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Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

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Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#151

Post by stevezsa8 »

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…

My wife is also T1, diagnosed a couple years back with a week in ICU. She pulled through and now has a CGM and pump.

What really surprised me was her blood sugar rockets up when she has video meetings with a certain difficult colleague. While other chilled colleagues have no such effect.

That made me wonder if interacting with difficult people causes more physiological changes than I realised.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#152

Post by hotpotamus »

stevezsa8 wrote: post #151
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…

My wife is also T1, diagnosed a couple years back with a week in ICU. She pulled through and now has a CGM and pump. What really surprised me was her blood sugar rockets up when she has video meetings with a certain difficult colleague. While other chilled colleagues have no such effect. That made me wonder if interacting with difficult people causes more physiological changes than I realised.

There are observable changes in the structure of the brain when people take up meditation. Not to get too crass, but we are the meat in our heads and bodies.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#153

Post by anon84873628 »

nvahalik wrote: post #70
diogenes4 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes you honestly question the idea of freewill. Hell two months in any psychology course will have you questioning that. We are truly biological beings first and rational agents second.

The middle ground here seems not only theologically sound but biologically coherent as well. We have a constrained will. Free will has never and will never exist since we are finite beings. We have a _constrained_ will that is boxed in by a number of factors: time, money, biology, knowledge, circumstances, etc. Theologically, that will is also constrained by our nature. There are certain spiritual things we cannot do…

By the time your internal monologue makes a decision, the neural network for it fired long ago. Non-physical thoughts don't guide the physical processes; they are simply a side effect of it.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#154

Post by kouru225 »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #145
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 t…

I don’t think I was implying that science intended to reject religion. I don’t think it matters what the scientific community intended though. Currently, science socially functions as a rejection of religion regardless of what the leaders of the scientific community think or say, and that social function results a bias against subconscious issues for the reason I explained in my other comments. The reasons why science functions that way are probably way too long and complicated to list (and probably are the result politics more than anything else), but you can’t tell me that that’s not true. The majority of the world think that science and religion are clashing forces, and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#155

Post by dragonwriter »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #149
dragonwriter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 be…

> They are physical causes but they are abstracted from matter.

That sequence of words doesn't even denote a coherent concept. To be physical is exactly to be a state of matter/energy.

> The underlying cause originates from the math/logic, not the material instantiation.

No, logic, including math, describes the relationship between abstract concepts. It doesn't cause anything. Implication is not causation.

> I’m trying to address the typical atheist layperson scientist who hasn’t thought through immaterial reality

I'm Catholic, not atheist, and I have no problem with immaterial reality, or even immaterial causes of material effects. But I do have a problem with the simple error of describing immaterial concepts as being physical causes, or with describing systems of concepts and oc describing their relations as causes of anything, except insofar as belief in them causes behavior in the believer.

> I know there are reasonable counter positions to argue why math isn’t real, but I don’t subscribe.

There are certainly senses in which “math is real” is a valid or defensible statement, but bot in the sense of it being a physical thing which can exist as a cause.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#156

Post by geye1234 »

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…

The trouble with this argument is it applies to your thoughts about reality, not just to your will.

Your argument implies your thoughts at time t are solely the result of your state at time t-1 and your environment. But if that's the case, your thoughts aren't about reality; they're just a result of reality, a result of whatever state you happen to be in.

But if your thoughts aren't about reality, why should your argument about free will -- or about anything else -- carry any weight?

Causal processes are not the same as logical reasoning, and if you reduce the processes of the mind to the former, you remove the possibility of rational argument.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#157

Post by ad987 »

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.

How can the truth of this statement be proven? Non-physical thoughts cannot be observed, so they are out of reach of being tested for being correct.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#158

Post by xpe »

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…

> 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. > 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.

Yes, people _often_ people give rationalizations of dubious merit. These are muddled, complicated 'reflections' of the full reality. So it is wise to not give them too much weight. (But it can be very interesting to try to parse them, but that's another topic...!)

Next point. From a predictive point of view about public safety, the context and situation matters. For example, consider the case of an addict who regularly steals because he is driven by the addiction. If he can break the habit (hopefully with help of many kinds), the theft problem largely goes away. Understanding the dynamic helps us understand downstream outcomes.

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#159

Post by thenerdhead »

mock-possum wrote: post #119
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…

Could you tell the story of what experiencing schizoid symptoms was like? I’m always curious!

I have a number of blogs that somewhat include these feelings:

https://jondouglas.dev/little-dark-age/

https://jondouglas.dev/the-stress-of-life/

https://jondouglas.dev/save-your-soul/

https://jondouglas.dev/obsessive-compulsive/

https://jondouglas.dev/love-of-fate/

https://jondouglas.dev/from-the-ashes/

Lots of depersonalization, heightened nerves, low lows, and desire to be alone. If you've ever read Leo Tolstoy, the best description is in his novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich".

Re: Common infections can spark psychiatric illnesses in children

#160

Post by Gibbon1 »

tetris11 wrote: post #45
iandanforth wrote: post #18

Have a friend with a PANDAS child. Really hard to even hear about. Total personality change, constant battles, even when it gets better the fear of reoccurrence. Truly awful.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PANDAS > Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections (PANDAS) is a controversial hypothetical diagnosis for a subset of children with rapid onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or tic disorders. > The proposed link between infection and these disorders is that an autoimmune reaction to infection produces antibodies that interfere wit…

When you consider that chronic and acute autoimmune disease is totally a thing. For instance Hashimoto's disease where the immune system attacks the thyroid is chronic progressing. Thyroiditis, is acute and resolves.

It would seem the burden of proof is on those that say the brain isn't subject to autoimmune disorders. Because everything else is.

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