"Whipping cures depression"

I recently found this link to what appears to be a genuine (if slightly out-of-date) news article:

Whipping therapy cures depression and suicide crises

Siberian scientists believe that addiction to alcohol and narcotics, as well as depression, suicidal thoughts and psychosomatic diseases occur when an individual loses his or her interest in life. The absence of the will to live is caused with decreasing production of endorphins - the substance, which is known as the hormone of happiness. If a depressed individual receives a physical punishment, whipping that is, it will stir up endorphin receptors, activate the “production of happiness” and eventually remove depressive feelings.

Russian scientists recommend the following course of the whipping therapy: 30 sessions of 60 whips on the buttocks in every procedure. A group of drug addicts volunteered to test the new method of treatment: the results can be described as good and excellent.

The idea that a the occasional beating can be good for your mental health isn't really news to us. But masochists and kinksters aren't the only people who have tapped into the human endorphin response. Flagellation has a place in a number of religious traditions - medieval Catholicism, Tibetan Buddhism, Gardnerian Wicca. The euphoria triggered by exercise is similar, I think.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that this treatment has a universal application, though. I don't really understand the psychology, but it seems plausible that there's some correlation between people exhibiting the self-destructive behaviours described above, and people who will respond well to endorphin manipulation. Note that the article says that the treatment was only tested on volunteers - that has to skew the results slightly.

”The whipping therapy becomes much more efficient when a patients receives the punishment from a person of the opposite sex. The effect is astounding: the patient starts seeing only bright colors in the surrounding world, the heartache disappears, although it will take a certain time for the buttocks to heal, of course,” Sergei Speransky told the Izvestia newspaper.

Well, I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that sounds familiar :) But what about people who are attracted to the same sex, eh? It bugs me when queerness is ignored by sex psychologists.

Nonetheless, I have to applaud the courage and open-mindedness of the research team. It would be great if the positive results of a healthy kink life were more widely recognised, particularly by the medical profession; if popular opinion saw what we do as part of a sane, affirming, balanced lifestyle, and not a symptom of being wrong in the head. I wonder if this Dr. Speransky is one of us?