Schizophrenia - A Discussion

[rayven]

it really pisses me off when some clueless, pseudo-intellectual douchebag says it's all bullshit and it's a big, bad, evil, money making plot when they haven't the slightest ****ing idea what makes the fields so credible and scientific.

If the OP is so wrong why would shrinks take to telling patients that are experiencing stigma and discrimiination is a paranoid delusion? This is a policy taken in certain health systems in this country when the patient complains about how the community and the agencies they deal with treat them (rife throughout society) and then up there dosage of mind altering if not zombyfying medication.

 

[vealesy]

The thing is doc, there really are blue meanies trying to shoot me with lazers and take me captive!!

 

[Chief]

it really pisses me off when some clueless, pseudo-intellectual douchebag says it's all bullshit and it's a big, bad, evil, money making plot when they haven't the slightest ****ing idea what makes the fields so credible and scientific.

I agree. I just wasn't going to be so direct about it

 

[Monniehawk]

I'm in two minds about all this schizophrenia stuff.

Oh, Wait a ...

 

[rayven]

If I am correct in what I think vealsey has knowlage on, i could say that you don't have any idea either chief.
I don't think alot hear know whats its like to be on the recieving end of whats been discussed and behaving abit like christian missionaries IMO, therefor have no fracking idea.

What I will say is I think Pauline hanson is full of shit, she is very intolerant,her views are shaped by some deep and meanigfull experiences she has had, by the culture she grew up in and some pretty bad mindsets taught by potentialy various sources, but there is truth in there somewhere in some things, I would put Scientology in a similar boat( there is an element of truth in somethings).

They say real Schitzophrenia is passed on by blood, Adolf hitler tried to stop this..........

.

 

[Chief]

They say real Schitzophrenia is passed on by blood, Adolf hitler tried to stop this..........

.

They do? They who?

 

[EasternTiger]

What has always baffled me is why they choose to label such conditions with ominous names. Whoever discovered this mental condition sat back and thought: Right, I'm probably going to get some sort of recognition for this. Best I come up with the worst possible name for it.

Can you imagine the mental images you would get when the doctor says "Sir I'm afraid you have SCHIZOPHRENIA!!!! It would be enough to give you a panic attack right then and there.

Not to mention the social stigma "Hi I'm George and I'm schizophrenic". You'd be treated like a social leper and people wouldn't let you hold their baby.

Instead, they should use womens names like they do with cyclones. "Hi I'm suffering from a condition called Tracy". Far less intimidating. You'd at least get a chuckle and a pat on the back, and someone might even buy you a beer and have a chat.

Same with Depression. Just hearing the word is enough to send you into a spiral. Why don't they call it Angelina instead. Much more likely to put a smile on ones face.

 

[Power King]

What has always baffled me is why they choose to label such conditions with ominous names. Whoever discovered this mental condition sat back and thought: Right, I'm probably going to get some sort of recognition for this. Best I come up with the worst possible name for it.

Can you imagine the mental images you would get when the doctor says "Sir I'm afraid you have SCHIZOPHRENIA!!!! It would be enough to give you a panic attack right then and there.

Not to mention the social stigma "Hi I'm George and I'm schizophrenic". You'd be treated like a social leper and people wouldn't let you hold their baby.

Instead, they should use womens names like they do with cyclones. "Hi I'm suffering from a condition called Tracy". Far less intimidating. You'd at least get a chuckle and a pat on the back, and someone might even buy you a beer and have a chat.

Same with Depression. Just hearing the word is enough to send you into a spiral. Why don't they call it Angelina instead. Much more likely to put a smile on ones face.

The social stigma surrounding the term schizophrenia is a result of the condition's symptoms, not the term itself.

Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease sounds bad as a term in and of itself, but it has no social stigma because it is a condition that affects so many people and doesn't detract from one's social worth. Its symptoms are accepted in society without retribution.

AIDS is a term that doesn't 'sound' bad at all, but go back to the 1980's and AIDS sufferers were ostracised equally if not more than schizophrenics today because of the social stigma surrounding the stereotypical aids carriers themselves.

It's not the name.

 

[Suspense]

Well, consider the nature of thought; when we conceive a thought, we do so in a way is inextricable from our (personal) language and our mood (which is fundamental and necessarily precedes thought).

What CB therapy does, essentially, is it does away with the crucial question of language altogether and reverses the proper mood-thought relation. I.e. it more or less posits that you are doing thought badly and therefore your moods are faulty.

As thought is something you are doing, it is something you can change (or "do" differently). As opposed to the true nature of thought, which certainly cannot be altered at the level of consciousness, even when dealing with "patterns" or "impulses" or whatever rather than individual thoughts.

What is changed, rather, is the ability to censor those thoughts more effectively, and pervert them in a way that yields a better behavioural outcome.

It's why, afaik, CBT is most successful where the patient is indeed "doing thought badly" - namely where belief has taken the place of thought (phobias and the like). There, the ability to censor the misguided belief and return to thought is obviously useful.

thanks. i think that your comments regarding CBT aren't far off the mark. my interest lies in what is termed as the "third wave of CBT" or MCBT. there are plenty of ongoing discussions as to whether MCBT is even CBT at all. at any length, i think it manages to avoid many of the criticisms you highlighted regarding traditional CBT.

The First and Second Waves of CBT

After the Second World War the first wave of the empirically based cognitive behavioural therapies was developed, to help combat the anxiety and depression following the war: this was termed behavioural therapy. In the 1950’s Ellis introduced the first approaches to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) in his development of Relational Emotive Therapy, which was followed in the 1960’s by the empirical study of how thoughts (cognitions) effected emotion and behaviour. This was referred to as the ‘second wave’ or the ‘cognitive revolution’. This second wave was largely developed by A. T. Beck, and initially this approach was mainly applied to depression (Beck 1967), but was later developed to encompass anxiety in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and in the 1990’s taken further to cover couples work, personality disorders and substance abuse (Wills 2009). The second wave was also strengthened by Beck’s team, who helped to conceptualise and model therapy for a large number of disorders (see Wells 1997, and many others). A further development of the second wave was the introduction of Schema Focused Therapy (Young et al. 2003) in the 1990’s.

The Third Wave

The most recent change in CBT has been the introduction of the ‘third wave’, which examines whether trying to control our thoughts or emotions is part of the solution, or actually, part of the problem. This has led to the development of a process whereby we don’t just try to change what we think, but how we think. Many of the third wave therapies have a decreased emphasis on controlling our thoughts and emotions, and rather an acceptance of how they are, and changing how we react to them. The main third wave therapies include: Acceptance and Commitment Theory (ACT), Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Behavioural Activation (BA), Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP), Cognitive Behavioural Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP), and Integrative Couple Therapy (ICT). This article will concentrate on Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, some of the other approaches may be tackled in future articles.

Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

MBCT involves accepting thoughts and feelings without judgement rather than trying to push them out of consciousness, with a goal of correcting cognitive distortions (Segal et al 2002). Wills (2009) states that such a way of thinking stresses acceptance of the idea that thoughts and beliefs are mental events and processes rather than reflections of objective truths.

http://www.mindandsoul.info/Articles/232757/Mind_and_Soul/Articles/Mindfulness_and_CBT.aspx (don't bother reading unless your xtian )
[FONT=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif,sans-serif]

[/FONT]Mindfulness, particularly relating to contemplation on the mind, is perhaps best expressed in the Mahāsatipatthāna Sutta: [FONT=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif,sans-serif][SIZE=-1]

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif,sans-serif][SIZE=-1]When you have anger in your mind, you should observe it (‘anger, anger, anger’) as it is. So when you have anger in your mind, you should be mindful of it, noting, ‘anger, anger, anger.’ When you have hatred, note ‘hatred, hatred, hatred.’ When you have aversion, observe it: ‘aversion, aversion, aversion.’ When you have ill-will, observe it: ‘ill-will, ill-will, ill-will.’[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif,sans-serif][SIZE=-1]If a meditator is able to be aware of, to be mindful of, any mental state arising at that moment, then he is sure to liberate his mind from defilements while he observing that mental state. That mental state (awareness of defilements) is free from defilement.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif,sans-serif][SIZE=-1]When he realises the arising and passing away of a mental state, anger for example, then he doesn’t take the anger to be himself. He doesn’t identify that anger with himself, with a person, a being, a self or soul. Because he realises anger is just a mental state, he comes to realise the impersonal nature of the anger. He comes to realise the non-self nature of the anger. Then he won’t be attached to the anger, or he won’t be attached to his mind, because he sees it as impermanent, or as arising and passing away.[/SIZE][/FONT]

http://www.aimwell.org/Books/Other/Great_Man/great_man.html

you'll note that MCBT, unlike CBT, doesn't strictly see suffering/unsatisfaction as a disorder nor does it seek to control or change thoughts, rather than simply acknowledge that thoughts arise unbidden in our minds and we can be aware/mindful of thoughts as just thoughts.

 

[BarneyBent]

Well, consider the nature of thought; when we conceive a thought, we do so in a way is inextricable from our (personal) language and our mood (which is fundamental and necessarily precedes thought).

What CB therapy does, essentially, is it does away with the crucial question of language altogether and reverses the proper mood-thought relation. I.e. it more or less posits that you are doing thought badly and therefore your moods are faulty.

As thought is something you are doing, it is something you can change (or "do" differently). As opposed to the true nature of thought, which certainly cannot be altered at the level of consciousness, even when dealing with "patterns" or "impulses" or whatever rather than individual thoughts.

What is changed, rather, is the ability to censor those thoughts more effectively, and pervert them in a way that yields a better behavioural outcome.

It's why, afaik, CBT is most successful where the patient is indeed "doing thought badly" - namely where belief has taken the place of thought (phobias and the like). There, the ability to censor the misguided belief and return to thought is obviously useful.

I have major problems with the assumptions you've made in this post.

Firstly, you've provided nothing but philosophical conjecture about how mood relates to thought. Saying that mood necessarily precedes thought is a rather old-fashioned take on the matter, and there is plenty of very recent and very good research to suggest that this is not the case. Thoughts and cognitions contribute a great deal to mood and mindset, both in the short term (thinking bad things make you pissed off) and long term (persistent negative cognitions disposes your brain to negative patterns of thinking).

In reality, a negative mood begets negative cognitions, and negative cognitions beget a negative mood. It is a bidirectional relationship. CBT aims to identify negative cognitions and limit their contribution to negative mood. Yes, it is not as delicate as perhaps would be ideal, it can be a bit brutal in its application, and as such in certain circumstances it might not be suitable or effective (though as Suspense outlines above, therapies are being improved in this regard), but to paraphrase Jarvis Cocker, it has to start somewhere, so it starts there.

Secondly, CBT is not at all about censorship and suppression. The danger of suppression is one that psychologists and psychiatrists are all too aware of, to the point that some irresponsible clinicians, in the process of trying to identify suppressed cognitions, actually unwittingly plant them there to begin with. But that's another issue.

The point is that CBT does not force a patient to stop thinking in certain ways so that they stop behaving in certain ways. It's a much more complicated and holistic mechanism than that. CBT is all about making people aware of negative semi-conscious cognitive errors, recognising their erronous nature, and treating them as errors, rather than truths. Mindfulness-based-cognitive-therapy focuses particularly strongly on the awareness side of this, but it is the underlying aim of all CBT. Once people are able to recognise cognitive errors for what they are, their reactions to such thoughts will change, changing their cognitive patterns so that these cognitive errors are background noise rather than salient, significant contributors to mood disorder and/or anxiety.

Basically, like any type of therapy, particularly relatively recent ones, it isn't perfect, it won't always work, it isn't always free from negative side-effects, and it is in need of constant review and improvement. But it is not "vulgar", it is not a "perversion", it is not, as you seem to be implying (correct me if I'm wrong) a band-aid, superficial solution that does more harm than good. It has a strong basis in modern understandings of the relationship between cognitions and mood, and it does not at all try to suppress thoughts; quite the opposite, it tries to bring them to attention so that they can be dealt with consciously.

 

[mdc]

But you can re-examine language and mood as well. I don't see how representations of the world aren't pre-conscious, but mood is.

This is where we differ. I don't believe you can act on mood or language through thought. "Representations", though certainly pre-conscious in the sense that they are not results of conscious acts, are nonetheless not fundamental in the way that mood/language are, because representations are themselves entirely dependent on language (amongst other things).

thanks. i think that your comments regarding CBT aren't far off the mark. my interest lies in what is termed as the "third wave of CBT" or MCBT. there are plenty of ongoing discussions as to whether MCBT is even CBT at all. at any length, i think it manages to avoid many of the criticisms you highlighted regarding traditional CBT.

It's certainly an interesting idea. Speaking from a completely ignorant perspective re: MCBT, my pragmatic concerns would be;
- How do you integrate it into the framework of "functionality" that dominates mental health? That is, if the key goal for therapy is the re-turning of a person to the normative mode of a socially accepted worker, would encouraging what is essentially dissociation (a disease!) and meditation (laziness!) really fly?
- Are the majority of people really capable of understanding their own moods? Particularly in a time that prescribes moods-as-diseases? To twist your quoted example a little, what use would it be to have Ricky thinking to himself "Depressed. Depressed. Depressed" given Ricky already understands depressed as disease? It seems to me that it would require a complete overhaul of the current language of mood, which would be extraordinarily time-consuming and expensive, thereby eliminating the key reason that CBT draws so much funding.

He doesn’t identify that anger with himself, with a person, a being, a self or soul. Because he realises anger is just a mental state, he comes to realise the impersonal nature of the anger. He comes to realise the non-self nature of the anger.

This reminds me of Heidegger's description of profound boredom (which he identifies as a fundamental attunement i.e. mood, italics his);

For with this 'it is boring for one' we are not merely relieved of our everyday personality, somehow distant and alien to it, but simultaneously also elevated beyond the particular situation in each case, and beyond the specific beings surrounding us there.
[...] it makes everything of equally great and equally little worth.

 

[mdc]

Firstly, you've provided nothing but philosophical conjecture about how mood relates to thought. Saying that mood necessarily precedes thought is a rather old-fashioned take on the matter, and there is plenty of very recent and very good research to suggest that this is not the case. Thoughts and cognitions contribute a great deal to mood and mindset, both in the short term (thinking bad things make you pissed off) and long term (persistent negative cognitions disposes your brain to negative patterns of thinking).

But the discussion of thought and mood can indeed be nothing but philosophical! That said, I'd be interested to take a look at this very good research - feel free just to post the links, I have access to most journal db's.

In reality, a negative mood begets negative cognitions, and negative cognitions beget a negative mood. It is a bidirectional relationship. CBT aims to identify negative cognitions and limit their contribution to negative mood. Yes, it is not as delicate as perhaps would be ideal, it can be a bit brutal in its application, and as such in certain circumstances it might not be suitable or effective (though as Suspense outlines above, therapies are being improved in this regard), but to paraphrase Jarvis Cocker, it has to start somewhere, so it starts there.

I am unsure of what "negative thought" or "negative cognition" means. Could you explain it? I can at least interpret "negative mood" as that which through thought leads to undesirable behaviour and so on.

I also agree that it needs to start somewhere - but the important thing is not where it starts, but how. Is it asking the right questions, does it have the right aims? The answer w.r.t to CBT, imv, is no.

Secondly, CBT is not at all about censorship and suppression. The danger of suppression is one that psychologists and psychiatrists are all too aware of, to the point that some irresponsible clinicians, in the process of trying to identify suppressed cognitions, actually unwittingly plant them there to begin with. But that's another issue.

Just to clarify, I am not accusing psychiatrists of wittingly trying to teach censorship and suppression. I am, however, arguing that the (false) assumptions that CBT makes regarding the nature of thought leads them down a garden path. The ultimate result of which is, often enough, censorship and suppression.

The point is that CBT does not force a patient to stop thinking in certain ways so that they stop behaving in certain ways. It's a much more complicated and holistic mechanism than that. CBT is all about making people aware of negative semi-conscious cognitive errors, recognising their erronous nature, and treating them as errors, rather than truths. Mindfulness-based-cognitive-therapy focuses particularly strongly on the awareness side of this, but it is the underlying aim of all CBT. Once people are able to recognise cognitive errors for what they are, their reactions to such thoughts will change, changing their cognitive patterns so that these cognitive errors are background noise rather than salient, significant contributors to mood disorder and/or anxiety.

I've mentioned as much. Thus my acknowledgement that CBT is indeed useful where the patient is "doing thought badly". This is distinct, however, from being able to change thinking in its proper sense, and in my mind is equivalent to self-censorship in many cases (with the exception of those I've already mentioned).

Basically, like any type of therapy, particularly relatively recent ones, it isn't perfect, it won't always work, it isn't always free from negative side-effects, and it is in need of constant review and improvement. But it is not "vulgar", it is not a "perversion", it is not, as you seem to be implying (correct me if I'm wrong) a band-aid, superficial solution that does more harm than good. It has a strong basis in modern understandings of the relationship between cognitions and mood, and it does not at all try to suppress thoughts; quite the opposite, it tries to bring them to attention so that they can be dealt with consciously.

I will have to correct you. I think CBT is reasonable enough at achieving its goals. That is, it's ok at effecting a change in a person's behaviour such that their "functionality" is improved (at least no worse than other therapies, and often cheaper). If this is what a patient truly wanted, then it would certainly do more good than harm. What I object to is labeling this mental health. It is not that - it is social or behavioural health. This applies more widely to the whole of the psychiatric profession, but CBT is the one that, it seems to me, least approaches what could be labeled a serious examination of the mind.

 

[BarneyBent]

But the discussion of thought and mood can indeed be nothing but philosophical! That said, I'd be interested to take a look at this very good research - feel free just to post the links, I have access to most journal db's.

What makes you say that it can be nothing but philosophical?

Anyway, just quickly, I'll post a few journal articles on the matter from a Google Scholar search (I'm not going to write an essay here). I've used the context of depression, but there's plenty on anxiety and other disorders as well. I'm also going off abstracts, I don't have the time nor inclination to read them all, so if something makes it in that isn't quite relevant then that's probably why.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...a94a6dcdbafc10827989526a90b65d29&searchtype=a

http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&uid=1981-25869-001

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l888055h70471225/

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w06v16r673820241/ (Note that this is not directly relevant to the mood/thought relationship, but assesses the success of CBT based on measures of self-esteem and self-acceptance, rather than functionality, so I thought I'd throw it in)

I am unsure of what "negative thought" or "negative cognition" means. Could you explain it? I can at least interpret "negative mood" as that which through thought leads to undesirable behaviour and so on.

I would not define "negative mood" as that. I would define "negative mood" off the top of my head as a state of being characterised by a prevalence of negative cognitions (which I will define soon), often irrational, and unpleasant somatic experiences, including psychomotor interference, physical anxiety and other such symptoms. This need not lead to negative behaviour. One may have a negative mood but force themselves to act positively (this result, I feel, would be more akin to your concept of the aim of CBT, but that is not the aim).

I would define "negative cognition" or "negative thought" as a thought or cognition that focuses on or interprets within events particularly negative aspects of oneself. This term may implicitly refer to a specific form, a "negative cognitive error", in which case such a negative cognition is markedly irrational, perhaps because of unrepresentative schemas and such.

I also agree that it needs to start somewhere - but the important thing is not where it starts, but how. Is it asking the right questions, does it have the right aims? The answer w.r.t to CBT, imv, is no.

Well I respectfully disagree. Based on a bidirectional or cyclical model for the mood/thought relationship, for which there is a fair bit of evidence (that's not to say that it's a simple relationship though, we don't understand it), any therapy is going to be aimed at breaking the cycle. Now, the easiest point of access, with the knowledge and technology we have, is obviously conscious or semi-conscious cognitions, as the subject can actually access and report them. So CBT encourages the subject to consciously reduce the significance that these thoughts have to them, their salience, thereby breaking the cycle, or at least sending it into a wobble.

You are basically saying that CBT doesn't address the source of the issue, only the symptoms. I'm saying that the symptoms ARE a source, and so by treating the symptoms (negative cognitions), one is also treating the source of the negative mood.

Just to clarify, I am not accusing psychiatrists of wittingly trying to teach censorship and suppression. I am, however, arguing that the (false) assumptions that CBT makes regarding the nature of thought leads them down a garden path. The ultimate result of which is, often enough, censorship and suppression.

And I'm arguing that these assumptions are not false, based on the evidence available.

I've mentioned as much. Thus my acknowledgement that CBT is indeed useful where the patient is "doing thought badly". This is distinct, however, from being able to change thinking in its proper sense, and in my mind is equivalent to self-censorship in many cases (with the exception of those I've already mentioned).

Once again, I disagree, as I would argue that this does achieve the goal of changing thinking in its proper sense.

I will have to correct you. I think CBT is reasonable enough at achieving its goals. That is, it's ok at effecting a change in a person's behaviour such that their "functionality" is improved (at least no worse than other therapies, and often cheaper). If this is what a patient truly wanted, then it would certainly do more good than harm. What I object to is labeling this mental health. It is not that - it is social or behavioural health. This applies more widely to the whole of the psychiatric profession, but CBT is the one that, it seems to me, least approaches what could be labeled a serious examination of the mind.

But there are observable changes in a person's mental state as a product of CBT. It isn't a behavioural thing. It changes cognitions and behaviours in order to change the mental state, it doesn't change cognitions to change behaviours with no regard for the mental state.

Now, whether or not you believe the evidence that suggests the bidirectional relationship between mood and thought or not, CBT is based on this, and so its aims are absolutely focused on changing mental health.

 

[Monniehawk]

If you think Schizophrenia isn't real, you need both your heads read.

 

[rayven]

They do? They who?

Apparantly 1 person with the disorder has a kid there's a 50 % chance that kid will inherit the same condition, if both parents have the condition, there is a 10 % chance that the child will not.

That is what i was taught when i worked for a mental health team at a local hospital.

Evidently if someone with fake Skitzophrenia ( unsubstantiated/incorrect diagnoses)has kids the same % apply but not for inheriting skitzophrenia but just some other axis I or II illness.

Although I don't like using statistics, because people say that male's experiencing DV are non existant and they are non existant because no one actualy records the statistics because it apparantly doesn't exist.

.

 

[BarneyBent]

Apparantly 1 person with the disorder has a kid there's a 50 % chance that kid will inherit the same condition, if both parents have the condition, there is a 10 % chance that the child will not.

That is what i was taught when i worked for a mental health team at a local hospital.

Evidently if someone with fake Skitzophrenia ( unsubstantiated/incorrect diagnoses)has kids the same % apply but not for inheriting skitzophrenia but just some other axis I or II illness.

Although I don't like using statistics, because people say that male's experiencing DV are non existant and they are non existant because no one actualy records the statistics because it apparantly doesn't exist.

.

This is incorrect. While a genetic connection has been observed, the etiology of schizophrenia, and other mental disorders, is currently understood in terms of a diathesis-stress model. That is, individuals may be born with an underlying genetic predisposition, but this requires a stress, an activation, that triggers the disease. So while a person that is the offspring of two schizophrenics might have a 90% chance of having the predisposition, for example, that doesn't mean they have a 90% chance of actually getting the disease.

As for Hitler, dude, Godwin's law.

 

[Suspense]

It's certainly an interesting idea. Speaking from a completely ignorant perspective re: MCBT, my pragmatic concerns would be;
- How do you integrate it into the framework of "functionality" that dominates mental health? That is, if the key goal for therapy is the re-turning of a person to the normative mode of a socially accepted worker, would encouraging what is essentially dissociation (a disease!) and meditation (laziness!) really fly?

hah. yeah its a very good point regarding the dissonance between traditional psychotherapy and MBCT. to put it v crudely, traditional psychotherapy works towards building up the self whereas MBCT focuses on the reducing the self. afaik, this is still very much a developing area of research, however there are a few guys (eg. Mark Epstein) who have worked on attempting to integrating the two and alleviating these fundamental differences.

fwiw, depending on how you define it, i don't think MBCT encourages any form of dissociation at all; it encourages the practice of direct experience, which is the opposite imo.

- Are the majority of people really capable of understanding their own moods? Particularly in a time that prescribes moods-as-diseases? To twist your quoted example a little, what use would it be to have Ricky thinking to himself "Depressed. Depressed. Depressed" given Ricky already understands depressed as disease? It seems to me that it would require a complete overhaul of the current language of mood, which would be extraordinarily time-consuming and expensive, thereby eliminating the key reason that CBT draws so much funding.

fair point. i believe the majority of people are capable of understanding their own moods. i don't see why there would need to be a overhaul of the language of mood. what MBCT strives to do, put simply, is acquaint patients with the modes of mind that often characterize mood disorders while simultaneously inviting them to develop a new relationship to these modes.

Mindfulness-Based Exercises help you to see more clearly the arisings of your mind and to learn how to detect when your mood is beginning to drop. These exercises can help break the link between negative mood and negative thinking that could lead to relapse. You will learn to mindfully observe distressing mood and negative thoughts without identifying as intently with them. You find that you can learn to stay in touch with the present moment without ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.

http://instituteformindfulnessstudies.com/MBCT.html

 

[Clash Hendrix]

All I will add to this thread is that to witness a family member or someone close to you become devoured by schizophrenia is a truly sad and horrific thing.

 

[Hard Ball Get]

All I will add to this thread is that to witness a family member or someone close to you become devoured by schizophrenia is a truly sad and horrific thing.

I'll second this.
This thread pretty much sums up why I don't post here. There is nothing worse than an idiot who thinks he is intelligent.

 

[Coolangatta]

Yeah tell me about it guys, I know what it's like because I live with a schizoaffective, but how the **** can you rationalise with these people? You can't. They won't listen, because they think they know everything, when they actually don't know shit from clay.

 

[EVERYHAWKUNITE]

A noble discussion it is... lol. But the method in the madness is not yours to come to terms with. You are the lucky ones.

There is no ulterior motive other than to connect and that causes a lot of people to batten down the hatches and ignore the person.

There is a lot of unwieldy fixtures to get through and often the person doesn't quite get it but look at it this way. They can only see it as being an attack on themselves and all of you normal people are becoming enemies. It is sometimes deliberate but mostly it is with the idea that some person will understand rather than beat them down.

It is weird and unhelpful and uncomfortable and lord knows it is hard to know why they want to kill you at times... metaphorically.

Just don't take it as gospel that schizophrenia is blind as a bat and screwing you around.

Heaven knows we could actually use things if we don't just become horrible with fright and toss the bathwater out without realising that the baby is there too.

 

[evo]

it encourages the practice of direct experience

Another way of putting that is getting rid of your 'beliefs' (preconceptions)

 

[Power King]

This is incorrect. While a genetic connection has been observed, the etiology of schizophrenia, and other mental disorders, is currently understood in terms of a diathesis-stress model. That is, individuals may be born with an underlying genetic predisposition, but this requires a stress, an activation, that triggers the disease. So while a person that is the offspring of two schizophrenics might have a 90% chance of having the predisposition, for example, that doesn't mean they have a 90% chance of actually getting the disease.

As for Hitler, dude, Godwin's law.

That's right, let's make weed legal then man, it doesn't harm anyone, it's a natural herb.

 

[Wahooti Fandango]

For anyone interested.

http://melbourneuniv-web.ungerboeck...d=6695&sessionid=fc8fa1fb6fe0ff1fc7&typeid=FL

 

[mdc]

@bloodstainedangel5: I have read your response, but at this point it seems there's little point continuing the to-and-fro. I will only say 2 things;

a) To deny that philosophical inquiry is necessary for the discussion of thought and mood is to claim philosophy is dead in the strongest possible sense.

b) Self-esteem. Argh! The most wretched Miltonian coinage. Of course, he meant it to be reserved for those who were indeed esteemed persons - poets and the such. Its meaning was more or less "I am above the common man, and I recognise it". The current usage is closer to what I'm sure Milton would have called self-delusion. That it is being used as a desired outcome in a "scientific" study sums up my points far more concisely than I could ever hope.