Listening to Madness Why some mentally ill patients are rejecting their medication

[truethat]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/195694


We don't want to be normal," Will Hall tells me. The 43-year-old has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and doctors have prescribed antipsychotic medication for him. But Hall would rather value his mentally extreme states than try to suppress them, so he doesn't take his meds. Instead, he practices yoga and avoids coffee and sugar. He is delicate and thin, with dark plum polish on his fingernails and black fashion sneakers on his feet, his half Native American ancestry evident in his dark hair and dark eyes. Cultivated and charismatic, he is also unusually energetic, so much so that he seems to be vibrating even when sitting still.


I'd like to see this discussed. I'm not sure how I feel about this one.

[Zygar]

The link appears to go to the wrong article.

[Zygar]

Having found and read the article, I can see nothing specifically wrong with what they are doing. Their mental state isn't one which is leading to the harm of others, and they are functional in society.

Being both functional and mentally ill is really pretty remarkable, and I think they are to be commended.

[drkitten]

The link appears to go to the wrong article.

Try http://www.newsweek.com/id/195694

As far as the argument goes, I can definitely see someone objecting to the way drugs make them feel. My father was on antidepressants for about a month and found he couldn't do his job; he would literally sit in his office and stare at the walls. If you've ever seen A Beautiful Mind you've seen that effect at work. John Nash's "professional skill" was seeing patterns, and his particular insanity was that he saw patterns that weren't there. But the drugs that they had him on kept him from seeing patterns at all, to the point where he lost most of his mathematical insights (and, frankly, most of what made him him).

[truethat]

Sorry about the wrong link. Yes I wonder about this as well. What is "normal." If you think about most advanced minds in the world they are likely to be considered "insane" by normal standards.

[Drudgewire]

Listening to Madness


doiaKo_AjY4

Someone had to do it. vhttp://www.lethalwrestling.com/upload/shobon.gifv

[drkitten]

Sorry about the wrong link. Yes I wonder about this as well. What is "normal." If you think about most advanced minds in the world they are likely to be considered "insane" by normal standards.

That's a common misconception, yes.

"Insane" actually has a fairly stringent definition; to be clinically insane, your mental state needs to cause the patient serious distress, enough to prevent him or her from leading a normal life. From the DSM-IV, "In DSM-IV, each of the mental disorders is conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom."

Merely being "wierd" shouldn't make the cut and rarely does unless it actively messes up your life.

Very few "advanced minds" suffer from this. One reason for this is that most "advanced minds" (e.g., Kurt Godel, Albert Einstein) are pretty good at problem solving and will put themselves in a situation where their quirks and foibles neither cause distress nor disability. Those who don't (e.g. John Nash) tend to display clinical manifestations.