Regarding the insults: Sure you can insult someone (god forbid) on physical grounds. If someone is blind ("Are you blind!?" ), if someone is deaf "Are you deaf?", if someone is sleepy "Keeping you awake?" if someone is uncoordinated "Your gramma taught you to pitch?" if someone is weak, "Ask that three-year old in the sand box to help you carry that piano."

If you want diseases, there had been lots of slurs made on STD sufferers, on the obese, on Alzheimer's patients, (could be classified as mental disease), on lepers, on men with no arms and legs, on blondes, on bodybuilders, on astronauts. (Levity and Leviticus.)

That is so because medical conditions do not affect the capacity to make good judgments, but mental conditions do.

What's with you, sky? this's been discussed already.

I think you're superblind on this issue of mental/medical disease stuff, because you forget earlier arguments, or pretend to forget them. Only fanatics will glide over valid counter-arguments in debates. Tell the Jehova's witness that the bible was not written or inspired by god, and that's a valid point. You glide over already stated valid refutations of some of your major premises.

I don't think that in any point in the history of medicine or pre-medicine, a broken leg was considered "right". Or a bleeding neck. Or leprosy. Or whatever. This quote above was a fabricated, untrue argument. It was the third premiss that you cited and is not true.

Oh gosh, now we have to add the word “compromised” into the mix.

Add a dash of salt and simmer slowly for one hour and you’ll get a nice thick soup.

Sorry if that offends, but it really is highly relevant to the problem as I see it. With all the shifting of words (sick, ill, disordered, challenged, and now “compromised”) trying to get agreement on a concise definition for any of them is like pulling teeth while wading through thick soup.

<end rant>

<deep breath>

<let it out slowly>

Ok.

I have been diagnosed with a “mental disorder”. Although personally I feel more “accused” than “diagnosed”.

Now whether “mental disorder” is the same thing as “cognitively compromised” or not, I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me.

And I will freely admit that I do not (and cannot) see everything from every possible viewpoint. Too many viewpoints – too little time.

Excellent points. Conceded.

No no no no no.

Assuming we subtract the moral value from the expression "wrong", if someone sees pink elephants when there are none (or a miryad of similar effects are happening), then he will still behave as there were pink elephants. Which behaviour is incongruous with the survival chances of the sufferer in case there are NO pink elephants where he sees them. And this brings down the whole tribe -- if he reproduces (i.e. makes love to women) or if he teaches the kids to not throw spears at the game but eat rocks and that will bring in the game, then the tribe will accuse him of being "wrong" and take measures. Our measures is to try to get the guy get along in society.

Behaviour that is contrarian to survival is "wrong" behaviour, just like a broken leg is a bad condition which results in the "wrong" behaviour of not being able to flee from a lion or not being able to chase a gaselle. People try to stop this sort of condition from propagating in the tribe. The tribesmen will 1. not allow the person to reproduce; 2. try to heal him; 3. expel him if he's incorrigible; 4. execute him if he's getting really bad.

This was premiss 4 I found "wrong" in your line-up of what you were basing your case on.

Hell, you're not "cognitively compromised", you're sharp as a tack.

But IQ has sometimes not very much to do with other brain functions. Such as, emotional influences, interpreting social responses by others, recognizing social/emotional personal relationships and social/emotional cause-effect relationships, and the like.

In fact one of the first three signs of mental disorder, disease, illness, is a misjudgment of reality. Not necessarily at all only with psychoses.

Another sign is the suffering that the patient reports.

And a third sign is the suffering of the community around the mental patient, which find him or her increasingly difficult to tolerate and love and continue to extend acceptance to.

This all goes for patients with high iq low iq and anything between and beyond.

I had never had ANY problem accepting my mental disease, in fact, in the early days of it I advertised it in social circles. But I know that for some it's such a blow that they never, ever, get over the denial phase. They know they'd need to mourn themselves for the rest of their lives if they accepted that they are personally mentally ill.

My only advice to those -- which is an empty advice since it will not be effective -- is to consider themselves in the general scheme of things. Some things happen to people whether they wish it upon themselves or not. Such as burning alive in a fire or being in an airplane that nose-dives to certain death of the passengers and crew. These are statistical events, such as which atom will release a gamma particle in a bunch of atoms. Most of the resistance to accept the diagnosis is because of stigma, because of assumed blame. It's automatic, since the tribe's reaciton to mentally ill people has become a moral judgement over the millennia. (Hence the great efforts by societies in the free world to de-stigmatize mental disease, disabilities, homosexuality, child-molestation, nun-beating, rape and homicidal ideation.)

So the quickest and best way to alleviate the pain of assumed "wrongness of the self" is to realize that it's a statistical occurrance; society will have the same percentages of mentally diseased members, and at birth it is impossible to say if the person or any of his or her children will be mentally ill. So it's just the luck of the draw. Nobody can be accused morally for drawing he short straw. It's absurd. So consider yourself, sky, and those others who also have a real hard time accepting that you have a condition, consider yourselves a statistical number.

Not a very uplifting thought, being a number drawn at random, but still better than the invinicible and unchangeable belief that you're evil and wrong. And there is a huge advantage to being a number drawn at random. When you declare yourself, when you force yourself to believe that you are mentally ill, then you become evil and wrong, which affects and influences and condemns all that's human in you. If you are a number, a statistic, then your blame is lifted, you're no longer evil, you're still able to retain all parts of your humanity.

It's some power you need, to be strong enough to believe yourself the suggestion of being a number as well as a fully-fledged human, instead of being an evil and wrong condemned, when you face being diagnosed a mentally ill person.

Now I've heard it all where "politically correct" is concerned.




When the time comes, I'm just going to tell people I've lost my mind. I'm sure I probably will some day. Alzheimer's disease runs in my family.

Isn’t “the lack of capacity to make good judgements” itself a mental condition? In fact, it seems to me that would be a pretty good universal definition of “mental illness”.

Really, it seems to me that what you said is tantamount to saying “mental illness causes mental illness”.

And that seems to me to be just about where the whole of the mental health industry is on the subject of causes for mental illness.

And so we close with derogatory accusations of both mental and a medical illness, as the basis for a position.

Now how ironic is that?

(I think you just proved my whole point for me.)

Hmmm……..

The hypothetical situation, as I stated it, had no inherent dependencies other than that the instance of seeing the elephants be communicated to someone else.

Whereas the for the rest of your post, you added additional dependencies that were not included in my hypothetical situation. (i.e. complex survival situations for the individual and group.)

Now since it is possible that the simple act of telling someone that you saw a pink elephant could have an adverse effect on their survival, and I didn’t specifically state that there were no other factors involved in my hypothetical situation, I will make a half-concession.

And because of that half-concession, I won’t cry strawman about the rest.



Now there are some points I’d like to make relating to the rest of the post…Ok, so in that scenario you’re using “survival” to measure “right and wrong”. In other words “right action” is action that increases the actual or potential survival of the individual. I got that and I agree.

So now, if we’re going to equate that concept of right and wrong with mental health or illness, I have to ask if there is any line drawn, and if so where?

By that I mean, is all “wrong action” the result of “mental illness”?

If so, then it must follow that anyone who ever has done, or will do, anything wrong, from the beginning of the universe to the end, has (at the time of the action) some “mental wrongness”. In other words, “mental illness” is universal. Everyone suffers from it.

Now on the other hand, if all “wrong action” is not the result of “mental illness”, then “wrong action” is an incomplete definition for mental health, and we’re right back at needing a definition for mental health.

That is, if the definition of “mental health”, is dependent on the definition of “wrong action”, but survival is not a valid measurement of “wrong action”, then we’ve got nothing left with which to measure “mental health”.

And the same logic applies to the “group” scenario.

Not all "wrong actions" are not the result of "mental illness".

Take, for instance, the hapless man who could not run away from a charging lion, because the man's leg was broken.

This was written up right there in the post.

Why did you ask? Why did you HAVE to ask?

Again, your premise was -- sorry -- unacceptable. You equated "wrong" with "mental illness" and vice versa.

That is not what anyone else was saying other than you. If you cannot escape from that rigorous dogma, then I cannot tell you anything about mental illness that you can accept.

I just say I am mentally challenged....






by societal perceptions.

This is one of the areas where I bristle.

Here's an exercise...

Consider a universe with only two people in it and unknown quantity (possibly zero) of pink elephants.

One of them says "I see a pink elephant."
The other one looks around and then says "I don't see a pink elephant"

How would one go about determining if either one did or did not "misjudge reality"?

Now use that exact same process of determining reality and apply it to a universe with three people, only one of which claims to see the elephant.

And then use that exact same process of determining reality and apply it to a universe with a million people, only one of which claims to see the elephant.

And finally, tell me if the exact same process of determining reality is universal. And if not, why not?

Now if you wish, you may start with the million and work your way back to the one. Or take them in any order you want.

I'm just looking for a universal method for determining whether or not someone has misjudged reality or not.

That seems to you that way, it seems to me, because you seem to me a person deathly afraid of having to admit to himself that he is mentally ill.

Mental illness does or does not cause mental illness. I don't know.

The failing of a mentally ill person's judgment is a sign.

There are many other facets to mental illness.

Nobody knows, basically, what causes what.

Our lack of knowing what causes what does not take away from the reality, though, that mental illness(es) exist.

What if there are a million people seeing pink elephants and only one not seeing any, where in fact there ain't any?

Reality is not decided by vote. Reality is decided by its effects on its own observers.

Failure to being able to see any other perception other than their own is a sign of madness.

Rigidly adhering to one mindset is a sign of madness.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is madness.

Expecting a different outcome, without being prepared to see the other view is madness.





Perhaps being mentally challenged is being able to see the madness in others.

One of the first lessons my shrink entrusted me with, back 35 years ago, was to practice "reality checking". It employs a technique that tells the thinker how his own perception compares to what would be reasonably stated by a different (and imaginary) person who perceives reality with no distortion.

I started the journey to a manageable life-style when I was well enough to be able to practice this.

It stayed with me the whole time -- the unexamined life is not worth living.

I learnt to accept that I am ill, and that I have needed all along to use tools to help me establish a reasonable existence that other people did not need.

I never saw it as a stigma. I saw it "this is how things are, this is what you have to do to compensate for these thigns." This applied to medication, too. And to by-weekly electroshock therapy, to medical rape (forced and unnecessary virtual (electronic) enemas) by the orderlies, and to pretending to be a wild, untamed tiger while the head nurse was the lion tamer (she even sported a handsome little curled-up black mustache for these sessions, along with the top hat and the whip and chair and nothing else), and she could never train me because she was a lion tamer, not a tiger tamer, the stupid little beeech. So I mauled and ate her when she put her head in my open mouth and she hadn't used that day "Head and Shoulders(tm)". I popped her skull with my molars as if it were a walnut. She tasted bad. (She must have had shiit for brains.)

This was your bedtime fairy tale.

Good night.

Phrased that way it doesn’t seem to me that there is any possibility of disabusing you of that notion.

If I said I have admitted to myself that I am mentally ill, would you believe me?

And here's a little story for you. It's satire, not sarcasem like yours. So if you don't like satire, I recemmend you not read it.

A guy walks out into his back yard with a friend of his and looks at a rock. The friend says “Hey! I’ve seen one of those before. It’s a blargenfarg.” “Really?” the guy asks, surprised. “I thought it was just a rock.” “Oh no, it’s definitely a blargenfarg.” his friend says. “And they’re really bad.” “Oh really?” the guy says again, becoming worried

A little while later the guy thinks to himself, “I don’t want that blargenfarg anymore. None of my friends like it and they all think I’m weird because I have it.” So he calls the official, government sanctioned Blargenfarg Specialist (BS for short) in his area and tells the BS his problem. The BS agrees to help him out. So the next day the BS comes out and examines the blargenfarg. After the examination he tells the guy “Yes, this is most certainly a particularly insidious form of blargenfarg. It is a split sedimentary form with multiple pigmentations, severe excavations on the anterior side, and some intricate traces of fossilization in the interior. The guys say “Wow, I’m sure glad to find that out. I’m so relieved. So can you get rid of it for me? The BS is horrified and quickly replies “I’m sorry but there is no known means of getting rid of it.” “Why is it here? How did it get here?” the guy asks, to which the BS replies “We really don’t know where they come from or why they’re here. Although I think I can help, but you’re going to have to do all the work yourself.” “Oh great!” the guy says. “What do I have to do?” The BS tells him “Go down to the ACME Nursery Company, get some sod, and cover it up. Now you’ll have to do this every week for the rest of your life because the sod will only last for a week. And I’ll have to come out once a month to check to see if it’s being completely covered. With every visit costing $500 plus travel expenses. And here’s my bill for this visit” “Wow BS, thanks”. You’re a life saver.” The BS hands him the bill and leaves smiling, thinking about how well his ACME Nursery Company stock is doing.

Meanwhile, another guy down the street, who had a blargenfarg too, got a friend of his to help him dig it up and disposed of it, and the natural grass has grown over the area without having to replant anything. He has a picnic table on top if the spot and everyone gathers there.

Our lack of knowing what causes what, does not take away from the reality that blargenfargs exist.

Blargenfargs exist! You can see ‘em and touch ‘em and sit on ‘em. And with the right technology, you can get rid of them.

And I wish not to be drawn into presumptions about personal motivations. I always assume that the people involved in a discussion in these forums are interested in sharing viewpoints about the issues. And agreed upon definitions are critical to any coherent discussion of any issue.

The point is this…

If I don’t understand something you say, and “normal conversation” does not resolve the misunderstanding, I assume it is because I have assigned meanings to the words that are different from the menaings you intended. SO I ask what the words mean to you.

So you are completely wrong in your presumption about my motivation in asking you for the definitions. Completely wrong.

Proving that I am not mentally ill never even crossed my mind until you mentioned it. And after you mentioned it, it still was nothing I had even the least concern for. So you’re completely wrong there to.