I won’t cover everything, because a lot of these further posts are the same crap as the first set, just rehashed. Here we go:
The question of mental illness, I don’t believe, is timeless, but it is certainly in line for one of the more pervasive problems in the thinking world. Many associate genius with insanity, but I question this and regard it as moot. It seems more that insanity opposed genius, but, suffice it say, it is still worthwhile to know your enemy.
thinksweet “don’t be afraid and ashamed of mental illness, or your self shortcomings, because in truth, nothing negaitves exist. nothing negative exist.â€
I’m afraid you’re talking semantics. If everything sucked could we say that no good exists? I think if you’re going to start turning everything into a triumph you won’t know where the put your foot in the throes of adversity.
onlyhuman “in my understanding of the context mental illness is a from of defense mechanism that is, at least to some extent, harmful to the person or those around them.â€
I fail to see where hallucinating, seeing things like wolves pacing the walls in your room and glaring at you, is a defence mechanism. Perhaps you could make a [mostly erroneous] claim that this person night fear wolves and is trying to protect themselves from them – this being some kind of ward against them – but in urban and suburban areas, wolves are not a commonality. Perhaps it is more that some deep-seated thought construct is responsible for this person seeing wolves, but that is far too lateral a precept to be a defence mechanism.
onlyhuman “An example being paranoia is often triggered by betrayal of trust in close friends and family, which makes sense, since if those close to you will try to harm you than it makes sense to keep your guard up.â€
The funny thing about clinical paranoia is that it is generally not set off by and reasonable parallel to the substance of the delusion. Stress generally triggers relapses and the chemical factor kicks in and it tends to operate more as we have covered in my latter deposition.
Paranoid ideations, however, are a different thing… but this is still not clinical paranoia. I will concede that most paranoia seems less than bizarre, but these delusions are not rooted in reality, as is part of the clinical profile for paranoiacs. Better to say that this is triggered by environment but the delusion is not inherent, in its exacerbated form, in the patient’s field of experience.
onlyhuman “The problem comes when said defense mechanism grows to the point where you are unable to override it with reason and you essentually seperate yourself from the world because of your fears.â€
Here you are actually on to something. Paranoia approaches melting point when the worry becomes delusional. The real bitch of it, though, is that these worries are incipient paranoia, and wouldn’t have surfaced if not for prodromal schizophrenia, for instance. In a nutshell, these states to not precede the illness.
statiktech “You say that a lot of these mental illnesses are defense mechanisms, which I totally agree with. In some cases these mechanisms are blown out of proportion in a sense, like paranoia, OCD, depression, isolation, not to mention the gang of phobias and manias that affect various people. I can see the role of the defense mechanisms in these things like shutting yourself in to avoid danger or contact with people, or someone with OCD washing their hands every few minutes to protect from germs, or someone with excessive paranoia always wondering if people are out to get them because they want to protect themselves.â€
Some of this might well prove true, and survive even my scrutiny – however: the problem with saying that OCD, for example, is a defence mechanism is blurring the lines a bit. I shall elaborate: the fears an OCD patient experiences are surely some of the fears that are, a little more, rooted in reality, real problem is that these behaviours are not. Even the patient realizes that their actions are unreasonable… few do not.
So, again, it’s all down to how you slice the pie; one or the other; the chicken and the egg; Larry, Curly, and Moe. Perhaps this condition might even be something which is a legitimate fear – germs certainly exist, and abound, but the symptomology is beyond ever this reasoning.
statiktech “owever, in some cases, like the above mentioned Mr. Dahmer or Ted Bundy, the issue seems more offensive. Im sure, in early stages, they dealt with defense mechanisms such as paranoia, schitzophrenia, obsessions, manias, etc. because they knew something was amiss. But when the killing and raping and games of domination come into play these individuals are no longer protecting themselves or struggling for survival. They are threatening and destroying the defenses and survival of others.â€
I don’t think I would say that psychosis has much to do with the serial killer mentality. It isn’t listed as a diagnostic object in either the DSM-IV TR or the ICD-10, but pure psychology had compartmentalized it.
These people are obviously quite sane, not driven to the edge, not stifled by society so they lash out, and surely not because they always got picked last for softball games in grade 4 gym class. I would attest that these people have a mind set that, while aberrant, is completely conducive to everyday logic, they just accept and repel things of which we are not currently aware.
onlyhuman “as a simple oppinion that seems very to the point and very accurate, but bear in mind that with the first case mentioned if these defense mechanisms had been dealt with before the breaking point then the offense mechanisms would never have come into play, and though they are conciderably harder to deal with on this level the can still be dealt with.â€
I would contest the idea of offensive mechanisms – perhaps they are either defence mechanisms you cannot classify, yourself, as something which would herald change for their betterment. I would agree that this section of my dissertation of thin, and probably flawed, but I believe these people are not offensive without it being an article of defence, but I don’t buy into the ‘defensive’ paradigm to begin with, so I am disgressing.
statiktech “Hmm, I think your choice of words is a little confusing. I don’t think he was talking about preventing mental illness. The best you can hope to do as far as prevention is to just raise and educate a child in his/her developmental stages the best you can.â€
I think we have all hit on something valuable here: prevention is key. You can’t, per se, prevent someone from developing a thought disorder or a mood disorder, but you can recognize the potential for this problems and take therapeutic precautions. I do not believe, however, that educating children will really help the problem, though.
statiktech “However, even if the question is “can we treat all mental illnesses” the answer would still be no, in my opinion.â€
Simply: yes.
statiktech “This is also why we have establishments to house the criminally insane, because most of the people there are believed to be a threat to themselves and/or others and no treatment can effectively change that.â€
The problem with the near-axiomatic with your thesis is that the criminally insane are often not mentally ill. Criminal insanity is put down to people who cannot stop abusing rules and regulations. You might say Antisocial Personality Disorder and other give regard for momentum in this direction, but personality disorders aren’t considered to be clinical disorders in the first place. They fall into the Axis II category, which are trait disorders as opposed to the state disorders as accounted for by the Axis I (which is the rubric something like schizophrenia falls under). The Axis II also encapsulated mental retardation, but are retarded people really mentally ill; I suppose, at worse, it could be a moot point.
statiktech “In the context of where the discussion is going, I do think that people who have the potential of a psychotic break can be treated to prevent them from becoming a threat. Though, even if the individual learns to cope and manage his episodes, he still has an illness and the potential to break and become a threat no matter what stage his illness is caught in.â€
Yes.
And before I get ahead of myself, I will close this communication on what perhaps will be a more irritating note: no one is perhaps more fucked up than they are willing to allow themselves to be. Mental patients are not “fucked up†I a sense, they are merely transgressive to the positive inertia of society.
In France psychoanalysis and homeopathy are the order of the day. Whether this is more problematic that efficacious than our ideas and protocols farther west, I am unsure, but it seems that deranged people can, indeed, fit in, perhaps still with limited effectiveness, but they still serve to maintain at least enough composure to find themselves at a similar level to most humans they encounter.
Perhaps I am full of shit, but I believe mental illness is not the entity you all are making it out to be. Have fun with it, kids.