nullorchis (imported) wrote: Thu Apr 21, 2011 8:31 am Do other creatures on Earth that have brains have mental illness? And how could you tell?

The major difference with human brains is what you might call "mental frames". Presumably (we never know for sure) animals' brains are mostly concerned with processing the present -- reacting to danger, chasing prey, mating, etc. but whatever it is it is going on at that moment.

Humans have the ability to process things that are totally abstract, which can also mean not real. We can speculate about the future, we can reminisce about the past, we can fantasize.

This facility for hypothetical thinking is obviously a powerful tool, but it has the drawback that sometimes we believe the fake stuff our minds make up. We can obsess about past failures, we can make bad decisions because of skewed views of our future, we can think about the world in ways that the world isn't actually.

This is why many spiritual traditions try to focus on the present and become highly aware of the present. Many try to get people to meditate in ways that stop the generation of these "mental frames".

If you think about your internal dialog, it is usually a continual rehashing of something that just happened, or lots of worry about what might happen. Or you might be obsessed with something ("must get rid of penis").

I'm pretty sure animals don't do that. Some mammals are probably close (like they might have some fantasy life, and some memories that stick with them), but unlikely that they are running through mental frames like we do.

Anyway, my point is that our mental frames can easily turn into mental illness because they are by definition not a true representation of reality. They overly simplify or can be just totally wrong. Your self image probably isn't what others really see you as, your assessment of your prospects for the future are probably pretty far off, your obsession with certain fantasies is probably just fantasy.

I definitely recommend trying some Zen or Yogic meditation sometimes. It is really refreshing to stop the endless, warped monologue most of us have running in our heads.

Leisure.

I Wonder <oh no>

What would be comparative mental illness rates where people must struggle for survival?

Re. Autism

Autism is a pediatric variant of Guillain Barre syndrome

http://www.google.com/#q=guillain+barre ... 62ca&hl=en

Every single immune response to an infection or pseudo infection may create a G-B reaction. Autistic kids occurred in the fifties but they were fewer. The one or two kids in every class. Since that time the number of infections and pseudo infections has dramatically increased during childhood as to account for the increase in autism. It is not the mercury. It is a gamble with every immune response. The data gets blurred because it happens in nature too. Now just more so with the addition of multiple vaccines with multiple serotypes, each with the ability to convert a normal toddler into an autistic one.

Unfortunately. There is no good way to diagnose G-B syndrome. Only indirectly via the unpopular and now rarely used lumbar puncture.

The prevention is to delay most vaccinations to a time when the immune system and the blood brain barrier are more mature.

MMR and Chicken Pox and Hep B should be optional, not mandatory as Polio.

Just say NO to mental illness.

I am normal. And so am I!

Moi

kristoff wrote: Thu Apr 21, 2011 6:01 am Add to these depression and the fashionable bipolar disorder.

Kristoff,

Very true, but those tend to be overdiagnosed more in adults than children, don't they?

-YPA

In my case, severe depression started when I was 13 or 14. It remained untreated and undiagnosed until I finally got tired of dealing with it in my mid-30s. I started taking Prozac after it had been on the market a few years and there was more experience with it, and it made a world of difference for me. After many years, it actually stopped working so well and I spent another year trying three different medications until Cymbalta (Prozac's younger cousin) worked well. It wasn't until my depression symptoms were under control that I began to recognize manic phases. I usually channeled these into my work, or at home working in the yard. When they began to concern me, I attended local support group meetings, and found out just how MILD my manic episodes were. Now I just recognize them and exercise caution in my decisions and actions. This is similar to how I dealt with major depressive episodes before starting medication.

All that being history, I agree, there are visible trends in diagnoses, especially when undiagnosed people finally begin to recognize their symptoms for what they really are. Not everyone is a hypochondriac, even though there are many of them out there. And there will always be doctors who'll just prescribe a pill because it's easier for them.

So, why can't we see a trend in diagnoses of eunuchism or MtF, and get orchiectomy accepted as a reasonable request?

YourPhriendlyAuthor (imported) wrote: Fri Apr 22, 2011 2:27 am Kristoff,

Very true, but those tend to be overdiagnosed more in adults than children, don't they?

-YPA

Infants and young children are "bipolar" by definition. They can go from extreme giggly excitement to pure abject sadness or anger quickly and deeply.

So bipolar is something that you can really only say is a problem if such mood swings persist into the teen years.

Depression though can and is diagnosed more early nowadays.

Anyway, they are diagnosing a lot of these "adult" conditions for kids now. Most parents I know have a kid diagnosed with something (most common right now is anxiety). I am suspicious of the drug companies because a diagnosis can lead to medicines being approved (just like the Risperdal I talked about earlier on the thread, it has only recently been approved for younger and younger children).

As a parent though a diagnosis is also helpful because then the school has to make special accommodations. Also they treat the kid different -- instead of being a behavioral problem, they have a medical problem. I admit that I like having my son have some classification so we can get tailored situations for him in the classroom. For example he's diagnosed as "gifted disabled" which gets him into gifted classes and also gets him out of mundane assignments that he used to freak out about.

Caith721 (imported) wrote: Fri Apr 22, 2011 3:48 am In my case, severe depression started when I was 13 or 14. It remained untreated and undiagnosed until I finally got tired of dealing with it in my mid-30s. I started taking Prozac after it had been on the market a few years and there was more experience with it, and it made a world of difference for me. After many years, it actually stopped working so well and I spent another year trying three different medications until Cymbalta (Prozac's younger cousin) worked well. It wasn't until my depression symptoms were under control that I began to recognize manic phases. I usually channeled these into my work, or at home working in the yard. When they began to concern me, I attended local support group meetings, and found out just how MILD my manic episodes were. Now I just recognize them and exercise caution in my decisions and actions. This is similar to how I dealt with major depressive episodes before starting medication.

All that being history, I agree, there are visible trends in diagnoses, especially when undiagnosed people finally begin to recognize their symptoms for what they really are. Not everyone is a hypochondriac, even though there are many of them out there. And there will always be doctors who'll just prescribe a pill because it's easier for them.

So, why can't we see a trend in diagnoses of eunuchism or MtF, and get orchiectomy accepted as a reasonable request?

Thanks for sharing that.

I just accept my mood meter is set on the depression side of normal. Runs in the family.

Lately when stuff gets too heavy I find

200 mg "Natural Factors" brand SAMe on an empty stomach in the morning a help. I use it occasionally and hardly two days in a row. Not speedy but kind of like I notice I am singing and remember I took it yesterday.

Comfort foods and protein too. AND, some deluxe chocolate occasionally.

Moi

Two things come to mind. The first is that even medical professionals have some difficulty confusing symptoms with diagnoses. Generalized anxiety, for example, is a description of a symptom, much like the over used Peripheral neuropathy, and not an actual diagnosis. Both have causes, but when the symptom can be relieved, to one extent or another, by prescription medication the search for causes stops.

The second is that the greatest cause of mental difficulties in the Western World has been known for years...Lack of Sleep! Sleep deprivation can produce almost all known mental problems from simple anxiety to major psychoses. With our fast paced world, demands for increased productivity, worries about financial insecurity, electronic distractions, and just plain noise of urban environments, hardly any of us get enough sleep. It used to be that children were able to get sleep anywhere, (if not at home, in the classroom) but digital connection has stopped that. I know of some preteens whose parents say they sleep clutching their cell phones. (And, I don't understand why their supposed parents let them do it!)

I seriously think that diagnoses of mental illness would precipitously decline if most of us could reliably get a good night's sleep.

On page 12 of today's (June 15) Financial Times is an article titled 'Visionaries don't need to be mad, but it helps.' It begins with a quote from Seneca, 'There has never been any great genius without a spice of madness.' The is a new book by psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi titled, 'A First Rate Madness.' His idea is that there is a link between mental illness and successful leadership. He thinks Ted Turner is bipolar and the resulting creativity and unconventional ideas were a key to his success.

There is another book, 'The Hypomaniac Edge' by John Gartner. He thinks hypomania (kind of a low grade manic-depressive) is what gives entrepreneurs their energy, creativity, enthusiasm and daring. Examples are Andrew Carnegie and Larry Ellison.

What is, and what is not, mental illness may be the central enigma of contemporary human social development.

As I have already indicated, I am autistic. Being autistic is normal for me, and I cannot imagine my life being as good as it is were I not autistic in the way I am. For me, autism is not a mental disorder of any sort, rather, it is a way for me to understand myself and other people in ways which, as in my doctoral dissertation, might eventually become helpful to other people, especially in terms of understanding why it seems impossible to stop human violence, particularly as in warfare.

Put simply (?), I have a hunch that warfare is a consequence of childhood trauma of a form which is not yet clearly recognized as causing some form of physical brain damage; it is that brain damage which, in my working hypothesis, seems to prevent stopping wars. My research working hypothesis also has within it the notion that further evolution of human society may allow learning and understanding what such trauma is (if it is), what causes it (if anything causes it) and what can prevent it (if anything can prevent it).

Was my decision to do what I deemed necessary to minimize my risk of dying relatively young (as have a number of close family members) a sign of mental illness or a sign of mental health?

Is what I find to be the written view of David Reuben, M.D., as in "Everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask (TM)" that being transgendered is a form of sexual perversion, a sign that I am mentally ill because of being transgendered, or that Dr. Ruben's mental illness resulted in his failure to truthfully understand the reality of biological (both genotypic and phenotypic) gender diversity?

Or, would it be wiser to allow that Dr. Reuben's written view is the result of his education, which did not give him any viable way to understand the validity of my life (and, I would guess, the lives of others who seek and/or find living better with low testosterone)?

The first version of "Everything you always wanted to know about sex..." has some physiology information I found useful. Dr. Reuben mentions that about half of the men whose testicles were destroyed beyond repair by German "castration mines" were able to have erections and orgasims and about half were not. Prior to my bilateral orchiectomy, I reckoned that, were my whole body dead, I surely would not be having erections and orgasms. Having read the first version of Reuben's book, I figured that I had about a 50-50 chance of retaining erections and orgasms, which, made for much better odds than being dead -- as happened to my brother.

The colectomy was done about two months after the orchiectomy. During those two months, the following events related to the orchiectomy happened. No hot flashes. No noteworthy change in erections or orgasms. No testosterone-driven frequent mandate for "sexual release." For me, the mandate went away, the option of choice remained. Had the option of choice not remained, that would have been just as good with me. Being dead from cancer is being without the possibility of such option...

After the colectomy, during the weeks it took to heal from that surgery, I found it a very helpful that I could ignore sex while healing and not be awakened in the middle of the night with mandatory wet and clammy pajamas.

If I thought that Dr. Reuben had any practicable way to have known any better, his evident view that my effort to avoid dying from cancer was a perversion would likely irk me.

It may be fair to allow that I had a middle-of-the-road form of gender dysphoria, not strong enough that, absent cancer risk estimates, I would have sought the orchiectomy, and strong enough that I have never thought it would have been better had I not gotten it when I did.

It is clear to me that "normal levels" of testosterone are not for everyone, including some folks with one X and one Y chromosome.

Is anything a better sign of mental health than dealing effectively in resolving difficulties which impair a person's sense of well-being?

So, what is mental illness? Confronted with what I found to be a life-threatening problem, I set out to resolve the problem in the most constructive way I could imagine. Yet I hold that I would not have needed very much stronger gender dysphoria to have sought and gotten the orchiectomy even in the absence of any identifiable cancer risk. I find that people whose quality of life is sufficiently impared by testosterone, or anything else, and who solve the impairment in order to a experience a life of improved quality are quite the opposite of being mentally ill.

A lecturer who had garnered multiple graduate degrees commented some years ago to the effect that an intellectual is a person who has things to do that are more important than sex. Might my supposed problem (which is not really my problem at all) be that I am a one-of-a-kind and perfectly normal variation on the theme of a transgendered intellectual?

(I am planning to attend the 2011 MoM in the Twin Cities area, and will welcome talking directly with other folks there.)