Mental Health Do you believe it is possible to resist mental illnesses through awareness?

[sexNcandy]

My question is basically whether you believe that mental illnesses in general are inevitable or not (after their onset). We know there is a genetic component and an environmental factors, but what about the level of knowledge the person has about what's happening to them?

For example, say someone develops a serious case of schizophrenia. Is it inevitable that they succumb to the illness, actually believing in conspiracies, attacks on their minds, and people being out to get them?

Or is it possible that someone who is informed enough could understand what's going on and fight to keep their senses and not give credit to any of this. They would still be experiencing it, but not actually believing in it and acting upon it.

I think you could draw a comparison to someone who is dosed 1mg of lsd without any prior psychedelic use or knowledge and is not aware of being dosed, and an experienced user who is aware. If both subjects have a bad trip and start believing throughout the experience that they are losing their mind, the experienced user is much more likely to be calm and aware that it will end when the chemical wears off, while the unaware subject could develop psychosis and never recover again.

I was reading about this today and thought, what about someone who is very knowledgeable on schizophrenia (like a psychiatrist), and has experience with alternate states of mind, what if they developed something like schizophrenia? Could they immediately know what's going on and attempt to control it, not believing any of it no matter how real it seems because they know from their life experience that it can't be true? Just like you know when you are tripping that the walls aren't actually swirling around but you still see it, and someone with no knowledge of psychedelics who is unknowingly dosed could actually believe it is happening. Thus, we could say said person although suffering from schizophrenia is not actually schizophrenic since they don't believe any of it and don't act upon it. Surely this would be very hard to do in practice.

I'm also asking about other stuff such as bipolar disorder, depression and any kind of mental illness. Like a person who develops bipolar disorder could understand that their high state is a mania and not let themselves off the leash. Could a person who is aware enough immediately recognize what's going on and resist it without meds, or will they sooner or later buy into their delusion?

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

Honestly, we don't know enough about mental illness to say whether someone can simply resist their mental illness or not, but odds are extremely heavily in favor of: no. LSD doesn't quite mimic schizophrenia. One cannot diagnose nor treat themself. Knowing that something is a hallucination is a lot different than controlling ones own mental illness. If they don't "believe any of it" then they probably wouldn't be schizophrenic... Oftentimes one doesn't realize that mania has occurred until after the fact.

Mental illness isn't generally something that can be willed away. In order to beat it, one needs various support systems from the outside which will help grow a malnourished kernel of a soul into a healthy person able to cope with the demands of a complicated and fast world.

 

[herbavore]

But there is some fascinating new thinking out there that says that awareness of one's own triggers, cycles etc with the particular condition can have a modifying effect on the severity and frequency of symptoms. There is currently an experimental sort of house in my town, completely inhabited and run by clients of County Mental Health that have been diagnosed with extreme states such as schizophrenia and bipolar. The whole idea behind it is that the people themselves understand their condition better than anyone else and that they can help each other to recognize triggers, develop strategies and sort of "trip sit" each other through all but the most severe episodes. The house has now been in existence for a couple of years and the data about decreased number of hospitalizations is pretty amazing but the best part is that the people living there have been able to reduce and in some cases eliminate medications.

 

[sexNcandy]

Honestly, we don't know enough about mental illness to say whether someone can simply resist their mental illness or not, but odds are extremely heavily in favor of: no. LSD doesn't quite mimic schizophrenia. One cannot diagnose nor treat themself. Knowing that something is a hallucination is a lot different than controlling ones own mental illness. If they don't "believe any of it" then they probably wouldn't be schizophrenic... Oftentimes one doesn't realize that mania has occurred until after the fact.

Mental illness isn't generally something that can be willed away. In order to beat it, one needs various support systems from the outside which will help grow a malnourished kernel of a soul into a healthy person able to cope with the demands of a complicated and fast world.

It certainly wouldn't be simple to resist either way, but I observe that some schizophrenics accept the realization in a much better way and acknowledge it after some struggle, while others choose never to believe it and fight it, saying stuff like everyone is in on it, there is no such thing as schizophrenia, and so on. Could there be some factor inherent to the former people, that is not genetic and that helps them deal with it better?


I know lsd is not at all like schizophrenia, my point was that someone not being aware of what might be happening to them could be in a much worse position to deal with it or attempt to self diagnosis. Of course schizophrenia just happens, you don't dose it in anyway, so it's different. But if a trained psychiatrist is in a better position to self diagnosis and try to control his schizophrenia than someone who is illiterate and has never heard of the disease, then there is a learning curve that affects your ability to resist it.

Like if the guy's life goes from being a normal average joe to being the center of a huge conspiracy, and even those he loves the most are acting against him behind his back and there are spies everywhere, it might be that this guy (who has treated people living through this all his life, and is now living it himself), has something *click* in his brain that says oh shit, i've had it didn't I? I lost it big time. No matter how real this seems to me, how impossibly real, it can't be that the world revolves around me, just like I told my patients for so many years that it didn't revolve around them.

If something like this is impossible, than it is impossible for anyone to resist their illnesses themselves, and there is no hope other than a lot of help from the outside world.


I entirely agree with you that most people don't realize what they are going through until much after it has already started.


@herbavore



That's very interesting, never heard that before.

 

[Wicked702]

I think they can be resisted, to a point. There are a lot of factors involved. If you've got the genetic markers I think you're likely to get some symptoms. In other words, I don't think you'd be able to resist 100%. But if the mental illness develops through drug use, and the physical damage done isn't permanent, it's quite likely that full recovery is possible.

I would say I'm living proof of the latter. Multi-year daily marijuana use caused some fairly significant schizophrenic symptoms. Unfortunately, I'm one of the minority that doesn't mesh well with weed. It was mostly a matter of stop using the drug (obviously) and convincing myself that what I was experiencing wasn't real. But you do have to be firmly mentally grounded for this to work.

For example, if you're fairly religious and believe in angels/demons, convincing yourself that demons aren't secretly out to get you is going to be more difficult. Mainly this is because you accept the POSSIBILITY of their existence. However, if you discard their existence as fiction, it's much easier to brush off any perceived conspiracy. (Not exactly what happened to me, but a simple example for illustration.)

 

[SilverFeniks]

I dunno .. I'm no stranger to lesser forms of mental illness myself (mania, suicidal depression, violent psychosis), but while I can't control these at times., I've never lost touch with reality to anything close to the degree I see with people in jail every week ... Suffering from extreme delusions, be they paranoid, religious or benign. I think there's a distinction to be made between 'lesser' forms of mental illness and the type defined by overriding delusions. One can be self-aware of the former, and thus able to battle to some extent, but the latter are completely uncontrollable by the conscious mind.
The closest I can relate to paranoid psychosis is from my years of cannabis abuse .. I can hardly imagine feeling such intense anxiety/paranoia as a result of mixed-up brainchem alone. Like experiencing acid rain with no concept of precipitation.

 

[bees_knees]

In my experience of schizophrenia it's a kind of sinking into a vague inner bubble of depersonalisation and derealisation and having extreme paranoia and anxiety with no real content, it's just there, you're just... paranoid. I think of it as just physical brain malfunction or a chemically induced brain damage. There's no way to combat it but to wait for the brain to heal, and it's not always that long if, like has been said, it was drug induced and you have stopped using that drug.

Fucking weed man. I hate it so much, I am frightened when someone whips out a joint or a bong. The. Horror.

Sorry to the weed community, I hope it's legalised and that all works out for you, but fuck that fucking fucked up shit. Fuck.

(yes I too am in a minority that cannot take ANY amount of weed)

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

It certainly wouldn't be simple to resist either way, but I observe that some schizophrenics accept the realization in a much better way and acknowledge it after some struggle, while others choose never to believe it and fight it, saying stuff like everyone is in on it, there is no such thing as schizophrenia, and so on. Could there be some factor inherent to the former people, that is not genetic and that helps them deal with it better?


I know lsd is not at all like schizophrenia, my point was that someone not being aware of what might be happening to them could be in a much worse position to deal with it or attempt to self diagnosis. Of course schizophrenia just happens, you don't dose it in anyway, so it's different. But if a trained psychiatrist is in a better position to self diagnosis and try to control his schizophrenia than someone who is illiterate and has never heard of the disease, then there is a learning curve that affects your ability to resist it.

Like if the guy's life goes from being a normal average joe to being the center of a huge conspiracy, and even those he loves the most are acting against him behind his back and there are spies everywhere, it might be that this guy (who has treated people living through this all his life, and is now living it himself), has something *click* in his brain that says oh shit, i've had it didn't I? I lost it big time. No matter how real this seems to me, how impossibly real, it can't be that the world revolves around me, just like I told my patients for so many years that it didn't revolve around them.

If something like this is impossible, than it is impossible for anyone to resist their illnesses themselves, and there is no hope other than a lot of help from the outside world.


I entirely agree with you that most people don't realize what they are going through until much after it has already started.

Ok. Accepting ones illness is different than treating it through willpower though. I'd imagine that acceptance is based on a variety of factors: witnessing those more ill than oneself, experiencing the positive effects of medication, reading the science behind it, etc.

Most people are aware that they are experiencing discomfort, but yes, recognizing it as a symptom of the disorder allows one to better cope. I don't think medical professionals are that much more competent to deal with their disease; of course they believe in the system and mental illness (most likely) but its a lo different being treated as opposed to occupying a position of more of an outsider. With schizophrenia in particular its just so difficult for the patient to first realize they are ill - it just appears to be part of their personality, not to mention that it oftentimes goes undetected because schizophrenics can appear completely normal, counter to, say, someone buying 1000 snickers bars and running up and down the streets handing them out with a giant smile (mania).

No. It simply usually doesn't work that way. Symptoms start small, such as thinking someone took your wallet whereas you just misplaced it, something that a non-ill person might experience, then might progress to thinking someone is behind you with a knife while you're, I don't know, sitting at your desk at night working overtime. This *click* is also more gradual. It takes a while to undo all of the damage. Of course people do have different experiences. A combination of medication and DBT/CBT (look them up, they're helpful), but crucially the latter two, will help someone realize that yes, they aren't the center of the world, and yes, people aren't out to get them in so extreme a fashion.

An illness is only really an illness when someone can't resist the symptoms themselves i.e. they are causing themself damage in some way.

Good talking.

 

[Wicked702]

Man, three in a row with weed. Really interesting. And encouraging.

I think there's a distinction to be made between 'lesser' forms of mental illness and the type defined by overriding delusions. One can be self-aware of the former, and thus able to battle to some extent, but the latter are completely uncontrollable by the conscious mind.

Why is that do you think? Based on my own limited experience, I have to conclude that at some point they accepted the delusions as a real possibility. I mean if you never actually believe in the delusion, then its effects should be eliminated. But once you start REALLY accepting the possibility of a conspiracy against you, say by your friends or even random people, then I think you've crossed the line. It's hard to come back from that I think.

What does your perspective tell you?

In my experience of schizophrenia it's a kind of sinking into a vague inner bubble of depersonalisation and derealisation and having extreme paranoia and anxiety with no real content, it's just there, you're just... paranoid. I think of it as just physical brain malfunction or a chemically induced brain damage. There's no way to combat it but to wait for the brain to heal, and it's not always that long if, like has been said, it was drug induced and you have stopped using that drug.

I had an aunt and uncle with actual full-blown schizophrenia (they both died last year, fairly late in life), so I have gotten to see some of it first hand. It's quite likely that I carry the recessive gene, but not enough of the genetics to get the whole thing. I'm just about 32 now, so I'm not concerned about it anymore. But during the weed years, for me it was auditory hallucinations. The voices. From what I've seen, hearing voices is a pretty common symptom of schizophrenia. Is it something you have (if you feel like sharing) and/or in your experience have you had to deal with auditory hallucinations?

 

[herbavore]

I think that the average person's understanding of mental illnesses is about equal to the average person's understanding of drug use, abuse and addiction. Many myths abound and get passed around so much that they become fact in people's minds. I think one of the reasons that I prefer the term "extreme states" to mental illness is that it encompasses my reality more than all the delineated labels/diagnoses do. During a time of extreme stress in my life--both internal and external--I experienced auditory hallucinations quite frequently. As is often the case, these contributed to self harm and a complete chaos inside. While I was briefly in psychiatric care mostly I was not and I truly do believe that I was able to use my intellect, insight from psychedelics and sheer determination to change my inner narrative to effect healing. I do not extrapolate from my own experience that this is possible for everyone. Extreme states, just like depression, can be chronic and physiological or situational. When I took steps to improve my life (stopped abusing drugs, got off the streets, became fanatical about creating my own life in a way that allowed me to be my true self) my symptoms disappeared--no more voices, no more self harm. Again, I want to stress that in no way am I suggesting that anyone's experience/reality is just like mine and that any extreme state can be "cured" by willpower and intention; but I do feel like my experience has a rightful place at the table.

The law professor and schizophrenic Elyn Saks says that her breakthrough came through identifying with the label ("I have schizophrenia" rather than trying to mask and hide it), an openness that allowed colleagues and family and friends to reflect back to her when she was starting to get "out there" in her behavior, speech etc. and through an acceptance that, despite the side effects, minimal medication was for her a fact of life. She has been able to avoid and reduce the number of hospitalizations through awareness of the onset of an extreme state and then putting to use her own particular strategies which she stresses have to be developed by the individual--in her case these are isolation, calming classical music, meditation among other things.

The undeniable enemy it seems to me when discussing anything to do with our brains--whether it be learning differences, mental illness, addiction, personality types, etc is over-simplification. We have this need to declare understanding (through the use of labels, categories,and theories which are mistaken for fact) when we would be better served by becoming more comfortable with questioning, uncertainty and exploration as a process.

 

[ComfortablyNumb95]

well, I actually thought that someone with schizophrenia qualifies as such because he cannot distinguish the hallucinations from reality, maybe I'm wrong?

anyway I read an interesting article about schizophrenia and meditation (which eightens your awareness) : http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1108238/

 

[Noodle]

situational + psychological = yes

 

[weekend addiction]

Awareness has been a big part of my battle. Acceptance is another one. Mental illness becomes easier to live with once you sit down and figure out how to make things work better for you. Easier said than done.

 

[bees_knees]

I haven't had to deal with auditory hallucinations, no. My brother has them 24/7 however. It occurs in 50% of cases.

 

[sexNcandy]

Thanks everyone for the contribution it's very interesting to me to read about your personal experiences and views

Ok. Accepting ones illness is different than treating it through willpower though. I'd imagine that acceptance is based on a variety of factors: witnessing those more ill than oneself, experiencing the positive effects of medication, reading the science behind it, etc.

Most people are aware that they are experiencing discomfort, but yes, recognizing it as a symptom of the disorder allows one to better cope. I don't think medical professionals are that much more competent to deal with their disease; of course they believe in the system and mental illness (most likely) but its a lo different being treated as opposed to occupying a position of more of an outsider. With schizophrenia in particular its just so difficult for the patient to first realize they are ill - it just appears to be part of their personality, not to mention that it oftentimes goes undetected because schizophrenics can appear completely normal, counter to, say, someone buying 1000 snickers bars and running up and down the streets handing them out with a giant smile (mania).

No. It simply usually doesn't work that way. Symptoms start small, such as thinking someone took your wallet whereas you just misplaced it, something that a non-ill person might experience, then might progress to thinking someone is behind you with a knife while you're, I don't know, sitting at your desk at night working overtime. This *click* is also more gradual. It takes a while to undo all of the damage. Of course people do have different experiences. A combination of medication and DBT/CBT (look them up, they're helpful), but crucially the latter two, will help someone realize that yes, they aren't the center of the world, and yes, people aren't out to get them in so extreme a fashion.

An illness is only really an illness when someone can't resist the symptoms themselves i.e. they are causing themself damage in some way.

Good talking.

Yea man I agree with you, it's very tricky trying to talk about this or understand it. I didnt know about dbt\cbt, it's good stuff I'll read more about it sometime. Thanks for all the input. I'm always fascinated by this.

I think that the average person's understanding of mental illnesses is about equal to the average person's understanding of drug use, abuse and addiction. Many myths abound and get passed around so much that they become fact in people's minds. I think one of the reasons that I prefer the term "extreme states" to mental illness is that it encompasses my reality more than all the delineated labels/diagnoses do. During a time of extreme stress in my life--both internal and external--I experienced auditory hallucinations quite frequently. As is often the case, these contributed to self harm and a complete chaos inside. While I was briefly in psychiatric care mostly I was not and I truly do believe that I was able to use my intellect, insight from psychedelics and sheer determination to change my inner narrative to effect healing. I do not extrapolate from my own experience that this is possible for everyone. Extreme states, just like depression, can be chronic and physiological or situational. When I took steps to improve my life (stopped abusing drugs, got off the streets, became fanatical about creating my own life in a way that allowed me to be my true self) my symptoms disappeared--no more voices, no more self harm. Again, I want to stress that in no way am I suggesting that anyone's experience/reality is just like mine and that any extreme state can be "cured" by willpower and intention; but I do feel like my experience has a rightful place at the table.

The law professor and schizophrenic Elyn Saks says that her breakthrough came through identifying with the label ("I have schizophrenia" rather than trying to mask and hide it), an openness that allowed colleagues and family and friends to reflect back to her when she was starting to get "out there" in her behavior, speech etc. and through an acceptance that, despite the side effects, minimal medication was for her a fact of life. She has been able to avoid and reduce the number of hospitalizations through awareness of the onset of an extreme state and then putting to use her own particular strategies which she stresses have to be developed by the individual--in her case these are isolation, calming classical music, meditation among other things.

The undeniable enemy it seems to me when discussing anything to do with our brains--whether it be learning differences, mental illness, addiction, personality types, etc is over-simplification. We have this need to declare understanding (through the use of labels, categories,and theories which are mistaken for fact) when we would be better served by becoming more comfortable with questioning, uncertainty and exploration as a process.

Excellent post, it's good to read that you managed to get back on track. You say insight from psychedelics helped you, and that is something I often think about. People who have had responsible experiences with altered states of consciousness, specifically psychedelics, are in my opinion sometimes better equipped to deal with something like this because they've been there before, even if temporarily. As opposed to someone who never tripped nor knows what it is who starts having delusions.