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Post by Bentley on Jan 27, 2024 20:10:33 GMT
I suspect that the amount of cannabis around isn’t doing the mentally ill any good . The relationship between cannabis (marijuana) use and psychiatric disorders is complex, and more research is needed to better understand the short- and long-term impacts of cannabis use on mental health. Considerable—though not all—evidence has linked cannabis use to earlier onset of psychosis in people with genetic risk factors for psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia, as well as worse symptoms in people who already have these conditions. Although less consistent, there is also evidence linking cannabis use to other mental illnesses and self-harm, including suicidal thoughts and behaviors. While people with mental illnesses and related symptoms are more likely to use cannabis,121 more research is needed to better understand how mental illness symptoms relate to cannabis use. Many factors—such as the amount of drug consumed, the frequency of use, the potency (THC content) of and type of cannabis product, and a person’s age at first use—have been shown to influence the relationship between cannabis use and mental health.122, 123 Similarly, many factors that influence mental health—such as genes, trauma, and stress—also influence how likely someone is to use drugs, including cannabis. Given these related genetic and environmental vulnerabilities, additional data from prospective, longitudinal research (studies that measure participants’ health over long periods of time) are needed to determine whether, to what extent, and for whom cannabis may cause or contribute to poor mental health outcomes. Research has shown that cannabis use is associated with an increased risk for an earlier onset of psychotic disorders (such as schizophrenia) in people with other risk factors, such as family history.122,123,138 Cannabis intoxication can also induce a temporary psychotic episode in some individuals, especially at high doses. Experiencing such an episode may be linked with a risk for later developing a psychotic disorder.125-127 A person’s genetics may play a role in this relationship nida.nih.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/there-link-between-marijuana-use-psychiatric-disorders |
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Post by Cartertonian on Jan 27, 2024 20:41:31 GMT
Personally, I reckon care in the community was a mass money saving exercise that has obviously cost people's lives, while the old and infirm were privatised. I don't know if it still stands, I could be wrong, that you can section someone for 28 days but after that it is very difficult to keep them locked up. Late to the party again! For those that don't know, I teach mental health care for a living, to undergraduates and postgraduates, and have been a mental health nurse for over a quarter of a century. sheepy's observation is partly correct. We closed the asylums and pushed care in the community partly because there was (and still is) evidence that many patients recover or manage their conditions better in the community, but in the context of the Thatcher era assault on public services, it was also a cost-saving exercise. For some, it worked out very well, but for many it was a retrograde step in their care, because the communities to which they returned, or into which they were placed, didn't care. Successive governments since the Thatcher era have paid ample lip service to mental health care, but never put their money where their lying mouths are. The reason why IAPT services (Improved Access to Psychological Therapies) had to be introduced in 2008 was to bridge the widening gap between primary healthcare (GPs) and the utterly swamped Community Mental Health Teams. Even that has matured into a situation where cost-driven limitations on IAPT services have reduced them to little more than a sticking plaster and many people continue to struggle without any meaningful or effective support. In this particular case, you should know that unlike Thomas Mair, who was suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ( A 'neurosis' in old money), Caldocane is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, a diagnosis confirmed by no less than four separate forensic psychiatrists. I have several friends who are forensic psychiatrists and they are not lefty liberal types who believe anything they're told by patients. They are deeply sceptical, professional cynics whose reputation depends on them not having the wool pulled over their eyes. To give you an idea of what we're talking about here, let's think of a patient group that usually evokes sympathy - soldiers and veterans with PTSD. The classic symptom that the average layman associated with PTSD is a 'flashback'. This itself is a 20th century invention, relating to cinematography, to represent what we in the trade call 're-experiencing phenomena'. PTSD sufferers do not simply respond adversely to remembering a horrific event, they completely re-experience it. They completely re-inhabit their memory, as if they really were back there and it was happening right now. I'm sure you can imagine how disorientating and terrifying that must be. In schizophrenia, the individual loses all sense of their current reality and genuinely believes the 'fantasy world' their disordered brain has taken them to. By way of example, when I ran the military inpatient unit in Germany in 2003, we had an unfortunate young R Sigs NCO who had developed schizophrenia, and he genuinely believed that the Nazis had won WW2 and that he was being hunted down by the Gestapo. In his disordered state, he believed that we were all Gestapo officers and went to extreme and violent lengths to fight us off and make a break for freedom. That's how powerful the effects of schizophrenia can be. The sufferer is simply not in our world. To finish on a positive note, the patient in question responded positively to treatment (schizophrenia is not incurable) and twenty years on is now a senior paramedic in a regional ambulance service, partly because he was inspired by the quality of care we gave him out in Germany (or so he tells me!). I'm sorry to say that I think a lot of the reaction to this horrific story is driven by a subconscious belief that persists in many people whose lives have been largely unaffected by mental disorder, that mental health conditions are 'made up', or 'all in the mind' (they are, but...) and should not be taken seriously. |
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Post by piglet on Jan 29, 2024 13:46:39 GMT
Schizophrenia has a physical cause, there are no examples of it being cured by talking, hash alters the chemistry of the brain, from the first ingestion. Other explanations may be that brain chemistry is altered by whatever cause, and that psychotic experiences are about gates being opened to other worlds, and may be real. Schizophrenia is not about mental health anymore than a broken leg is, but it does affect mental health.
Psychological mental health is another thing completely.
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Post by jonksy on Feb 1, 2024 6:07:38 GMT
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Post by Orac on Feb 1, 2024 8:21:40 GMT
People who have been deemed 'not responsible for their actions' without a clear explanation for why that state is temporary and very unlikely to return, are not equipped to take part in general society
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Post by Orac on Feb 1, 2024 8:39:27 GMT
Personally, I reckon care in the community was a mass money saving exercise that has obviously cost people's lives, while the old and infirm were privatised. I don't know if it still stands, I could be wrong, that you can section someone for 28 days but after that it is very difficult to keep them locked up. I'm sorry to say that I think a lot of the reaction to this horrific story is driven by a subconscious belief that persists in many people whose lives have been largely unaffected by mental disorder, that mental health conditions are 'made up', or 'all in the mind' (they are, but...) and should not be taken seriously. I think some of us smell a potential conundrum. There is no proper test for believing yourself to be in another world and we do not understand the mechanism that causes such beliefs. If we take a look at the crimes of this man, in common parlance you would have to be 'off your trolley to do these things'. The crimes themselves provide evidence that the man was not in a normal state of mind - in fact, any apparently motiveless crime would act as similar evidence. However, isn't such a diagnosis missing part of the point? |
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Post by piglet on Feb 1, 2024 10:43:33 GMT
In the course of my work a woman believed she was being raped by the devil over and over, medication did not help.
For her the above was as real as it gets, and who knows, it might have been, when he approached she would hear the hoofs on her floor approaching, and she behaved and had the emotions like it was real. Like the man above, whatever the reasons for him doing what he did, he thought those reasons were real and valid.
It may be different for him, that his doctor found an effective medication that would make him like you or i. And yes the point is that the above will always have the potential to commit those crimes again, always, there is no cure, as you point out, orac, even when well, it misses the point, the point being that the above is a bomb waiting to go off.
And as in all things in life, if it can happen it will. Many are murdered in this way.
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