Jesus, how sad, especially because schizophrenia doesn't usually manifest itself until early adulthood. She's not even going to have a stable childhood to look back on as she gets older. And did you notice the bags under her eyes? I'm sure her prognosis is awful. I have a feeling she won't live past age 30.

Adding video to channels (Health) - requested by kronosposeidon.

The dad's got bags under his eyes, too. It's clearly eating him up.

That is one of the saddest things I've seen in a long time.

I can't help but sense some method to her madness, though, which makes it all the worse.

This is the best way to show that your consciousness, soul, psyche, perception, etc... Is not the core of your mind to say. There is no inner cluster that we "exist" at then grab information and use it. We are more like a connection of various information and inputs/outputs that float on top of a giant constantly idling, shifting, turning, braking, etc... engine.

Our "averaged" perception is the norm. If your brain runs, tuned differently, then the human being floating above has no chance to modify it's ability to change any information you use. This is what makes it hard for some of us to grasp these concepts. Because, by definition our perception and continuity of thought are a delusion. This why acid and associated drugs bend and sway reality, perceptually.

We can only do so much with chemicals as most of the problem is underlying within the engine. How it retrieves memory for you, what comparisons it makes, and what chemicals it orders or re-actively orders for any given input and output; by the brain or our psyche.

----
The brain is a magnificent machine. Even when it seems to spout out insanity you know it is doing a large amount of comparative study, memory consolidation, and giving active personalities/ai to illusions that are very much real to the person involved.

I wonder if we will find a connection one day between our "true perception" or awareness being linked to the ability for the mind to compare data from dream states to input/outputs. Perhaps, our ability to make that final leap is to be able to break the dream barrier from the none. Leading to our first true self measurement of self and comparison to the rest.

Fiction vs. reality? Could it be that simple.

/My rant for the week, have at it you neuroscience geeks.

^ Have at what, exactly? Not really sure what claim you're trying to make, if any.

>> ^berticus:

^ Have at what, exactly? Not really sure what claim you're trying to make, if any.


"I wonder if we will find a connection one day between our "true perception" or awareness being linked to the ability for the mind to compare data from dream states to input/outputs. Perhaps, our ability to make that final leap is to be able to break the dream barrier from the none. Leading to our first true self measurement of self and comparison to the rest.

Fiction vs. reality? Could it be that simple."

That's the only one really. The only other thing would be the basic understanding that a "soul" or "entity" is merely a delusional perception by your collective psyche.

@kceaton1, I don't mean to sound like a bastard but I still don't really get what you mean. Are you wondering what the connection is between reality and perception? Can you maybe rephrase, the language isn't all that clear. Sorry!

berticus::


What is the definition of a mind that perceives input a (a = the summation of incoming or already stored data: visual, sound, smell, etc... and memory) and then understands or assumes that the perception is continuous without interruption?

Delusional? I'm saying that we are delusional from the onset and it is by comparison (perhaps by dream state; testing possibilities then storing data) using a very discriminating sensory system (call this reality or at best what we can perceive it as) vs. our already gained memory filtered through dreams (call it fiction) alone that allows for humans to make a leap and understand what it is in the mirror.

I'd have to really simplify what I'm trying to get at it I wanted to make it easier. I know I didn't answer everything with the above statements, but I hope it's enough. Yes, I know that makes my condensed version a bad read unless you have some of the right information already on hand.

/A quick example for above. As children we have more areas of the brain gathering data and storing them. This slows down as we get older. Does this affect our gauge of time in relation to perceived continuity?
Since more of a days progress is stored as children does this correlate to a "slowing of time"?

//This would basically mean we're all delusional to an agreed upon value socially.

kceaton's basically getting at the fact that our sense of reality is a summation of our sensory input, with noise filtered out, and then combined with our ability to estimate missing information; and simulate the near and far future, based on both logic and experience. You get a good sense of all this from optical illusions.

Each of those components are variable, and there's a lot of dependencies in that which would cause your perception of reality at any given moment to differ if changed.

I think the heart of what he's getting at is that if there are so many variables to create a resolved reality, and which can differ from person to person; can we say there is really a single canonical 'true reality'; or are our experiences a personal and fluctuating abstraction?

It also leaves you to wonder what your identity is. I think many people feel that their identity refers to something real and solid; whereas these considerations show serious flaws in that concept.

I believe the filtering, and simulation parts of that process are what we refer to as 'rationale', and are grounded by empathising with others. That gives us reference points for what is sane, and what is noise. I think that's also what leads to social interactions such as fashions and trends; as well as the ability for groups of people to 'drink the kool-aid' and be irrational together.

Btw, I had schizophrenia between the age of 6 and 10. From this video I can say it was probably far milder than what this little girl is going through. It wasn't a pleasant time in my childhood and it's something I've never shared with anyone. It mostly affected me whenever I felt tired or bored; and always when I was alone. As I had no way to express what was happening and even at that age was aware of how crazy people were treated, I never told anyone. Only at the age of about 17, when reading a psychological thriller novel that happened to be prefaced with a medical description of schizophrenia (rather than crappy Hollywood style split personality portrayals) did I actually realise what I had gone through.

Strangely, and thankfully, it all ended rather suddenly one day when I was about 10. I was alone, and got extremely frustrated and demanded as loud as I could in my head that it stop; then I refused to entertain the thoughts ever again. In the 10 years after I probably felt something like it again on two occasions; both very mild and I just accepted it and it went away in seconds. In the last 10 years I've been completely fine.

/me sharing

>> ^L0cky:

I think the heart of what he's getting at is that if there are so many variables to create a resolved reality, and which can differ from person to person; can we say there is really a single canonical 'true reality'; or are our experiences a personal and fluctuating abstraction?

I think he's trying to get at something deeper than that, because that's an old question with an obvious answer. What he IS trying to get at though, I'm still not clear on. His examples about children for example - um, what? Show me some evidence for these claims.

Human life seems innately unfair in innumerable ways, but I think science will eventually fix it.

She looks like she hasn't slept for more than an hour since she was born.

they say life is a gift, I say in rarest cases, death is.

Being a psychotherapist myself who works mostly with children, schizophrenia is one of the toughest emotionally for me to deal with. Mostly because the person is innately aware of their disorder and they almost always hate it. Their acceptance of their hallucinations is almost always universal, which makes it easier to team with them, but it's also nearly impossible to completely eradicate the symptoms.

I've worked with a handful of kids with this and the onset usually doesn't happen until just after puberty (usually 13-16 y.o. age range). This has got to be the earliest onset I've seen.

The best thing these parents can do for themselves is really form a strong support system team around them to give them breaks, think of different parenting strategies, etc. I certainly hope there's mental health services in their area that can help meet the entire family's needs and not just Jani's. Jani needs two strong and refreshed parents to help her out just as much as medications (though I'm not entirely certain how well anti-psychotics work on pre-pubescents, actually).

Sad.

These people are amazing. I can't fathom having the patience they have obviously shown for years. They are far better people than I.

Small google sample. That's just about changes during youth to old age.

Your ability to "grab" data becomes slower as you age. I was pondering aloud if it would cause a sense of "time going by faster" then when you compare your memory to the "time that went by" on a typical childhood day, etc...

My main wonderment is over the interface the body uses in particular to take input then decides what is a: not real, b: is real. I know most of that will be data comparison, I want to know what element of the mind was able to start that in the first place. I was wondering aloud if it might be humans' input interface is *very* hard-handed and exact, then compared to an Elephant's system? Could it be dreams? That was the only other question I was asking above. L0cky covered the rest.

I have also seen mental illness in my time. It has also given me extreme patience for anyone as I know reality is a troublesome thing. Our unique ability to communicate across that void is the biggest mystery to solve; to heal, to push innovation; and perhaps spread it one day (if we dare, or even think we should have that right). Besides a Unified Field Theory...

If someone knows anymore go at it. I just need links because I'll want to read it all.

Bleh. This conversation is too waffly for me.

Just FYI, while schizophrenia is a real and horrible thing, this case in particular has come under a lot of scrutiny as being possible a case of Munchhausen Syndrome by proxy. To be short with it, this is the parents either consciously or unconsciously projecting the illness on their child in order to seek attention.

I'm not trying to minimize the disease where it is real, but there was something quite exhibitionist and attention-getting about the way the parents were parading her around in the video that made me suspicious and when I googled it, there were a lot of claims that this wasn't quite passing the legitimacy sniff test.

Something isn't right here, but it might not be schizophrenia...

Have a look at this:

http://bipolar-stanscroniclesandnarritive.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-year-old-jani-schofield-schizophrenic.html

I don't know what would be worse - that it is a real disorder, or that people would project this onto their child.

Mental illness has always scared me so much.

Well this is supposed to be a rare case, but after reading that small bit of info that ponceleon linked to it makes you ask what was first; chicken or the egg?

Whatever the case, with that kind of medication going through her and all the sidelining at a critical age it will certainly leave her mentally ill. Sad case no matter which way it looks.

>> ^berticus:

Bleh. This conversation is too waffly for me.


I know the time stuff is wonky, but here is a link that talks about it a little. I know there is more information out there on this as there were some studies that came out about six-ten months ago. Some of that will be in the archived area for www.physorg.com.

If I find the more pertinent data I'll put a link in this post within a few days.

From what I can tell it has come under a lot of scrutiny and criticism from people who have no idea what they're talking about. The father refers to them, in his blog, as people "prepared to make (or refute) a diagnosis based on 44 minutes of television, newspaper articles, or even what I have written on this blog" and it seems pretty accurate.

He is completely up front about the accusations of abuse in his blog and has been investigated several times.

If you look at the rest of the blog you link to, it's a blog about how medication is bad, doctors are evil and everything is a conspiracy. I also looked around to see if the blogger listed any sort of relevant qualifications, but I'm not seeing any.

>> ^ponceleon:

Just FYI, while schizophrenia is a real and horrible thing, this case in particular has come under a lot of scrutiny as being possible a case of Munchhausen Syndrome by proxy. To be short with it, this is the parents either consciously or unconsciously projecting the illness on their child in order to seek attention.
I'm not trying to minimize the disease where it is real, but there was something quite exhibitionist and attention-getting about the way the parents were parading her around in the video that made me suspicious and when I googled it, there were a lot of claims that this wasn't quite passing the legitimacy sniff test.
Something isn't right here, but it might not be schizophrenia...
Have a look at this:
http://bipolar-stanscroniclesandnar
ritive.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-year-old-jani-schofield-schizophrenic.html

So you were asking whether our sense of the passage of time differs from childhood to adulthood? We already know humans are notoriously bad at estimates of time. Forward and backward telescoping, for example, are well known psychological phenomena. But aren't you trying to link that to.. something else? Something about dreams ... it all starts to get hazy there.
>> ^kceaton1:

>> ^berticus:
Bleh. This conversation is too waffly for me.

I know the time stuff is wonky, but here is a link that talks about it a little. I know there is more information out there on this as there were some studies that came out about six-ten months ago. Some of that will be in the archived area for www.physorg.com.
If I find the more pertinent data I'll put a link in this post within a few days.

"there's a ten and an imaginary ten"
she has good mathematical intuition

>> ^L0cky:
Btw, I had schizophrenia between the age of 6 and 10. From this video I can say it was probably far milder than what this little girl is going through. It wasn't a pleasant time in my childhood and it's something I've never shared with anyone. It mostly affected me whenever I felt tired or bored; and always when I was alone. As I had no way to express what was happening and even at that age was aware of how crazy people were treated, I never told anyone. Only at the age of about 17, when reading a psychological thriller novel that happened to be prefaced with a medical description of schizophrenia (rather than crappy Hollywood style split personality portrayals) did I actually realise what I had gone through.
Strangely, and thankfully, it all ended rather suddenly one day when I was about 10. I was alone, and got extremely frustrated and demanded as loud as I could in my head that it stop; then I refused to entertain the thoughts ever again. In the 10 years after I probably felt something like it again on two occasions; both very mild and I just accepted it and it went away in seconds. In the last 10 years I've been completely fine.
/me sharing


Though an active imagination may be linked to schizophrenia, it isn't. I too went through an similar thing with an active imagination from about 3-10: "seeing" animals coming out of the bath tap, "seeing" the visage of death in every dark room, not being able to stop narratives from going on in my mind. And I too, got sick of it and made it stop. But thats not what schizophrenia is.

A question: do you know how much the anti-psychotic medication has been researched on children? Children and adults do react very differently to substances. An example: children and young teenagers need a lot more alcohol to show signs of being drunk (relative to body size), than adults do.

What I'm coming at is this: is it unethical to give very strong medication to children, when there is little scientific evidence? Might it damage more than it helps?

In reply to this comment by brycewi19:
Being a psychotherapist myself who works mostly with children, schizophrenia is one of the toughest emotionally for me to deal with. Mostly because the person is innately aware of their disorder and they almost always hate it. Their acceptance of their hallucinations is almost always universal, which makes it easier to team with them, but it's also nearly impossible to completely eradicate the symptoms.

I've worked with a handful of kids with this and the onset usually doesn't happen until just after puberty (usually 13-16 y.o. age range). This has got to be the earliest onset I've seen.

The best thing these parents can do for themselves is really form a strong support system team around them to give them breaks, think of different parenting strategies, etc. I certainly hope there's mental health services in their area that can help meet the entire family's needs and not just Jani's. Jani needs two strong and refreshed parents to help her out just as much as medications (though I'm not entirely certain how well anti-psychotics work on pre-pubescents, actually).

Sad.

Sorry, but just because the father, who has blogged about beating and starving his own child in order to deal with her behavior, says that his diagnosis is the right one doesn't make it so.


Again, if you had read my post, you'd see that I'm not saying that this is absolutely Munchausen, I'm just saying that these people are a BIT too media-hungry... Oprah, LATimes, etc... they seem like attention whores and frankly I think it is a good idea to question ANYONE who is more concerned about getting media coverage than anything else.

Is the blog I posted a bit whacky in general? Sure. Is it possible they are right? Are there a BUNCH more people who seemed to have the same idea? Yup.

Just because you find a doctor who is willing to go along with Munchausen by proxy doesn't make the diagnosis correct. I'd say by the very comments here in the sift that there is a lot of debate as to what exactly is going on with this girl and to dismiss the idea that the parents might be a bit nuts themselves is very dangerous.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

From what I can tell it has come under a lot of scrutiny and criticism from people who have no idea what they're talking about. The father refers to them, in his blog, as people "prepared to make (or refute) a diagnosis based on 44 minutes of television, newspaper articles, or even what I have written on this blog" and it seems pretty accurate.
He is completely up front about the accusations of abuse in his blog and has been investigated several times.
If you look at the rest of the blog you link to, it's a blog about how medication is bad, doctors are evil and everything is a conspiracy. I also looked around to see if the blogger listed any sort of relevant qualifications, but I'm not seeing any.
>> ^ponceleon:
Just FYI, while schizophrenia is a real and horrible thing, this case in particular has come under a lot of scrutiny as being possible a case of Munchhausen Syndrome by proxy. To be short with it, this is the parents either consciously or unconsciously projecting the illness on their child in order to seek attention.
I'm not trying to minimize the disease where it is real, but there was something quite exhibitionist and attention-getting about the way the parents were parading her around in the video that made me suspicious and when I googled it, there were a lot of claims that this wasn't quite passing the legitimacy sniff test.
Something isn't right here, but it might not be schizophrenia...
Have a look at this:
http://bipolar-stanscroniclesandnar
ritive.blogspot.com/2009/07/6-year-old-jani-schofield-schizophrenic.html

xxovercastxx said: "If you look at the rest of the blog you link to, it's a blog about how medication is bad, doctors are evil and everything is a conspiracy"

Of course everyone is entitled to an opinion; though the vast majority of the information written about in post on this blog are backed up by substantial evidence (there is also many humorous, satirical, and personal opinion pieces). I have to wonder if you took the time to actually do any research about what you read before dismissing it off the cuff xxovercastxx?

Of course anyone that wants to play apologist for these parents that are "admitted" abusers are entitled to their opinions (and there are many). I guess they are also many people that excuse our main stream media writing reports that excludes key related facts in their articles.

http://bipolar-stanscroniclesandnarritive.blogspot.com/2009/07/los-angeles-times-reporter-defends.html

If that's what you coin wacky, then so be it.

I'm not sure why you're addressing some of this to me because a lot of it has nothing to do with what I said. I don't give a shit what the father's diagnosis is nor did I even allude to it. He's no more qualified to make a diagnosis than you, me, bipolar stan, or all the people leaving abusive comments on his blog. That was my whole point; that professionals have given her a diagnosis of schizophrenia and for some reason you, bipolar stan and a horde of internet warriors think you know better and you're all citing each other as supporting evidence.

I'm not sure what kinda fucked up glasses you're looking at this through to think they're parading her around for attention. They seem to be doing the same sort of things that lots of parents with children with mysterious/unusual conditions/illnesses do: get them exposure in the hopes of finding someone who can help.

Could bipolar stan be right? Sure. Young Earth Creationists could be right too, but since they can't back up their claims, I don't take them very seriously. Why should I listen to bipolar stan? Because lots of other people think along the same lines? See sentence 3 of this paragraph.

>> ^ponceleon:

Sorry, but just because the father, who has blogged about beating and starving his own child in order to deal with her behavior, says that his diagnosis is the right one doesn't make it so.
Again, if you had read my post, you'd see that I'm not saying that this is absolutely Munchausen, I'm just saying that these people are a BIT too media-hungry... Oprah, LATimes, etc... they seem like attention whores and frankly I think it is a good idea to question ANYONE who is more concerned about getting media coverage than anything else.
Is the blog I posted a bit whacky in general? Sure. Is it possible they are right? Are there a BUNCH more people who seemed to have the same idea? Yup.
Just because you find a doctor who is willing to go along with Munchausen by proxy doesn't make the diagnosis correct. I'd say by the very comments here in the sift that there is a lot of debate as to what exactly is going on with this girl and to dismiss the idea that the parents might be a bit nuts themselves is very dangerous

The first thing I did was dig up the full blogs that Stan takes excerpts from and read them in context. Some of the excerpts take on very different meanings in their full context. When he refers to "starving" her, for example, he's talking about sending her to bed without dinner when she refused to eat what was made. This was something recommended by her doctor. I think most kids are "starved" this way at some point in their life and I don't think anyone ought to be screaming "child abuse" because a child refuses to eat their dinner.

That Stan would blatantly manipulate the facts to agree with his version of the story tells me not to trust anything he says. I then went and looked over some of his other content and found a lot of was what I would categorize as wingnut conspiracy theories.

Of course I'm not playing apologist for the parents. Whether they were right or wrong is another argument. My point is that the people in this thread, Stan's blog, and elsewhere, who are making their own diagnosis based on what they saw on Oprah, read in the LAT and/or saw in this video clip have no basis or qualifications to do so.

>> ^Whacky:

xxovercastxx said: "If you look at the rest of the blog you link to, it's a blog about how medication is bad, doctors are evil and everything is a conspiracy"
Of course everyone is entitled to an opinion; though the vast majority of the information written about in post on this blog are backed up by substantial evidence (there is also many humorous, satirical, and personal opinion pieces). I have to wonder if you took the time to actually do any research about what you read before dismissing it off the cuff xxovercastxx?
Of course anyone that wants to play apologist for these parents that are "admitted" abusers are entitled to their opinions (and there are many). I guess they are also many people that excuse our main stream media writing reports that excludes key related facts in their articles.
http://bipolar-stanscroniclesandnarritiv
e.blogspot.com/2009/07/los-angeles-times-reporter-defends.html
If that's what you coin wacky, then so be it.

More video
http://health.discovery.com/tv-shows/psych-week/videos/born-schizophrenic.htm

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by eric3579.

Whatevers going on it looks exhausting.