Sad News

I may have overstated the degree of knowledge. The problem with treating with chemical is having to match to body and overcome natural defenses, so there is a tendency to overuse.With a self regulated system much less is necessary to reach the level of control needed.Certainly this has no effect on people that do have chemical balance eh?yeah, riiiiiight.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

mmm baker act.they need to quit using it on kids with add and start using it on people who are really dangerous.

yeah good luck getting the fundies to go for it. frankly, i think we'd be better off with trepanning and exorcisms than most psychoactive drugs...arach's little brother was wrongly diagnosed with tourets or something when he was like 8 and given terrible drugs that made him psychotic. so they diagnosed him psychotic and gave him more drugs. he's 13 now and might almost be sort of normal (if creepy cause 13 year old boys are creepy). and he looks like the kid from the shining. *willies*but it's really funny cause penicillins make me psychotic (made me suicidal at 7) and i'm lucky to have dodged a misdiagnosis because my mom caught it quickly enough that it was the medication.while i am the first to say that the 8 years i spent on dextro then adderal would have been disastrous without them, drugs don't always work and should only be approached with caution. but people have to be protected from themselves. schitzophrenics and other seriously disturbed people should be supervised at all times until we have a solution. if that means that they have a live-in nanny type thing then fine. but they should certainly not be in charge of children unsupervised. they should have contact with their loved ones. but not at the expense of safety.

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This is the problem of "personhood" ultimately, but when the "person" is disfunctional due to chemical imbalance (whether we know all about it yet or not) and when that "person" changes when chemical balance is restored, we have to ask which is the {real\proper\desired\etc} person - one who kills their own children?

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Do we as society get to make that decision? There will be many ethical questions involved in treatment, but it still has to be better than doing nothing.

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I'd rather it be left to the individual (if mentally competent) or the individual's family (if not mentally competent).

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This is not something that would alter the thinking of people that already have balanced systems, but would affect those that don't ... perhaps act more like a pacemaker.

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The problems with medications is that they are generic broadsides that flood the system with chemicals at fairly high doses to enxure a result. A genetic base treatement could be more {tailored\gradualistic}

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Less expensive, I would estimate, is the sterilization of those with tendencies. I can see that as highly generic. Herd 'em, zap 'em, bingo. They will have no children to kill.
I think persons with mental disabilities leading to such devastation cannot decide for themselves. Harsh methods(?) for harsh behaviors? Is that not a fair exchange? Especially since medications will lose their clout with time.

Particularly if a "cure" is found for religion ... If memory serves it was Reagan that shut down a lot of facilities and turned people out on the streets (literally). After all, why should the state take care of people that aren't fit to take care of themselves?Isn't that compassionate conservatism?This message has been edited by RAZD, 10*23*2005 04:03 PM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Many instances do not show up until later in adult life (and thus are not selected against by evolution, while the ones that do show up earlier have been?) and the children are already on the scene. May even be connected to childbirth and the flood of chemical changes that occur in that process and then switch back off?Then we get to the question of sterilizing for stupidity -- being intellectually incapable of taking care of children ... and yet some can be excellent baby sitters.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

i'd have to say kharma bit him in the ass.

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Many instances do not show up until later in adult life (and thus are not selected against by evolution, while the ones that do show up earlier have been?) and the children are already on the scene. May even be connected to childbirth and the flood of chemical changes that occur in that process and then switch back off?

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Then we get to the question of sterilizing for stupidity -- being intellectually incapable of taking care of children ... and yet some can be excellent baby sitters.

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It's the pits, ain't it?
Any closer to isolating that stupidity gene? (LOL)

Stupidity no, however this came on the news today -- rather ironic eh?Schizophrenia Linked to Genetic Mutation
Forbes.com article (click for whole article)and
Genetic Defect May Help Predict Schizophrenia Risk
DNC: Health News (click for full article)Odds don't look good for robin (only he can answer the co-factors), but not definitely bad either - he may be lucky.The real good news to me is that if it is genetic then sooner or later we can find a fix at the cellular level.This may also mean less dependency on the mind dumbing drugs and more work on the mind enabling drugs: it should change the course of research to a more positive place. And as a side note, 7 is too small to place much faith in the percentage numbers being accurate at this point. This also looks like one of those (ahem) "soft" science studies ...

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Thanks for presenting this information. Of course, mental illness runs rampant in our world, recognized as such or not. Sometimes I'm tempted to pronounce it on all of humanity in small and big ways, big nuts and little nuts.
Thanks again. The drug companies will feel so, uh, slighted.

Having previously worked in the field for 10 years....believe me when I say there is a very fine line.

I work in retail, in a town that is generally very tolerant of difference, so as a result we get a lot of people with obvious (and not so obvious) mental health issues.I've seen and dealt with many drug and alcohol addicts of all sorts, and dealt with a number of people I was fairly sure had suffered some kind of brain damage that rendered them, um, rather volatile and aggressive, shall we say? Or, they are just very, very neurotic and not well-adjusted to life. Mostly these people have money and are generaly functional, in that they are more or less in touch with reality but just behave very poorly according to the rules of polite adult behavior. Cruel old men and women who make sport of being horrible to salespeople, tightly wound, helpless rich women who are afraid of the coffee grinder, elderly people in the first stages of dementia or Altzheimers, young punkers or businesspeople clearly high on cocaine or heroin. Adults who are stuck at the 6 year old level emotionally (an adult man got so upset when he tasted an olive oil he didn't like that he made a big "icky-poo" frowny face and stormed off), people who are so unhappy and angry about everything that they blame their mistakes upon the sales people (a woman who later said she was allergic to vinegar who ignored a large sign on the wall behind the product, the labeled cup, the labeled bottles, the sign next to the cup, and the color of a liquid and soaked a big piece of bread in chardonnay vinegar, and then had the nerve to try to blame me for her choice to taste it).And then I have also had to deal with the people who obviously needed to be in an institution, or at least heavily supervised.There was Priscilla, who visited the store several times a day, was obviously very intelligent, and schizophrenic. She became fixated upon the young men behind the counter and constantly asked them out. She used to ask for many, many free samples, but had a little money and decided to place an order one day. When she came to pick it up a couple of days later, she had a freak out at the register for some reason and we had to ask her to leave. We didn't see her again for a long time but she did come back and called the police on a customer and while telling her story, grabbed that customer by the arm. The police then banned her from the shop. I still see her every now and then on the street, where she obviously is taking medication. She is like a zombie.Then there was Floyd. He was a rather frightening, excitable middle aged schizophrenic man who lived in a house just up the street, with a live in helper. He used to come into the store and demand whole slices of bread that would normally cost a dollar, take handfulls of samples from every basket, and grab at the women who worked there (me included. What fun). He was much more normal when he was on his medication but he refused to take it and spent all of his time drunk instead. He finally got himself banned from the shop and was arrested several times when he came back anyway. He eventually moved away and I heard that he died last year.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 10-25-2005 01:10 PM

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I've seen and dealt with many drug and alcohol addicts of all sorts, and dealt with a number of people I was fairly sure had suffered some kind of brain damage that rendered them, um, rather volatile and aggressive, shall we say? Or, they are just very, very neurotic and not well-adjusted to life. Mostly these people have money and are generaly functional, in that they are more or less in touch with reality but just behave very poorly according to the rules of polite adult behavior. Cruel old men and women who make sport of being horrible to salespeople, tightly wound, helpless rich women who are afraid of the coffee grinder, elderly people in the first stages of dementia or Altzheimers, young punkers or businesspeople clearly high on cocaine or heroin. Adults who are stuck at the 6 year old level emotionally (an adult man got so upset when he tasted an olive oil he didn't like that he made a big "icky-poo" frowny face and stormed off), people who are so unhappy and angry about everything that they blame their mistakes upon the sales people (a woman who later said she was allergic to vinegar who ignored a large sign on the wall behind the product, the labeled cup, the labeled bottles, the sign next to the cup, and the color of a liquid and soaked a big piece of bread in chardonnay vinegar, and then had the nerve to try to blame me for her choice to taste it).

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And then I have also had to deal with the people who obviously needed to be in an institution, or at least heavily supervised.

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There was Priscilla, who visited the store several times a day, was obviously very intelligent, and schizophrenic. She became fixated upon the young men behind the counter and constantly asked them out. She used to ask for many, many free samples, but had a little money and decided to place an order one day. When she came to pick it up a couple of days later, she had a freak out at the register for some reason and we had to ask her to leave. We didn't see her again for a long time but she did come back and called the police on a customer and while telling her story, grabbed that customer by the arm. The police then banned her from the shop. I still see her every now and then on the street, where she obviously is taking medication. She is like a zombie.

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Then there was Floyd. He was a rather frightening, excitable middle aged schizophrenic man who lived in a house just up the street, with a live in helper. He used to come into the store and demand whole slices of bread that would normally cost a dollar, take handfulls of samples from every basket, and grab at the women who worked there (me included. What fun). He was much more normal when he was on his medication but he refused to take it and spent all of his time drunk instead. He finally got himself banned from the shop and was arrested several times when he came back anyway. He eventually moved away and I heard that he died last year.

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There are eight million stories in the naked city.
You are a witness to only a few.

It's not that simple.My brother is a "dual diagnosis" (paranoid schizophrenic/bipolar); the difficulty of keeping him on his meds is well known; he has strong family support.Nonetheless, he often manages to stay off his meds long enough to experience an episode. In part, this happens because of familial fatigue; after years of slow motion implosion, families of schizophrenics get pretty much used up.In addition, he isn't just the behavioral model of his disease. He is a near brilliant and mischievous fellow who jokes about his illness, and the stereotypes of it, whether he is medicated or not. He will cheerfully use his illness to manipulate his family and friends. It does not surprise me in the least to hear a family member say they didn't take "feed them to the sharks" all that seriously. I've heard much worse spoken in jest or self-dramatization.I suspect there is a lush garden of schizophrenia, a few rows of purely genetic petunias, acres of genetic susceptibility plus environmental insult/infectious agent daisies, a few rows of purely environmental pansies...I recall studies demonstrating that children whose mothers contract influenza early in pregnancy are more likely to develop schizophrenia; the presence of antibodies to a micro-organism (sorry, can't recall which) carried by cats also significantly correlates. I haven't checked back on these in a while, but I expect the number of environmental correlations will multiply: our continued saturation of the planet with novel chemicals will probably yield some new subtypes.BTW, shock therapy is a horror. If every patient and/or family facing the possibility of it spoke to a patient who received it, the practice would stop altogether.

Nothing ever is. Sorry to hear about your brother. My mom was a psychologist, she specialized in autistic chldren learning, but it made me aware of the precarious nature of the brain. She now (85) has early onset Alzheimers, mostly just memory loss at this point. As a chemical imbalance train there are likely to be a number of ways to get to that station, yes. The more stations (and kinds of stations) the better we can treat all the forms.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

​

RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.