Psychology/Psychiatry

[zabu of nΩd]

I would just like to say that if you hypnotize a schizophrenic and say if, like my friend Stu, they hear voices in their head, you can tell them to turn the voice so low that they don't hear it anymore.

The thing most people with real mental illness need are options for response. Obsessive compulsives are just stuck in a loop, created my mental images of something bad happening and a associated anxious bad feeling. Give them a way out of the loop that feels better and they will take it. Same with phobics. Have them feel relaxed and do some double dissociative, where they watch themselves watching themselves in a phobic situation. Then as they step into the situation, they stay calm , and learned a new response which can be kept.

If you know someone with anxiety, tell them to toss a ball or something, back and forth. Anxiety is just a buildup of one side of your brain.

the thing is that there is no one who isn't mentally ill, its just some people can control it and others can't. We hallucinate in daydreams, or when doing math, etc. The problem people have is that they don't know how to control their thinking.

I'm sure you can imagine anyone's voice in your head, Even hear one when you read. Does that make you a schizophrenic? No, its the lack of control over those voices. The lack of options.

Boy, you sure know a lot about psychology. I bet you could open up your own psychiatric office.

 

[Silver Incubus]

Boy, you sure know a lot about psychology. I bet you could open up your own psychiatric office.

Everything I said is provable so joke all you want. Psychiatric professionals for the most part are making patients worse then better.

Pills do more damage then good. They are only supplied by the big pushers who get major kickbacks from the drug industry. All the cures for most of these things can be found in people who have overcame these problems and finding out how they did it shows that solutions for the mind come from within not in pill form.

Not to mention the increased rate in psychotic episodes for those on anti-depressants like Prozac and Paxil etc. So what do they do when that happens? They prescribe anti-psychotic pills. Its sad really.

 

[Seditious]

Boy, you sure know a lot about psychology. I bet you could open up your own psychiatric office.

unfortunately, once he tells them 'just toss a ball' they wont really need his services anymore. So his marvelous magic cures just aren't profitable enough to go into business.

 

[Silver Incubus]

unfortunately, once he tells them 'just toss a ball' they wont really need his services anymore. So his marvelous magic cures just aren't profitable enough to go into business.

well lets see here. You need both sides of your brain to use both arms. The part of your brain that controls your fear doesn't control your arms, so focusing on something that requires brain stabilization would thus stabilize the brain and get rid of the anxiety. What is magic about that?

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Everything I said is provable so joke all you want. Psychiatric professionals for the most part are making patients worse then better.

Pills do more damage then good. They are only supplied by the big pushers who get major kickbacks from the drug industry. All the cures for most of these things can be found in people who have overcame these problems and finding out how they did it shows that solutions for the mind come from within not in pill form.

Not to mention the increased rate in psychotic episodes for those on anti-depressants like Prozac and Paxil etc. So what do they do when that happens? They prescribe anti-psychotic pills. Its sad really.

So... do you have any references on hand to go with all these claims? 'Cause, no offense, but it really sounds like you're talking out your ass here. You make it sound like each of these disorders is just some misunderstanding on the patient's part, and that a simple mental exercise of one kind or another can provide a perfect solution that no amount of drugs could. And your attitude toward drugs is clearly biased, so unless you have some statistics indicating the sweeping failures of medications, I'm going to disregard all your blanket condemnations of them.

Brain activity is just a big sequence of electrical and chemical interactions anyway. The whole idea of drug therapy is to alter the chemical balance in the brain to a healthier state. While it's always possible for someone to bring about major changes in their brain chemistry through 'sheer will', it's rare to find people who are mentally disciplined enough to have that much control over their state of mind - and it's not reasonable to expect most mentally ill people to solve their problems though mental exercises when drugs offer such an effective shortcut.

People who advocate the 'mind over matter' approach generally seem to be the type who hold some mystical reverence for the human body, and see it as too sacred to be tampered with. In reality, it's more likely that the human body is just another machine that can be studied, analyzed, and manipulated with predictable results.

 

[Silver Incubus]

Its called cognitive behavioral therapy. Look it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

the thing about the ball is to alleviate the anxiety, not the thing causing it. Knowing there is a way out of anxiety sometimes stops the anxiety attacks from happening, but it is different depending on the person.

edit: Oh and pills only stop the symptom not what is causing it. Not to mention the damage it does to the brain and body.
Found this little article in a quick google search http://www.breggin.com/paxilproductliability1.html

 

[Seditious]

pills only stop the symptom not what is causing it.

precisely why it's a good combo with CBT as I said

 

[JoeVice]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_Voices_Network

 

[CatwomanEarache]

CBT is generally an approach to changing the way we think without the use of drugs, or maybe combined with the short term use of anti depressants/anti anxiety drugs.I once took Seroxat myself for a period of about a year, I found it fine apart from maybe causing a little tiredness especially in the afternoons. I came off it gradually over a period of months also ok, but now find its rarely prescribed due to withdrawal problems, in fact there are whole websites dedicated to it, message boards set up by those affected by it. Maybe it affects individuals in different ways but I had no problems on it whatsoever.

 

[CatwomanEarache]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/2310197.stm

 

[Έρεβος]

CBT is generally an approach to changing the way we think without the use of drugs, or maybe combined with the short term use of anti depressants/anti anxiety drugs.I once took Seroxat myself for a period of about a year, I found it fine apart from maybe causing a little tiredness especially in the afternoons. I came off it gradually over a period of months also ok, but now find its rarely prescribed due to withdrawal problems, in fact there are whole websites dedicated to it, message boards set up by those affected by it. Maybe it affects individuals in different ways but I had no problems on it whatsoever.

Direct side effects are not the problem with drugs.

 

[CatwomanEarache]

Direct side effects are not the problem with drugs.

Can you be a little more specific in your reply, that was too subtle for moi

 

[infoterror]

Socialized cost is.

 

[NikeGoddess]

Mental disorders are extremely real. Treatment should be provided to those who need it. I have no problem with psychiatry and psychotropic medications. My only concern is, medications have been dispensed casually for conditions which have not been thoroughly evaluated.

 

[Bone_Machine]

I can only say in response that mental illness is very real because I have seen my brother have manic epsiodes as a bi-polar schizo-affective person. He needs heavy doses of anti-psychotics to keep from having a relapse and the meds work because he has not had one for a long time now.

True there are unpleasant side-affects but it's better than the alternative of losing your grip on reality and having your mind start making up BS stories that you actually believe and start to act on, much to the detriment of your social life or even personal safety.

As someone who has also experienced psychosis in the form of schizophrenia I know it is a most terrifying thing to experience and know that it is something you can not control on your own, without medication. The meds available not may not be ideal but its the best thing available for someone who is losing their mind.

 

[Bone_Machine]

Or is madness perhaps a societal or cultural construct as Foucault postulates? Surely there are truly mad people, but perhaps most are not mad? Perhaps most who are labelled with a disorder or need drugs, are actually lashing out at a injust and repressive society, at work, at stress, or at the incredible lack of creativity allowed but in a few money-making fields?

I don't know how you can suggest that madness is a cultural construct. Our bodies can be ill, our brain is our body, our brain can be ill too, and just like any other illness that requires medication like anti-biotics, so does some mental illness require medication. The reason it is much harder to diagnose than a bodily illness is it's your freaking brain! Your brain is the most complex organ in your body and the organ that is least known about because of this.

Sure there are a lot of people who try to get drugs as soon as they feel a bit depressed or anxious but that doesn't negate the rest of the popullation who suffer from real disorders.

Anxiety disorder for example is very real - some people suffer from panic attacks which are very real physiological disorders where your heart rate increases or decreases, you can sweat more, hands shake etc. Then there are people who will go see a psychiatrist and exaggerate their anxiety level to get drugs. Because of the nature of anxiety disorders it is virtually impossible to tell when someone is lying or not about a certain level of anxiety, and so more often than not, if someone says they have extreme levels of anxiety, they get the drugs.

 

[monoxide_child]

why did everyone stop posting on this thread???