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My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
11–20 of 209 posts
Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
#12"Every year, one in every five children and one in every four adults has a diagnosable mental illness. A quarter of all mental illnesses are considered serious." 1/16 adults having a serious mental illness seemed awfully high to me, but I went and looked it up and that may actually be low-balling it: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-coun...
When you consider that (probably) most of the people who exhibit serious substance abuse problems are self-medicating, the numbers aren't difficult to digest. (I say this not as somebody with studies in hand, but as a person who's been clean and sober for more than a quarter-century, and who has significant experience dealing with other addicts and alcoholics. One can make pretty reliable predictions about underlying issues based entirely on the addict's "drug of choice".)
Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
#13"Every year, one in every five children and one in every four adults has a diagnosable mental illness. A quarter of all mental illnesses are considered serious." 1/16 adults having a serious mental illness seemed awfully high to me, but I went and looked it up and that may actually be low-balling it: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-coun...
There are a lot of mental illnesses (did I spelt this right?) which aren't noticeable and even untreated let you live a "normal" life (whatever a normal life is).
I'm diagnosed with ADHD myself. I'm not on medication or treatment and while my attention span is somewhat weak I learned to live with it and find ways to accomplish things. Working in a field I find interesting, even when everything seems to be interesting for me, helps.
Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
#14"Every year, one in every five children and one in every four adults has a diagnosable mental illness. A quarter of all mental illnesses are considered serious." 1/16 adults having a serious mental illness seemed awfully high to me, but I went and looked it up and that may actually be low-balling it: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-coun...
I don't really like the term 'mental illness', not so much because of the stigma attached to it, but because the term implies there is some 'normal' from which only a small subsection of the population deviates.
In reality, there is no 'normal'. There is no one person with perfect mental health; perfect clarity of thought, perception, of feeling and action. Everyone, to put things bluntly, is a little fucked up.
Thus, these figures don't really surprise me. As far as I'm concerned you can end up with any percentage of the population suffering from mental illness, it just depends where you set the thresholds.
Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
#15My old eyes cannot handle very very long lines of very small type, and after several tries I was not able to guess the URL for the story in human friendly form. Please submit links for humans, not machines. Add the machine link in a comment if you wish. PS: I'm aware of Readability and the ability to increase font sizes. There are other problems in general with print links that those do not address: • Print links gen…
Check out Readability.
Or the Readability Redux browser extension.
Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
#16"Every year, one in every five children and one in every four adults has a diagnosable mental illness. A quarter of all mental illnesses are considered serious." 1/16 adults having a serious mental illness seemed awfully high to me, but I went and looked it up and that may actually be low-balling it: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-coun...
When you consider that (probably) most of the people who exhibit serious substance abuse problems are self-medicating, the numbers aren't difficult to digest. (I say this not as somebody with studies in hand, but as a person who's been clean and sober for more than a quarter-century, and who has significant experience dealing with other addicts and alcoholics. One can make pretty reliable predictions about underlying…
What underlying issues do you see with someone who takes psychedelics (shrooms, LSD, DMT, etc)?
Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
#17It's pretty sad that the best way to get mental health treatment is to commit a crime and go to jail. What an epic failure.
It really goes to show how our society thinks of people: if we're punishing someone for a wrong, then spend as much money as necessary. But helping someone before they do something wrong: that's socialism.
Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
#18"Every year, one in every five children and one in every four adults has a diagnosable mental illness. A quarter of all mental illnesses are considered serious." 1/16 adults having a serious mental illness seemed awfully high to me, but I went and looked it up and that may actually be low-balling it: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-coun...
There are a lot of mental illnesses (did I spelt this right?) which aren't noticeable and even untreated let you live a "normal" life (whatever a normal life is). I'm diagnosed with ADHD myself. I'm not on medication or treatment and while my attention span is somewhat weak I learned to live with it and find ways to accomplish things. Working in a field I find interesting, even when everything seems to be interesting…
I think that we need a new definition of "serious" if you can live a normal life without treatment. If someone has a "serious" tumor, the assumption is they are likely to die soon without treatment.
Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
#19You can blame the schools for misdiagnosing ADHD, and you can blame them for a poor IEP, but you can't blame them for a child not having a normal life due to one of the most tragic diseases known to man. Schizophrenia is not the kind of disease you can treat with an IEP, and it sounds like the author's son fell out of the system from a very young age. Trying to blame anything but genetics and development for his son'…
His son might not have been contributing, but having him homeless and bouncing in and out of jails is more expensive to society than appropriate institutional support.
Furthermore one of the stated issues is his unwillingness to take antipsychotic medication, and one of the characteristic traits is that in a structured jail environment, where he's presumably receiving those medications, he is able to function well. That indicates that with a proper support system that includes support to make sure that he takes the required medication, he might have a shot at being a contributing member of society.
Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.
#20"Every year, one in every five children and one in every four adults has a diagnosable mental illness. A quarter of all mental illnesses are considered serious." 1/16 adults having a serious mental illness seemed awfully high to me, but I went and looked it up and that may actually be low-balling it: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-coun...
I don't really like the term 'mental illness', not so much because of the stigma attached to it, but because the term implies there is some 'normal' from which only a small subsection of the population deviates. In reality, there is no 'normal'. There is no one person with perfect mental health; perfect clarity of thought, perception, of feeling and action. Everyone, to put things bluntly, is a little fucked up. Thus…
There's a ridiculously vast difference between "a little fucked up" and serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, rapid cycling bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.
If you think serious mental illness isn't a real, debilitating reality, I encourage you to spend some time with somebody in a truly psychotic state and see how you feel afterwards. Then imagine living as that person.
There may be no absolute "normal", but there are most certainly people who live in a sad, terrible, frightening state of mental disturbance with no simple treatment.