And make no mistake, its not that I believe every random guy yelling into a plastic bag in the middle of traffic is privy to some great truth...or that all who are happy are denying reality...I am instead pointing out that there is a lot of gray when it comes to gray matter...and we are only JUST beginning to take it apart. Even the mad men are still men. Men who happen to see the world differently.

I would also like to know how much influence pharmacuticals have on society and it's breakdown. The idea that it's o.k. to be psycotic as long as its controled in an approved direction is, to put it bluntly, crazy. It brins to mind musings on exactly who is in the asylum and who is in charge of it. Myself, being a Waylon Jennings fan, I have always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane. Thank you for this thread

I've been out of work as a plumber and heating engineer for over a year now, I had problems before being made unemployed. I had OCD in it's extremist form, which I battled myself without any help or medication from the doctor. I don't know how I did it but I over came that.

During my period of unemployment my self esteem is very low. I can't stand in a line at a super market with out feeling uneasy and thinking that people are thinking bad thoughts about me. All someone has to do is look at me and I think they are instantly thinking 'hes this hes that' . I've not felt like this before, I've given in and received medication from the doctor.

He put me on serotonin- I was on it no less than a month- I became very aggressive and my attitude was terrible which was completely out of character for me ! . I stopped them

Need to get working- thats the problem

I agree with what's being said here. Our existence is subject to our perspective, and our perspective is subject to our existence. I'm of the constitution where I believe a lot of these "disorders" or disabilities are conditions where the individual has been subject to an environment where they've been badly affected; which could have been from abuse from other people or some other negative experience.

In my brief experience I've become acquainted with people who have in their lives been diagnosed with everything from alcoholism to bi-polar disorder to those with psychotic tendencies; and this is all within my narrow cross-section of the urban demographic I'm familiar with. regarding the alcoholic, he was in my extended family and shortly prior to this he and his first wife who he had a child with had a complicated divorce and he lost his house. During this downward spiral he reverted to drunkenly humiliating himself in front of his friends; alienating his close family to the point where he was locked off from his child, and then turned to self harm... fortunately for him his family weren't prepared to see him descend any further and he entered into a few stints at rehab clinic and he was given a new lease of life in a new environment. The last time i saw him (around christmas) he'd not had a drink for over a year and a half and he's now a councilor and helps out people who are in similar situations to what he was in..."experience is the best education".

That was just my example on how badly situations can affect people, no doubt there are many of you on here who are familiar with people who are/were in similar circumstances; if only it weren't for his caring family then who knows where he would've ended up. I know men and women who went through bad times and they've regressed and ended up being diagnosed with mental disorders and even been sectioned into mental hospitals, though after a short stint they've recovered and gone on to carry on and succeed with their previous lives.

I think it's self determination coupled with your environment. It's what makes these conditional disorders distinct from all-pervasive mentally debilitating diseases. I don't believe anyone is born too completely different from one another, and these schizotypal/personality disorders (as all encompassing as the spectrum is) are the result of badly conditioned (through no fault of their own) children in negative environments that may even reinforce their behaviour in some cases. Giving these people medication programs with drugs designed to sedate their brains or to give them a dose of 'happiness' is insanity to me. What they need is councilling, to be assured that they are in fact not that much different from regular people.

We throw around perceptions of "good and bad" behaviour too much and associate them with "personality" which is in itself again a misleading construct. What's more worrying is how we often bundle together negative perceptions of people (either indepentally observed or from an outside source) and pack them into an all in one disorder, such as "aspergers syndrome" or "adhd" and then label young people with them; perfectly normal kids who just display some out of the ordinary behaviour (as we are all predisposed to at certain points) and then to have it reinforced by their parents who often see the diagnosis as a way to rationalise why their kids aren't "perfect kids" and are either too negligent, lazy, or out of touch or just unwilling to make a change to wake up to their ignorance. I've observed this many times in my personal experience, although separating the autism spectrum is a whole other controversial debate in itself; although it's something I've always tried to understand as my younger brother suffers from severe autism (couldn't live independentally, limited speech, very narrow behavioral pattern) and I believe that the way we treat autistic individuals is just as negligent of their specific needs on reflection...