This is not schizophrenia. Let's look at some symptoms here that a fellow is reporting in a weight-lifting forum. Many of the commenters are replying that the guy has "the beginnings of schizophrenia", "mild schizophrenia" "schizophrenia", etc, etc ad nauseum. Let's take a look at his symptoms:
At night, no matter what I do. Not every night it always happens during the week when I have to work the next day, I cannot fall asleep. Music, TV, RX pills, Tylenol PM, melatonin. Even taken together, mixed and matched, I cant fall asleep sometimes. And my body is tired, but my brain wont shut up. And I'm not even thinking about anything important. Sometimes, just fucking music is playing.OK, the guy is unable to control the thoughts in his head. Thoughts, crazy thoughts, random nonsense, just races through his head with little or no control over it at all. Songs, uncontrolled and unbidden, pop up in his head unbidden and play by themselves in his head.
And it will keep my up, not sleeping 2-3-4 nights in a row. By the 3rd day, I feel delirious, and I didn't want to train the other day, cause I was afraid I'd hurt myself from how slow, and tired my body felt. I'm trying not to smoke as much pot lately, cause I'm cutting, losing weight.
It's effecting my home life, my job, my training, my relationships. Someone asked me if it was because I was depressed. I really don't have much to be depressed about. I have a good job, I make good money, I get laid, my own place. If I'm depressed, I don't know why.
It's almost like I'm "tripping" is how much sense it doesn't make -like when you're on acid and your mind is racing and none of it applies to anything, or means anything. Random craziness.
I hear voices (not like telling me to kill or anything) but just random babbling and the voices change like they're inhaling helium. It doesn't make any sense. Other times, random songs play through my head and I cant shut them off. I can only control them by putting other songs in, but that causes me to strain my brain and think hard when I'm trying to relax my mind.
My head sometimes gets heavy too, like it weighs like 50 lbs, and my equilibrium gets off balance sometimes. Like a concussion.
He can't shut any of this bullshit off, and the only way to stop the music is to substitute one stupid song for another. I am assuming the "voices" he is hearing are voices in his head, not outside of his head. Fortunately, you can hear all the voices in your head as possible without being mentally ill, though it really isn't ideal.
It's crucial to realize that psychotics who hear voices actually hear them with their ears, not in their minds. We all "hear voices" in our heads. Our "inner voice" is a voice inside of our heads. The idiot media and popular does not do us any good by refusing to differentiate these symptoms. Psychotic voices heard with one's ears are transformed into "voices in his head".
Obviously, if it's sane to one one "inner voice", it's not psychotic to have more than one, or an unlimited number, though it's not exactly ideal. You could even have animal sounds in your head.
Hang on.
OK, I just made some animal sounds in my head. There was a cow and a monkey and now there's a lion. Does that make me schizophrenic? Come on.
If you follow the discussion, you will note that many of his friends on there tell him that he is developing schizophrenia. I do not believe he is doing any such thing, and this is not a symptom of incipient schizophrenia anyway.
I've been around folks in the prodrome of schizophrenia, and while their functioning was still ok enough, they were hallucinating (hearing voices) a significant part of the time. No amount of argument could convince them that the voices were not actually real, nor would they believe me when I said I didn't hear them. This is a pretty typical picture of incipient schizophrenia.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of schizophrenics hear voices. In fact, if you don't hear voices, I wonder if you really have schizophrenia.
What's also interesting is that, terrifying and weird as these symptoms are, a number of the commenters admit that they have experienced them - they say they have had strange, out of control, unbidden random thoughts and music in their heads before. So, while it's not optimal, this stuff seems to be pretty common.
What's the diagnosis for out of control, random, unbidden thoughts and songs in your head? I say nothing. There's no DSM dx that has a criteria like that as a sole criteria.
Just like "having a weird look in your eyes" does not give you a mental illness dx either. There are all sorts of folks walking around with all kinds of weird and crazy looks in their eyes. While it's disconcerting, it's not necessarily indicative of mental illness. There is no DSM dx for "has a weird or crazy look in their eyes."
You need to be nuttier than just that. What gives people weird looks in their eyes if they aren't nuts? Who knows? God knows what goes in people's minds. But as long as your speech and behavior remains normal, you're not mentally ill.
Why am I writing about this crap? I'm on a crusade to get people to quit being such morons about mental health. Even if we aren't ill ourselves, it doesn't help to give out false dx's and go around accusing non mentally-ill folks of "being crazy". It's insulting, stupid and cruel.
Personally, I never refer to other humans with words like "weird", "crazy", "nuts", etc.
Instead, I'm going to give you some specific description of their behavior, possibly with a potential dx. I can usually figure out what might be wrong with someone after spending a bit of time around them. I can almost always tell if they are psychotic or not, and usually if they are obviously dangerous or not.
Life's tough for everyone and probably few of us make it out unscathed.
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