Your word is your bond,” which means they need to be able to believe everything you say and if they cannot, it may cost you your life because they are putting they are making their business and life vulnerable by associating with you, so they have to be able to trust you with their life. Research on delinquency, crime, and deviance over the life course finds modest to impressive support for social bond theory among both adolescents and adults. Your word is your bond, and if you work hard, you can get anything you want in life. (www.thedeedle.com) #RyanPhillippe 8 of 8