When Reality Knocks

Hello, Henry here today. Here is a thought about the quality material on television. A headline from the paper a while back datelined Phoenix from The Associated Press states that a local man, Neil David Sutz, is suing Dr Phil McGraw and the producers of his show for discrimination. Now I know everyone’s all over Dr. Phil these days because of the Britney Spears thing and I don’t want to kick someone when they’re down, but I did want to comment on this.

When the audience for one of Phil’ shows was poled, to see if anyone had any mental illnesses, he said that he had a bipolar disorder. Then staff apparently told him: “Not to speak during the show or communicate with McGraw or staff members. I was the only one singled out when it was made clear that I had a mental illness; they said `Can’t speak’”

I don’t blame him for his anger. If he had been high then he would have been inappropriate in the meeting and likely could not have sat there in a composed manor. If he was down he would likely not have found the energy to go to the show. Likely he was on medication and as long as he takes it shows no symptoms of his condition. It seems to me that the staff was ignorant of psychiatric conditions and quite fearful.

Phil passes himself off as an expert on the human condition, so what is the problem? He should have been able to deal with any interruption by someone who had bi-polar disorder. His staff should be trained to deal with such people, not simply muzzle them. Bi-polar disorder is a condition that takes a great deal of understanding and patience to deal with. Although it’s completely understandable that the Dr. Phil staff would want the show to run smoothly, it would be nice if Dr. Phil could bring some attention to that.

From this distance it seems to me that the mistake that Mr. Sutz made was to be honest about his condition. Like most of the population, obviously the staff had no idea, or no interest, in how to handle someone with bipolar condition, except to attempt to ignore them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 9:12 am and is filed under Personal Growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.