ATS and Mental Illness

Originally posted by kevinunknown
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

I think you have said your peace, I am not changing my mind. All you are doing now is trolling going on and on until I say oh yeah I agree with you, I am not going to do that, regardless of how much you think of yourself. Do you agree with me that ATS fuels psychotic delusions and that there is a real possibility that it might lead to people stopping their medication or disregarding the professional information they are given. That is a very real problem that could result as a person going on ATS.

That's your problem Kevin you need to stop imagining what you think should bind anyone else.

That is what people are taking objection too.

No ATS does not need mental health police to censor the membership.

What it needs are creative and skeptical minds too that create real content other than just wanting to bash other members and control how the site is managed and self promote themselves.

You have failed to display in any form that your method of banning people based on statements that don't violate the Terms of Service Agreement will help them in any way shape or form.

In fact you have failed to display that you have done anything yourself to ever help the mentally ill in any way shape or form.

Emptying out bed pans isn't exactly a Freudian science Kevin.

A telephone switch board operator that works in a mental facility is no more qualified to diagnose or treat mental illness than an orderly that works in one.

It's a bad idea, an unfounded bad idea, being proferred for all the wrong reasons.

It's that simple.

You are welcome to keep trying to promote censorship of the boards, and to categorize members in broad strokes in unflattering ways, and the members are free to reject that.

Welcome to ATS!

reply to post by kevinunknown

Do you agree with me that ATS fuels psychotic delusions and that there is a real possibility that it might lead to people stopping their medication or disregarding the professional information they are given. That is a very real problem that could result as a person going on ATS.

I have not gotten the H1N1 swine flu virus inoculation because of this site and I'm glad I haven't. How about you kevinunknown? Have you been inoculated for swine flu yet?

I have not been diagnosed as being mentally ill by the way. Just recently I was asked if I would like to have that shot and I declined and told the nurse why. She responded by agreeing with me one hundred percent and then confided in me that everything we hear on the news isn't always true. I laughed because she said that in a whisper as if she would get in trouble for letting me know that!

She might be mentally ill kevinunknown. Would you approve of the likes of this nurse perusing these boards?

reply to post by jackflap


I did get the inoculation and didn’t have any side effects other than a bit of sore arm. If the nurse was advising you directly not to take the vaccine then I am pretty sure that’s a breach of the NMC code. The decision not to get it however is always yours and I would not have forced you to get it. I can also tell you not to believe everything you hear about health care on the news, doesn’t really mean much. If it went the other way and you did get swine flu then your story would be very different, and it is likely that some people have refused medication purely from what they have read on ATS.

Originally posted by Xcalibur254
reply to post by truthquest

 

There are however valid and reliable surveys that can be given that do a pretty good job of helping flesh out a diagnosis. The most famous of these is the Beck Depression Index. Then there are tests like the MMPI that test for a wide variety of disorders, with numerous sub-scales, that has been standardized against people who display the disorders. More work has gone in to calibrating the MMPI than probably any other test in existence. So, it is not all guess work like you seem to believe.

I looked up MMPI and find it to be a fancy name for a guessing tool... not a real physical test. Its a bunch of questions like one of those online quizzes you can take to find out if your a sex-aholic or whatever. There is no machine or blood test that can confirm or deny the majority of mental disorders. So once again I emphasis that the mental health workers making the decisions on what disorder someone has are being ridiculously overconfident.

If survey questions are so reliable, lets throw out the MRI/cat scan machines and just give people quizzes to make the diagnosis for people. Lets throw out the fancy microscopes in hospital tech labs and just give people surveys to find out which bacteria and viruses are infecting them. I know a med tech who showed me around the hospital lab and he must have 20+ different machines in his lab to work with making a diagnosis. Yet none of them seem to have ever diagnosed ADHD.

Originally posted by kevinunknown
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

I think you have said your peace, (that's piece kev) I am not changing my mind. All you are doing now is trolling going on and on until I say oh yeah I agree with you, I am not going to do that, regardless of how much you think of yourself. Do you agree with me that ATS fuels psychotic delusions and that there is a real possibility that it might lead to people stopping their medication or disregarding the professional information they are given. That is a very real problem that could result as a person going on ATS.

Kevin kevin kevin, have you learned nothing but dogma? I would like to know what level you are trained to and when. Personally I think you're an auxilliary. To know when you were trained is critical..there have been so many half cocked ideas coming from so called mental health professionals in the time I've been involved I'd like to know what period of nonsense your training fits into.

My partner was a journalist in the late 70's and early 80's in Israel. War broke out with lebanon and he came back to britain to apply for his press card to go to beirut, had depression (common in war zones) and was diagnosed and hospitalised. He has been suffering at your profession's hands ever since.

During that time I have heard some really stupid theories about mental illness. How about 'the schizophrenics brain is 2c wamer than a normal persons' ?(early 80's)or 'a schizophrenic has more fluid on the brain than a normal person'? (late 80's).

Don't you know how the meds operate. This chemcal imbalance rot created by pharmaceutical giants for giant profits? Don't you know kev?

The dopamine and seratonin uptake inhibitors (old meds and new meds right kev?) Well they restrict the dopamine or whatever in the brain by blocking it's connectors. But...kevin...and its a big but...the brain does not accept that. So when people are on these meds the brain compensates and starts producing MORE of these chemicals to redress the balance. That means that should someone stop taking the meds they ARE left with a chemical overload and that DOES present as psychosis. It can resolve itself over time and with medical assistance. It's just that you guys don't assist people at times like these.

Remember Stephen Fry's tv show? Right at the end of the last episode in the series they interviewed a drug company researcher who said that managing psychosis was perfectly possible without drugs..however...once on these drugs you could NEVER actually come OFF them because THE WITHDRAWALS PRESENT AS PSYCHOSIS. GET IT YET KEV?

The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive

In Scotland my lad we treat mental illenss by containment and drug therapy....that is purportedly due to a lack of money. It is not necessarily the best treatment.

And I have that from the horses mouth kevin. FROM YOUR BOSS.

What Kev here fails to grasp is that real mental illness, not personality disorders, are caused by biological and physical abnormalities of the brain, mainly the frontal and temporal lobes.

NOT by things going on in the environment.

In other words, if someone who is Bi-Polar goes off his medications, he is going to go manic REGARDLESS of the content he has access to on the internet.

A paranoid schizophrenic who goes off his meds is going to go psychotic REGARDLESS of the content he access to on the internet.

If you ban the mentally ill from ATS, they are STILL going to be mentally ill.

What Kev is doing is taking the old "people, places, and things" from pop psychology and saying that if you ban mentally ill people from certain "people, places, and things" such as ATS, they won't go insane.

This is absolute rubbish.

It is called the nature/nuture debate from psychology, NOT psychiatry.

Nature/nuture debate-

Does "nature" cause mental illness (for example, epigenetics, brain function),

OR

does "nurture" cause mental illness (for example, ATS, things going on in the environment, see Behaviorism).

If you want to ban anyone from ATS, you should ban the people who give the mentally ill bad advice about medication.

Medications are necessary for the mentally ill, even if these medications are for the most part in the "dark ages."

So, what is the topic exactly Kev?

Why not just present it like this-

1)

a)

b)

2)

etc.

DSM-IV Codes-

en.wikipedia.org...

Kev, could you please list for us out of the DSM-IV which specific disorders qualify someone for being banned from ATS?

reply to post by Hyperwave


Environment and biology both play key roles. It's called the diathesis stress model. A person's genetics and biology predispose them to a disorder, but it usually requires environmental stressors for the disorder to manifest. Depending on how predisposed someone is determines how extreme a stressor is required for a disorder to manifest. It goes back to the nature/nurture debate which, despite what the MSM seems to think, has been over for decades now. The agreed upon answer was that both genetics and environment play a major role, which is why the heritability of most disorders is only about .5.

In Short Kevin,
I am equally suspect of those that believe they and they alone can pass judgement and set standards, self appointed governors and regulators who decide the acceptable benchmarks, in my opinion are more dangerous.
The globe has enough gods.

This is the true face of mental illness-

anxietypanichealth.com...

Not some dude in a psych ward claiming that ATS made him do it.

The sad brutal truth is that when Kev walks around in the real world, he's most likely diagnosing half the people he sees, silently fantasizing about banning them too from whatever whim happens to be the prize in the happy meal he's munching on.

Originally posted by HappilyEverAfter
In Short Kevin,
I am equally suspect of those that believe they and they alone can pass judgement and set standards, self appointed governors and regulators who decide the acceptable benchmarks, in my opinion are more dangerous.
The globe has enough gods.

I kind of thought this was the perfect post to close this argument with...it sums up in a nutshell how ludicrouly silly Kevs OP and arguments have been. (Kev left a while back with his tail firmly between his legs...and his needle stuck in the groove.)

It does however concern me deeply that a character like kev is loose among vulnerable people. (Especially as he's loose in Scotland where I too reside). His attitude, sense of superiority, 'us and them' mentality re patients and staff, his obstinacy and dictatorial tendencies, are, i am afraid to say, indicitive of the kinds of problem we in scotland face when trying to provide good quality care for people who need help. We have to get through the kevs of our system...those who prefer to impose their ideas of assistance without firstly speaking to the people they purport to be helping.

Originally posted by kevinunknown
It seems to be that almost every day now we have someone writing about their experiences of mental health but with a bit of a conspiracy twist. I am talking about statements like “I was abducted by Aliens and that is why i am mentally ill” or “I might be mentally ill but that is because of a glitch in the matrix”, and “I am not mentally ill rather I am being visited by God”.

All of the above statements are what any health professional would expect to hear form a person who is living with schizophrenia. Some can be very dark statements, like the man who once told me that he could only see death and how he perceived every waking moment as if it were hell. Another thought that the TV was trying to seal her thoughts and another man once told me that everybody else was mad because they all thought he was Jesus.

When people who are living with a significant mental health diagnosis on ATS they are confronted with two things that could be dangerous in their fragile state of mind. The first is an entire forum detected on the most part to expose medication as being unnecessary and even dangerous, it talks about how it can make us ill and even control us. The second danger comes from the people on ATS who fuel their psychotic delusions and build further mistrust in the health services. Sometimes people on ATS try to convince people who talk about a mental illness that they are not mentally ill rather they have some type of special incite or are being subjected to some form of mind control.

These claims to not benefit that person in anyway regardless if they are going through a psychotic period or not, they cast doubt over their very diagnosis and can encourage them to stop taking their medication. Its highly unethical and I suspect the only reason some ATS members like to give alternative explanations about what mental illness is, is because they are ignorant. I bet none of you would tell any relatives you may have who are living with a mentally illness that they are not mentally ill but just hearing the voice of God.

My own views are very much fitting with the status quo I believe what the medical community says about mental illness to be true. I also think that it would be advisable for any thread about mental health on ATS to be subject to the increased monitoring like the 9/11 forum. I would go as far to say any member who confesses to having experiences of a mental illness should be banned. I know that’s harsh but I really do think it’s for the best.

I once tried to argue about this on a thread about someone talking about their experiences of mental health and it’s fair to say I was flamed. It was also difficult for everyone because we all had to be sensitive to the OP. So for this reason I am starting this as a tread to discuss everyone’s views on mental illness so any views you have on any aspect of mental illness feel free to contribute.

EDIT: I should be more specific with the idea of banning people. I am only talking about people who have confessed to a diagnosis that causes delusions. But would support strong moderation of all threads about mental illness (including this one)

[edit on 20-7-2010 by kevinunknown]

Wow anyone that confesses to having a MI should be banned? I have paranoid schizophrenia and being a member of this community hasn't effected my illness one bit. If anything after reading some of the things on this board it just reminds me there are people with more F-ed up beliefs then me. I've seen some religous people with more delusions then I've ever had.

Yeah I agree there are some ignorant people on here. My goal is to help people understand MI. I run into stigmas and stereotypes all the time due to my illness.

Schizophrenics stop taking they're meds all the time. A lot of schizophrenics don't believe there is anything wrong with thierselves to begin with. It's just the nature of the illness. But alot of schizophrenics have insight to they're illness like me. I know better then to buy into BS.

Did you know that 1% of the US populations has schizophrenia? There are 3.5 million people in this country with it. Schizophrenia is the second most common mental illness other then depression. There are more people with schizophrenia then parkinsons or alzheimers. There are also 5 types of schizophrenia with several different subtypes such as paranoid personalities. Not all schizophenics are the same or share the same symtoms. Lots of schizophrenics can go a lifetime without needing treatment.

As if living with this illness wasn't bad enough. I have to deal with all the ignorant people that don't know the first thing about it but think they do. You know what its like to date someone and everything is fine until someone tells them you have schizophrenia and then they dump you because of it? Or how about your own grandmother seeing a story in the news about a schizophrenic that molested someone and she thinks all schizophrenics are molestors? Or how about working at a job for 3 years without a problem then one day you tell a coworker you have the illness. Then within 2 days your being called into the union office with your boss demding to know what medications you take. Then fired 3 weeks later. I worked at that job for 3 years without a write up. Then I got 6 in two weeks after that.

In my personal life I don't even tell people I meet I have schizophrenia. If anyone notices any of my problems I just tell them I have a seizure disorder. I met a guy that had a sister with schizphrenia. I knew him for over a year before I told him I had it. He said he would have never geussed I had it in a million years. The only reason I told him was because he mentioned his sisters illness.

The internet is the only opertunity I get to talk about it freely without a fear of being stereotyped. For the most I part I just try to educate people about it.