Comment by tcj_phx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tcj_phx | Hacker News Reader

The quakers figured out that most people could recover from what are now called "psychotic breaks" by being put in a safe place ("asylum") and provided 4 meals a day [2].

Much of the current problems of Psychiatry stem from the split of neurology and psychiatry [0]. Over the last 60+ years investigators have found many physiological considerations for the so-called "mental" disorders. The core of the resistance against psychiatry (slandered as "antipsychiatry") are the experiences of patients whose conditions deteriorate from medications that do not address the cause of their conditions.

Stress is one of the most important factors in every psychiatric diagnosis. Malnutrition is a type of stress; emotional stress and genetic mutations [1] creates a need for more of certain nutrients.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuropsychiatry

[1] https://www.gxsciences.com/methylation-testing-s/2.htm

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_treatment#England

I appreciate Szasz's comment about the crucifixion of Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian obstetrician who had the audacity to suggest that his fellow doctors should wash their hands between autopsies and childbirths:

"It taught me, at an early age, the lesson that it can be dangerous to be wrong, but, to be right, when society regards the majority’s falsehood as truth, could be fatal. This principle is especially true with respect to false truths that form an important part of an entire society’s belief system. In the past, such basic false truths were religious in nature. In the modern world, they are medical and political in nature." (emphasis added)

The enduring mistreatment of those labeled as "mentally ill" is one of the great tragedies of our time.

edit: added reference [2] edit2: extraneous words removed

Most people do not know a lot of basic but important things about stress.

- Change increases stress

- To-Do list items are also known as "stressors"

- Implementing someone else's suggested "happiness plan" in your life could easily kill you, simply because it's new to _you_ and requires dramatic change

To be "right" as per Szasz means to fit into and apply a preferred template in order to bring about that template's preferred outcome more than it means to be true. It is the difference in template that causes the fatal dynamic, not any difference in truth. More true does an individual feel, the more their acted-out template matches their own psychology, and the more they see the template benefiting others who are amenable to its way of framing things. More do they demonstrate alarming symptoms, the more their preferred, best, most trusted template is overridden both objectively and within their subjective experience.

To make all of HN go "mentally ill" simply confine its membership to Facebook fashion groups or the neighborhood butcher shop or the religious cult. The method of or reason for confinement or the place of confinement will always differ, but the result will be the same--absolutely devastating symptoms and strange diseases, etc. Just change, and unknowingly set at an unsustainable pace right from the start.

The illness model has its leverage points in e.g. its natural provision for quick social exits, but other models also contribute much to our self care and other-care.

- Stay in an abusive (doesn't even have to look too bad) relationship and try to live the other's "happiness plan"

Good example! And a deep topic...

>To make all of HN go "mentally ill" simply confine its membership to Facebook fashion groups or the neighborhood butcher shop or the religious cult.

This fascinating statement makes me wonder about the rise of mental illness in children. I've tended to fall on the side of prior under-diagnosis, but I wonder if some is actually a result of the children being 'trapped' by modern helicopter parenting and educational systems by removing the time they would need to remain sane by engaging in free, unstructured, self-directed play?

There's one critical nuance here on the physiological issue. Physiological differences imply that an issue is a product of biological, physical, or other sources outside of individual choice or mental mechanisms, but this is not necessarily so. A great example of this is the difference between amateur and master chess players. An entirely different area of the brain is used when masters analyze a position than when amateurs do. So the knee-jerk reaction there would be to say that then that's evidence that masters are just somehow physiologically different. Of course that's false. Everybody begins with the 'amateur brain'. It's just that dedicated training and development physiologically changes the individual.

So the problem here is that our ability to observe physiological differences, particularly given the development of EEG/MRI/CT/etc, has radically outpaced our ability to have any clue what they mean. The point being that just because a "condition" has a physiological manifestation in no way whatsoever then directly implies that the condition is therefore physical or can even be realistically 'treated'. For instance, we're not going to develop a drug to make you a strong chess player anytime in the foreseeable future. And while perhaps you could create a drug to make a master a weak player again, it would almost certainly be little more than a glorified lobotomy.

Got a link (or name) for that chess brain mapping study? Sounds interesting?

(sorry, tangent)

There are an immense amount. The chess player's brain is apparently a popular topic of study! Here's a Google Scholar link for 'chess brain' which turns up lots of relevant studies: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=chess+brain

Know which of these deals specifically with the differences between amateur and titled players?

Many! The third [1] and fourth [2] links specifically talk about the physiological differences between master and amateur brains. I didn't check beyond there, but I expect you could probably find dozens of others.

And one very important third link. [3]

[1] - https://www.nature.com/articles/35088119

[2] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002839321...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub

thanks!

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