A new approach to mental illness

Would you agree then "mental disorders" can also be induced ?
Side step this important question again and I'll just ask it again .
Click to expand...

Of course it can be.....the use of medications have been proved many times to induce other disorders, thus requiring further meds which also do...etc etc

So what's your point?

I am not recommending drug therapy here. And only suggesting that some drug therapy be "continued" if necessary.

And I might add the main reason for suggesting continuation of med therapy if necessary is to placate the fears of relatives and Doctors and not just the patients themselves and also to avoid legal conflict. ( court orders and such )
 
Mental Illness
A new approach

Introduction

When considering the nature of mental illness it is important that we define what it is we are considering.

Mental illness is a mental condition that prevents the sufferer from participating in life in the way he or she would wish. It is a condition that places the sufferer in a state of dysfunction.

It is a condition that society wants to protect itself from for it deems the mental state of the sufferer to be precarious, unreal and relatively unpredictable.

Within the following example of mental aberration I will use the condition notoriously referred to as Schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia demonstrates the greatest variety and complexities of the aberrant mental state and I intend to suggest a way that will allow us to treat and cure this condition.



w w w w



Schizophrenia is about ability, not ordinary ability but extraordinary ability.

At some time in the patient’s life his brain has acquired an ability or abilities that the patient has little to no control over. The ability(s) are acquired intuitively and usually discounted as inconsequential by the patient himself and as delusion or hallucination by the medical profession when he or she is finally admitted to hospital or some form of professional therapy and care.

The abilities I refer to are of a sensory nature: intuitive sensory abilities of an extraordinary nature. The patient immediately becomes embattled with what he senses as ordinary sensory behaviour and that which he himself would consider extraordinary sensory ability.

Society is telling him that his ability is delusional and yet he knows that it isn’t. His imagination tries to accommodate society and his own experiences, putting himself in a state of self delusion because he is inclined to deny his ability as real because society is saying that this is the case.

So we have at least two abilities happening. The first is his ability to know what is extraordinary (Aberrant) sensing this and the actual intuitive ability that he has acquired which is also sensed.

A classic example would be paranoid schizophrenia where by the patient feels a strong sense of conspiracy, that the CIA or the police are watching him or his parents are threatening to kill him etc.

A normal person is quite capable of sensing conspiracy in fact we are all part of a conspiracy. We are all part of everyone else’s plans. The wife or girlfriend is planning a special dinner. The government is planning to introduce the GST. The guy down the pub is planning to punch him in the nose etc.

So the patient has developed an ability to sense conspiracy to a depth that would be considered extraordinary. His sense of reality is threatened and he becomes deluded trying to deal with his sensory ability and that which society would consider normal.

For instance he senses his girlfriend’s plans for dinner and feels threatened because of his fear of his ability to sense this. He behaves badly trying to cope with all the mixed signals that his brain is trying to interpret. He behaves badly and arrives in the hospital in an extreme state of anxiety.

The premise I am using here is that fear is always real. Not always understood for what it is but very real and valid. The ability to understand and learn from it is the ability that needs to be learned and it is only by achieving understanding and learning that the patient has any chance of recovery.

To deny the ability is to provoke delusion. To nurture the ability is to free the patient of delusion.

Funnily enough it is society’s state of delusion as to the nature of Schizophrenia that is actually perpetrating and enforcing a delusion upon the sufferer. Society having the delusion that extraordinary ability doesn’t exist. Which is of course not true as some of our most gifted people exhibit extraordinary ability all of which could be considered intuitive.

I am suggesting that the patient’s sensory abilities have somehow achieved a greater depth than would be considered normal and like a person studying martial arts the patient must learn sensory discipline and nurture his ability to the level that he is comfortable with.

I believe that our current approach to Schizophrenia is in fact quite deluded and as you would now understand the patient is also aware of this causing even more grief.

Medication rejection, hospitalisation rejection etc are all symptoms of our “insane” approach to schizophrenia: the patient being caught between two worlds and not knowing what to believe.

Sensory ability is essentially reflexive in that until controlled by other governing reflexes the ability continues to exist at all times in a way that is ungoverned and it is only when the ability is governed by learned reflexes that the ability is controlled and the patient’s anxiety and comfort levels return to “normal”

w w w w

Conclusion

What I propose is that the patient be treated as a person who has abilities yet to be governed and not denied.

That the treating staff attempt to identify what abilities are in play and structure a learning and therapy program that helps the patient in the achievement of comfort by allowing him to achieve the skills and disciplines needed.

Many programs can be developed that are able to help the patient with the above in mind.

Open mindedness to what the patient is describing as delusion and treating the description in the light of uncontrolled intuitive ability will achieve significant results.
 
What is you opinion about the University of Pennsylvania participating in covert research together with law enforcement ?

What kind of anger do you think is generated by this kind of behavior ?
 
Hi, I have not read the rest of the posts, only the first one.

I find your thoughts on mental illness extremely interesting and rather intuitive.

I'm not clear on all that you say but most of it sounds semi-promising, obviously a proper clinical study would be required to prove your theory right or wrong.

On the subject of schizophrenia, i do believe there is far more too it than basic counselling. when a person is so far gone they do need medicine to make their brains READY for positive counselling.

I believe.
 
What is you opinion about the University of Pennsylvania participating in covert research together with law enforcement ?
Click to expand...

Firstly I think that all persons regardless of mental state are fully entitiled to full disclosure of all objectives and methods PRIOR to any research and informed consent be achieved.

Assuming that this ( covert research) is occuring I would be absolutely horrified and disgusted by any covert methods. If the patient is unable to be informed due to mental incapacity then NO research should be undertaken until such consent can be gained.

Secondly, this is why I also fully agree with a patients right to reject medication. Of course society has the right to isolate the patient to protect itself but at no time does it have the right to force any person to undergo medication or involuntary treatments.

There are of course always exceptions where the state will act in what it believes is in the best interests of the patient, for example in life threatening situations and where the patients family is called in to make decisions on behalf of the patient.

What kind of anger do you think is generated by this kind of behavior ?
Click to expand...

The behaviour you describe is totally reprehensible for the reasons given above.
 
On the subject of schizophrenia, i do believe there is far more too it than basic counselling. when a person is so far gone they do need medicine to make their brains READY for positive counselling.
Click to expand...


The issue of medication is always a hot potato. So often the medical profession will take the easiest path and throw a person into a heavilly sedated state with horrible side affects simply because 1) they don't have the money or the skill to do anything else and 2) they are numbed out, in that seeing severe trauma every day just kills off any empathy they might have.

The psychiatric hospitals are a bit like the people who working the sewage and medical waste disposal industry. They deal with the very end of the human dilemma.

The persons they treat rarely offer thanks for their efforts and the psy staff are contantly in a state of threat and fear.

Medication is often prescribed to serve the community and not the patient. Because it is more convenient to do so.

Most Doctors will tell you that Schizophrenia is incurable and the patient invariably is deemed to be a continuous and ongoing liability on society.

I refuse to accept this.

Schizophrenia IS curable and this can be achieved with the smallest amount of medical intervention. ( medication to slow things down to the point where the patient can be reached )

The most important thing that prevents a cure is the closemindedness towards just how incredible our ability to sense is.

Once the medical profession understand the depth that our senses can sense they will be able to treat the illness with the view to a cure and not just a convenience.
 
Quantum Quack,
That is still a very onesided view to have, a reason for why a patient should talk to someone should just be about deciding their fate in how treatment should be applied, it should be about first diagnosing correctly that the patient isn't in a real conspiracy to begin with.

For instance a patient could say their paranoid about their parents trying to kill them, and they will be diagnosed with Paranoid schizophrenia, but what happens when the patient winds up dead and it's found their parents have been slowly poisoning them for years, Other than a bunch of doctors covering up what they misdiagnosed (which is not a conspiracy, just what their little formulated brotherhood does and has been brought to attention in the press in the past.)

I suppose you could say my view is that a persons "delusion" should at first be given the benefit of the doubt, similar to being innocent until being proven guilty.
If you can without shadow of a doubt prove something to be just a delusion to which a patient is going to have to come to terms with, then deal with it in that way, but if there is doubt (which admittedly with certain professionals, they never have because they never question.) then perhaps you should re-analyse how you do business.

Perhaps I should carry out my own experiment if I could find a few volunteers (although if it was to be authentic I would obviously have to use people without knowledge of being used), the simple experiment would be to place into their heads a conspiracy that truly exists and get them as far as being dealt with by doctors, just to see how the doctors handle it. (Of course in my instance before the "patient" is led away to a cell or piled high with drugs, I'd pull the plug proving the conspiracy to both patient and doctor, but thats because my experiment terminates there where others might be just beginning.)

Mind you I suppose it would be unfair to entrap Psychiatric doctors in this way, but if it was publicised research it would obviously make a difference in the way they conduct business.
 
Stryderunknown,
In many ways you are saying exactly what I am.

Open mindedness to what the patient is describing as delusion and treating the description in the light of uncontrolled intuitive ability will achieve significant results.
Click to expand...
hmmmm......
Ok, you would say that it is possible that it should never get to this stage.

I think possibly it isn't understood that a person isn't normally diagnosed just because of a belief. ( not here in Australia, as far as I know any way)

You can believe what you like, this is not grounds for committal or treatment.

It is only when behaviour becomes illegal. In that you pose a threat to your self or to others.

Belief that your parents are trying to kill you is not grounds for diagnosis.

Actions based on those beliefs in a way that threaten or harm your parents would be. The choice being either lock some one up for assault or committ them to psy care.

Say for example a person believes his mom is trying to kill him, so he locks himself in a room and refuses anyone to come in. After a many days the police are called and they take the person away to be assessed.

He has locked himself away for a number of days with out food or water, no toilet. no shows, nothing.

What do you do?

Another example,

A person believes his mom is trying to kill him.

So he walks around the house with a large knife in his hand threatening to hurt his mom.
( I have a friend who used to do just this when psychotic)
What do you do?

A guy stands at a city intersection weilding a samari sword screaming about a police conspiracy and threatening any one that comes close. The city comes to a halt.

What do you do?

The first thing that happens from my understanding is that the doctors and police attempt to stabilise the situation. Isolate, quarrantine and allow time to pass. If the patient remains psychotic he is then diagnosed.

Here the patient has many rights that allow for the possibility of missdiagnosis. Most of the time it requires just that, a passing of time.

A guy walking the streets waving a sword around has comitted a crime, and normally would recieve punishment from the law, however he recieves treatment instead because the police have realised the persons precarious mental state.

There is and always will be many exceptions and many grey areas when it comes to the issue of insanity or sanity.

There will always be examples of missdiagnosis, in fact I woudl suggest that in some way they are all miss-diagniosed and the diagnosis is not Schizophrenia it should be Diagnosed ..... Reflexive sensory disorder or something like that.
 
Well I'm glad you responded like that, it seems we've managed to understand where each other is coming from rather than misinterpretting.

Perhaps however you could suggest that if a person has a conspiracy how they should act to rectify that conspiracy.

If for instance a person suffers a conspiracy that "Could be real", what should be their course of action before they believe they have run out of options and then do something sporadic? (Don't worry I haven't any intension of doing anything oddball, well other than posting to some of the threads in this forum.)
 
hmmmm before I answer I have been thinking since my last post and wanted to say that the diagnosis of Schizophrenia and the like are used way to often and overly easilly. By this I mean that the diagnosis of Schizophrenia is a very serious diagnosis, it's a bit like telling someone that they are F**ked for the rest of their lives. A bit like "cancer of the mind"

I think more effort is needed by the doctors to ensure accurate diagnosis.
To your question:

The first thing I ask my self is how do people "normally" respond to conspiracy whether real of otherwise?

Then I would ask my self "Am I sensing something I don't understand?"

Say we use the example of being "chipped"

The patient feels very strongly that he has been implanted with a device that is being used to monitor his location and mental state.

The first thing I would do is say to myself "so what?"

I would attempt to lower the fear asssociated with this issue.

I would say to myself ..."you mean to tell me that some one is spending all their time and money just to keep an eye on me?"....."what have I got to hide" or "I have nothing to hide" so they want to know when I go to the toilet, when I fart, when I pick my nose....hmmmmm....well....so what?

I would lower the intensity of the injustice and fear. So that I could start to think more clearly about what I "Think" is happening.

Then if the belief is still strong enough after rationalising it, I would either accept it or take steps to find out for sure.

I would have a Cat scan done and probably a MRI scan done. But I would also accept the outcome of these tests.

I would ask very strongly what benefit is there in this sort of monitoring for the monitor?

In the past I have found that patients ( maybe 3 or 4) who experience this sort of conspiracy end up realising that it is actually themselves that are doing the monitoring.

Hyper vigilence, self monitoring, severe introspection, severe self analysis and criticism.

The most important step is to reduce the fear associated with it. Lower it to a point where the person can think about it with a clear head.

Knowing that fear clouds our judgement.
 
Thanks for the reply QQ . Information obtained however , indicates that the University of Pennsylvania was utilizing the same method as you are now proposing . They have colluded with law enforcement and lent their expertise to covertly cultivate individuals delusional capabilities . You have stated that you disagree with this if done covertly , but at the same time embrace the very basis of this abuse of power .

Your slick and intelligent , I enjoy talking with you , but would never trust you . Don't ever come near me or my family ....
 
Abnak I don't think the abilities you refer to are delusional........And that's the point you fail to see that differentiates me from your obsession.
 
You categorize self defence and the desire to protect ones family as irrational ? What have you Aussies become ?

You do agree that drugs can induce mental problems . Enviorment can also produce distress in individiuals . You propose to create an enviorment , by " nurturing delusional abilities " . This will aggravate not alleviate . It seems intentional , considering your knowledge .
 
Maybe for the sake of clarity you could tell me and the reader what delusional abilities you are referring to.
 
I once went to a review for a woman with schizophrenia. She believed there was a conspiracy against her, that her flat had been bugged etc. At the review, all the important people in her life were gathered together, discussing her case, explaining to her why she was deluded. I was absolutely appalled, since our very being there provided her with positive evidence.
I think the issue of collusion is complicated, but we should certainly make an effort to resolve some of the more obvious errors, like the one I've outlined above.
 
Leda , I know of some one who was experiencing years of vandalism , home break ins and postal theft before asking for assistance in dealing with the stress . The first thing that was done by the supposed medical experts was to try to convince this person that he was just imagining every thing , at the same time placing him on powerfull medications . Pulling his medical records years later, it was filled with inacuracies and outright fabrications . His reaction was one of anger that scientists could operate in such a dishonorable fashion .

You state that this women had schizophrenia . How do you know this ? Hidden cameras and audio devices can be and are used to harass and terrorize . Just because you have not experienced this doesn't mean that it doesn't occur and the other person is delusional . She might indeed be incorrect , but might very well be a victim . What if it where you or your child , that was a victim ? What if some one sought to encourage overreaction , exacerbate fear and sought to justify this with double talk and mendacity ?

-----------------------------

"..could tell me and the reader what delusional abilities you are referring to."-QQ

I was commenting on your proposal , it is up to you to give specifics .
 
I'm not going to lie, I've known doctors to lie openly. In one particular case a person was said to have been violent and offensive towards doctors, but the reality had been that he had been co-operating with them up until he decided that the drugs they were giving him were doing more harm than good.

This meant he just refused to take the medication given to him, since it's not an enforced requirement. However his tribunal had the doctors suggesting that he was a danger to everyone and manipulating testimony.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top