Something beautiful to me

I saw this on a blog post I read and it's ace. It's something I might add to the profile of this blog.

http://www.mind.org.uk/blog/3227
"

“You can listen to these songs,
Have a good time and walk away.
But for me it's not that easy.
I have to live these songs forever.
"

Ugh

Another super-successful member of the family popped round today.
She's a senior executive at a major US company over here on business.
She's had an amazing career and will no doubt continue to great
corporate success. A career woman who's also got a two kids. I think
she's one of my eldest cousins. I didn't really want to see her but she
does the important formalities that I don't. I was still in my pyjamas,
hadn't showered since Friday and had a little blood on my top. I had to
change my appearance - physical and mental - very quickly.

I write about concepts of human biological types, such as schizotaxia,
and my family would have the closest genes to me. I wonder if they'd
been through psychosis in some form or other mental illness. Whatever -
they still a damn sight better on consensus measures.

Ultimately I reflect on what went wrong with me. On the measures that
everyone else would use I am a total failure. Don't worry. At this time
I don't feel that way. At least not in comparison to my family. I'm
oblivious to that sense of uselessness. The minor concern in that
department is how my parents might feel because they can't be proud of
their son.

It's just considering the environmental factors. I'm sure most people
would be happy to leap to "drugs" but I don't think it was just the
period of using psychiatric medication or my self-medication. I was a
mess well before. I think many families would have thrown me out many
times as a child or put me into psychiatric care sooner than it was
forced upon me.

When I was first sectioned I was at the start of what could have been a
similar career to my cousin's. It wouldn't have been equal to the
careers of my cousins in the UK. They're all doctors now. I can barely
feed my fucking self.

And yet I still think that mental illness is not an illness. Not in
truth. My wealth I have yet to earn but it will not be material things,
salary, respect, status or title. I just want to make a difference with
my life and while I'm still a failure at that....well....I just have to
work harder.

I wonder if...

...one day society will evolve to the point where it's ok to talk
about suicidal feelings. 1 in 6 people in a lifetime experience suicidal
thoughts according to one of the highest quality studies in the UK
(Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey 2007).

Yet talking about it in public is weird. Speaking about it is still
strange to many people. It is a taboo and I guess that some people think
it's a taboo because it may increase the suicide rate if people spoke
about it. My opinion is it may not change or it might reduce the suicide
rate. I think in the short term there would be no change but in the long
term as society became accepting of the normality of suicidal feelings
and people became willing to accept the truth that 1 in 6 people have
these feelings at some point then perhaps things may get better.

The correct words for feminist and misogynist

This is a discussion I had a while ago. It's pretty irrelevant to most men.

Put simple, it's ok to be a feminist but not a misogynist.

They are not antonyms in meaning but are in practice as can be seen from this article on language where the author/ess chooses to use the terms misogynist and feminist as though they are opposite and equal terms.

The Latin root of the words and the undertones mean that the male term is pejorative and negative while the female term is positive and affirmative.

A misogynist should be called a andropist I think (or an anthropist but I thnk anthro- would mean human rather than man), or a feminist should be called a misandropist. Or something like that. Literature professors
could probably come up with the correct, equal terms to be used to describe lovers or haters of a particular gender.

Truth be told: I dislike both terms and concepts. It's sexism whichever way you look at it. People are just people. Their biology is of little relevance in my interactions with people. Who they are is important and their gender doesn't really matter in my personal opinion. The history of ills of men are not the burden of today's generation.

Our only burden in that respect is not to repeat it and not to let women do the same to us as their gender becomes dominant.

Grief as a mental illness?

I am so glad that there are good psychiatrists like Frances Allen out
there. I have had the serendipity to come across a recent article in the
New York Times by one of the psychiatrists on the DSM-IV taskforce.
Shoot she/he's actually the chairperson of DSM-IV, not Robert Spitzer
which is what I thought. Anyway, there's a bit I want to snip out of
this but the whole piece is really good. It's the bit about
understanding that psychiatrists aren't trying to do something malicious
or evil with the possible medicalisaton of grief.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/opinion/15frances.html

"
A startling suggestion is buried in the fine print describing proposed
changes for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders — perhaps better known as the D.S.M. 5, the book
that will set the new boundary between mental disorder and normality. If
this suggestion is adopted, many people who experience completely normal
grief could be mislabeled as having a psychiatric problem.

Suppose your spouse or child died two weeks ago and now you feel sad,
take less interest and pleasure in things, have little appetite or
energy, can't sleep well and don't feel like going to work. In the
proposal for the D.S.M. 5, your condition would be diagnosed as a major
depressive disorder.

This would be a wholesale medicalization of normal emotion, and it would
result in the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of people who would do
just fine if left alone to grieve with family and friends, as people
always have. It is also a safe bet that the drug companies would quickly
and greedily pounce on the opportunity to mount a marketing blitz
targeted to the bereaved and a campaign to "teach" physicians how to
treat mourning with a magic pill.

It is not that psychiatrists are in bed with the drug companies, as is
often alleged. The proposed change actually grows out of the best of
intentions. Researchers point out that, during bereavement, some people
develop an enduring case of major depression, and clinicians hope that
by identifying such cases early they could reduce the burdens of illness
with treatment.

This approach could help those grievers who have severe and potentially
dangerous symptoms — for example, delusional guilt over things done to
or not done for the deceased, suicidal desires to join the lost loved
one, morbid preoccupation with worthlessness, restless agitation,
drastic weight loss or a complete inability to function. When things get
this bad, the need for a quick diagnosis and immediate treatment is
obvious. But people with such symptoms are rare, and their condition can
be diagnosed using the criteria for major depression provided in the
current manual, the D.S.M. IV.

What is proposed for the D.S.M. 5 is a radical expansion of the boundary
for mental illness that would cause psychiatry to intrude in the realm
of normal grief. Why is this such a bad idea? First, it would give
mentally healthy people the ominous-sounding diagnosis of a major
depressive disorder, which in turn could make it harder for them to get
a job or health insurance.

Then there would be the expense and the potentially harmful side effects
of unnecessary medical treatment. Because almost everyone recovers from
grief, given time and support, this treatment would undoubtedly have the
highest placebo response rate in medical history. After recovering while
taking a useless pill, people would assume it was the drug that made
them better and would be reluctant to stop taking it. Consequently, many
normal grievers would stay on a useless medication for the long haul,
even though it would likely cause them more harm than good.

The bereaved would also lose the benefits that accrue from letting grief
take its natural course. What might these be? No one can say exactly.
But grieving is an unavoidable part of life — the necessary price we all
pay for having the ability to love other people. Our lives consist of a
series of attachments and inevitable losses, and evolution has given us
the emotional tools to handle both.

In this we are not unique. Chimpanzees, elephants and other mammals have
their own ways of mourning. Humans have developed complicated and
culturally determined grieving rituals that no doubt date from at least
as far back as the Neanderthal burial pits that were consecrated tens of
thousands of years ago. It is essential, not unhealthy, for us to grieve
when confronted by the death of someone we love.

Turning bereavement into major depression would substitute a shallow,
Johnny-come-lately medical ritual for the sacred mourning rites that
have survived for millenniums. To slap on a diagnosis and prescribe a
pill would be to reduce the dignity of the life lost and the broken
heart left behind. Psychiatry should instead tread lightly and only when
it is on solid footing.

There is still time to keep the suggested change from entering the
D.S.M. 5, which will not be published until May 2013. The task force
preparing the new manual could adopt a more cautious and modest
estimation of the reach of psychiatry and its appropriate grasp.

For the few bereaved who are severely impaired or at risk of suicide,
doctors can already apply the diagnosis of major depression. But don't
change the rules for everyone else. Let us experience the grief we need
to feel without being called sick.

Allen Frances, an emeritus professor and former chairman of psychiatry
at Duke University, was the chairman of the task force that created the
fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
"

A useful article on what a "psycho" (used here as an abbreviation for psychopath) actually is

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/dsm-iv/content/article/10168/54831

The whole thing's pretty interesting but here's the relevant snip for
those who aren't interested in the details.

"
Most psychopaths (with the exception of those who somehow manage to plow
their way through life without coming into formal or prolonged contact
with the criminal justice system) meet the criteria for ASPD, but most
individuals with ASPD are not psychopaths. Further, ASPD is very common
in criminal populations, and those with the disorder are heterogeneous
with respect to personality, attitudes and motivations for engaging in
criminal behavior.
"

I don't want you to be like this

This is a thought from love. It is what a parent might think if they thought their child was miserable. It was what a compassionate person would think if they knew someone else was miserable.

It is also the beginning of defining normal and acceptable behaviour if looked at with a very different lens. It is hard for me to put this concept across, the one that from this form of compassion or love comes an unacceptance of this. If the misery meets a clinical diagnosis then the desire is to remove the symptoms of the misery.

This is an incredible bad way of trying to get across two paradigms of understanding of what is exactly the same action or event but looked at in different ways. Another example might be the creation of the asylum system: an act of great compassion that decided to see the unwanted and 'socially ugly' as "mentally ill" to be cared for in the psychiatric institutions of the day, or the Great Confinement where the mad were treated like prisoners (or worse) and hidden (and forgotten) by society.

A CBT practitioner might simply this to be a debate about "is this glass half empty or half full?" and in someways they'd be right however with their mode of thinking the person who is incorrect is the person who sees the glass as half empty. It is my belief that there is 50% water and 50% not water in a transparent silica-based vessel...but existing in seeing the duality (and in paradigms of mental health it's more than a duality) is very difficult as is maintaining that clear lens that sees both the good and the bad in everything and everyone. I think what I'm talking about is objectivity in a subjective world.