Newsgroups: sci.med

In sci.med, hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:


>I have never questioned that schizophrenia is a biologically based COMDITIOM.
>One should not compare it to cancer, but more to conditions like abnormal
>muscular development.  It would make just as much sense to class an 
>unhappy genius as mentally diseased and use therapy to make him into a
>happy person of lesser mentality.   In fact, our sorry excuse for an
>educational system tries to do exactly this, often using drugs to control
>children who are just imprisoned in schools which do not recognize the problem. 
You must be confusing things, here.  Overactive children on drugs to slow them
down is not the same issue as treating psychotic adults.  You can argue 
about the children's natural tendency to speed along, but save it about 
deadly brain disorders, absolutely unnatural and intolerable to the patient 
and the people around them.  You don't know what you're talking about in that 
area, I feel.

>   Nor will I consider pregnancy a disease, but rather a condition.  Just
>   recently, psychiatrists have removed homosexuality from the list of
>   diseases, and classified it as a non-disease condition.

They may classify schizophrenia as a natural non-disease condition, but it
sure isn't optimum, and if you ask the schizophrenic if he'd like treatment,
don't expect a sound answer.

>   A cancer patient can legally, at just about any stage, stop the treatment
>   being given.  Do we give the same rights to "mental patients"?  

On an outpatient status as most mental patients are, Yes.  By the way, it
was drug treatment that emptied the psychic wards in this country.  But when 
the mentally ill exercise their option to end their treatment, the results
are almost always the same: another major breakdown with probable suicidal
activity.  Then he gets placed back in the psychic ward for same treatment.
This costs taxpayers more money to have them ill than sane and happy.

>   There was
>   the case a few years ago of some psychology students who, as part of a
>   project, committed themselves.  The doctors refused to release them when
>   they asked for this, giving the detatils, claiming that they were cases
>   of paranoid schizophrenia.  It was a major job to get them out.

Well, they lied about their condition as serious, and it's often the case that
paranoids lie to escape their "persecution".  A natural mistake and these
psychology students were dumb to get into it like that.  My twin was twice
placed in a psychic ward against his will for treatment for bipolar (manic-
depressive) syndrome and he was extremely paranoid.  One stay lasted 6
weeks to stabilize him.  He would spit the medicine out.  Only after awhile
did they catch on to what he was doing and the medicine finally took effect.
Six years later he is virtually normal, but his medication is his lifeline.
I had a bipolar episode two years ago and am still on medication.  Without
it, we'd both either by completely dysfunctional (oh, but "normal and natural")
or dead.  I think I am more like myself before my breakdown with drugs than
without.  Which is the real brainwashed condition?


    >The conclusion, NO BRAIN 
    >WASHING!  Let's leave these terms to the cults and not to what scientific 
    >evidence has proven.

>On the contrary, I see no more moral right for the medical profession to
>mandate a chemical alteration of a person's outlook than for cults to use
>their methods.

Sorry, but a mentally ill person cannot make these decisions with a sound
mind.  Instead, his instincts are to fight it in a paranoid state.  I and
my twin brother both had to be dragged in against our will for treatment.
I was told twice by my father to go in and I still refused, thinking "I
ain't crazy, I'm just getting over some nerves here. It'll go away." Wrong!
My dad knew better, he's seen it before with my brother.


>   The biological basis of any non-contagious condition does not give the
>   medical profession a moral right to mandate treatment.  Society doe
>    have a right to detain people who have, by their explicit actions,
>   shown that they are a direct threat to others, but not much more.

The country turned around the psychotic world into the fully cognizant
world and you are telling them they are wrong for not getting the psychotic's
permission.  Come on.  You need more information about this before stating
the things you do.  Mental illness is not fun and will not be considered
by anyone with the disease more fun than treated.  I know of no one like that.
I also know of no one who sought treatment for their mental illness on their
own.
Newsgroups: sci.med