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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
Entropy

NP Friday May 05 2017

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9 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Mental Illness can not be easily identified like a physical injury or infection.

This makes it difficult to understand for some people on the periphery of medicine.

Such as a lot of psychiatrists.

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9 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Such as a lot of psychiatrists.

From one of my favorite webcomics:

"I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that students go into psychology for ulterior motives. Either they want to learn how to manipulate people, or they're kooky. So, is it really any wonder that the basic psychological model of the mind is that of a manipulative kook?

"Psychology really hasn't had its Einstein yet. Well, actually, I don't think they've had their Newton yet either. Or Galileo. (I'm not even sure about Aristotle.)

"I kind of get the impression that their basic model exists on the back of a giant turtle in a bowl of water, supported by four giant elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle...

"... and most of their research goes into find out what color the elephants paint their toenails."

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3 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

"I kind of get the impression that their basic model exists on the back of a giant turtle in a bowl of water, supported by four giant elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle...

"... and most of their research goes into find out what color the elephants paint their toenails."

I personally am convinced that a huge majority of all psychiatrists go "quack, quack, quack" and fly south for the winter.

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4 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

I personally am convinced that a huge majority of all psychiatrists go "quack, quack, quack" and fly south for the winter.

I consider myself lucky, between the age of 8 and I think 10 or 11, I had to see a psychiatrist every 3 months. I had been diagnosed with ADD and was being bullied frequently. she asked about school and how the other kids treated me, we played games like mastermind and crazy eights as well, I might have been too young to really think about it, but I do remember always enjoying the sessions. I don't recall what her opinion was of my situation though and it's been so long that I don't think my parents remember either.

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4 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

From one of my favorite webcomics:

"I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that students go into psychology for ulterior motives. Either they want to learn how to manipulate people, or they're kooky. So, is it really any wonder that the basic psychological model of the mind is that of a manipulative kook?

"Psychology really hasn't had its Einstein yet. Well, actually, I don't think they've had their Newton yet either. Or Galileo. (I'm not even sure about Aristotle.)

"I kind of get the impression that their basic model exists on the back of a giant turtle in a bowl of water, supported by four giant elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle...

"... and most of their research goes into find out what color the elephants paint their toenails."

"The idea that boys want to sleep with their mothers strikes most men as the silliest thing they have ever heard. Obviously, it did not seem so to Freud, who wrote that as a boy he once had an erotic reaction to watching his mother dressing. But Freud had a wet-nurse, and may not have experienced the early intimacy that would have tipped off his perceptual system that Mrs. Freud was his mother. The Westermarck theory has out-Freuded Freud." -- Steven Pinker, quoted by Wikipedia.

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On 05/13/2017 at 7:09 AM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Mental Illness can not be easily identified like a physical injury or infection.

On 05/13/2017 at 5:16 PM, Don Edwards said:

"Psychology really hasn't had its Einstein yet. Well, actually, I don't think they've had their Newton yet either. Or Galileo. (I'm not even sure about Aristotle.)

I see connection.

Considering even psychiatrists often have problem diagnosing, I'm not surprised psychiatry didn't get far.

On 05/13/2017 at 6:51 AM, The Old Hack said:
On 05/13/2017 at 2:37 AM, hkmaly said:

Do they seriously give people who are freaking out something which can make them forget how they get where they are? Sounds shortsighted.

In Denmark we have mental 'health' institutions where patients will be kept immobilised and/or heavily drugged for weeks or months on end because it makes them easier to deal with. The patients' actual health, mental or physical, is at best a tertiary consideration if it even rates at all. Part of the problem is lack of funding. In my personal opinion the principal difference between these places and a medieval bedlam is that in the more 'modern' version, the floors are kept cleaner.

There are people for which this is best option. But it's definitely not true for everyone who is there (likely not even 10%), and regarding people freaking out on ER, what if they have REASON to freak out? How are you supposed to examine person whose state was both physically and psychically altered?

... on the other hand, there are worse things like keeping patients in mental health institution drugged to not bother. Like doing the same to people in nursing homes. Lot of people there need reason to live and to keep trying, not drugs, especially sedative ones.

 

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4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

There are people for which this is best option. But it's definitely not true for everyone who is there (likely not even 10%), and regarding people freaking out on ER, what if they have REASON to freak out? How are you supposed to examine person whose state was both physically and psychically altered?

... on the other hand, there are worse things like keeping patients in mental health institution drugged to not bother. Like doing the same to people in nursing homes. Lot of people there need reason to live and to keep trying, not drugs, especially sedative ones.

Out of pure curiosity: having spent time in a mental institution, why is it that you do not consider it necessary for me to have a reason to live and keep trying?

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15 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Out of pure curiosity: having spent time in a mental institution, why is it that you do not consider it necessary for me to have a reason to live and keep trying?

You have it the other way. I was commenting that people in nursing homes need reason to live - because them LACKING it is the worst problem they have. People in mental institution usually have other, more serious problems (sometimes actually solvable by medications). While there are surely exceptions, in most cases they already HAVE reason to live, therefore they don't need another one.

(Another exceptions I guess will be some psychopaths, which already have reason to live but they definitely need another which would be less damaging to the people around them.)

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5 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Out of pure curiosity: having spent time in a mental institution, why is it that you do not consider it necessary for me to have a reason to live and keep trying?

I also have been in the psychiatric ward as well as caring for dying parents.  There comes a point when things like "recovery" or "rehabilitation" are simply not going to happen.  At that point, keeping a patient as calm, quiet, and comfortable as possible is the best thing for them and for those around them.

On the other hand, not all patients in the psychiatric ward are shocked and drugged zombies dependent upon the mercy of Nurse Ratched.  Most of us are just overwhelmed people who need a monitored time-out.

I had a simple guideline for the professionals taking care of my parents.  And I would want the same criteria used if I was in a terminal condition or had an extreme psychiatric disorder.  Does it give the patient a realistic chance at recovery or significant improvement?  Will it make the patient more comfortable?  If the answer to either one of those is "Yes", then do it.  If it is just prolonging the inevitable or adding services to bill to the insurance, then the answer is "No".

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41 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

You have it the other way. I was commenting that people in nursing homes need reason to live - because them LACKING it is the worst problem they have. People in mental institution usually have other, more serious problems (sometimes actually solvable by medications). While there are surely exceptions, in most cases they already HAVE reason to live, therefore they don't need another one.

That must be a nice place to be treated. If I should ever happen to get into a situation like that again, I'll have to get into one of these.

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57 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

You have it the other way. I was commenting that people in nursing homes need reason to live - because them LACKING it is the worst problem they have. People in mental institution usually have other, more serious problems (sometimes actually solvable by medications). While there are surely exceptions, in most cases they already HAVE reason to live, therefore they don't need another one.

That must be a nice place to be treated. If I should ever happen to get into a situation like that again, I'll have to get into one of these.

Ok, I'm admitting that I don't have personal experience with mental institution. (I don't even have personal experience with nursing home, but my grandmother knows some people there.)

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6 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Ok, I'm admitting that I don't have personal experience with mental institution. (I don't even have personal experience with nursing home, but my grandmother knows some people there.)

I had two great aunts (one of my mom's side, one on my dad's side) both had been living on their own for quite some time and were quite healthy despite one being in her mid 90's and the other being over 100, but their children got worried about what if something happened to them and there's no one around, so they convinced them to go into a nursing home. It didn't take long in both cases for their health to decline, and we're pretty certain that it's because of their loss of independence. I have grandparents on my dad's side who are up there in age, grandpa had suffered a stroke a few years ago and grandma suffered a mild heart attack more recently, but they're still living together at their home and they have 3 children plus several grandchildren living nearby to help with things, I haven't heard any talk about "they should be in a nursing home.", we know it's not something they want.

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If you are going to move an elderly or disabled relative into a facility away from their own home, it is vitally important that level of care is appropriate for their level of independence.  For some, it is sufficient to be in an apartment or gated community where the neighbors are of similar age and ability.

Assisted Living, Memory Care, Rehabilitation, Group Home, Long Term Care, Skilled Nursing Facility.
The right one will give the patient the best quality of life possible.

The wrong one...

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41 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Assisted Living, Memory Care, Rehabilitation, Group Home, Long Term Care, Skilled Nursing Facility.
The right one will give the patient the best quality of life possible.

The wrong one...

Look, Pharaoh, all due respect for your culture and I would never want to come across as prejudiced, but I am just not convinced that disemboweling someone, stuffing their innards into jars, wrapping them in bandages and putting them into stone sarcophagi only to store the sarcophagi in huge stone monuments is the best way to ensure their quality of life. Or even afterlife, for that matter.

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8 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Look, Pharaoh, all due respect for your culture and I would never want to come across as prejudiced, but I am just not convinced that disemboweling someone, stuffing their innards into jars, wrapping them in bandages and putting them into stone sarcophagi only to store the sarcophagi in huge stone monuments is the best way to ensure their quality of life. Or even afterlife, for that matter.

Personally I consider the part where they pull the brain through the nose most troublesome.

12 hours ago, Scotty said:

I had two great aunts (one of my mom's side, one on my dad's side) both had been living on their own for quite some time and were quite healthy despite one being in her mid 90's and the other being over 100, but their children got worried about what if something happened to them and there's no one around, so they convinced them to go into a nursing home. It didn't take long in both cases for their health to decline, and we're pretty certain that it's because of their loss of independence.

Exactly the problem I was talking about. And it can be even worse if the personal decides to use drugs to keep them from complaining.

(I would add details but I don't remember enough ...)

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32 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Personally I consider the part where they pull the brain through the nose most troublesome.

To be fair, that's the part that comes closest to recreating the effect of watching modern entertainment TV and news.

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11 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
46 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Personally I consider the part where they pull the brain through the nose most troublesome.

To be fair, that's the part that comes closest to recreating the effect of watching modern entertainment TV and news.

I agree that the principle is similar, but Egyptian way is way quicker.

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1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

I agree that the principle is similar, but Egyptian way is way quicker.

But very manpower intensitive. I think the modern method is overall faster when you need to perform a cerebrectomy on an entire population.

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6 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
8 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I agree that the principle is similar, but Egyptian way is way quicker.

But very manpower intensitive. I think the modern method is overall faster when you need to perform a cerebrectomy on an entire population.

I would object based on the manpower required in preparing all those shows, if not for the existence of reruns.

Although the objection still holds in case of news. Those are rarely rerun.

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48 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I would object based on the manpower required in preparing all those shows, if not for the existence of reruns.

Although the objection still holds in case of news. Those are rarely rerun.

Nonetheless. A news show created and run by as few as a couple dozen people or three can reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Overall it is amazing how much stupidity such a small group of people can generate and spread to such a large number of viewers.

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33 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Overall it is amazing how much stupidity such a small group of people can generate and spread to such a large number of viewers.

That's because similarly to darkness, stupidity is negative quantity. Turning off the light bulb doesn't allow darkness to spread from corner, nor does it create it and emit from the bulb ; the darkness is only absence of light. (We will now ignore the magical Darkness from some universes, which is obviously something more). Similarly, turning on the television doesn't start actually spreading some physically measurable quantity of stupidity, it just too often fails to spread any information ; problem is that if you focus your brain on something, it assumes there is some information which needs to be processed, and if you focus it on something which totally lacks useful information too often, it is then surprised when you try to focus it on something different and may take it some time to actually start working.

Also, brain has some similar traits to muscles ; and some people fail to train it so much if they use their muscles the same way they would get bedsores.

The equivalent of magical Darkness is misinformation ; entertainment rarely produces that, while news do that often. Misinformation can truly spread in way similar to information and can go from one media to other.

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4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

The equivalent of magical Darkness is misinformation ; entertainment rarely produces that, while news do that often.

I partially agree. But entertainment can and often does spread misinformation unintentionally. It usually does so by reinforcing existing stereotypes and occasionally so through a complete lack of understanding of complex subjects. More, entertainment may also be used for the active dissemination of propaganda. As an example, the Nazis would use it quite cleverly. Many German artists and film makers in the thirties did not like to portray Nazi ideology. Instead of persecuting them for their reluctance they were encouraged to make romantic movies or tales from happier times. Thus they could tell themselves that they were not actually supporting Nazism, but they were in this way sending the message that things weren't really so bad and that the world was going on as normally. And of course this was exactly what the Nazis wanted them to do.

It may also be done more directly. As a more modern example, the execrable series 24 has done much to normalise torture in the public mind. The 'heroic' protagonist, in order to prevent some dire disaster like a nuclear device about to detonate, is 'forced' to employ torture in order to extract needed information from the villains. And somehow the magically unflawed information the 'hero' gains always allows him to save the day. All of this is, of course, utter hogwash.

Firstly, real world intelligence does not run like a bad Hollywood script. While time is important and often critical, it is rare indeed that any agent is faced with a ticking 24-hour clock and knows exactly when it is too late. Next and just as important, torture does not work as it does in Hollywood scripts, either. In fact, quite apart from being ethically and morally bankrupt, its primary issue is that it does not work at all. Torture victims tell their torturers what they think they want to hear, not the truth. Worse yet, while it is indeed true that anyone will eventually break under torture, a determined enemy can thwart their torturers by initially 'confessing' to clouds of misinformation. When they finally break, even if they do tell the truth at the time -- as said, even someone broken will not necessarily say the truth but only what they think the torturers want to hear -- it will be buried in everything else the victim has said till then. And if the torture continues, well, the truth didn't work, the victim will then try something else again to make the pain stop.

Professional interrogators, on the other hand, can get enormous amounts of information and cooperation out of their subjects. Very often without the subject even realising how much it is giving away. They also scorn torture as counterproductive.

More positively, entertainment may also be used to educate or provoke thought, and while it is all but impossible to do so in a truly apolitical way it can at the very least attempt to do so in a detached or bipartisan manner that does not sermonise or harp on a message. For example, I recently saw a children's cartoon that sent a quiet message about the importance of gun safety. Note: not gun control, gun safety. I personally live in a country where firearms are carefully controlled and am quite happy with that state of affairs. Nonetheless, from my time in the Army and the Home Guard I am also a firm believer in being careful with the durn things. I have on the internet at times exchanged opinions with NRA members or even ordinary people who very strongly believe in the right to bear arms. Disagree as we might on that, I have yet to meet any owner of a firearm that did not fully agree with me on the absolute necessity of being careful with an instrument that, when all is said and done, is intended to kill your fellow beings.

If that cartoon managed to make at least some children stop and think about the fact that guns aren't actually toys it may have saved lives. And that is no bad thing.

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On 5/11/2017 at 8:07 AM, mlooney said:

Normal sized doses of Ativan would count.  Never mind a "given in the ER to calm down freaking out people" level dose.

 

On 5/12/2017 at 7:37 PM, hkmaly said:

Do they seriously give people who are freaking out something which can make them forget how they get where they are? Sounds shortsighted.

 

On 5/12/2017 at 11:51 PM, The Old Hack said:

In Denmark we have mental 'health' institutions where patients will be kept immobilised and/or heavily drugged for weeks or months on end because it makes them easier to deal with. The patients' actual health, mental or physical, is at best a tertiary consideration if it even rates at all. Part of the problem is lack of funding. In my personal opinion the principal difference between these places and a medieval bedlam is that in the more 'modern' version, the floors are kept cleaner.

 

Let me be clear here, the usage I was talking about was the short term "stop the person from eating the wall, beds, and chairs" thing, not a long term "treatment" plan.

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