Up to my nose

Up to my nose

I woke up feeling good up to my nose.

From my toes to my nose,

Body signals were go.

And sad stays a bandit,

Masking my eyes,

Arresting the flow.

No go.

Using language to separate

Mental illness has its own medical specialty, its own volume of diagnostic codes, and its own vocabulary.  The word stigma is one of the words that is now used in a special way.  The coupling in the phrase “the stigma of mental illness” is pervasive.  Instead of its intended use to eliminate stigma the constant reminder serves to maintain the concept of stigma in the public mind.

“Stigma” means discrimination and prejudice and shame.   The mental health leadership would better align psychiatric disability with other disabilities and use the human rights language that they use.  

Even anti-stigma campaigns maintain the separateness of things related to mental illness by using language to separate instead of to bridge.

Early

Early

She has arrived early, has had time to collect her self and her appurtenances, waits.

The appointed time passes and so does her calm.  Anxiety tromples her peacefulness.  She wonders about often being early, and often giving up her sense of self as the time passes.

She is early in her life, too, having finished, at 64, her life review, is accepting of what she has done, has raveled the loose ends, is a bit bored, a bit patient, a bit nonchalant, wondering what she’ll do for the next expected 20 years.

She thinks about how to calculate how many minutes/hours/days she has spent being early and what the value has been and the learning.  Well, she has never missed a plane!

She waits, early 

She waits.

4/22/2000

Healing through diet

In addition to the known or suspected connections between certain foods/diets and certain body and mood reactions, I think that abrupt extensive changes to one’s ordinary diet, such as severe restrictions on categories of input, cause a shock to the system and that within that shock the system can reorganize and symptoms can fade and disappear.  Sometimes that reorganization doesn’t last, and the system reverts to dysfunction and symptoms reappear.

Getting lost when there is too much input ...

The possibilities for the internet to facilitate outreach and inclusion excite me.  In the US, the new administration is using social networking tools to gather input and allow dialogue.  Except there are thousands of ideas and I have some and have just spent 30 minutes trying to figure out where my input should go and how to actually post.  And then it would be somewhere down around 3000 on a list.  Who would read that far?  And I understand networks are using outreach tools to boost favorite ideas to the top of the list.

So here is this wonderful tool being used to disadvantage outliers.  

I have given up and am therefore here posting two ideas about fiscal economies.  I’d like to be able to submit these formally to the person recently appointed to do a full spending review of budget and spending.  CPO, chief performance officer, is a position covering federal government budgeting and reform.  Nancy Killefer was former assistant secretary of the treasury in the Clinton Administration.  Her boss is White House budget chief Peter Orszag.

.

First, I think there could be a suggestion program, a bit more formal than commenting on blogs.  Just as there are now mechanisms to comment on, for instance, health care, I'd like to have a place to make suggestions about government efficiencies, ways to conserve and consolidate.  Sometimes end-users of services and programs have straightforward ideas about reducing complexities and layers of bureaucracy.  Submitters of adopted ideas could earn points, privileges, invitations, even dollars.  Or there could be contests between geographic Assembly Districts, which could save the most.

A suggestion that occurs to me is to combine certain letter carrier and census taker functions.  Letter carriers are familiar with their routes, know every residence.  In conjunction with the 2010 census, the Census Bureau is hiring contract workers to verify residential addresses.  It seems to me that letter carriers could be offered a voluntary overtime day and could each do their own route very efficiently.

Tools for connection

In the 90s, email was a way to bring together people for whom their local universe was insufficient. It provided community and mobilization. And then it became so popular as to become burdensome. Social networks, chat, instant messaging, phone texts created a weave of affinities which demanded both attention and bandwidth. For some it became overwhelming, with many disjointed pockets, not coalescing. What began as an anarchy skilled at self-organizing became out of control,

Enter new tools.

Dgroups describes itself as “simple, non-commercial (no ads), respectful of privacy, and targeted at low bandwidth users in the South”, a tool to be used by advocates who would uplift the developing world.

A health discussion dgroup is moderated, and “to ensure integrity, the forum is overseen by skilled moderators. As a subscriber, you can be assured that all messages you receive will be relevant, readable, and understandable. Messages are proofread before posting to ensure they are reader-friendly. All internet addresses mentioned in emails are checked for functionality.”

No typos, no name-calling, no rough edges. I wonder what kind of an exchange or community is built when interventions are so edited, massaged, moderated, smoothed. Doesn’t this put a great deal of power in a few hands, create a hierarchy that will perpetuate in the developing world the style and values and politenesses of the already developed world. Capitalism, democracy, and culture all globalized.

Another instance: a website prides itself on “selected, current [health] knowledge from peer-reviewed journal literature via C-Channel”, assuring that nothing too unusual will be available for the viewer.

Like is finding like to the exclusion of all else - making universes smaller instead of larger, and those in power believe they are helping those with less. Will we all become homogenized?

“A closed system limits choice, but it is more stable and more reliable. An open system is far more fragile and unreliable – this is the price of freedom.” Leander Kahney, Inside Steve’s Brain, 2008. p 248

Science gone mad?

Science gone mad?

In order to know what to expect from each other and even from themselves people invent patterns and categories as practical ways of understanding. Earlier patterns were esoteric, spiritual: 7 chakras, 12 astrological signs, 7 deadly sins, the 8 fold path; later patterns became more psychological and: Freud’s ego and id, Jung/Myers-Briggs 4 dimensions, 9 enneagram points, 7 ray studies.

Today science has extended personality groups from the mystical and logical to minute pragmatic detail, providing 18 major categories*, more than double the number prior organizers have needed.

Is this doubling or tripling of types increasing clarity or creating an opportunity for wrong guidance?


*From a listing on the internet of the table of contents of the current DSM:

Disorders Usually First Diagnosed in Infancy, Childhood, or Adolescence ... 39
Delirium, Dementia, and Amnestic and Other Cognitive Disorders ... 135
Mental Disorders Due to a General Medical Condition ... 181
Substance-Related Disorders ... 191
Schizophrenia andOther Psychotic Disorders ... 297
Mood Disorders ... 345
Anxiety Disorders ... 429
Somatoform Disorders ... 485
Factitious Disorders ... 513
Dissociative Disorders ... 519
Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders ... 5A
Eating Disorders ... 583
Sleep Disorders ... 597
Impulse-Control Disorders Not Elsewhere Classified ... 663
Adjustment Disorders ... 679
Personality Disorders ... 685
Other Conditions That May Be a Focus of Clinical Attention ... 731
Additional Codes ... 743