Monday, January 21, 2013

Job enrichment

Celebrating DSM-5. the future of psychiatric diagnosis. with Global Search and Replace on a document.

Job enrichment: extending the scope of a job, adding new fields or activities; also derog.: adding busy work.

The objectives of this tutorial are: 
First, establish that job enrichment is to humans what environmental enrichment is to pets.
Next, cite a couple of real life examples.

We found this definition of environmental enrichment on the web:
Environmental enrichment is simply supplying different ‘stimuli’ for your animals to react or interact with in an attempt to make their environment more interesting. By supplying these different and novel ‘things’, you will greatly benefit your animals mental well being by giving them additional mental exercise. Hopefully this in turn may avert the development of some problem behaviors as many such problems can occur when animals are bored and under stimulated.

Here is the result of replacing "animals" with "psychiatrists"
Environmental enrichment is simply supplying different ‘stimuli’ for your psychiatrists to react or interact with in an attempt to make their environment more interesting. By supplying these different and novel ‘things’, you will greatly benefit your psychiatrists mental well being by giving them additional mental exercise. Hopefully this in turn may avert the development of some problem behaviors as many such problems can occur when psychiatrists are bored and under stimulated.

Here is the result of replacing "animals" with "government agencies"
Environmental enrichment is simply supplying different ‘stimuli’ for your government agencies to react or interact with in an attempt to make their environment more interesting. By supplying these different and novel ‘things’, you will greatly benefit your government agencies mental well being by giving them additional mental exercise. Hopefully this in turn may avert the development of some problem behaviors as many such problems can occur when government agencies are bored and under stimulated.

Examples  
Now that we have a concise description of job enrichment for government agencies, we go to the examples section.

One off the cuff example for job enrichment in the United States could be the recently reported coverage of the Occupy movement by a well-known federal agency.
Occupy was certainly "different and novel", probably a "more interesting environment", and agencies "reacted or interacted" with that great enthusiasm seen around the world in news out of Oakland, CA.

In Germany, you could consider the fact the the domestic secret service has a number of elected members of parliament under observation a well-intended attempt at job enrichment as described above. In addition to "different, novel, etc.", we can also discern a strong color 'stimulus' in the fact that the parties of most of these politicians are associated with the colors "red" or "black", probably the most politically and sexually stimulating colors around.

On second thought, this whole blog post could be cited as an example of job enrichment.

Why is DSM-5 so cool? Because, looking at the trend of more disorders, we will, by DSM-10, all be certifiably crazy and on meds.

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