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Have a FIT and Get Well - Psychiatrys Miracle Breakthrough!
Psychiatry is well known for cutting edge technology such as, er....cutting heads, hammering ice picks into the eye socket, wiring the head to the mains and mass drug dependency, as well as startling discoveries such as the fact that everybody is and, more importantly, always will be mentally ill.
Its is renowned too for its successes in keeping people quiet, finding good homes for taxpayer dollars, avoiding prosecution and helping pharmaceutical sales to skyrocket, not to mention advances that have seen the number of mental health recoveries soar to (and I don't have the exact figures) almost one.
Moreover, another set of statistics have emerged to attest to the success of psychiatry: the number of mental illnesses discovered by groups of psychiatric researchers painstakingly tossing ideas around and dreaming up scientific names has shown a healthy rise, reaching the magical ten thousand mark only last month with the discovery of OSD (Odd Sock Disorder - the tendency to wear socks that don't match).
Detractors of course are fond of pointing to the millions of deaths and mental breakdowns of people in psychiatric care but such hysterical aspersions are easy to dismiss as those deaths can be statistically proven to be of people who would have died eventually anyway. Besides, critics of psychiatry have been found - for irrefutable evidence, see the minutes of our last national conference - to be suffering from COP (Criticizing of Psychiatry Disorder) or Prooforexia (an obsession with introducing science into mental health).
As to the millions who went from being a bit down to completely insane under the kind ministrations of their psychiatrist, well it is simply unfortunate that in every case psychiatric treatment was started too late.
We have discovered that infancy is simply too late in the day to start drugging people: the average toddler is already displaying signs of serious mental illness, such as poor coordination, falling over, incoherent speech, poor table manners or the inability to perform simple tasks such as checking their emails or ironing a shirt. Couple this with the discovery that human beings are genetically incapable of functioning without the aid of medication (Egypt, Rome, the Renaissance and so forth were merely flukes) and we have established the scientific fact that treatment must start at birth, or even earlier, if we are to prevent further epidemics of adults suffering from COP or Prooforexia, IVD (interest in Vegetables Disorder), IWD (Irritating Whistling Disorder), becoming nutritionists or human rights activists or writing sarcastic articles.
Be that as it may, I am pleased to announce yet another exciting technical breakthrough that comes courtesy of several minutes of painstaking research and then several years of adjusting test results (known quaintly in the trade as "doctoring") and which is destined to replace ECT (Electro Convulsive Torture) as our main means of engendering the "malleability" of our patients.
The main problem with ECT is that it can be heavy on the electricity bills and a great deal of money has been, unfortunately, wasted trying to neutralize the criticisms of human rights activists, medical doctors and other crackpots and Prooforexia sufferers, through extensive, scientifically precise PR campaigns.
I envisage no such storm of criticism and objection on "human rights" grounds of the new therapy for at least six months: it has the distinct scientific advantage over ECT that no-one has yet heard of it and it will take COP sufferers months to wade through the scientific papers in search of, er.....science, before they can prove there isn't any.
So we have months in which we can get cracking with the new therapy in peace and quiet and in that time, if we get busy, thousands of patients can experience its benefits. I expect no complaints from said patients either because one of the unfortunate side effects (vastly outweighed by the benefits of the new therapy) is that the patient exhibits permanent and irreversible amnesia - which, when you think about it, is a good thing and thus logically therefore a positive indication of the therapy's benefits.
The new therapy, by the way, goes under the name of FIT (Fist Impact Therapy) and is the brainchild of Doctors Torquemada and Bipolar of the Joseph Mengele Institute at Guantanamo Bay.
Dr Bipolar tells the story:
"The discovery of FIT came quite by accident when, during a routine administration of ECT, a patient became resistive (RBDD - Resistance to Brain Damage Disorder) and we were having grave difficulty strapping him to the chair. It was while observing one of the male nurses attempting to calm the patient down that my colleague, Dr Torquemada, noticed that a series of impacts to the head with a fist had much the same effect as ECT: the patient became docile and unable to remember that he had been depressed - or indeed remember anything at all.
"Struck (no pun intended) by this similarity and the potential for saving on electricity, plus the absence of need to strap the patient down, we experimented further on the same patient and then a series of patients.
"Various methods of punching the patient in the head were tried and the results carefully monitored. We tried various fist sizes, varied the frequency and number of blows and then experimented with varying means of delivering the required kinetic energy to the cranium (baseball bats, bricks, large spoons from the kitchens, boots and so forth).
"The sad loss of several patients due to unexpected side effects and hitherto undiagnosed PDD (Premature Death Disorder) led us to dispense with the baseball bats, bricks and boots and we came after extensive research back to the human knuckles as the best and safest ATKV (Agent of Therapeutic Kinetic Vectors).
"We were then able to establish the most advantageous points on the cranium to apply the aforementioned ATKV, the relative force and frequency required to replicate the irreversible stupour and loss of contact with reality for which ECT has been so renowned.
"We were by then very excited by the potential of FIT. It had several advantages over ECT in that it did not require a fancy looking machine with knobs, an electricity supply or restraint (one could simply stand the patient in the room and then hit him before he was expecting it).
"This produced, however one serious danger for the psychiatrist treating his patient with FIT: it had a tendency to skin the knuckles and after a while the arm becomes tired.
"From there we went on to invent the FIT machine: one simply turns a handle and makes a piston shoot back and forth. To the end of the piston is attached a block of wood the approximate size and shape of a human fist. One can adjust the scientific "setting" of the device by varying the speed of turn of the handle and thus the rapidity of impact to the cranium.
"Dr Torquemada and I naturally took out a patent on our new therapeutic device (it has the advantage of being patentable and thus profitable, whereas the human fist isn't) have had a design company come up with some pretty sleek looking prototypes with various knobs and flashing lights that serve the vital function of reassuring the patient that he is in the safe hands of cutting-edge science. The machine costs $35 to manufacture and goes on sale next week.
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