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My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

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Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#181

Post by lostlogin »

pan69 wrote: post #7
tzs wrote: post #3

My 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…

Press CTRL+PLUS a couple of times to increase the font size. CTRL-ZERO to go back to 1:1.

Try that link from an iPhone. I love small type usually, but that's a little small. Yes, Instapaper is what I should have done.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#182

Post by lostlogin »

jetti wrote: post #112

One of the major problems that I've seen first hand with mental illness is that the diagnosis is so subjective and often times relies on accounts of the patient and family. If you have family who don't know what to look for or the patient doesn't know how to explain it or is under the duress of the illness at the time, you run the chance of misdiagnosis. This happened to me. My senior year of high school I had a "bre…

Thanks for sharing that. It isn't just the US that is a bit average where mental health is concerned.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#183

Post by baxrob »

cletus wrote: post #64

Things like this are easy to say: > If I were a legislator today, I’d mandate — and provide funding to ensure — that every teacher receive training in recognizing symptoms of mental illnesses. but teachers aren't psychiatrists or clinical psychologists and can't really be expected to be. I was recently watching a program talking about the somewhat controversial theory that schizophrenia (and other mental disorders) a…

> but teachers aren't psychiatrists or clinical psychologists and can't really be expected to be.

rather to the contrary, i think. Or you haven't had occasion to attempt teaching enough?

> There's been research to show that there is correlation between the incidence of schizophrenia and the domestication of cats.

As I recall, this was more recently debunked, largely on the basis of correlation/causation confusion. ... Unfortunately, I failed in googling the counterpoint. Don't take my word for it, obviously. But consider: the popularity of cat-themes, and of mental-health quackery, especially on the internet.

OTOH, my grandmother, who was paranoid schizophrenic, refused to spay/neuter her cats because she had, to her, important conversations with them. So maybe you/they are correct.

Also note, the fluoridation of the public water supply may be sapping our precious bodily fluids[1].

> ...as parasties, viruses and bacteria (or even the lack thereof) may be far more immportant than currently realized, possibly even causal in many cases.

Agreed. Eg: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1298621...

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#184

Post by stan_rogers »

littlegiantcap wrote: post #57
xk_id wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm let me try… Psychedelics -> Social rejection MDMA -> Problems with parents Weed -> Infantilism Alcohol -> low IQ NOTE: they are not absolute (e.g IQ below average), but relative to what would make that particular individual comfortable given the life challenges he deals with at the time.

Alcohol abuse has actually been correlated with High IQ and is most commonly abused by this group because of the despair they see in the world due to their high IQ's. Essentially, because they tend to be more educated, and aware of global problems that makes them depressed.

The high IQ is a bit of a miss—it covers the spectrum, although it is certainly true that there was a tendency for high-functioning people from relatively affluent backgrounds to find their way into a recovery setting years ago. Self-selection was certainly part of it, but we have to keep in mind that more effort would generally be put into "salvaging" somebody who had displayed a lot of promise once than someone who would be a lot easier to write off.

The despair, though, isn't far off: chronic depression, or dysthymia, is common among alcohlics.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#185

Post by jfrm »

mc32 wrote: post #96
Shorel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both alcohol and tobacco are legal, and have worse health consequences than marijuana. The only real reason is that 90-70 years ago, the white people smoke tobacco and the black people smoke marijuana.

In the US, it was more or less unregulated till the 50s/60s. Also, your claim does not explain European countries' stand on it or that of African nations.

I believe trade agreements with the US prevent full legalization. Portugal decriminalization act was carefully drawn not to break any of this treaties.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#186

Post by DanBC »

cwisecarver wrote: post #98

It was a very interesting article and I really enjoyed reading it but why is it on Hacker News?

Ideally politics of healthcare are avoided, and then people can provide information about how this stuff is handled in other countries, or discuss better systems.

You have a flow of 'patients' through a system. You also have a flow of information about those 'patients'. Some people need access to (some of) that information (doctors, the patients, their carers) but the information needs to be kept private from others.

Already there's an interesting problem that plays to the strength of many people on HN.

Given that health care spending is so large - about £120bn in the UK[1], about $800bn US[2] - it would seem that big money is available for a good solution to these problems.

There are people doing interesting things in health care IT. But I don't know what a minimum viable product looks like when you're aiming at over 60 million records (UK population) or 300 million records (US population).

[1] (http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_health_care_budget_2009...)

[2] (http://www.usfederalbudget.us/health_care_budget_2012_1.html)

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#187

Post by D3 »

car wrote: post #66
debacle wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-psychotic medication isn't like taking Tylenol. It can completely change a person's personality, and people have likened it to living in a fog.

What is your point? Schizophrenia already horribly changed the patients personality, medication just helps them deal with the symptoms. Before we had these drugs, schizophrenic patients were basically tortured (e.g. Lobotomy) because there was no way to help them.

I'm probably one of the few people here who's actually tried an atypical anti-psychotic (mistakenly, might I add, I'm not schizophrenic). It was an absolutely horrible experience which I would not wish on anyone. Everything is blunted, you're tired and there are no good emotions or bad ones. It's bland, flat and not a life worth living. The irony is that we do have the tools to treat these types of illnesses. We've had them for a long time. Unfortunately, politics dictate that these tools are not an option.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#188

Post by bjourne »

gojomo wrote: post #86
Shorel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both alcohol and tobacco are legal, and have worse health consequences than marijuana. The only real reason is that 90-70 years ago, the white people smoke tobacco and the black people smoke marijuana.

Do you have evidence that alcohol and tobacco are worse in the specific context of schizophrenia?

Tobacco has anti-psychotic properties which can help to alleviate the effects of schizophrenia, which is one reason almost all schizo patients smoke. Alcohol on the other hand can make the condition worse because it has psychotic properties. Marijuana is both psychotic and anti-psychotic so how that will affect the patient is more unclear.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#189

Post by vacri »

theatraine wrote: post #172
vacri wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your article - a couple of questions. My background is that in the dim dark past I studied neuropsych and then worked as an EEG tech (mostly epilepsy screening with infrequent psych patients) for 4 years (2000-04) before going to work for the company that makes Synamps 2 :) Now, I've only skimmed your method and results as I'm a bit flu-ridden and hence vague, but a couple of things popped out. The first i…

The no control for medication is primarily based on the conclusions of Boutros 2008, a summary of spectral abnormality studies of schizophrenia. I reproduced a table from the paper in the appendix. What type of psych drugs were you working with? As an aside drugs used to treat schizophrenia have especially nasty side-effects, such as weight-gain, reduction of white blood cells, and--ironically--some of the "negative"…

Sorry, it's so long ago that I can't recall the drugs, only that as techs we had to report what was on the referral. We'd do our tech reports and the official report done by the neurologist would refer to the flat, beta-filled EEG as being 'normal for -foo-'. Part of me wants to say benzos, but I'm not sure if that's confabulation on my part.

I understand the limitation of the data - it's particularly hard to get access to inpatients as subjects for new studies. Thanks again for sharing your thesis - sorry I can't converse a bit more intelligently about it at the moment.

EDIT: looks like it is benzos: Some agents, particularly benzodiazepines and barbiturates, induce fast or beta (β) rhythms, and the EEG may be a useful pointer to drug intoxication when this is clinically unsuspected. from http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/76/suppl_2/ii8.full

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#190

Post by barry-cotter »

lostlogin wrote: post #180
barry-cotter wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD has a lot to do with poor impulse control. Most prisoners have low impulse control and are stupid.

That's rather narrow minded. If a country has a large prison population there are more people to blame than just those in the prison.

Your second sentence is true. What I said is also true; Most prisoners have low impulse control and are stupid.
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