Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 245 posts

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#121

Post by hinkley »

thenerdhead wrote: post #16

> Dr Pittenger says it is now clear that covid-19 infections can trigger psychosis, fatigue and other neuro-psychiatric symptoms. A misbehaving immune system is thought to be the culprit. The idea that schizophrenia may, at least sometimes, likewise be an auto-immune disorder is also under investigation. Until I got long covid(generally recovered now after 2 years), I couldn't comprehend this idea. I felt like I was…

There was a medical article the other day that popped up where a daughter received the first kidney transplant without life-long anti-rejection drugs. Instead they reprogrammed her immune system to see her mother's tissue as self instead of foreign body. She was on anti-rejection meds for months instead of life. I presume so they could test whether their plan worked or not.

If they can do that for life or death situations, I have hope that we can refine the process for other auto-immune diseases that are everything from lifestyle threatening up to life-threatening. My issues are middle of the list, but if arthritis had a solution other than immunosuppression while I still have cartilage, that would make me so happy.

And I'd really like to be able to eat croissants and baklava again, if that can be arranged.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#122

Post by hattmall »

pixl97 wrote: post #78
mistersquid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not eating and getting low blood sugar can much more simply answer the question of "Do I have free will, or am I a subject of my internal chemical reactions". You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions.

Can you? I'm a type 1 diabetic, I have a continuous monitor that tells me what my glucose level is. This monitors actual interstitial fluid level and not blood sugar, this means there can be a pretty large delay between what's measured just under the skin versus what my blood stream is experiencing. If a rapid drop occurs there can be a lead time that I'm unaware of it, but others are because I'll behave in a 'cranky…

Of course you can control your actions. But that doesn't mean they can't be influenced by external factors like drugs, weather, or in your case low blood sugar.

You don't have absolute total free will in all situations. That's why development of willpower is such a huge discipline (religion, meditation, etc).

There's a range where your blood sugar starts to influence your actions, with more willpower and cultivating a less cranky personality you could certainly extend that range.

Some people have similar non-beneficail reactions to high stress situations, other people develop the skill to abstain from those actions and maintain control in those situations.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#123

Post by thegrimmest »

xpe wrote: post #85
pixl97 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you? I'm a type 1 diabetic, I have a continuous monitor that tells me what my glucose level is. This monitors actual interstitial fluid level and not blood sugar, this means there can be a pretty large delay between what's measured just under the skin versus what my blood stream is experiencing. If a rapid drop occurs there can be a lead time that I'm unaware of it, but others are because I'll behave in a 'cranky…

Well said. > You are in far less control of your actions then you believe. No. But I say this in a way that might surprise you? I view 'free will', as most people understand it, as an illusion. I recognize that I, at best, have a tiny fraction of control. If I consider "me" to be a locus of control w.r.t. volitional action, then I will grant that "me" has causal impact. But what causally impacted "me" at time t? A co…

I agree that free will functionally doesn't exist. However for the purposes of social organization I see no better alternative than to treat each person as an agent and hold them fully accountable for their actions, regardless of upstream "causal" impacts.

If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrelevant. Actions and outcomes count, not intentions.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#124

Post by pixl97 »

thegrimmest wrote: post #123
xpe wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. > You are in far less control of your actions then you believe. No. But I say this in a way that might surprise you? I view 'free will', as most people understand it, as an illusion. I recognize that I, at best, have a tiny fraction of control. If I consider "me" to be a locus of control w.r.t. volitional action, then I will grant that "me" has causal impact. But what causally impacted "me" at time t? A co…

I agree that free will functionally doesn't exist. However for the purposes of social organization I see no better alternative than to treat each person as an agent and hold them fully accountable for their actions, regardless of upstream "causal" impacts. If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrele…

> Actions and outcomes count, not intentions.

There is a whole division in law around mens rea vs actus reus that disagrees with this take.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#125

Post by thegrimmest »

pixl97 wrote: post #124
thegrimmest wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that free will functionally doesn't exist. However for the purposes of social organization I see no better alternative than to treat each person as an agent and hold them fully accountable for their actions, regardless of upstream "causal" impacts. If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrele…

> Actions and outcomes count, not intentions. There is a whole division in law around mens rea vs actus reus that disagrees with this take.

I'm aware, but the bar for a guilty mind is quite low. You basically have to have known what you are doing, which we assume just about every conscious person does. There are also crimes where mens rea isn't even applied to a perpetrator, but to a reasonable objective analyzer (eg. manslaughter).

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#126

Post by bregma »

fenesiistvan wrote: post #6

I woul look carefully to the pills that was subscribed to that infection.

I was on a length course of Doxycycline (for borreliosis). It had the side effect of acting as an antidepressant. I got better (from the borreliosis), the treatment ended, and so did the antidepressant effect. It may be a study of n=1 but antibiotics affect bacteria selectively, including gut bacteria. It could be that the H. pylori solution is pointing the way to greater things.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#127

Post by pixl97 »

hattmall wrote: post #122
pixl97 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you? I'm a type 1 diabetic, I have a continuous monitor that tells me what my glucose level is. This monitors actual interstitial fluid level and not blood sugar, this means there can be a pretty large delay between what's measured just under the skin versus what my blood stream is experiencing. If a rapid drop occurs there can be a lead time that I'm unaware of it, but others are because I'll behave in a 'cranky…

Of course you can control your actions. But that doesn't mean they can't be influenced by external factors like drugs, weather, or in your case low blood sugar. You don't have absolute total free will in all situations. That's why development of willpower is such a huge discipline (religion, meditation, etc). There's a range where your blood sugar starts to influence your actions, with more willpower and cultivating…

Willpower occurs after awareness. They are objectively different things.

If you are not aware of something, you cannot choose to make a reaction for or against it. For example, imagine that your body did not detect heat. If you put your hand on a burner you would instinctively withdraw from it (and yes this happens in people that do not feel pain).

Willpower is in the ballpark of conscious awareness. "I choose to do X or Y"

Training on the other hand attempts to remove the conscious decision part from the mind after awareness occurs. "If X then Y", this way you're not wasting time and brainpower trying to figure out what's going on.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#128

Post by kouru225 »

dylan604 wrote: post #52
kouru225 wrote: post #32

Honestly I feel like the science community’s disregard for religion has caused them to completely fail at dealing with human psychology. Science has spent the last 1.5 centuries presenting itself as a counterpoint to religion, but they fail to understand that religion is just an early attempt at talking about the subconscious. So the science community continually misidentifies issues stemming from the subconscious as…

This is stated as if religion has never had it's own pseudo-science/medicine beliefs that conflicted with actual issues. "we don't know what's going on, so it must be a possession" type of things when it could have been something more more like schizophrenia or some other medical condition.

I never said religion was correct. I said that science tries so hard to differentiate itself from religion that it labels anything that doesn’t appear to be logical as pseudoscience. Since the subconscious isn’t logical, subconscious issues get ignored.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#129

Post by whats_a_quasar »

I found the NIMH factsheet on PANDAS very clear and comprehensive [1]. If this article is relevant to you, I suggest reading it too. Summary:

Children who have strep sometimes develop psychiatric symptoms as well. This is a condition called PANDAS[2]. The characteristics signs are tics, OCD-like symptoms, and anxiety, occurring in children roughly ages 3-12. The symptoms usually occur suddenly, "overnight".

So, the action is: If a child develops this sort of psychiatric illness, get them tested for strep, and possibly treat them for strep before the psychiatric condition. And awareness among doctors is low, so you might need to be the one to identify the condition and advocate for it to get treated.

The suspected mechanism is the immune system attacking human cells during an immune system response to stress. Some other commenters are discussing psychiatric responses to long COVID, schizophrenic-like symptoms, and effects of PANDAS on adults. There's also something called PANS for kids getting psychiatric conditions from infections that aren't STREP. This is very interesting to me too but the research still seems murky enough to not have an obvious course of action.

[1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/pandas

[2] The expanded acronym is very long: Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated w/ Streptococcal Infections

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#130

Post by Retric »

dragonwriter wrote: post #114
dr_dshiv wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that non-material causes can be just as deterministic (if not more so) as matter. Logic and math are physical but not material, for instance.

> Logic and math are physical but not material, for instance. Logic and math are neither physical, nor material, nor causal.

When living things or machines do math they are doing a physical thing.

The abstract concept of mathematics doesn’t need to exist for that to happen.

Post reply on HN