Psychiatric Posting Quotes

An open Facebook page is simply a psychiatric dry erase board that screams, “Look at me. I am insecure. I need your reaction to what I am doing, but you’re not cool enough to be my friend. Therefore, I will just pray you see this because the approval of God is not all I need.

...some patients resist the diagnosis of a post-traumatic disorder. They may feel stigmatized by any psychiatric diagnosis or wish to deny their condition out of a sense of pride. Some people feel that acknowledging psychological harm grants a moral victory to the perpetrator, in a way that acknowledging physical harm does not.

Conviction rates in the military are pathetic, with most offenders going free AND THERE IS NO RECOURSE FOR APPEAL! The military believes the Emperor has his clothes on, even when they are down around his ankles and he is coming in the woman's window with a knife! Military juries give low sentences or clear offender's altogether. Women can be heard to say “it's not just me” over and over. Men may get an Article 15, which is just a slap on the wrist, and doesn't even follow them in their career. This is hardly a deterrent. The perpetrator frequently stays in place to continue to intimidate their female victims, who are then treated like mental cases, who need to be discharged. Women find the tables turned, letters in their files, trumped up Women find the tables turned, letters in their files, trumped up charges; isolation and transfer are common, as are court ordered psychiatric referrals that label the women as lying or incompatible with military service because they are “Borderline Personality Disorders” or mentally unbalanced. I attended many of these women, after they were discharged, or were wives of abusers, from xxx Air Force Base, when I was a psychotherapist working in the private sector. That was always their diagnosis, yet retesting tended to show something different after stabilization, like PTSD.

Instead of taking a bow for walking on the moon, Colonel Buzz Aldrin, PhD, told his admirers, “It’s something we did. Now we should do something else,” apparently no more satisfied than if he had painted a fence. His desire was not to bask in his glory but to find “something else”—the next big challenge that could hold his interest. This perpetual need to identify a goal and calculate a way to reach it was perhaps the most important factor in his historic success. But it’s not easy having so much dopamine coursing through the control circuits. It almost certainly played a significant role in Aldrin’s post-lunar struggle with depression, alcoholism, three divorces, suicidal impulses, and a stay on a psychiatric ward, which he described in his candid autobiography, Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon.

There is no major psychiatric condition in which sleep is normal. This is true of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder (once known as manic depression).

That question became even more salient to me as I began my clinical work with troubled children. I soon found that the vast majority of my patients had lives filled with chaos, neglect and/or violence. Clearly, these children weren’t “bouncing back”—otherwise they wouldn’t have been taken to a child psychiatry clinic! They’d suffered trauma—such as being raped or witnessing murder—that would have had most psychiatrists considering the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), had they been adults with psychiatric problems. And yet these children were being treated as though their histories of trauma were irrelevant, and they’d “coincidentally” developed symptoms, such as depression or attention problems, that often required medication.

Frosh (2002) has suggested that therapeutic spaces provide children and adults with the rare opportunity to articulate experiences that are otherwise excluded from the dominant symbolic order. However, since the 1990s, post-modern and post-structural theory has often been deployed in ways that attempt to ‘manage’ from; afar the perturbing disclosures of abuse and trauma that arise in therapeutic spaces (Frosh 2002). Nowhere is this clearer than in relation to organised abuse, where the testimony of girls and women has been deconstructed as symptoms of cultural hysteria (Showalter 1997) and the colonisation of women’s minds by therapeutic discourse (Hacking 1995). However, behind words and discourse, ‘a real world and real lives do exist, howsoever we interpret, construct and recycle accounts of these by a variety of symbolic means’ (Stanley 1993: 214). Summit (1994: 5) once described organised abuse as a ‘subject of smoke and mirrors’, observing the ways in which it has persistently defied conceptualisation or explanation. Explanations for serious or sadistic child sex offending have typically rested on psychiatric concepts of ‘paedophilia’ or particular psychological categories that have limited utility for the study of the cultures of sexual abuse that emerge in the families or institutions in which organised abuse takes pace. For those clinicians and researchers who take organised abuse seriously, their reliance upon individualistic rather than sociological explanations for child sexual abuse has left them unable to explain the emergence of coordinated, and often sadistic, multi—perpetrator sexual abuse in a range of contexts around the world.

Our brain scanning experiments in healthy individuals offered reflections on the relationship between sleep and psychiatric illnesses. There is no major psychiatric condition in which sleep is normal. This is true of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder (once known as manic depression).

He tried to get help from the VA but he couldn’t, as so many other returning soldiers have discovered. He suffered terribly—nightmares, insomnia, flashbacks. He drank too much to mask these symptoms, and unfortunately alcohol only exacerbated the condition. It’s called post-traumatic stress and it is a recognized psychiatric disorder. It was around long before we had such a serious-sounding clinical name for it. In the Civil War, it was called a ‘soldier’s heart,’ which I think is the most accurate of the descriptions; in World War One, it was ‘shell shock,’ and during World War Two, ‘battle fatigue.’ In other words, war changes every soldier, but it has always profoundly damaged some of them.

As bad as were the physical consequences of captivity, the emotional injuries were much more insidious, widespread, and enduring. In the first six postwar years, one of the most common diagnoses given to hospitalized former Pacific POWs was psychoneurosis. Nearly forty years after the war, more than 85 percent of former Pacific POWs in one study suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), characterized in part by flashbacks, anxiety, and nightmares. And in a 1987 study, eight in ten former Pacific POWs had "psychiatric impairment," six in ten had anxiety disorders, more than one in four had PTSD, and nearly one in five was depressed. For some, there was only one way out: a 1970 study reported that former Pacific POWs committed suicide 30 percent more often than controls.

The Japanese psychiatrist Kimura Bin, director of the Psychiatric Hos- pital of Kyoto and translator of Binswanger, sought to deepen Heidegger’s anal- ysis of temporality in Being and Time with reference to a classification of the fundamental types of mental illness. To this end he made use of the Latin for- mula post festum (literally, “after the celebration”), which indicates an irreparable past, an arrival at things that are already done. Post festum is symmetrically dis- tinguished from ante festum (“before the celebration”) and intra festum (“during the celebration”). Post festum temporality is that of the melancholic, who always experiences his own “I” in the form of an “I was,” of an irrecoverably accomplished past with respect to which one can only be in debt. This experience of time corresponds in Heidegger to Dasein’s Being-thrown, its finding itself always already abandoned to a factual situation beyond which it can never venture. There is thus a kind of constitutive “melancholy” of human Dasein, which is always late with respect to itself, having always already missed its “celebration.” Ante festum temporality corresponds to the experience of the schizophrenic, in which the direction of the melancholic’s orientation toward the past is in- verted. For the schizophrenic, the “I” is never a certain possession; it is always something to be attained, and the schizophrenic therefore always lives time in the form of anticipation. “The ‘I’ of the schizophrenic,” Kimura Bin writes, “is not the ‘I’ of the ‘already been’; it is not tied to a duty. In other words, it is not the post festum ‘I’ of the melancholic, which can only be spoken of in terms of a past and a debt. . . . Instead, the essential point here is the problem of one’s own possibility of being oneself, the problem of the certainty of becoming oneself and, therefore, the risk of possibly being alienated from oneself” (Kimura Bin 1992: 79). In Being and Time, the schizophrenic’s temporality corresponds to the primacy of the future in the form of projection and anticipation. Precisely because its experience of time originally temporalizes itself on the basis of the future, Dasein can be defined by Heidegger as “the being for whom, in its very Being, Being is always at issue” and also as “in its Being always already anticipat- ing itself.” But precisely for this reason, Dasein is constitutively schizophrenic; it always risks missing itself and not being present at its own “celebration.

Imagine if you were Jewish and someone tells you that you are not. Imagine if you are lesbian and someone laughs in your face and says you are confused since you are really heterosexual. Imagine if you are Black and someone tells you that you are white, or that you are not racialized in this ostensibly post-racial world. Or imagine you are Palestinian and someone tells you that Palestinians do not exist (which people do). Who are these people who think they have the right to tell you who you are and what you are not, and who dismiss your own definition of who you are, who tell you that self-determination is not a right that you are allowed to exercise, who would subject you to medical and psychiatric review, or mandatory surgical intervention, before they are willing to recognize you in the name and sex you have given yourself, the ones to which you have arrived? Their definition is a form of effacement, and their right to define you is apparently more important than any right you have to determine who you are, how you live, and what language comes closest to representing who you are. Perhaps we should all just retreat from such a person who denies the existence of other people who are struggling to have their existence known, denies the use of the categories that let many of us live, but if such a person has allies, if they have power to orchestrate public discourse and occupy the position of victim exclusively, and if they seek to deny you of basic rights, then probably at some point you will feel and express rage, and you will doubtless be right to do so.

To erase or “de-pattern” personality traits, Cameron gave his subjects megadoses of LSD, subjected them to drug-induced “sleep therapy” for up to 65 consecutive days, and applied electroshock therapy at 75 times the usual intensity. To shape new behavior, Cameron forced them to listen to repeated recorded messages for 16-hour intervals, a technique known as “psychic driving.” —Washington Post, July 28, 1985, quoting the Congressional Record of the Senate, 99th Congress, 1st Session, Volume 131, No. 106, Part 2, p. 131, in regard to the mind-control work of psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron, former President of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations, while in the employ of the CIA

Women who had often done little more than manifest behaviours that were out of feminine bounds (such as having a libido) were incarcerated for years in asylums. They were given hysterectomies and clitoridectomies. Women were locked up for having even mild post-natal depression: the grandmother of a friend of mine spent her life in an asylum after throwing a scourer at her mother-in-law. At least one US psychiatric textbook, still widely in use during the 1970s, recommended lobotomies for women in abusive relationships.62

There are more people with mental health disorders in prison than in all of the psychiatric hospitals in the United States added up. In 2015, the Washington Post reported that, American prisons and jails housed an estimated 356,268 [people] with severe mental illness.… [a] figure [that] is more than 10 times the number of mentally ill patients in state psychiatric hospitals [in 2012, the last year for reliable data]—about 35,000 people.

Second Week Of June 2012 I agreed to be Dr. Arius’ case study. In my reply to the psychiatrist, I wrote: Good Day Dr. A. I’m surprised and flattered that you consider me an appropriate candidate to conduct a case study on my unique E.R.O.S., Bahriji, elite Arab Household, and secondary school experiences. As much as I am delighted to agree to your proposed challenge and to answer your questionnaires to the best of my abilities, I also have questions for you for which I would like answers before being an active participant in the survey. * Are you planning to publish professional psychiatric papers and publications to your findings? Or are you working on this project solely for your personal interest? * If your research reveals a positive alternative to the current accepted educational norm, are you planning to actively advocate for change? As you are aware, I can only provide you with my personal opinion on my educational experiences. I cannot speak for other  E.R.O.S. members. Before I agree to undergo this case study, I wish to make it very clear that I only speak for myself. Under no circumstances will I undermine to reveal the actual names of people and places, or jeopardize their society and individual standing in any way. I am obligated to honor my oath of confidentiality and pledge never to reveal the true identity of the clandestine society. As long as you are aware of my pledge, I am happy to answer your questions to the best of my ability. Although I have not known you for very long, I consider you a trusted friend. My intuition tells me you are a man of integrity. I have always trusted my inner voice and it has never failed me. I look forward to your next correspondence and your answers to my questions. I hope all is going splendidly in your part of the world. Keep me posted on the progress of your gay organization. It is good to receive your emails as always. Yours truly, Young.

Some estimates show that, over the next twenty years, an incredible 16 to 18 percent of all health care costs will be consumed by health issues arising from excessive weight: not genetic misfortune, birth defects, psychiatric illness, burns, or post-traumatic stress disorder from the horrors of war—no, just getting fat. The cost of Americans becoming obese dwarfs the sum spent on cancer. More money will be spent on health consequences of obesity than education.

You really need to be careful In taking advice, being influenced, or following and supporting someone on Social Media. Choose to double-check, verify, and apply logic and reasonable thinking in everything. It is because you don’t know the state of mind, intentions, situation, or conditions of the person posting. They might be posting from prison, psychiatric hospital or dark place. They might be bots, egocentric, pessimists, greedy, dishonest, manipulative, narcissistic, vindictive, sarcastic, toxic, selfish, hostile, pedophiles, scammers, murderers, insane, minors, catfish or psychopaths. They might have bipolar disorder. Because they have a large number of followers or they are too vocal it doesn’t mean you should listen and take everything they say.

The effects of these symptoms on daily life can range from mild to disabling. The four groups of PTS symptoms will probably sound familiar: intrusive memories, changes in thinking and feeling, changes in arousal and reactivity, and avoidance (American Psychiatric Association 2013). However, you may not have noticed the link between all of the symptoms and the traumatic event that you experienced.

Our brain scanning experiments in healthy individuals offered reflections on the relationship between sleep and psychiatric illnesses. There is no major psychiatric condition in which sleep is normal. This is true of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder (once known as manic depression

Could he have concentrated on the most extreme cases, the ones who’d remained symptomatic? And if so, why? “Was this incident generally known?” “Of course. It was taken up by every scientific community that had anything to do with social or psychiatric phenomena. It would have been hard for the Egyptian government to keep a lid on something that huge. There were even articles in the Washington Post and New York Times. Look in any archive—you’ll find them.

Evolution Narrative The fact that the mad are 'maladjusted' to society does not mean they are maladjusted to nature, to the underlying basis of the cosmos. As Laing presciently wrote, 'Our society may itself have become biologically dysfunctional, and some forms of schizophrenic alienation from the alienation of our society may have sociobiological function that we have not recognized.' This stunning insight of Laing's has not been fully appreciated by psychiatric survivors. This idea is the basis of the vision of the eminent Indian Philosopher and yogi Sri Aurobindo. Though we are presently mired by ignorance, human beings sooner or later must ascend to a more enlightened state, we must realize the divine life, the eternal life, on Earth. This will involve a profound change of society, humanity, and of the cosmos itself: society will be based on a realization of the unity of humanity, not on, as at present, the division of humanity and the struggle for survival of the fittest (in reality, the most ruthless). The current 'laws of nature' will be transcended by 'newer ones' more conducive to human happiness. As Sri Aurobindo wrote, 'The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature.' This, and not 'some post-mortem salvation,' Aurobindo tells us, is the 'new birth' for which humanity waits as the 'crowning movement' of its 'long, obscure and painful history.' The dream of heaven on Earth – the recovery of paradise that has haunted the collective imagination for millennia – will be realized. The human being must transform herself so that she can be the instrument of this planetary transformation. 'Man is at highest a half-god who has risen out of the animal nature, and is splendidly abnormal in it, but the thing which man has started off to be, the whole God,' wrote Aurobindo, 'is something so much greater than what he is, that it seems to him as abnormal to himself as he is to the animal. This means a great and arduous labor of growth before him, but also a splendid crown of his race and his victory. This new being would indeed be abnormal by the standards of society, of the mental health system. The process by which she would evolve spiritually might take unexpected turns, it might – and clearly often does – lead through madness. It might indeed be madness by our currents standards.

Researchers and clinicians in the fields of psychology and psychiatry are increasingly viewing mental health conditions through the lens of predictive processing. Looking at the extremes, psychiatric diseases can be seen as disorders of inference. Over-predicting and attributing excessive salience to sensory data results in hallucinations and delusions – the fantasies that our brains are constantly generating are not kept in check by the sensory evidence that should temper them. The opposite can result in dissociation – the experience of detachment from your emotions, your body or the world. According to the predictive processing framework, what we term mental illness is the formation of a maladaptive model of the world, one ceasing to be updated by prediction errors and inflexible to changing contexts. The predictive brain also explains why humans are so susceptible to ‘confirmation bias’: it’s easier to receive information that confirms our model of the world. Let’s say, for example, that you have depression fuelled by a core belief that you are an abject failure in all areas of life. Over time, your brain turns up the gain for evidence confirming this negative belief, and does not pay adequate attention to contrary evidence suggesting that you actually do have strengths and are valued by others. These beliefs also result in behaviours, such as social avoidance, that further strengthen a belief that you have no friends and nothing to offer the world. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: down and down a vicious spiral you fall. Context is also crucial. A mental health condition may result from what was once a successful, adaptive response that has been transplanted into an unsuitable environment. I once assessed an army veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who, a decade after returning from a busy tour in Iraq, instinctively jumped off a road bridge in response to the sound of a backfiring car. Thankfully, the waters of a canal below broke his fall. That was a well-adapted response for war-torn Basra, but one unsuited to an uneventful, middle-class suburb of Birmingham. Following a traumatic event – whether it be war, childhood abuse, severe pain, a nasty infection – our brain’s predictive baseline can be dislocated and end up becoming hypersensitive, expecting to be in constant danger even long after the peril has passed. Essentially, if someone’s model of the world does not successfully adapt to their environment and minimize uncertainty, the result is misery.