Mental Illness, the ultimate lie!

Okay, I've just been thinking about folk with mental disorders, folk who do bad things because they are schizophrenic, or temporary insanity. Those who have schizophrenia, or temproary insanity are apparently devoid of rationality, so much so, that we excuse them from any responsibilty. Because of this, we excuse them as moral agents, just like we excuse, children, wild beasts, plants, and rocks because of their lack of rationality.
In short, I am guessing that people who hear 'voices' and give an excuse 'God told me to eat the raspberry' is not the same as not having reasons for eating the raspberry in the first place. It's my view that the schizophrenic person who kills his wife because "God told him too" is not evidence that of how valid his explanation is. Such a person kills his wife because he wanted too, but he disavowed his intention to, and casts himself as an obeying slave who could not help but obey. It's all in their own self conversations they ultimately disown.
There is probebly never been a single account on a schizophrenic's voice telling the subject to buy his wife flowers, or take her to a romantic cruise. So I will guess that there is motive behind the most senseless act, because he or she wants to achieve something.

I think you are wrong. Do you know any of these people? I do know 2 that have this problem and they do buy flowers but maybe not for the same reasons you and I might.
You will only read about the bad things these people do.

The mental illness' you listed are very real. Sometimes people who
are sane use them and try to get away with things by claiming that
they too are mentally ill. However, the sad fact is that there are
vast numbers of mentally ill people out there and it isn't their
fault that they are ill.

Ever see the commercial with Martin Sheen about mental illness??
It's a disease, just like cancer.

Go to your local community college and take an abnormal psychology
course. You'll find it interesting and informative. It will definately
change your mind about mental illness.

**that's not a dig .. that's just a suggestion.

You could also buy the Comer abnormal psychology book and
do the book with them online -
bcs.worthpublishers.com...




[edit on 5/9/2006 by FlyersFan]

Sounds to me lilke you don't know that much about schizophrenia. The very nature of the disease is that voices tell them to do destructive things. Are you talking about paranoid schizophrenics? There are a number of different types. Paranoids will sometimes kill lpeople but not because they are malevolent. They genuinely are afraid that people are out to get them and that's where things like murder happen, although the majority of schizos are pretty harmless. When a schizo is put on medication that works, the voices stop, alot of the paranoia leaves and then you havev a person who has no reason to murder and therefore doesn't.

I worked with lots of schizophrenics in my 15 years as a therapist.

There is a possiblity that some may try to fake it,but yes people do have mental illness,I have a sister that is mentally ill,and she will be the first to say everyone else is crazy,some people live in a different realm then general populace,some can't seperate fantasy from reality

The brain is an enigma. We have only begun to tap into the inner workings of it and there is still so much a mystery. If we only use approx 10% of our brains what is the other 90% do or for?
Perhaps people with mental disorders such a schizophrenia are truely haunted by inner voices because the part of their brains have tapped into something we consider abnormal. We label it mental illness because we don't hear voices telling us to eat a raspberry or kill a person. But what if they really do? What if when certain individuals have a psychotic "break" that a portion of the brain hasn't tapped into an otherwordly area?

I used to live across the street from a gentleman that was schizophrenic (mildly) he heard voices but wasn't violent in any way. Whenever he would go off his meds you would see him outside having a "conversation" with someone. He truely looked engaged as if talking to someone real. I often wondered at that point if it was real and just something the 10% of my brain wasn't privy to.

I heard that we use all of our brain, just not all at the same time ( ie only ten percent at a time). Somehow that infomation got taken the wrong way and now its 'common knowledge' that we only use a small part of our brain instead of the whole thing.

Can anyone verify that...? Im not sure if its true or not.

I was very disturbed, absolutely no pun intended, to see this thread. As previous posters have stated, there are forms of mental illness that are very common and very real.

I am not normally an angry person, but this thread has done it. The OP should review the motto of this web site and thoroughly consider his/her motives for beginning a discussion of this nature.

Coming from someone who lives with a person who suffers from a form of mental illness....I can tell you its very real.

I read about a man some time ago when I was researching schizophrenia who seemed to have it all. A beautiful girlfriend, a sweet, high paying job, a nice house...

After several disturbing episodes the man was diagnosed as schizophrenic and lost everything basically. He left work, he 'scared' his girlfriend away. He was institutionalised and lost his house. His life was basically


MacDonagh you are saying that schizophrenics basically do bad things then blame there mental illness for it. You say 'Such a person kills his wife because he wanted too' and that schizophrenics ' want to achieve something'. So therefore you are saying that any 'disturbing' thought a schizophrenic has is just them trying to find something to validate there actions.

I dont think that man that lost everything wanted to. I dont think people who are so frightened and paranoid kill because they want to. I dont think people who are institutionalised want to be there. I think that if you did a quick survey of people who had a mental illness...any kind...if they wanted that illness the answer would be no.

(Just my 2 cents!)

MacDonagh,

The difference between someone who rejects thoughts of malevolence and someone who acts upon them to victimize one or more innocents, is often characterized as "mental illness." The discarnate world overlaps our own and everyone is constantly influenced by those on the Other Side. The people who are unstable psychologically, unprincipled spiritually, and who do not have the emotional strength and/or desire to reject a negative influence, become an agent of evil for inferior spirits to work through. It happens all the time. Which is why it is common for a mass murderer/rapist to claim that he was just acting upon the voices in his head. Those voices are not generated by their brains but represent the thoughts and feelings of spiritually retarded people on the Other Side.

How do I know this?

I know this from my decades of experience in dealing with and in counseling people who have suffered from discarnate demonic attack.

The vast majority of the medical and psychoanalytical community do not recognize the discarnate demonic element - much less are prepared to deal with it. So they just label the "disorder" with an impressive name and then drug-up the victim.

Part of the problem in understanding stems back to the Freudian paradigm. Sigmund Freud was an atheist who did not believe in life after life, life before birth, and the discarnate dimensions. Consequently, all his psychoanalytical conclusions and psychological paradigm was distorted accordingly.

Those of us who are experienced in this area of life, in contrast to the Freudian paradigm, know that when we go to sleep at night, one part of our brain does not "wake up" to create dreams for us. What really happens is that when one is resting, one becomes more receptive to telepathic communication from discarnates that is usually clothed in symbolic representation (dreams). Most dreams are not spiritual or helpful because most of the people on the Other Side are neither.

Another truth that Freud never considered, much less espoused, is that each and every thought that "just pops in there" is actually channeled from Spirit, which includes ALL hallucinations.

The answers in dealing with and in preventing many of the "mental disorders" is to strengthen the body, mind and spirit. One does this by:

1. Striving to live by The Golden Rule:
2. Serving others;
3. Prayer and visualization techniques;
4. Meditation for mental clarity, self-healing, and to receive spiritual guidance/insight;
"Prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening to God."
5. Qigong for self-healing and centeredness;
6. Careful nutritional supplementation which includes lots of B-vitamins, calcium, lecithin, vitamin E and Omega-3.
7. Spiritual and self-education.

Many do a lot of the above now. But in the psychoanalytical and medical community at large, it is still too progressive.

Besides, it is more lucrative to pharmaceutical companies - as well as to doctors and therapists - to simply prescribe drugs to patients.

Everyone is responsible for their actions, and even their intentions.

[edit on 9-5-2006 by Paul_Richard]

Originally posted by MacDonagh
Because of this, we excuse them as moral agents, just like we excuse, children, wild beasts, plants, and rocks because of their lack of rationality.

I don't believe that's the case. We hold crazy nutcases responsible for their actions, just in a different way than those folks who go out and create havoc with a completely clear mind and evil intent. Don't you think we should? You don't think there's a difference between somebody doing something because they have a slippery grip on reality, as opposed to somebody who purposely goes out and does something they absolutely know is wrong, but they do it anyway?

There is a little thing in the law called "intent," which goes hand-in-hand with "mens rea." If you run somebody over with your car "accidentally," maybe because the windshield was all fogged up or something, you didn't mean to do it. You could have stopped or not driven when with the window fogged up, but you had to get somewhere. You'll probably face some charges, vehicular manslaughter, perhaps. But you probably won't do hard time. Compare that with what would happen if you ran somebody over with your car in broad daylight because you wanted to kill them, and you succeeded. What do you think the punishment should be? The action and result is pretty much the same. Car runs over a guy and kills him. Why should we go easier on the person who didn't mean to do it, who just couldn't see good through the windshield?

Same kind of thing. It's just that the windshield in some people's minds aren't as clear as others.

Many voices don't tell people to do harmful things, simply confusing ones. A friend has this, a voice told him to go to an ATM as there would be money there waiting for him. When he got there it laughed at him, he also got a compulsion to shave his head and eyebrows. You seem to have based your examples on horror conventions, and include a very narrow range of cases.

Originally posted by factfinder38
I think you are wrong. Do you know any of these people? I do know 2 that have this problem and they do buy flowers but maybe not for the same reasons you and I might.
You will only read about the bad things these people do.

It's best to definately look at this with an open mind. People always love to jump to conclusions and eventually ridicule and say i don't believe in this or that, or i don't believe in victims. But we don't know the entire story either, the columbine kids had alot of problems, no one wanted to listen to them, they were on massive drugs, they blew up and look what happened. The only way we can treat them is if we take the good and the bad, and keep an extremly open mind on it. But i'll ask a question if a person is sleepwalking and kills, is he/she at fault when they weren't conscience?

Originally posted by Periphery
Many voices don't tell people to do harmful things, simply confusing ones. A friend has this, a voice told him to go to an ATM as there would be money there waiting for him. When he got there it laughed at him, he also got a compulsion to shave his head and eyebrows. You seem to have based your examples on horror conventions, and include a very narrow range of cases.

I base my conclusions on decades of personal experience as well as from those I have counseled over the years.

The confusing voices are not the issue here but the ones that influence people to do harm to innocents. I could care less about minor manipulations like the supposed examples you mentioned, as situations such as those are not diagnosed as "mental disorders."

[edit on 9-5-2006 by Paul_Richard]

I suppose every time a lion chomps on a gazelle it must be because it has Schizophrenia! 50 years ago Schizophrenia meant one thing 50 years from now it will likely mean something else and 50 years from then it will mean what it meant 100 years prior. Have you ever noticed how absurd science can sound when it gets itself all so arrogant and full of itself? I too have studied many areas of psychology for various reasons and found it quite unsteady in terms of reliability. But one has to ask from what "balance and measure" are we referring to in the spacetime? I mean there are infinite possible measurements and outcomes and currently we describe mental reality with a dsm-iv and somehow this makes sense because we can read momentary eeg's? Any measurement is simply a speck of dust in the vastness of infinite realities, science is capable of detecting so few senses and quantum mechanics shows that there are multiple "unseen" realms in existence we are unable to account or measure only through mathmatics of sequentiality and comparison. That's it....two types of science that describe a vast majority of the reasearch, yet there are infinite possible ways to measure, how meaningless and arrogant to assume such a small area of measurement can account for infinite possibilities. There are so many infinite factors that go into any spacetime and to place all bets in say what a EEG says today versus just tomorrow or next year simply defines the world so narrowly. Not to mention to place measurements into terms that quantify a specific mental state, as if a mental state is static, sigh, there is so much we clearly do not understannd, meanwhile many act as if they are fully aware of all these infinite possibilities and that they can be measured, i fear we will still be here 100 years from now, making similar pronouncements about the latest mind reader 2100 machine and how it's so much more accurate than the one the aliens gave us last year, lol.

I must apologise if I offended any folk with my boorish bluntness, as I fear it may have come across wrong. What I've tried to bring about is a wee debate about the concept of mental illness and if I've offended anyone on this subject, I apologise. However, I must contest some of the concepts of mental illness. And here is why. Modern science rely on laws untouched by human desire, or motivation. We use the same physical laws to explain why a plane flys and crashes, the same chemical laws to explain why this drug gives positive and negative effects, and the same biological laws to explain how cells maintain the organism and how these cells can become cancerous, and how they can destroy the organism. The point is that there isn't a set of rules to describe a set of normal bodily functions and another set of rules to describe the abnormal functions of the body.

In the science called psychiatry, the laws are reversed. We have one set of rules describing and explaining the mentally healthty person, and another set of rules to describe and explaining the mentally ill person. The mentally healthy bloke is viewed as a responsible moral agent. He makes decisions and decides accordingly on what his best options are; like for example, he chooses to marry his beloved. In contrast, the mentally ill patient is viewed as a idle agent, as he has fallen into difficulty either biologically, chemically, or physically, and has a mental illness.
I guess what I'm trying to say is or put in words is that 'we' attribute acceptable behaviours to reason, and unacceptable behaviours to causes.

Ta, for reading. And I apologise if I offended anyone in my first post. It came across wrong I think.

when a patient says he has gone to space
he has
reality is what we make it
if 90percent of the world started to hear voices in there head
and you did not
you would be the one with a mental illness
i think you have a good point MacDonagh

Originally posted by MacDonagh
Okay, I've just been thinking about folk with mental disorders, folk who do bad things because they are schizophrenic, or temporary insanity. Those who have schizophrenia, or temproary insanity are apparently devoid of rationality,

The prison population has relatively few people with associative disorders. Although most in there tried to state they were "not themselves".

If you take into account all the people who do wrong, seldom is it the case they didn't know what they were doing; else they would not have been able to do it.

This God told me to, is quickly eroded by the fact internal impulse is overriden by fear of being caught and punished.

As an interesting point, according to crime statistics: You are much more likey to be hurt, physically, by someone you know and trust.

As an interesting point, according to crime statistics: You are much more likey to be hurt, physically, by someone you know and trust.

good point