A Mental Disease by Any Other Name | Hacker News Reader

A Mental Disease by Any Other Name

nautil.us

52 pointsdnetesn21 comments

The very best thing anyone with any mental illness can do in western society is to ensure that medical professionals do not find out about it. Three months ago I had suicidal thoughts, and even after they had subsided and I came home to rest and recuperate I was literally forced to get out of bed (I had been dozing) from where my loving family wanted me to remain, and was forced into a small, filthy locked room in the ED ward of Liverpool hospital.

I had been awake for over 14 hours. I desperately needed sleep. Instead, I was stuck in a hospital with almost no contact with any staff member (except the occasional nurse or doctor that checked my vitals) for the next five and a half hours. Thank goodness my friend Andy arrived 15 minutes after I was in that locked room, I would have gone barmy - there was literally nothing to do, I was tired but had bright lights constantly shone upon me and I was extremely stressed that I was being held against my will, even though I wasn't in any danger of harming myself or anyone else.

In Australia, at least in NSW, a drug dealer growing Cannabis or producing meth in a drug house gets more rights than a mentally ill person: under the Crimes Act, the police must get a warrant from a magistrate before they can enter a drug house. But if you are deemed by an ambulance officer to be in danger of harming yourself then the police can enter into your house with no warrant and forcibly take you into the nearest mental health facility - even if you aren't unwell! If that happens, then they can make you wait there for up to 12 hours before you are allowed to go home. And there is nothing you can do about it.

From one point of view, schizophrenia seems like an impingement on individual realities by other realities, as from the individual's standpoint the unseen seepage into the consensus realities are stark enough to bewilder the sufferer from determining what is real and what is not.

It is interesting that a step towards the remedy in Buddhism to the suffering of the consensus reality (samsara) is seeing that the attributes of that reality are self or mind arisen and have no substantial basis.

And yet, we take our individual realities to be quite solid and real. Might schizophrenics be those who have a perceptual filter inadvertently opened? An eye unbound able to sense beyond the individual? It would seem to an outsider the only difference between a schizophrenic and a sage is composure.

Schizophrenics do not seem to be able to make more accurate predictions about anything than non-schizophrenic people. This suggests that schizophrenics do not have any particular additional "senses".

Is that speculation, or do you have evidence? I'm genuinely curious, for personal reasons.

Schizophrenia and mood disorders run on both sides of my family. The schizophrenia is rare - the mood disorder not so rare. But, we are all kind of eccentric and artistic and driven to be creative.

Anyway, one thing that we often talk about is this sense of being able to subconsciously and intuitively 'feel' what others are thinking and feeling. It can be a painful experience because it acts like a sixth sense in a way. That is, it's physically painful to be around people with underlying anxiety or anger or tension, even if they're suppressing it enough that others don't notice. People have said that I'm able to predict what they are thinking and feeling before they even know that they're they're thinking and feeling it.

You may find this interesting:

http://www.medicaldaily.com/monkey-see-monkey-do-emotions-ar...

What incentive would there be on their behalf to offer such a thing to neural intruders if they could?

The Swiss medium Hannes Jacob (based in Neuchâtel) actually works on exactly this question [0], calling it the "Hannes Jacob Syndrome", which states the following:

A certain percentage of people diagnosed with "schizophrenia" are misdiagnosed. They are in fact people whose sensitivity is such that they have spontaneous contact with what we usually call "the other side", "beyond", etc., not constructs produced by mental illness.

And yes, he collaborates with licensed Swiss psychiatrists. What's more, he actively searches for scientists who are willing to put his various discoveries to the test, as it was already done at the University of Tübingen/Germany (if you know any such scientists, please establish contact).

He has just finished his book "Au-delà d'un défunt" [1] which is a pretty incredible read.

[0] http://blog.hannesjacob.ch/2016/01/12/syndrom-hannes-jacob/ [1] https://www.payot.ch/Detail/au_dela_dun_defunt-mahan_hannes_...

The mental health profession "diagnoses" someone with a set of symptoms, then treats them with drugs that suppress the problem-symptom without addressing its cause.

My friend needed sobriety to recover from her "mental disease". Alcohol, cocaine, and methamphetamine are good for throwing the body's chemical energy flows (glucose -> ATP, etc) out of balance. B-vitamins are sometimes appropriate...

Mental health diagnoses are mostly based on vague symptoms that could described a number of "disorders" and are all firmly based in the values of the patient's society. Psychiatry is more or less a pseudo-science [1].

I don't mean to imply that unhinged delusions should be entertained, or for the deluded to be received as enlightened as this article seems to suggest. I do think we need a least a modicum of empiricism in psychiatry before the field can be taken seriously.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_surrounding_psyc...

Many of the things described in that reference could be applied to medicine, in general. And, probably other sciences where Human-crafted models cannot possibly account for all influential variables (i.e. Economics, etc.)

These days, when one is diagnosed with a major mental disease (in contrast to a minor one that's managable with physical or mental exercise e.g. CBT), the treatment process is very experimental. The doctor presents a long list of chemicals that are known to alter different chemical pathways. Then they choose one or more with the fewest negative side-effects. Then, it's a process of trial and error until the right mixture is found.

If the doctor is competent and ethical, which many are, then at each step they weigh the risks against the benefits.

Many, but not all, patients eventually find the right mixture that allows them to live a relatively 'normal' life. The side effects are tolerated because the alternatives are stark - usually dissociation or early death.

I'm certain that many of these diseases are aggravated by our self-imposed habits, rituals, and culture. But, to be a Human unfortunately means tolerating pain for potential future gain.

One big difference between psychiatry and other areas of medicine is that other areas of medicine do not base every diagnosis on a single manual (the DSM).

Let's glamourize schizophrenia the same way we've glamourized asperger's (and partially autism as well).

Totally serious.

I self identify as being at least somewhere on both spectrums.

I don't think the larger society has glamorized Asperger's at all.

True. In our insular world, including some businesses, it has been though yeah?

I agree that we haven't glamorized Asperger's.

However, I believe schizophrenia is certainly more stigmatized.

When you say "self identify", do you mean you settled on this state without medical professionals diagnosing you? If so, why, and why not pursue a diagnosis?

Serious questions and genuine interest, not trying to be an ass.

A diagnosis is mostly useful if you want medical help. If you're self-managing reasonably well, there's no need to go to a doctor, even if you're showing symptoms - just like you might not go to a doctor with a physical injury you can look after yourself or with the help of friends.

A diagnosis can even be actively harmful.

If I found myself with a developing case, I'd get one if I felt like I couldn't self manage and was running out of options, but mental illness is just something that neither the American social system nor medical system handles very well.

Agreed, a minor injury turning into a major sickness from visiting a hospital when it's not needed, is not necessarily an unwarranted paranoia, e.g. MRSA.

And I have witnessed in my own life mental health professionals both helping situations and making them worse.

For me, it's not as simple as "never seek help from professionals" or "always seek help from professionals".

I didn't mean to imply a particular position on the spectrum, was trying to be a clever tongue in cheek reference to the idea that the boundaries between "having" the condition or not are murky, not trying to share my personal life story, at least not this time :)

Hey, no worries. Replies all around were interesting, so thanks :)

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