If affluenza is real, consideration and treatment of it must be real
(to me the interesting point here is that the legal system recognized the illness, and then placed Ethan Couch right back in the care of those who brought about his dysfunction. This illustrates that the court saw the defense as novel, well played and thereby effective, but the court never considered the alleged mental dysfunction and its possible causes seriously).
Is Affluenza Real?
Dr. Peggy Drexler; Author, research psychologist and gender scholar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peggy-drexler/is-affluenza-real_b_9048668.html
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Scoff all you want: It may sound ridiculous, but the "affluenza" defense worked. Couch managed to avoid jail time and was instead sentenced to 10 years probation...At the time of the teen's December 2013 sentencing and in news reports since, most have argued that the defense, and the sentencing, were an outrage; that "affluenza" is not a disorder, but a result of bad parenting, for which there's no excuse. And that, in fact, "affluenza" is not real.
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Still: Bad parenting notwithstanding, who's to say Ethan Couch doesn't also suffer from some mental impairment? Nature, we now know, isn't the only cause of mental illness. In fact, genetics and environmental distress -- including bad parenting or a detrimental home life -- can work together to produce mental illness. And, well, the symptoms used to describe and "diagnose" affluenza are entirely real: low self-esteem, sense of entitlement, anxiety, impulse control issues.
A number of legitimate psychological studies suggest that "affluenza" may not be so far-fetched, and that the very issues listed above are indeed often higher among kids of certain privilege. So let's say that Couch's symptoms were a result of bad parenting; just as with any other mental disorder, how they got there matters less than the fact they are there. Affluenza may not be an excuse, but it is an explanation. If Ethan Couch was truly raised without a sense of right or wrong, how would he be expected to behave in a way that's socially acceptable?
That's not to say there should be total leeway for children, or young adults, who do the wrong thing simply because they did not fully understand the implications of that thing. Other forms of mental illness are not get-out-of-jail-free cards, and neither is this one. The mentally ill who break the law are required to face consequences, even if their punishment is different from that handed to someone of sound mind and body; their mental illness being a factor in their behavior, but not a justification for it. And so it should be for Ethan Couch. If "affluenza" is indeed what caused him to get behind the wheel with a blood alcohol count three times the legal limit for adults, resulting in the deaths of four people, he deserves to face consequences. But he also deserves to get some help.
Instead, Ethan Couch was sent back into the care of the very people -- his parents -- who allegedly caused him to act without regard to consequence in the first place.
So here's the truth about "affluenza." If it's real, then our treatment of it needs to be real, too.