Hacker News Reader

Comment by falcolas | Hacker News Reader

/angry

Tell me, how does dementia lead to the birth of a healer? How does someone regressing mentally, with their ability to communicate being completely lost, with their behaviors becoming more and more childlike to the point where they can't even feed themselves, how does that signify becoming a healer?

The only blessing in watching my grandmother's decline like this is that it was swift. Six months of hell, of watching someone you love becoming frustrated at their inability to communicate even the most basic thing. Of watching them forget how to take basic care of themselves. Of watching a simple door lock with the code printed right above it being sufficient to keep them from using that door. Of watching them play with a child's woodworking set because they no longer know the difference between that and the beautiful works they used to make with wood.

Fuck this shit. Birth of a healer my ass.

View on HN

Chill out, dementia is something very different from schizophrenia.

It's a mental illness, and while the article focuses on schizophrenia (and depression), they generalize it to all mental illnesses.

I'd be a bit less angry if they hadn't generalized it like that. A bit: how many "healers" have been lost to their visions, or to their depression? I have a feeling they'd simply sweep that under the rug as a natural consequence of seeing the spirits that others can not.

The best way to look at it is a corrective to the harmful pathologization of unusual mental states by psychiatry. Yes, the new-agey claims are not really plausible. But mental illness is less prevalent in traditional societies where it is understood in a more nuanced way.

AFAIK dementia patients don't generally get involved in the oppressive and demeaning psychiatric system. It's a horrible business.

It is important to listen to the experiences of the "neurodiverse" to understand how we need to make life better for them. It's true that schizophrenia is generally a disaster that destroys the life of the sufferer and the people around them. What needs to be more widely recognized is the psychosocial aspect of illnesses like schizophrenia, e.g. the extent to which they are caused by toxic families and/or social circumstances. This is where "healing" becomes relevant: a psychotic problem can be an opportunity to change and escape from a toxic situation. Of course, it often has the opposite effect, when the patient is pathologized, medicated, and told that they are the problem.

Those "unusual mental states" are not classified as problematic by psychiatry until they adversely affect the patient's ability to live in modern society. And if they can't deal with life in a modern society without assistance, something needs to occur. If the person has the support of their community to make up for their shortcomings, then great. If they don't have such a community, then if medicine, CBT, or can help them, why not use it?

As for how dementia is handled in the US? With full time care in lockup facilities. The few families who try and handle the care themselves fail most of the time, since it requires around the clock alertness and care, lest the person with dementia hurt themselves at 3 in the morning.

Also, most of the "neurodiversity" and "unusual mental states" proponents try to tell me that my ADD is a benefit to my life, that I would have made a great hunter gatherer. Which is, as the person actually suffering from the ADD on a daily basis, complete and utter horseshit. I know I couldn't have survived in such a lifestyle, because I'd die of starvation if I was required to hunt to survive.

Hunting requires moving in silence; ADD means I'm constantly bumping into things. Hunting requires sometimes interminable amounts of waiting; I'd get antsy after ten minutes and have to move. Hunting means being able to concentrate so when the right moment comes, you're ready to strike; ADD means I'd be thinking about ways to improve my spear and bow as a buck passes me by.

misplaced anger based on fundamental misunderstanding of the contents of the article and fundamental misunderstanding of distinctions between conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and the completely different condition senile dementia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com