Jani's at the mercy of her mind

[lightningBugout]

What bothers me, I think, is what and how she's naming these things which are haunting her. For some reason that's where the 'creepy' comes in for me. Makes me wonder.

Doesn't this board have a substantial number of people who believe in demons, entities, etheric parasites and the like? Ironically, the notion that schizophrenia may be caused by various scenarios of trans-dimensionality was historically very popular and yet one of the most amazing people I have ever met, a very forward-thinking energy healer (someone who is currently doing incredibly cutting-edge work for one of the largest public hospitals in this country) strongly believes this too.

Even what I have just written gives the scenario a language that I do not intend, rife with all sorts of negative association, etc. Yet, again, I strongly intuit that there is something simply weird about the fact that many schizophrenics constantly report that they are aware of entities whom the people around them are not and that these entities encourage them to harm themselves and otherwise berate them. What is that? An incredibly precise abberration that recurs frequently - ie a symptom of schizophrenia is the brain misfiring to make you believe in entities you alone can see and curiously these entitities don't usually like give you a blowjob or make you a sandwich, no, they tell you to kill yourself?

I am reminded of a fucking amazing story from the NYT magazine a year or two ago in which a 19 yo kid had a psychotic break (after taking shrooms) and was nuts for a few months. He eventually recovered and the piece included something he had written in which he basically said he believed he had had a mystical experience in a culture that could not recognize it and that he became "sick" only because there were no shamans to guide him through it.

I thought of that piece again recently. I met a kid named Sam who had recently left a psyche ward. He was confused because he thought he might be god. And had been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder of some sort. But he really made sense to me. The episode had begun with shrooms, which I am assuming most of us had done, which pretty much invariably make you think you are "god" in one sense or another. The problem seemed to be psychological in nature -- Sam had gotten fixated on, and hung up on, the idea he alone was god.

I'm sure Sam will get bombarded with lots of ugly fucking meds and stabilized and all that. But on some level, I kind of assume that with enough meditation he'll just work it out and have that much more insight for it.

So as for this kid, at risk of getting slapped -- what if her friends are basically beings that we cannot recognize because of our world view? Not to say demons. I mean what if 400 is a beast of the noosphere even.

What if this kid is highly, highly sensitive to a world that most of us interact with sometimes, even if we fear judgment too much to admit it. I, for example, had an experience with a ghost recently that was so real as to be boring.

What does it say about us if we slap some inhuman amount of Thorazine into that same kid instead of guiding her? Would it be any more crazy, in some sense, to fly her to the Amazon to work with a Shaman than it is to do what the parents have currently been convinced is the only choice?

You know?

[lightningBugout]

LBO - I wouldn't be surprised to find out the family is on the drug company administered hardship program and getting free or discount drugs. Which would put the case on the drug companies radar, and who's to say one of their reps didn't somehow help point the reporter at the family. Of course there is at this time no evidence for that, and... I'm not 100% sure the story helps drug companies agenda either.

Hmm. I'd say it helps the Eli Lillys immensely. Because its offers a scenario in which they are the saving grace, the saviour of the distraught family. But regardless if you are correct or not about the hardship > radar scenario, it is entirely plausible and there are all sorts of variants that are equally so.

[Nordic]

The responses to this article are pretty creepy. Whenever the subject of mental illness comes up here, the reactions are strong and perplexing. Some, oddly, seem fiercely protective of mental illness itself, I don't know how else to describe it. It's strange.

I mean, there was nothing strange or sinister about that story at all. It was just the story of a sick child and her desperate, suffering parents. The illness happened to be schizophrenia, and the only way to treat that is with strong drugs, that nobody wants to give to a child. But what is the alternative? Let 400 The Cat tell Jani to jump out the window?

I know there's that risk but I don't think we're over reacting. This seems over the line. I just don't accept that she "has" any such disease as schizophrenia. There is a serious sleep disorder present and the article says nothing about treatment for that. As for the imaginary characters, she's a bright highly imaginative kid, and everything around her is reinforcing their expression/validity, and become a handy excuse for having acted out poorly controlled impulses.

what she needs is a steady stream of friendly adults to talk to and help structuring her creative output, keep her busy drawing and making stories and building. It seems like the environment is not right and I think she'd be far better off in a different environment, with more people around who will engage with her rather than 'deal' and 'cope' with her. but I've no idea how she and her family can get to that place, wherever it is.

Wow, that is just so incredibly out of line it makes me wonder who has the mental illness here.

Are you having delusions that you're a psychiatrist specializing in childhood schizophrenia?

Or are you just some guy who actually has no fucking idea what he's talking about?

Pick one.

Yeah, why don't we just give her some fucking vitamins, I'm sure she'll be fine. Sleep therapy?

Obviously you have had NO experience with anyone who's really mentally ill.

[justdrew]

I mean what if 400 is a beast of the noosphere even.

What if this kid is highly, highly sensitive to a world that most of us interact with sometimes, even if we fear judgment too much to admit it. I, for example, had an experience with a ghost recently that was so real as to be boring.

What does it say about us if we slap some inhuman amount of Thorazine into that same kid instead of guiding her? Would it be any more crazy, in some sense, to fly her to the Amazon to work with a Shaman than it is to do what the parents have currently been convinced is the only choice?

You know?

well, yeah, maybe, maybe something along those lines is going on. If things really are that wild, then hopefully this exposure will bring the case to the attention of someone(s) who know(s) how to help or can get help, from a distance.

( I hope they're not besieged by con-men and self-deluding non-competents )

[justdrew]

Yeah, why don't we just give her some fucking vitamins, I'm sure she'll be fine. Sleep therapy?

Obviously you have had NO experience with anyone who's really mentally ill.

obviously you didn't read the article or you would know why I think the substantial lack of sleep is significant. way to twist my words, thanks, they needed wringing out. and yes, I'm definitely "just some guy" "commenting" on a field outside my expertise, and ready to read corrections from my betters. anything else generally goes on?

on edit: I'm not trying to say the parents are doing anything wrong, or that it's easy, I was just saying more people around would probably be better. Best wishes to anyone caring for those with mental illness. No harm intended. I'm certainly not going to number or list the people I know, or any qualifications, no matter how tangential. I'm just some guy.

[lightningBugout]

Wow, that is just so incredibly out of line it makes me wonder who has the mental illness here.

Are you having delusions that you're a psychiatrist specializing in childhood schizophrenia?

Or are you just some guy who actually has no fucking idea what he's talking about?

Pick one.

Yeah, why don't we just give her some fucking vitamins, I'm sure she'll be fine. Sleep therapy?

Obviously you have had NO experience with anyone who's really mentally ill.

Jesus Nordic. What gives. For starters, since you've credentialed it I (very sadly) have much experience with a dear friend who has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

As for Drew, his comment about the sleep disorder is pretty much spot on. Sleep disorders (and their relationship to states of brainwave) are, to many people who work in mental health, sort of a new frontier. He is very much right on with it.

See, there is the light read in which Drew is romanticizing mental illness ala claiming they are wholly negatively created via social norms and the more forward thinking read in which gestalt-type therapies are being re-explored. I "know" Drew fairly well through this board and, um, he's really smart. So I'm assuming there is a good bit of thought behind the words.

Regardless though - in my experience the closer you are to someone with real mental illness, the more clear it is that mental illness itself is a not-particularly-stable category. For that matter, drugs have huge side effects and negatives and, in my experience, work in a very, very coarse sort of way.

Point being - Drew's comments are very much in line with the spirit of RD Laing as well as some of the more interesting directions in mental health treatment happening today.

[lightningBugout]

I mean what if 400 is a beast of the noosphere even.

What if this kid is highly, highly sensitive to a world that most of us interact with sometimes, even if we fear judgment too much to admit it. I, for example, had an experience with a ghost recently that was so real as to be boring.

What does it say about us if we slap some inhuman amount of Thorazine into that same kid instead of guiding her? Would it be any more crazy, in some sense, to fly her to the Amazon to work with a Shaman than it is to do what the parents have currently been convinced is the only choice?

You know?

well, yeah, maybe, maybe something along those lines is going on. If things really are that wild, then hopefully this exposure will bring the case to the attention of someone(s) who know(s) how to help or can get help, from a distance.

( I hope they're not besieged by con-men and self-deluding non-competents )

Well I don't mean to sound pedantic, but what I am getting at is that I don't think it is "wild" to at least question the notion that schizophrenics have a relationship to what we tend to call "mystical" experience that is, at very least, not respected within the tradition (cough cough "genocide") that we call allopathic medicine.

Off the top of my head, for whatever it is worth, I can think of, say, ten doctors or healers that I would love to see offer their services to this girl. That said, I assume that roughly 80% (bare minimum) of people proffering things like Reiki or Chinese medicine are snake-oil salesmen, but very often that other 20% are incredibly visionary. And (again), at least, I am quite sure some of them could bring ideas and approaches that are very unlikely to be introduced otherwise.

Most importantly - maybe this child is genuinely sick from a hereditary, organic, physical brain abnormality that is simply insidious. But when you are as close to wit's end as these parents seem to be, why in the world wouldn't you investigate every single possibility for healing?

[brainpanhandler]

Some, oddly, seem fiercely protective of mental illness itself, I don't know how else to describe it. It's strange.

In the video at the link the mother says something to the effect of, "Sometimes I think Jani sees things that really are there and it's just that we can't see them". When she asks Jani if that is what is happening Jani answers yes. I don't see how voicing a thought like that could be helpful to Jani.

Jani herself does not want to give up her "good" friends as the father relates in the video.

[compared2what?]

The story's very painful. And almost impossible to accept at face value, reflexively. I'm having trouble with it. But FWIW, I knew a child (when I was a child, then a teenager; I'm eight or so years older) who was a childhood-onset schizophrenic. And who is no longer a child, obviously. But definitely is in adulthood -- and I believe was as a child -- schizophrenic. Although not recognized as such by me or by anyone for...maybe four or five or so years? At some point in early-ish adolescence, anyway. I'm not certain when since by then I was, you know, too busy being drunk and high to really be either paying all that much attention. Or for that matter, understanding much of anything about anyone. I'm not even certain what was new with me on a day-to-day basis at that point in my life. Anyway. It was very rough for him. And his family. Not that the more typical (for boys) late-teen, young-adult-onset isn't. Schizophrenia's a pretty bad deal no matter when you get it, and having no better alternative than taking anti-psychotic medications for all or most of the rest of your life is a pretty horrible prospect no matter when it arises.

And...I'm not sure that Fresno_Layshaft was saying this. But if what he was saying was that it's disturbing how little, if any, interest these threads tend to show in the first part of that equation, I agree. There are a whole lot of people who do have major mental illnesses. And they do have a much more grave and fundamental problem than the one represented by the horribleness of the meds they have to take. That problem being that they have major mental illnesses. As they still would if all the outrage expressed at Big Pharma here whenever the subject arises led to a total worldwide ban on psychotropic medications. Dull, I know. But true. Too true to bear thinking about, almost.

Anyway. I'm not saying she does, but Jani might in fact have childhood-onset schizophrenia. It's very unusual. But it's not unheard of. So you can't just rule it out. Or her troubles and pain might arise from some other completely separate cause. I have no way of knowing. But I don't see anything in the article on its face that suggests the latter. Poor child.

[lightningBugout]

having no better alternative than taking anti-psychotic medications for all or most of the rest of your life is a pretty horrible prospect no matter when it arises.

There are many psychiatrists who would strongly contest this sort of characterization of tragic pharmaceutical inevitability. Maybe Drew and myself sound like fruity, kaftan wearing nitwits, but things like psychotherapy, nutrition, etc. as treatment for schizophrenia are very cutting edge with a good subset of pros. As much as there is the one rather disgusting trend towards the heavy pharma bandaid, there is also its much more interesting, much more hopeful corollary.

[justdrew]

maybe Morpheus can help

[compared2what?]

having no better alternative than taking anti-psychotic medications for all or most of the rest of your life is a pretty horrible prospect no matter when it arises.

There are many psychiatrists who would strongly contest this sort of characterization of tragic pharmaceutical inevitability. Maybe Drew and myself sound like fruity, kaftan wearing nitwits, but things like psychotherapy, nutrition, etc. as treatment for schizophrenia are very cutting edge with a good subset of pros. As much as there is the one rather disgusting trend towards the heavy pharma bandaid, there is also its much more interesting, much more hopeful corollary.

I'm aware of the alternative treatments. Although I sure as hell am not aware of any that so reliably address most -- or in some cases, any -- major mental illnesses that there's any reason to think of them as reasonable alternatives to the tragically largely non-existent mental health case system we have now. Except insofar as it would still be tragically largely non-existent were they to take the place of meds.

And you're still talking and thinking only about doctors and treatments, rather than the people who have the problem.

[Nordic]

Well if I misunderstood I apologize.

I am totally open to the notion that schizophrenics and other mentally ill people might be in touch with, yes, what we're calling "mystical" or "supernatural" or whatever you want to call it. I know mental health professionals who are intrigued by this and have studied this to a point, as much as one can study this sort of thing, which isn't very much, frankly, using any sort of Western scientific methodology.

I agree totally with LightingBugout's notion that perhaps some sort of Shaman could perhaps help her by actually dealing with this aspect of her situation rather than trying to coarsely build a brick wall over this aspect of her reality through heavy drugging.

But one has to wonder how much self-awareness a 6 year old can have, in order for herself to deal with this sort of thing. She seems incredibly bright and intuitive, almost freakishly so, but she's stuck so badly between worlds she's literally in a type of hell and one that she cannot possibly understand.

I'd hazard to say that she would need a therapist on the order of the woman who worked with Helen Keller to get through to her in any way other than pharmaceutical.

I hope she finds that person.

It's a terrible thing to read.

I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

I have to say, in my own close dealings with a family members with a serious mental illness, there were times when I would swear to god that they were literally possessed by someone else.

As someone who has had first-hand experience with ghosts and realizes that there are indeed spiritual entities floating around out there manifesting themselves in various ways, and that many of these entities (ghosts at least) behave often as "insane", it would not surprise me in any way if in fact these were finding ways to possess people who were susceptible to being possessed.

The person to whom I'm referring, the one with whom I have had the most direct and dramatic experience, often has a very difficult time remembering what happened when these possession-like episodes occur.

I feel terrible for that little girl and for her parents.

[Nordic]

I have to add that the heavy pharma bandaid used in "modern" psychiatry is crude and cruel and brutal.

I put it on par with western "medicine" of, oh, maybe the 1850's or so.

The treatment mental health patients get is right up there with leeches and blood-letting and treating the "black bile" and that sort of shit. And it usually involves throwing various drugs at the wall and seeing what sticks.

The mental health patient is nothing more than a guinea pig, subjected to experimental medication every time, as they try different drugs out, seeing which ones might work and which ones don't. The problem is that when they don't, the results are worse, sometimes FAR worse, than no drugs at all.

And then there are the side affects. Nasty business.

Mental health care is pretty medieval.

And that's for the lucky ones. The unlucky ones roam the steets, defecating in our alleyways and begging on the corners. Where I live, they number in the tens of thousands.

[MacCruiskeen]

The "case" of six-year-old January should be filed under Ritual Abuse, and I'm not joking. Those fuckers who are imprisoning and drugging her should be in jail pending charges, and the journalist along with them.

Did anyone watch that seven-minute film at the LA Times site? It is deeply, deeply creepy. Why is the father doing all the talking? Why are the parents never interviewed together? Why is there only one short quote from the mother? And why does that one short quote make the mother look and sound much much madder (since these are the scientific terms we're using) than the designated lunatic, six-year-old January?

At the age of five January greeted the birth of her new brother by addressing an imaginary friend. So far, so absolutely normal. But this frightened the mother (!), who responded by abandoning her child to "the authorities" (eh, Nordic?) and letting them process that defenceless infantile "schizophrenic" through the dark satanic mill of enforced drug addiction.

Here's a statement of the obvious, just going on what can be gleaned unambiguously from the film and the article: January is exceptionally intelligent and requires very little sleep. Other than that, she is absolutely normal - she sometimes loses her temper (especially when she's being wilfully misunderstood or deliberately abused by "authorities"), she was a little confused by the arrival of her new sibling (like most if not all only children all over the world), she currently has several imaginatively-named imaginary frends (just like my own child, my best friend's child, two of my brothers in their childhood, and maybe half of all posters to this board when they themselves were kids). Sadly, January has also been cursed, by her parents, with a senselesly stupid fucking name, which can't have made it easy for her starting school -- often a difficult time for kids, especially if they're sensitive and intelligent and struggling to cope with the arrival of a new male sibling and subsequent rejection by her mother, and most especially if that school is run by averagely-stupid "authorities".

There is no case there. There is no illness. None. The child is being pushed around and emotionally and physically manipulated by everyone around her, so it's no wonder she's suffering and making others suffer; she's still refusing to take it lying down.

Don't worry, though, they'll crush her soon, you can depend on it. (Is it legal to place bets on the outcome?)

"Early-onset schizophrenia" my arse. Those parents need help and no one is giving them any. And that LA Times article is just an infuriating piece of brutally sanctimonious claptrap. Par for the course, though; normal as normal can be. It shows in microcosm what a profoundly sick state the US is now in.

Christ alone knows exactly what those medical authorities would have done to William Blake or Emily Bronte. Drugged them out of existence, presumably. There's not a doubt in hell that those blind self-serving quacks would have succeeded brilliantly, one way or another, in preventing them from becoming who they eventually managed to be.