Page 42 - July 2015 Issue
P. 42
Erin Brockovich, Photo Courtesy of nydailynews.com
Most are done. The families are all happy and the girls are going back to school.” McVige knows all the girls
well having treated them and worked intimately with them throughout the past several months. She says they
have simply undergone conversion disorder.
“As far as the conversion (disorder) it’s tough, nobody wants to hear ‘it’s something inside of you.’ They’d
rather hear just ‘give me a pill.’ Their youth had a lot to do with it, kids are impressionable. There were dei-
nitely things going on in the kids’ lives… social stressors. There was bullying, the mass hysteria in Le Roy,
some of them were bullied. They were told to stay off Facebook, when you have a conversion disorder, part of
the healing process is knowing that something is going on.” Although Dr. McVige was prohibited from going
into detail, this sounded like a case of typical school bullying that expanded into social network bullying. After
the story broke the media didn’t make it any easier on the 12. McVige continues “even the media tried to ask the
girls questions under the guise of being their friend, they knocked on their doors, they hunted them down, and
they talked to their parents. Some of the girls are shy.” So essentially typical school bullying and later on media
bullying through they’re persistently trying to get a story on the girls and their illness caused and prolonged the
Le Roy-itis.
This and of course whatever personal and family-related stress the girls were undergoing individually are the
main factors in this case. Before I pick up my ball-point stethoscope, I can honestly say that living in an area
that has experienced at least four major cases of bullying in the area outside of Le Roy (1 in Rochester, 3 in
Buffalo including 2 that lead to suicides) I can certainly say in this bizarre world we live in (your generation
not mine), that suicide is always a possibility. Dr. Jennifer McVige is no novice; she is a 7-year-veteran neurolo-
gist and practiced with Dr. Litcher when she was a resident MD (resident means training). If then the ticking
behavior manifested with those girls are purely mind-related as opposed to chemical related, you would have
to assume whatever they were going through was pretty intense, at least to them. I learned something new just
researching about this. As time goes on hopefully there will be a little green pill illed with vitamins along the
lines of McVige’s illustration that can stop symptoms like these in their tracks. All wars come with their own
sickness, WWI had Spanish Flu, Vietnam had Agent Orange, the war in Iraq had SARS, and maybe these little
social network wars are producing a devastating illness. One safe rule to use is to prohibit the use of social net-
works with your children whom are still in grade school. No Facebook or Twitter accounts for them until they
graduate from high school.
Chris is a regular columnist for blackcommentator, a contributor to the Hampton Institute, his own blog
www.thebuffalobullet.com and a syndicated columnist. Follow him on Twitter, and Facebook, you don’t
have to join any of them. Watch his video commentary Policy & Prejudice and The Network for clbTV &
Follow his Blogtalkradio interviews on 36OOseconds. Respond to him on the link below.
42
Most are done. The families are all happy and the girls are going back to school.” McVige knows all the girls
well having treated them and worked intimately with them throughout the past several months. She says they
have simply undergone conversion disorder.
“As far as the conversion (disorder) it’s tough, nobody wants to hear ‘it’s something inside of you.’ They’d
rather hear just ‘give me a pill.’ Their youth had a lot to do with it, kids are impressionable. There were dei-
nitely things going on in the kids’ lives… social stressors. There was bullying, the mass hysteria in Le Roy,
some of them were bullied. They were told to stay off Facebook, when you have a conversion disorder, part of
the healing process is knowing that something is going on.” Although Dr. McVige was prohibited from going
into detail, this sounded like a case of typical school bullying that expanded into social network bullying. After
the story broke the media didn’t make it any easier on the 12. McVige continues “even the media tried to ask the
girls questions under the guise of being their friend, they knocked on their doors, they hunted them down, and
they talked to their parents. Some of the girls are shy.” So essentially typical school bullying and later on media
bullying through they’re persistently trying to get a story on the girls and their illness caused and prolonged the
Le Roy-itis.
This and of course whatever personal and family-related stress the girls were undergoing individually are the
main factors in this case. Before I pick up my ball-point stethoscope, I can honestly say that living in an area
that has experienced at least four major cases of bullying in the area outside of Le Roy (1 in Rochester, 3 in
Buffalo including 2 that lead to suicides) I can certainly say in this bizarre world we live in (your generation
not mine), that suicide is always a possibility. Dr. Jennifer McVige is no novice; she is a 7-year-veteran neurolo-
gist and practiced with Dr. Litcher when she was a resident MD (resident means training). If then the ticking
behavior manifested with those girls are purely mind-related as opposed to chemical related, you would have
to assume whatever they were going through was pretty intense, at least to them. I learned something new just
researching about this. As time goes on hopefully there will be a little green pill illed with vitamins along the
lines of McVige’s illustration that can stop symptoms like these in their tracks. All wars come with their own
sickness, WWI had Spanish Flu, Vietnam had Agent Orange, the war in Iraq had SARS, and maybe these little
social network wars are producing a devastating illness. One safe rule to use is to prohibit the use of social net-
works with your children whom are still in grade school. No Facebook or Twitter accounts for them until they
graduate from high school.
Chris is a regular columnist for blackcommentator, a contributor to the Hampton Institute, his own blog
www.thebuffalobullet.com and a syndicated columnist. Follow him on Twitter, and Facebook, you don’t
have to join any of them. Watch his video commentary Policy & Prejudice and The Network for clbTV &
Follow his Blogtalkradio interviews on 36OOseconds. Respond to him on the link below.
42
