What if you know your kid was going to be mentally ill?

I can not even begin to fathom how difficult a decision this would be in
practice.

I spoke to a couple last night who had paid for the MMR jab to be given
as separate injections. Even though the research was hokey and the
doctor debunked they didn't want to risk their child. They didn't want
their child to have autism.

The science of genetics will advance to the point where the risk of a
behavioural or emotional disorder can be assessed with a high degree of
accuracy. Most parents will get their information from the media and
will trust in the medical idea of mental illness. They dont want an ill
child.

This is a highly effective way to rid the world of mental illness. It
offers the potential to create a human race of mindless automons with
minimal emotional needs and capable of maximum productivity.

I would be dead sooner than live in that sort of world but I'm never
going to be a parent so would never have to face that sort of choice.

What would you do?

Ramble on science, genetics, ethics, children, diversity and mental health

Last night I had a conversation that reminded me what a real science is
like. It was enriching.

I was talking about semiconductor physics and quantuum mechanics with an
old friend of mine. He was explain just how crappy the science was. I
had to laugh and have a small cry inside. He didn't know anything about
mental health research.

Physicists and engineers have pushed the understanding of physical
reality ever further such that their accuracy is close to the truth,
certainly for the lay person.

He spoke to me about the problems if the bottom quark being discovered
at 3.5 times the estimated size. The hypothesis described by the complex
mathematical equations involved in sub-atomic physics must be proven by
the evidence collected from particle accelerators such as the Large
Hadron Collider.

This was a sign of how poor the science of quantum physics was but to me
it was a good sign. The scientist will continue to push for the truth
and not be swayed by dogma which can exist even in the greatest sciences.

I drew out a scale in front of him and marked a point near the top end
to show him where physics research was and another point near the bottom
end of the scale to indicate mental health research. The scale
represented the ability to reliably come up with the best approximation
of the absolute truth.

Mental health really is akin to alchemy. It is far from a real science.
Many smart men have made this point again and again.

It is unfair to criticise because I know just how difficult
understanding life and the human mind is. Application of positivistic
science hasn't elucidate the same quality of answers as was possible
with the physical world.

Mental health professonals don't seem to care that their science is like
alchemy. They apply techniques that are based on tiny effect sizes and
often poor quality experiments riddled with bias. The results can only
be applied if the exact same conditions used in the experiment are used
in practice however this doesn't happen which reduces the value of
evidence-based medicine to the point where trial and error is more
suitable than offering a certain type of therapy or medication..

The science is evolving and as the new fashion for psychosocial
interpretations of mental health comes into season the biomedical
model's swan song is psycho- and pharmocogenetics. Psychogenetics offer
for the first time the possibility of identifying those who may be
predisposed to certain 'illnesses', e.g. a person could be identified as
fitting the criteria for schizotaxia through their genetic code rather
than an operational cluster of symptoms. Pharmocogenitics offers the
hope of first time 'treatment' using medication and enables the use of
dangerous drugs with otherwise couldn't be considered because of the
risk of death.

Research into the physical world rarely had much consideration of ethics
however it is essential in mental health and the application of the
research results as well as the research itself. To prove nature versus
nature Dr.Money decided to change the sex of a baby (with his parents
consent) after his penis was burnt off in a circumcision accident.
Thankfully nothing like this would ever happen today.

The genetic map of human behaviour and type will offer the greatest
opportunity for preventative 'treatment' and the greatest opportunity
for humankind to wreck the gene pool and the diversity of the human
race. Identification of individuals who may or may not have emotional or
behavioural problems through genetic assay could be used to make certain
types of human disappear.

Mental illness is a societal judgement based on whatever sociopolitcal
situation exists at the time and how well society and the human race is
adapted to the spectrum of the human race and behaviour. Parents would
want the best outcome for their children so they would be expected to do
genetic tests to assess the risk of mental illness (and with time this
may be adapted to understand the psychological type of the parents and
their psychosocial capability to form an undisordered individual). Given
free will many would choose not to have a mentally ill child because
their understanding of mental illness is wholly a medical illness just
like any other illness, but it isn't.

Many parents would also want to screen for other conditions. If a parent
knew that their child had a risk of being born blind they would probably
choose not to have that baby. But people who are blind are part of the
human race and part of our diversity. Their lives are difficult because
society is still not fully adapted to the spectrum of the human
condition (the physical and even more so the mental condition). In the
ideal society, i.e. one that worked for everyone, their disability
wouldn't exist and their difference would be able to contribute to the
wealth of richness of homo sapiens.

The human race will be less without the blind and without the mentally
ill, in my opinion.

Mental distress as part of a feedback system for the soul

Pain in the physical body is a feedback system. Put your hand in fire
and it'll get burned without the burn pain sense immediately triggering
an autonomous reflex to withdraw from the flame. There is a physical
illness where children do not have the capability to feel pain and they
live very short lives because without that feedback system they can do
untold damage to themselves.

Mental distress may also be part of a feedback system. The symptoms are
in a sense a sign of an 'illness' (though not in the biomedical sense).

I don't know if this is fully recognoised by mental health practioners.
The diagnostic criteria for many illnesses often stipulates 2 weeks of
continuous symptoms as the minimum period. People are expected to bear
with their problems during that period (either because a bit of intense
misery is normal or the limitation of healthcare resources or something
else). I don't know if people are taught that this pain may be trying to
tell them something and that it has a purpose.

Someone must have written a book on this concept.

innocent until proven guilty

is a tenet of the justice system.

It is not a tenet of the mental health system. It should be because the
negative impact of overdiagnosis or misdiagnosis can be horrific for the
patient.

Another thought about what schizophrenia means

I don't know what schizogrippen means (the term used by Bleuler). I
think it may translate to "the group of schizophrenia" or perhaps "the
group of what was called dementia praecox but I've decided to call
schizophrenia/schizogruppen because I've reconceptualised it"

An alternative to relabelling and neologisms with the objective of improving outcomes

If negative outcomes caused by negative expectations associated with the
diagnosis and through stigma and self-stigma are the reason why the
label for the term schizophrenia is changing perhaps an alternative is
mad pride?

This is the anthesis of the politically correct movement. It is about
reclaiming words rather than changing them. Few people are allowed to be
proud to be mentally ill. If this were allowed then perhaps people
wouldn't feel so shit about being mad?

Can technology become designed for well being?

I've noticed over the last year or two more and more electronics
manufacturers are attempting to push the eco-friendliness of their
products. The engineers as always are driven by the market and the
marketing department (well explained in the Dilbert cartoons).

Computers can cause a lot of stress to people in high performance roles.
There are stories of city traders throwing non-functioning equipment at
support staff.

Technology is meant to make life better. In the modern age it may make
it worse. For example the social network application and email has led
to new levels of community and social connection across the world,
however there is now too much communication to deal with.

What if the new marketing tag line was, "this is a stress-free product"
and the product designers had this on their list of priorities. It's
worked reasonably well for Apple already. People pay a premium for this
quality.

It hasn't caught on as a fashion in the technology industry, yet.

A ramble and a rant on change in mental healthcare

If treatment for mental ill health understood that the 'illness' exists
in the individual as well as in society then mental healthcare must look
at it's objectives differently.

Treatment involves the old paradigm of mental health treatment combined
with changing society. In my opinion the latter is achieved by
destigmatising the symptoms of mental illness (not the cluster or the
diagnosis). It is also about building a society that understands that
most people at some point in their life wiill go through some sort of
crisis, and that modern society shouldn't be designed to work for the
average, 75% (the not 1 in 4), or 95% (the scientific measure of
confidence interval or something like that): it's for everyone.

Laws like the Disability Discrimination Act stipulate reasonable
adjustments for physical and mental disabilities. Reasonable adjustments
are provided for those who don't fit into the Industrial revolution
"factory" so provisions are provided. Some of these are also used to
advantage other groups. This is the start of the change in society that
is necessary for the mentally 'ill' and 'normal' people to be equal.

It is not enough.

Take the financial system. The personal credit system has supported the
developed nations continue to prosper over the last 40 years since the
destigmatisation of personal debt in the 1970s. It is based on the
assumption of continued employment. This is a poor assumption because a
lot of people will have a period of unplanned unemployment. The credit
system doesn't interface with the mental health system until recently
and only in debt collection. A person can take out a £10,000 loan when
manic with no checks however a system to prevent this could also
disadvantage those who suffer through life crisis.In times of
recklessness people can take all sorts of self-harming decisions. It's
not just financial risks.

The consumer market is a minefield of complex deals and offers designed
to confuse the buyer into spending more. These systems will disadvantage
people with low financial capability and may look to exploit them.

The mental ill may have poor opportunities in long term relationships
however I am unaware of the evidence to support this. My personal
experience is women prefer sane men as partners. To paraphrase Sheryl
Crow, "I'm not the kinda guy you take home." The swings of conditions
like bipolar can make a partner the light of a person's life or the bane
of their existence. Some people can handle this though.

Job opportunites are fewer and gaps in employment are a negative point
on an application. Even with the DDA many suffer discrimination and many
do not understand the power of the DDA.

Temporary cognitive impairments associated with many mental illnesses
and forms of distress affect performance. This is human however many
organisations want a perfectly uniform performance. A story about the
guy who invented the lightbox was he was the top salesperson at his
company in summer but was on the verge of getting fired in winter. Many
people do not understand this sort of cycle is common. This may also
disadvantage some people during education, for example a person going
through depression may score worse on an IQ test than someone in a state
of hypomania or in an average state of mind.

Since "The Great Confinement" the stigmatisation of madness has
increased significantly because the severely mentally ill disappeared
from view. Care in the community is starting to repair that mistake but
the root stigma of madness needs to be addressed. This will be a social
change movement that will take a century to complete. It may have
already started through the work of people like R.D. Laing.

Crisis can bring about change in a person and this is part of their
journey through life but few social systems understand this.

I have no idea if there has ever been a Prime Minister who had been
through severe mental illness.

Mental illness itself is still pathologised.

The list of areas where society could be improved to fit the full
spectrum of the human race would need a toilet roll. People with
physical disabilities have seen wheelchair ramps and lifts installed in
many buildings. I dream of a day when society will make the same effort
to include those it describes as mentally 'disabled'.

The central teachings of many religions are perhaps a place to start
looking for the solutions to mental health and mental health stigma.
Love thy neighbour. Help the leper. Don't want your neighbour's
donkey...no....not that one. Accept that without death and destruction
there can be nothing new. The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had
no tears.

An after thought on the relabelling of schizophrenia

Shit. Bugger. Damn and blast. I've forgotten about the power of the
placebo effect.

I haven't read the study but it's often quoted that brighter, more
colourful, better packaged pills work better. Side effects can exist
with placebo drugs. The results in homepathy and placebo-controlled ECT
show the power of the mind for healing. So changing the term makes sense
and could, perhaps, in the short term have some benefit. I'm unaware of
any study done on the effect of relabelling. I might have a look for
that at some point.

However, "super amazing ultra mega person" should be what the diagnosis
should be changed to, not social integration disorder or post trama
psychosis or even Care Bears.

More realistically ego death or spiritual crisis are positive
interpretations of a very distressing experience. The promotion of the
concepts behind these terms is equally important and I'd suggested
higher levels of well being are experienced by people who are aware of
these interpretations as well as the psychopathological interpretation,
i.e. brain illness and/or social dysfunction.

It ain't bad being mad but it ain't half fucking strange

This is one of the best quotes. I wish I could remember the guys name.
It might be Laurence. I can remember his face.

It was said to me by a fellow patient in a psychiatric ward. Such
extraordinary eloquence.

In fact he was talking about marriage and not madness. I just misheard
it. But that doesn't take away from the warm memory of the man.

What is hearing voices and what isn't?

Hearing voices to me means auditory hallucinations. These are associated
with psychosis and are part of the a diagnosis of schizophrenia (but as
a single symptom are not enough).

This bit is where my lack of ability with language becomes a problem so
bear with me.

An auditory hallucination is 'delusional' communication through the
aural channel. My experience of this is around the time of my first
hospitalisation. I was listening to a drum and bass mix by Ray Keith. At
some point I began to communicate with the MC and he was communicating
back. The responses were out of possibility for a drum and bass tune and
the responses from the MC's voice answered my questions. This is an
auditory halluncination in my simplistic understanding. I must admit I
used enthogeons to get to this state, along with very high number of
stressors and it was a fascinating and powerful experience.

A few years I went through ego death or acute psychosis or the startling
phase. For a long period I felt controlled by another force or entity. I
had many explanations for what that force or entity was. I recieved
unusual forms of communication though very rarely were they auditory
hallucinations as described above. I received messages from TV programs
that wasn't part of the content of the words spoken through "stressing"
of certain words or parts of words however these weren't auditory
hallucinations as I would define them. The words have been received
through the aural signal path and the delusion began after the sound
signal have been interpreted.

Not everyone goes through the same experience. But there is the problem
of language and its limitation in this area. The English language is not
suitably constructed in lay terminology to express the internal
experience of the mind. What I'm talking about may have an academic
language I am unaware of however my search into this area has lead to
more confusion.

At present I experience a mix of experiences of internal reality and
interpretation of external reality. Importantly there are thoughts that
are consider not 'mine', i.e. there is "I" within the stream of thoughts
that I used to assume was my I. Now there is "I" and there is we. I'm
explaining this really badly.

Basically the inner voice that lots of people have, the inner
conversation or the committee in their head. The common state of
awareness is that these are all part of the self. My experience is that
"I" am one consciousness within the many that exist in my head.

In a paper by Professor Marius Romme published in the British Journal of
Psychiatry in 1992 he explained that in his study of coping voice
hearers not a single one experienced auditory hallucinations at the time
of the study. In fact they had a state of consciousness similar to mine.
He used the term "ego dystonia" however upon Googling it the word was
different to what I understood the word to mean from Professor Romme's
paper.

Psychiatric terms used to describe symptoms of the experience of
psychosis include "thought broadcast", "thought insertion" and
"thought...errr.......................withdrawal." People talk about the
voice in their head (well they don't, but that's another issue).
Auditory hallucinations are possible.

Is my confusion making any sense? Am I a voice hearer and if so are you
a voice hearer?

The journey of life

It's not always linear. Paths in life are not some predictable equation.
A well planned journey in life is a poor substitute for a real life journey.

My journey seems to be periods of hardship with periods of happiness in
hardship.

Something has triggered a change process. I thought this part of the
journey was over. Guess I was wrong.

Maybe I should stick to the adage about the British weather.

"The only thing you can predict is that it will be unpredictable."

A positive quote

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.” ~ Confucius

A science joke that involves mental illness

http://www.jupiterscientific.org/sciinfo/jokes/miscellaneousjokes.html

"
     A scientist who enjoyed considerable success during the first half of his life was eventually knighted. His name was Sir Ramick. Unfortunately, he developed a mental illness in his early fifties in which he had a split personality: he was a scientist most of the time and a murderer during brief "bad periods". 
     During his first "bad period", he got into an argument with a taxi driver over the amount of a fare and sliced the driver's throat. He went to jail, was prosecuted, found guilty and placed on death row. On the day of his electrocution, the executioner asked Sir Ramick if he had any last requests. He responded, "I would like to eat 10 bananas before I die." It seemed like a harmless request and so Sir Ramick was granted his wish. He promptly ate 10 bananas and said confidently, "Put me in the chair now." When the executioner flipped the switch, nothing happened. Now, in the country where Sir Ramick resided, there was an unusual law that said if the execution of a death-row inmate fails due to an act of God or any other reason then he should be set free. Sir Ramick happily left the execution facility and went home to work on a new science project. 
     A month later, he went for a walk during a beautiful evening lit by a full moon. Unfortunately, his bad personality emerged. He grabbed a teen-aged boy and threw him into a wide river. The boy was found dead the next day and Sir Ramick was again imprisoned. On the day of his execution, he again requested to eat ten bananas and again the electrocution apparatus failed to kill him. He exited the facility smiling.
     Two months later, the scientist went to church and shot a nun. The community was in an uproar. How could such a violent man be allowed to roam the streets, the citizens complained. They signed a petition to repeal the execution loophole law but it would be at least six months before the government would be able to respond. In the execution facility, Sir Ramick met the executioner for a third time and requested to eat 10 bananas as before. Knowing that Sir Ramick was a superb scientist, the executioner suspected that the scientist somehow was using his scientific knowledge to escape death. After a discussion with other members at the execution facility, Sir Ramick was granted his wish to eat 10 bananas for a third time. And again, the machine failed to kill him when the switch was flipped. 
     Just before going out the facility's main entrance, the executioner approached Sir Ramick and asked him, "I need to know what's going on. Is it the bananas?" To which, the scientist replied, "No, I'm just a bad conductor." 
See explanation
"

(I had to look up the explanation on the website).

Unjust Salary Theorem and Women are evil proved by maths

From
http://www.jupiterscientific.org/sciinfo/jokes/miscellaneousjokes.html

"
The Unjust Salary Theorem asserts that scientists can never earn as much as sales people. This theorem is proved as follows. Start by using the physics formula 
Power = Work / Time
Now you probably have heard that Knowledge is Power and Time is Money. Substitute these tautologies into the formula for power to obtain 
Knowledge = Work/Money
Solving for Money, one finds 
Money = Work / Knowledge.
Therefore, the less you know, the more you make.
"

Sadly this is a maths joke that people may not get. There's a similar one that proves that women are evil.

[Warning - this could trigger thoughts that I'm a sexist. Sheesh. Like that's never happened before.]

Start with
Women are time and money
    Women = Time x Money

However Time is Money
    Women = Money x Money
                 = (Money) squared

We also know that Money is the root of Evil
    Money = root (Evil)

Substituting into the equation
    Women = (Money) Squared
                 =  (root (evil)) squared                (this line looks better when written down than typed)
                 =  evil

QED, to geeks. : )

science joke

Q: What's the difference between a mathematician and an experimentalist?
A: A mathematician thinks that two points are enough to define a straight line while an experimentalist wants more data.
http://www.jupiterscientific.org/sciinfo/jokes/miscellaneousjokes.html

Some seemingly bizarre research into humour

http://facstaff.uww.edu/mohanp/twinhumor.html

There's mention of a twin study done using Far Side cartoons which so no genetic link.

"
Why The Far Side? 
                   One of the reasons Larson’s cartoons were chosen for the study is that they 
                   contain cognitive, or “off the wall,” humor. Spector explains, “Cognitive is the 
                   good sensation that comes over you when you get the joke.” Such a sensation 
                   comes from the sudden mental integration of incongruous ideas, attitudes or 
                   situations. 
                        Spector chose to use this kind of humor for the study because responses 
                   to it are variable. He says some people love The Far Side, for example, 
                   while others just don’t get it at all. Also, cognitive jokes make good test 
                   material because they’re generally not offensive. 
                        The three other defined humor types are not quite as sophisticated. 
                   “Conative” humor produces a smug feeling of superiority from other people’s 
                   misfortune, such as when we laugh at someone tripping on a banana peel. 
                   “Affective” humor involves racial or smutty jokes. “Orectic” humor combines 
                   the previously two mentioned types.
"

A bit like
What's black and white and goes boo?
A cow with a cold.

The last bit about brain damage making people prefer slapstick jokes is almost amusing in itself. I think there's a brilliant joke cognitive joke in there worthy of Andy Kaufman. Perhaps.

Positives from hallucinations

It may, perhaps, be a sign of creative potential.

If you are experiencing delusions or hallucinations one thing to try is
to express through any creative medium. For me it's photography though
writing has also supplemented my core medium. Paint, sing, make music,
draw, do comedy, write computer programs, design fractal algorithms...I
think I'm making my point.

It doesn't have to be art that you produce however you may be surprised.
It may or may not help the madness. In my experience I feel it does
however I'm not sure that it's true and it's true for everyone who
experiences delusions, hallucinations, unshared perceptions, unusual
information coming from reality or madness.

There may or may not be meaning in the work produced during times of
delusion. I think there may be however the capability to understand the
communication is not available to many people. It is complex and people
will rest on simple answers they read in books and papers. It is only in
very recent times that mental healthcare has attempted to listen to the
content of delusions and hallucinations. Attempting to interpret it is
rarely practiced. The relevance you take from it is probably more important.

Simple tips to deal with hallucinations and delusions

This could probably be an essay but I'll try and keep it short.

The voice in your head that may be commenting as I'm writing this is a
relatively normal experience for adults. This is the inner conversation
or stream of consciousness but experiencing thoughts as coming from
another, e.g. being pushed into your mind or coming from people around
you or being electronically projected in by the government, is hell itself.

The type of hallucination or delusion matters. I rarely have visual
hallucinations however when I've taken enthogeons in the past I've seen
and perceived things that weren't there. They weren't real and couldn't
be real even though I experienced them as real. So if I saw a monster
growing from my bed it was scary but I knew it wasn't real. That's an
easy one because monsters don't grow from beds.

Another hallucination or delusion I have is receiving a message from
words that aren't what the words mean. So as I wrote "a monster growing
from my bed" the delusion (I desperately hope) was that the monster was
me sitting on my bed typing this blog post. Why did I feel like that?
I'm not sure. However for a moment I felt the intense negativity of my
monsterishness and shame or guilt or something. It may come from a root
fear that I really am a monster and that may partially be true. I dealt
with the negative mood swing quickly though. I pulled myself up from the
negativity but I don't know how. Maybe it's been training by therapists
or by me to push away those unreal negative thoughts that now can come
into my perception of reality from unusual sources and in unusual ways.

I learned to dismiss all that information that came in unusual ways
rather than attempt to understand the communication. It was a survival
mechanism that caused my current problems with understanding and
communicating with people, perhaps. I am trusting of people and events
and have to be because I have a continuous onslaught of extraneous
information that could be described using a number of terms. There are
times when my resilience to this onslaught is impaired.

Dealing with telepathy and ESPs a real bitch. When the experience of
having your mind read happens its inconceivably real. When I'm in this
state everything tells me that my mind is being read when I know that
that can't be true. It takes a battle to ensure that I stick to the
"they're not reading my mind" thing. I've done the internet searches for
things like the Illuminati and methods of thought transmission, as well
as methods of blocking these transmission out when I was in a really bad
way. Some of it is theorectically possible but I know people who've
worked on what were somewhat secret projects (nuclear submarines,
military computer software development bunkers) and they're pretty
average people. The conspiracy would leak eventually.

The feeling of having real information beyond the information given, for
example sensing that a person wasn't well and reality testing and it
being confirmed as true, can really make dealing with the paranoia or
the delusions hard. There's something in science I try to remember
called subjective validation or rose-tinted glasses might be a better
way to describe the effect where people can only remember certain
details and forget other ones when they think something up, so they may
remember the times when they though their ESP was right but forgot the
times their ESP was wrong. With a binary outcome remembering only the
positive or negative outcomes alone will lead to lead a person to think
ESP doesn't work or does. Remembering that if you guess at something
enough you'll get an answer and if you forget the failures then that'll
make anything seem good.

Dealing with the presence of another force or entity is not something I
can discuss from my personal experience. My methods were wrong. The best
thing is to draw no conclusion about the existence of another entity.
Experience it, understand other people's experiences and conclusions,
read the research and the literature and for fucks sake stay openminded.
The path to falling too deep into madness is to accept one of these
realities.

Flowers around Cockfosters

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The stigma of unshared perceptions and risk of dangerousness and friendship

Imagine if people you'd call a friend would think that you were
dangerous only upon hearing one fact: that they heard voices or had
experiences of communication with another consciousness.

This isn't about stigma. This is about trust in another person. It's
pretty much the foundation of friendship.

I'm trying to see the other side of this. This one's hard. What's the
value of a friendship built upon lies? I'm stumped. I'm sure an answer
will come to me.

The Moon

CAnon 50D and Sigma 400mm f5.6
ISO 100 f 5.6 1/250 sec + Jobo Gorillapod support
Full frame

Are prints a dying medium?

The 20th century was the decade of the photography and the new
millennium saw mass market digital photography and high quality flat
digital displays. Will these kill the print?

Probably.

A preventative treatment for reckless spending and a bit about the impact of reckless spending and mental health and the credit system

One of the symptoms of bipolar disorder are times of reckless spending.
It's pretty complicated in my case but I've had classic periods of mania
associated with taking out unnecessary loans, crazy business ideas and
reckless spending.

A preventative treatment of reckless spending can be to train an
individual to be an expert consumer and a very good shopper.

The "prosumer", which is a term I believe may have been coined by Alvin
Toffler in his book The Third Wave, is a natural development in society.
It is a word that describes the sort of shopper. The one that knows more
than the salesperson. An expert patient would be the analogous concept
in mental health. Developing the skills to required for modern expert
shopping, e.g. the ability to search effectively, critically assess
online and other sources of information, have the experience to make
assessments of value and performance, comparing prices, doing it quickly
etc in people with an assessed risk of reckless spending or bipolar may,
perhaps, slow down the buying process and reduce the impact of debt
caused by reckless spending.

The very good shopper part is about becoming a bargain hunter and
valuing the feeling of acquiring a bargain (though, as always with these
things, this effect becomes deadened with time). Again this is about
slowly down the buying process and reducing the financial impact of
reckless spending. Effective shopping is opportunity shopping, shopping
secondhand, buying off-brand, haggling, taking time to get the best deal
etc. Its also knowing when to break those rules which is a valuable
skill however in reckless periods this capability becomes risky, e.g,
someone can get to the state where they go "oh fuck it!"

I think these two sets of skills have helped to avoid a mania diagnosis
and reduced the impact of "high" periods. I can spend a long time trying
to get the best deal but were I in a similar state 7 years ago I would
have taken out a loan and bought what I wanted rather than spend time to
get what I needed and take no loans.

The impact of mania can be devastating and beyond financial status. It
has taken so much from me and I still choose to risk it again. But I
never want to get in debt again. Poverty has helped me learn how.

The direct effects of debt are not well studied and it's only recently
that there's been a surge in academic and professional interest on the
impact of debt and mental health, much of it spearheaded by Mind's
exceptional Debt and mental health campaign. The research available was
limited and there is a desperate need for the results of the high
quality studies to be turned into practical, real world solutions
because in a reession economy there are going to be a heck of a lot more
people going through what I went through.

Financial crisis can be a life changing experience for many people. The
financial system is not designed for people who have periods of
unwellness. The debt system is based on continued employment. This is a
privilege that's not available to all but a few of the severely mentally
ill. Regrettably were that recognised the system would exclude anyone
with a severe mental illness from taking out large just as society
excludes someone from being a director or an MP if they've been sectioned.

The current work on regulation of baliffs is a welcomed move towards a
more humane system but it's like pissing in the ocean. The entire
personal debt system needs to be revisited if it is to be considered
safe because at the moment it's killing people through suicide and
wrecking people's mental health whether they're mentally ill or not.

Bankruptcy was the option given to me after my second hospitalisation
after a failed suicide attempt after I got into a crisis debt situation.
That causes a high level of future financial exclusion and creates
virtually insurmountable barriers to future career prospects as well as
the problems caused by the stigma of bankrupcy. The other option is the
IVA (Informal Voluntary Agreement?) where a loan can be paid off in 5
years with much of the debt written off but the individual forced to
live in poverty. An assessment is made of income and outgoings with the
aim to redoing expenditure to a bare minimum. This can rapidly take an
individual from living a good quality of life to living at or below the
poverty line. I'm sure there's research into this effect. Social
exclusion often ensues and the damaging effects of this are well
studied. An individual's capability for recovery is severely lowered.

As with all things in my life there are positives now I can see past the
tragedies. Through poverty I learned to value material things less.
Through social exclusion I have learned more about myself and become
less dependent on other people. Through the suffering I have learned to
tolerate situations that would break other people. I learned the value
of never giving up on something I love. I learned what Nietszche
probably meant when he said "What ever doesn't kill you will make you
stronger."

It's just not something I'd want anyone else to go through.

Imagine a poltically correct spell checker

Lets just say I'd written "salesman" the spell checker I'm using at the
moment wouldn't highlight the error however it would be simple to
develop one that does change the word to "salesperson".

Knowing the rules and knowing when to break them

The shot with the crow loosely adheres to the compositional rule of
thirds. Elements are positioned alone thirds lines on at the point where
the thirds line intersects.

The paintery shot of a tree is technically incorrect. Some of the bottom
should be lopped off. But the shot works better as it was shot. The shot
is also lighter than my usual preference however I wanted to give a
feeling of summer.

Both of these images are heavily processed using Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta
2. The free trial is over soon and I'm totally hooked by the workflow
and am finally getting the results I could get with Gimp.

These images have been created only using tools available in the
darkroom. No effects filters have been applied. The shots have been
heavily sharpened using unsharp mask, the contrast tweaked, the black
levels increased and saturation heavily iincreased. Lightroom offers two
controls not found on other photo packages. Vibrancy and Clarity.
Vibrancy is an alternative to saturation and would be the equivalent of
changing films to select different levels of colour richness, so
choosing Velvia for the saturated rich colours or Portra for natural
tones. Clarity is the tool I'm least familiar with. Its a sort of blur
effect that only works on highlights (I think). There are specific
darkroom techniques, for example using stocking material or a vaseline
coated glass plate in front of the enlarger lens or setting the enlarger
lens out of focus on a sceond exposure on the same print, that could
achieve unusual blur effects however I am unsure if this last tool full
meets the criteria of something that could be achieved in the darkroom.

Canon 50D and Sigma 400mm f5.6
ISO 400 f5.6 1/500 sec (both shots)

My unusual senses...

..tell me that someone I really love is thinking of splitting up with
her boyfriend. I don't know who it is. I know a lot of people.

Why is the case study at the bottom of the hierachy of evidence

And not at the top?

Alcohol and mental health

One of the worst treatments in mental health is cold turkey. There is
growing care is taken to help people come off legal
psychopharmaceuticals by weaning them off. Guess no one gives a shit
about the pain of addicts.

Abstinence is also wrong. The end result of the journey from addiction
is discipline. It is the only way to have control over the drug and if
that is the goal then teetotal is not the solution. To give up something
you enjoyed is foolish.

A little of the concept of we

This happened through a realisation I had during my ego death period.
That which I am, i.e. my self as I can identify as me, is a combination
of things. During psychosis I came to terms with the existence of
another force or entity or power that has been given different names and
different interpretations by different people over the years. One of
them, and one that I don't wholly accept, is that this is god and the
experience I went through is why some people in history spoke of a
divine being. How those people ended up being the saints, prophets and
sages I don't know.

This period and surviving this period alive has given me a strength to
handle situations that other people simply couldn't live through. It
wasn't something I had before but I have it now. And I need it now.

Is there a stage beyond recovery and was that my thought or was it from
my entity. In the end I guess it doesn't matter too much. I went through
real ego death a few years ago and that is why I am we.

Everything that I am and everything that I do is a combination of many,
many things. It is spirituobiopsychosocial in origin. Maybe more?

My life is much more than a combination of normal events and random
chance and normal influence. That is why I am we.

One experience of paranoia or psychosis or unshared perceptions or whatever you want to call the experience

Imagine reading this text below.

I am in the country

I've had an experience where I would read across the line as you are now
but the focus would be on the "count" bit and in my head that would
translate to the word talking back to me in a sense that said "cunt",
and that meant that I was a cunt.

My eyes would scan across and it was the visual focus 'highlighting'
that initiated the unusual sense or message from that one line in the
example here. Its a normal feeling I think to have a word or a part of a
word or a sound be 'highlighted' or 'raised' or whatever the correct
phrase is for the experience where the mind or a non corporeal entity
adds information or random content to real text, speech and events in
reality.

What is not so common is to take an interpretation beyond the content. A
real example was when I was putting online content about mental health
law on an intranet site. This method of highlighting of certain words
was causing me intense distress and I was trying to battle the messages
it was creating. At the time I was also having a lot of trouble
controlling my fingers and the system was crashing often, much of which
I attributed to the same non-corporeal entity (that may simply be an
illusion created by a chemical imbalance in my brain).

No one should ever have to go through this experience alone. It tore me
asunder. That's why when people talk about split or shattered mind and
schizophrenia I think that it means shattered.

I've been through some pretty bad experiences in my life. They're not as
bad it's been for some. Ego death rates up there as one of the worst
experiences in the journey of life. It is insane for me to think that
people should have the right to go through it and come out the other
side. The transition process is horrific and the social exclusion of the
result and the negative social outcomes can be awful.

Healthcare is needed but not wards, not injections and boring drugs.
Compassion, understanding, space to be mad, the comfort of those who've
been through it and the continued life opportunities to ensure the
greatest chance of existing in an insane world.

I don't know what spiritual crisis is all about. That's beyond my
current level. I know what it's not. It is not an experience to be
pathologised and the individuals who go through are as important as
those who don't, and vice versa. The people who go through it are some
of the best people I know and they go through hell on earth - far worse
than me.

No one should go through it alone, and I'm a hypocrite. But I want to
change society so that no one else has to go through it alone either.
That is more important to than fanny about with the fucking words, or it
should be perhaps.

Fashion in schizophrenia and language

Fashions in mental health change over the years.

The differences in the diagnosis of schizophrenia and what it has meant
culturally is probably an essay all in itself.

Culture matters.

The latest fashion comes from Japan. They relabelled schizophrenia and
reconeptualised it to something like social integration disorder. The
shift away from what Bleuler meant is significant. After all, words have
power according to some studies.

There are complex cultural reasons why this makes sense and they are
explained by this excellent paper that's well worth a read.
Impact of the Term Schizophrenia on the Culture of Ideograph: The
Japanese Experience
Yoshiharu Kim and Qerman E. Berrios
http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/27/2/181-a.pdf

To most people in the West the word "schizophrenia" means nothing unless
you know Greek whereas "bipolar disorder" can have meaning to the
uninformed lay person because the idea of two poles can be taken from
the words. "Extremes of mood disease" could be a relabelling of bipolar
disorder if the aim was to help communication of the concept to the lay
person. I am unaware of the impact on outcomes on the relabelling of
manic depression to bipolar.

The Chinese ideograph for schizophrenia directly expresses the meaning
as "the disease of disorganized mind" to a person without psychiatric
knowledge. That in itself is a reasonably accurate interpretation of one
facet of what people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia look like upon
external observation. However the Japanese ideograph
(seishin-bunretsu-byo) means "mind-split-disease" which is similar to
the most commonly cited explanation of the Western translation of the
word schizophrenia. There are undertones to the word and the individual
lexical components which combine to make a highly stigmatising word in
that culture and one that is immediately understood from looking at the
word. "Catastrophe of the mind" is one of the lay connatations in China
and Korea. The stigma in Japanese culture is significantly higher and it
is inbound in the word itself.

The paper explains that this is why their is a priority for a name
change int he East and the situation is significantly different from the
West.

The term schizophrenia has lasted for over a century. In that time the
intepretation of schizophrenia has changed. The advance of the
sociological model of mental illness means that the new word is about
lack of integration with society and implicitly with local culture. This
could explain the overdiagnosis of schizophrenia in black men as much as
racism.

However it is the current fashion. In 30 years there will be a new
interpretation. In fact there are already competing paradigms in the new
words to be chosen for use in the West. I can't remember the new term
suggested - something like post trauma psychosis - which is based on
professor Marius Romme's work and the work of the Hearing Voices
Network. It is a different interpretation from Bleuler and the Japanese
and is from a psychosocial paradigm or predominantly psychological paradigm.

The new label is being hewn from the rocks of academia but these haven't
settled on a consensus. Instead they're creating new terms that are
different around the world in a time when there was talk of unity
between DSM and ICD. These new terms won't last 30 years let alone a
century because they are linked to the different understandings.

If the goal is the most positive outcomes for patients then the
relabelling should be considering alternatives like "disease which is
only has bad outcomes because doctors are idiots and don't listen to
patients" which would quickly solve the problem of doctors assessment of
poor outcomes for this condition. It could be called "artists and saints
disease" which again would put a positive spin on the term and would be
a great propaganda message. "Spiritual crisis" and "ego death" are
already terms which relabel and reconceptualise the experience.

These terms also have much more chance of withstanding the changes in
fashion in world psychiatry.

The paper also refers to the original book by Bleuler and how he
described what he saw as schizophrenia. It means splitting of the
psychological functions and has a different meaning to the splitting of
the mind in my opinion though I'm sure even this evidence will not be
enough to make the point that people seem lost in etymology and
semantics when they should be looking at concepts and better 'treatments'.
"
Is the "split mind" metaphor still relevant? The history of
this metaphor is rather important and will be briefly mentioned.
Bleuler (1911) wrote, "In each case there is a more
or less clear splitting of the psychological functions: as
the disease becomes distinct, the personality loses its
unity" ("In jedem Falle besteht eine mehr oder weniger
deutliche Spaltung der psychischen Funktionen: ist die
Krankheit ausgesprochen, so verliert die PersOnlichkeit
ihre Einheit")
"

It also mentions other past failed neolgisms other than social
integration disease and post trauma psychosis.
"
intrapsychic
ataxia, dementia dessecans, discordance, dementia sejunctiva,
dysphrenia, discordance, and so forth. None ever
caught on (Berrios 1987).
"

Signficantly to me the paper explains
"
Its introduction into
American psychiatry (by DSM-IH, American Psychiatric
Association 1980) led to a gradual abandonment of the
Bleulerian view.
"
This is a good reason to change the name.

This last bit is really interesting and says it better than I can
"
A new name could be constructed on the basis of (1)
a fundamental biological mechanism, (2) a pathognomonic
clinical feature, (3) a crucial psychological dysfunction,
or (4) an eponym. Bleuler wished that it was
option 1 but in the end settled for 2. The problem today is
that there is not yet a scientific conclusion about either the
disease's fundamental biological mechanism or its
pathognomonic clinical feature. In regard to option 3,
Kraepelin regarded dementia praecox as primarily a disorder
of intellectual function (as opposed to manic-depressive
illness, which was primarily a disorder of affect), and
the field is now going through a "cognitive period" in the
interpretation of the disease (e.g., Andreasen 1999).
However, grouping schizophrenia with the many dementias
currently described might be confusing, and a redefinition
of "cognition" in the future might leave many with
egg on their face. It would seem, therefore, that our scientific
ignorance precludes 1, 2, and 3 above.
What about 4? Eponyms are safe in that they are
proper names and avoid connotations altogether. History
shows that the disease was mainly identified by Kraepelin
and Bleuler. "Kraepelin's disease" already exists to name
a form of presenile dementia, and "Kraepelin-Morel's disease"
and "Bleuler's disease" (Morbus Bleuler is the original
term and is used in some parts of Germany) never
took off. "Bleuler's syndrome" already exists to name a
form of "organic delirious state." Under the circumstances
and provided that we all believe that schizophrenia will
survive as a unitary disease for the next 50 years, we may
want to rename schizophrenia "Kraepelin-Bleuler disease,"
or KBD for short.
"

A more difficult solution is to individualise diagnosis such that every
person has a diagnosis based on their name. So Stephen Fry didn't have
bipolar. He had "Stephen Fry of QI disorder." This is a ridiculous
concept on first appraisal however the state of science in the
psychiatric system and clinical practice means it is as useful to
classify a person as an individual with an individual experience of
life, an individual prognosis and response to treatment. It makes things
harder for psychiatrists to practice medicine but it solves the problem
of the stigma of labels, poor outcomes for conditions that are hard to
'treat' and encourages more openminded thinking.

Useful papers on the Japanese and the term schizophrenia

Impact of the Term Schizophrenia on the
Culture of Ideograph:
The Japanese Experience
by Yoshiharu Kim and Qerman E. Berrios

http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/27/2/181-a.pdf

Renaming schizophrenia: a Japanese perspective
MITSUMOTO SATO
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1472254/

Both are open access too.

Solitude

This would be ideal if it was shot with a decent lens and was in focus.
The Sigma 400mm is a pretty awful lens at its widest aperture. I like
the composition though and I feel a kinship to this bird.

Canon 50D and Sigma 400mm f5.6
f5.6 1/3000 sec ISO1000

Japanese

This image feels Japanese.

It's a plant growing by the side of the road in my local area I shot a
few days ago.

I feel like my photography has gotten better the last few days. I wonder
if the madness is causing it.

Canon 50D and Canon 50mm f1.8
1/125s f13 ISO400

Plane

I love this shot. It was taken about a week ago. I looked up at the sky
and the lone trail stood out across the blue backdrop and felt just
right. I love the sense of space and the simplicity.

Canon 50D and Canon 50mm f1.8

Who started the movement to change the Japanese word for schizophrenia

>From this radio transcript which is worth a quick read.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/s726169.htm

Zenkaren was the name of the organisation that started campaigning for the change of the Japanese word for schizophrenia back in 1993.

There's another interesting little snip.
"A recent study reveals that over 80% of doctors avoid naming schizophrenia in front of patients and their families because of the stigma, even when it’s the right diagnosis."

Togo-Shicchou-Sho is the new word or ‘loss of integration disorder’

Some other information about Japan.
"
Japan is said to have the highest number of patients in psychiatric hospitals in the world, and most of these are private. 

The country’s suicide rate is just staggering, more than 30,000 people a year.
"

neologisms

From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism

A neologism (pronounced /niˈɒlədʒɪzəm/); from Greek νέος (neos 'new') + λόγος (logos 'word') is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event. According to Oxford English Dictionary the termneologism was first used in print in 1483.

Other uses

In psychiatry, the term neologism is used to describe the use of words that only have meaning to the person who uses them, independent of their common meaning.^[1] This is considered normal in children, but a symptom of thought disorder (indicative of a psychotic mental illness, such asschizophrenia) in adults.^[2]

People with autism also may create neologisms.^[3]

Use of neologisms may also be related to aphasia acquired after brain damage resulting from a stroke or head injury.^[4]

In theology, a neologism is a relatively new doctrine (for example, rationalism). In this sense, a neologist is one who proposes either a new doctrine or a new interpretation of source material such as religious texts.^{[citation needed]}

Social ugliness, health economics, research, antipsychotics and dementia

Its a good thing that most doctors are blind to what they're doing.

Antipsychotics proved to be useful for the 'treatment' of challenging
behaviour assoicated with dementia just as they are useful for
'treatment' of many forms of social ugliness...I mean mental illnesses.
These individuals didn't have a schizophrenia diagnosis. They are not
experiencing psychosis. However their behaviour can be treated in the
same way the it is treated through use of high dose antipsychotics in
acute wards.

This created the research opportunity to assess the impact of on life
expectancy of antipsychotic drugs. Previously this was impossible
because standard clinical practice is antipsychotics for psychosis and
schizophrenia. There is an established reduced life expectancy with the
condition and it was assumed that the whole of this effect was through
the condition.

In one study on people who were very close to death the impact of
treatment with low doses of antipsychotic medication was around 50%.
Doctors are killing their patients because of their challenging behaviour.

The problem is that according to health economics this is a good result.
The cost of physical healthcare for these patients would be high and the
distress caused to doctors was is also high. The cost saving from the
reduction in life expectancy combined with the increase in quality of
life for doctors will be enough to ensure that antipsychotics will
continue to be used to 'treat' people with dementia.

There may be other reasons why antipyschotics will continue to be used
to treat social ugliness and kill people quicker when there is evidence
like this. No one gives a shit about another dead dementia patient.
Everyone's too busy fannying about with words.

the meaning and the individual and the choice of word

It hit me today.

Bleuler probably meant "splitting of mental faculties" when he
relabelled dementia preacox to schizogruppen or whatever. As far as I am
aware the 1908 paper did not use the exact term "schizophrenia."

The debate often centres around the greek etymological root. But this is
bollocks. The meaning of the word comes from what Bleuler meant it to
mean. "split mind" may be as correct as "shattered mind" if looking at
the Greek root of the word schizophrenia but this is of little
relevance. The concept of schizogruppen and its meaning as Bleuler used
it either in the 1908 paper or more usefully in the 1911 book is what
schizophrenia means. And I think what he meant was splitting of the
mental faculties, which is different from a splitting of the mind and a
shattering of the mind.

Words are important. Concepts moreso.

An idea for treatment for schizophrenia from Japan

This is some fucking interesting shit.

Comparison of Current Schizophrenia Therapy in the United States and Japan
Sayuri Yamaguchi
The University of Arizona
http://juns.nursing.arizona.edu/yamaguchi.htm

(PWS stands for people with schizophrenia)
"
Family and Folk Therapy in Okinawa, Japan

In the Okinawa prefecture of Japan, the family is actually considered to
be the first source of mutual help and support for the PWS. The ties
within the Okinawan family are strong, and easily run through three
generations. The problem of one family member is usually regarded as
being a problem of the whole family, and all the family members unite to
deal with any given situation. This cultural characteristic of Okinawans
offers many advantages. The strong family and social ties provide the
security, care, and emotional and material support that are very much
needed by the discharged chronically ill PWS (Matayoshi, 1996).

In Okinawa there is a unique "ethno-medicine" family therapy, which is
practiced by a therapist/healer known as a "Yuta." The Yuta's role is
primarily an advisor who closely relates to the patient's daily life,
providing spiritual counsel concerning health problems and general
counsel for mental health matters (Naka, Takaishi, Ishizu, and Sasaki,
1983). One example is that the Yuta uses the examination of a patient's
family tree to identify a mental illness in the patient's ancestors, so
as to make the PWS aware of this connection. By doing so, the family
member and the client see schizophrenia as an inherited family problem,
rather than as an individual's behavioral problem (Matayoshi, 1996).
This therapy is effective because it takes into full consideration the
cultural, societal, and personal needs of the PWS. The Yuta's
credentials are totally reliant on reputation rather than education, a
factor that seems to reduce patient/therapist boundaries; the PWS
therefore feels more relaxed and less distanced from the advice that
they are receiving. A conceptual model of current comparison therapy for
a PWS in the U.S.A. and Japan is presented (Figure 1). Cultural
diversity in the U.S.A. and Japan are shown, as well as differences and
similarities in patient management.
"

A note to a friend

There's a friend who my senses tell me needs some support. I have no
information on this other than the sense that she is going through what
I am going through. It is a sense I very, very, very rarely act upon.

If you need me I wish I could be there for you right now. I know I
probably don't help much but I take you away from your troubles for a
moment, or at least that's my hope. Sometimes that small thing is enough
to lift a person out of the doldrums of distress.

My jug is totally empty. Of course I can keep on giving but when I'm in
this state I'm not sure I'd be able to distract you with my waffle and
childish japery. I'm sorry but there are times when I just need to try
and help myself instead of helping others in order to help myself.

Yes, there's an implicit admission that I may be going through a hard
time however I'm internalising it and working through it on my own as
part of my process. I will come out soon.

I may be wrong.

What if you thought someone was lying when they were telling the truth?

I deal with paranoia on a daily basis. One of my paranoias is that some
people think I lie about stuff. In a sense I do though usually it's an
error of omission. I rarely tell outright lies. They usually cost me a
lot so I avoid them. My most common form of lie is witholding evidence,
for example I'll often justify the impression that it's not that bad
having a severe mental illness by leaving out some of the details of
just how shit it really is.

One of my recent paranoias has been that people think I'm lying about my
past. I don't know why this is happening. The reason may be a distrust
of my friends and it's all I can do to fight the paranoia. My past is as
unusual as I am, and perhaps that's why the paranoia might be true (and
therefore not paranoia?).

I've got some amazing stories too - too many for a normal person to
have. Some people would see me as some sort of pathological liar though
my old friends who know the truth are probably just bored of the same,
old insane stories. For them there's no incredulity when I tell them I
stumbled across a gay nudist night on a Monday evening in London and
tried to get in. If I tell them I wrote 25,000 words in 5 days they'll
say "I know you idiot, you emailed it to me as you wrote it."

But I don't know what the truth is. It takes faith but sometimes it's
really bloody hard.

Link for info on dreams and mental illness

http://www.psyplexus.com/excl/dicp_2.html

Disability law in Indian

From
Banerjee, G. (2001) The concept of disability and mental illness. Mental Health Reviews,  Accessed from <http://www.psyplexus.com/excl/cdmi.html> on May 23, 2010
http://www.psyplexus.com/excl/cdmi.html

"
At present, measurement of the extent and nature of disability in relation to mental illness is a crying need for both academic and administrative purposes. Such measurements will ensure scientific basis for further study of disability in relation to mental illness. Objective and precise measurement of disability is also necessary for determination of extent of social security benefits for each individual.
"

There's some other useful snips.
"

In 1993 the United Nations declared that the term “Disability” summarized a great number of different functional limitations occurring in any population in any country of the world. People may be disabled by physical, intellectual or sensory impairment, medical conditions or mental illness. The U.N. has thereby broadened the ambit of the concept of disability and specifically included mental illness in addition to mental retardation as a cause of disability. This authoritative statement has had an appreciable impact on the academicians, administrators, legislators and other policy makers in favour of mentally disabled persons. From a clinical point of view WHO (1992) accepted disability as one of the consequences of mental and behavioral disorders.

Disability in the context of mental disorders may involve following areas of a person’s functioning:

1. Activities of daily living including health care, grooming, dressing, bathing, looking after one’s health etc.

2. Social relationship including communication skill, ability to form relationships and sustain them.

3. Occupational functioning – ability to acquire a job and hold it, cognitive and social skills required for the job, doing home-work or studying as a student.

"

And a little on the development of the Indian equivalent of the DDA
"

In 1993 the United Nations declared that the term “Disability” summarized a great number of different functional limitations occurring in any population in any country of the world. People may be disabled by physical, intellectual or sensory impairment, medical conditions or mental illness. The U.N. has thereby broadened the ambit of the concept of disability and specifically included mental illness in addition to mental retardation as a cause of disability. This authoritative statement has had an appreciable impact on the academicians, administrators, legislators and other policy makers in favour of mentally disabled persons. From a clinical point of view WHO (1992) accepted disability as one of the consequences of mental and behavioral disorders.

Disability in the context of mental disorders may involve following areas of a person’s functioning:

1. Activities of daily living including health care, grooming, dressing, bathing, looking after one’s health etc.

2. Social relationship including communication skill, ability to form relationships and sustain them.

3. Occupational functioning – ability to acquire a job and hold it, cognitive and social skills required for the job, doing home-work or studying as a student.

"

Assorted wildlife

I've been playing with my old Sigma 400mm f5.6. It's another independent
lens that doesn't work on modern Canon digital SLR except at the widest
aperture. Getting an in focus shot is very hard because of the small
depth of field at long focal lengths and wide apertures which make for a
small depth of field. The quality is also awful and made worse by the
high ISOs needed to get a high enough shutter speed. 1/750s is the
minimum shutter speed required to get acceptably sharp shots with
minimal blur from hand movements with this lens whereas 1/90s is
sufficient for a 50mm lens. Lenses are invariably worst at their widest
aperture. There is significant purple fringing that can be seen on some
of the edges and a modern lens designed for digital sensors would be
significantly better but cost in the region of £1000 whereas when I
bought this second hand it cost me just over £100. The autofocus is
faster than the Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 because the simpler and lighter
optics are easier to move and the len's focus range is insensitive, i.e.
a small adjustment can make a large change in the point of focus.

A useful figure on the rate of homicide by "patients" in the UK

From P34 of National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness Annual Report July 2009
http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/psychiatry/research/suicide/prevention/nci/inquiryannualreports/AnnualReportJuly2009.pdf

"During 1997-2005, 510 people convicted of homicides (10% of all those convicted) were identified as patient homicides, i.e. the person had been in contact with mental health services in the 12 months prior to the offence."

The figure is for convictions of homicide and I am unsure if that covers manslaughter, diminished responsibility and not guilty by reason of insanity. It also only covers people who have been in touch with services within the year.

P 33 has information on the number of people in psychotic or abnormal states however I'm too lazy today to analyse the data on the page.

There is a figure I'm hunting to find a reference for
"95% of homicides are committed by people who have not been diagnosed with a mental health problem"

I can't find the source and the high quality sources indicates the figure would be higher.

The chance of being killed by someone experiencing the symptoms of a mental illness is also about 10%. (http://www.mind.org.uk/help/research_and_policy/dangerousness_and_mental_health_the_facts#_edn5)

As with all these sort of things the percentages are meaningless in relation to the risk. The risk of being murdered is tiny though there is a high degree of public paranoia and hysteria about the risk of death.