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

141–150 of 245 posts

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#141

Post by zhivota »

cloudquelle wrote: post #29

When I was around 12 or 13, I had the Epstein-Barr virus. For a couple of *months* I couldn’t: - Walk straight. Always looked like I was completely drunk - Speak normally. Each word I spoke was only half-finished and I had to constantly re-pronounce any words again and again - Write on paper. I just couldn’t write a single sentence, it just didn’t work. I had practically lost the “precision ” of any movements Not to…

I had it at 16, and like you I was down for a month. Barely could do anything - I don't recall bad mental effects but physically I was zero energy for a long time. I feel like my constitution never really recovered. Even today I get bouts of illness unlike anyone else my age or in my family, and I'm otherwise a very healthy person (healthy weight, work out regularly, etc.).

I never really thought about it until the long COVID discussions and learning more about things like this, but it really is something people barely understand today.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#142

Post by watwut »

mistersquid wrote: post #68
pixl97 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It makes you honestly question the idea of freewill. 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". Or, much more simply stated "You're not you when you are hungry".

> 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.

Uncontrolled aggression is one of common symptoms of low blood sugar. If you are not diabetic it should not just happen, your body should deal with situation. But it does happen to diabetics and they have to watch out for that.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#143

Post by MadcapJake »

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…

yes, a prisoner may be locked inside and have a laid out routine for them, but they do still have a say in the minutiae and their small actions could actually echo into the future.

Another thought, just because our unconscious mind also plays a part, people fear that this implies mostly determinism but really why are we considering that as not also our thoughts too? They're just thoughts that our deeper mind has put forth and our deeper mind doesn't usually want to be questioned, they've got more hard data. Still you can fight this or things like suicide, soldiers. daredevils wouldn't be possible. We just don't get to see how it came to conclusions so we assume it's some hard-wired code.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#144

Post by anon84873628 »

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…

It's simpler than that. Your thoughts -- the internal monologue deciding what actions to take -- are the result of physical processes in the brain. There is no way those non-physical thoughts are changing the physical processes; they happen after the fact. We have the illusion of being in the driver seat but really we are just along for the ride.

This is assuming you adhere only to what science can prove, and not religious beliefs like the soul.

But yeah, the fact that we are the result of past decisions and outside inputs going all the way back to before we even had consciousness at all is also a nice proof by induction.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#145

Post by tasty_freeze »

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…

I reject your sweeping statement "science has spent the last 1.5 centuries presenting itself as a counterpoint to religion."

Science is a process of trying to explain why things as they are and to predict how things will behave in the future. Many (in ye olden days nearly all) scientists have been religious. There is a conflict only when the two come to different explanations of the same thing. That conflict wasn't the goal of science, unlike what you seem to imply.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#146

Post by hotnfresh »

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…

> It makes you honestly question the idea of freewill. Good thing that Robert Sapolsky's new book is coming out next month on the topic!

Watching someone go through certain kinds of dementia can have a similar effect. Simplify the input and make situations repeatable (from their perspective) on very-short timeframes and it’s hard not to notice how much we behave like automatons. It’s being able to hold a lot of context that makes us seem like we’re ordinarily not, I reckon.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#147

Post by TimTheTinker »

xpe wrote: post #94
TimTheTinker wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ancient religion and philosophy taught that habits influence desires far more strongly than desires influence habits. It is possible to want different desires (if you disagree, ask any recovering drug addict). So even conflicting desires can exist simultaneously on multiple planes of consciousness. A powerful way to change your desires to be what you want them to be is to change your habits.

Yes, and that raises the question: by what mechanisms do we change our habits? I like an idea mentioned by James Clear (author of the "Atomic Habits" book) that each action we take is a "vote" towards establishing or breaking a habit. There are connections between this notion and neurochemistry, such as Hebbian learning.

One important mechanism for changing habits is to join a community of people who are practicing the habits you wish to practice. A thoughtful, intentional choice of whom to associate with is one of the most powerful forms of agency we possess.

Zooming out a bit, local communities of people who practice virtuous habits are an indispensable cornerstone of society, for by them we gain agency to desire and do what is virtuous.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#148

Post by anon84873628 »

WesternWind wrote: post #116
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…

Prior to getting into tech, I had an internship at the NY State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) where I did work helping people developing assessment tools for schizophrenic prodromes (people before they develop schizophrenia), as they were working on a predictive assessment questionaire. Basically they were looking for risk factors but also to predict who might actually develop the disease imminently among those at ri…

I believe there was a RadioLab episode that discussed schizophrenia and reduced thermoregulation. Very interesting; it explained why some schizophrenic people wear lots a clothes (a phenomenon one might notice out on the city streets). Could also be used as an early diagnostic tool.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#149

Post by dr_dshiv »

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.

They are physical causes but they are abstracted from matter. The underlying cause originates from the math/logic, not the material instantiation. Physicalism is often conflated with materialism, but the world is physically constituted by more than matter!

A lot of this world is obviously caused by the inherent formal influence of math and logic. There are ongoing mysteries in this, to be sure, but these forms are beyond matter. I’m speaking from the Pythagorean-Platonic-Tegmark school of thought. I’m trying to address the typical atheist layperson scientist who hasn’t thought through immaterial reality (rejecting it as supernatural, thinking it involves ghosts or spirits or something). I know there are reasonable counter positions to argue why math isn’t real, but I don’t subscribe.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#150

Post by tcskeptic »

anon84873628 wrote: post #144
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…

It's simpler than that. Your thoughts -- the internal monologue deciding what actions to take -- are the result of physical processes in the brain. There is no way those non-physical thoughts are changing the physical processes; they happen after the fact. We have the illusion of being in the driver seat but really we are just along for the ride. This is assuming you adhere only to what science can prove, and not rel…

> There is no way those non-physical thoughts are changing the physical processes; they happen after the fact. We have the illusion of being in the driver seat but really we are just along for the ride.

How can you conclude this with any certainty?

Post reply on HN