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Ignatius M. Meen posted:"Personality is mutable and in fact, the whole of a 'mind' is mutable and subject to change, therefore not essential. Since it is not essential that this man keep his mind the same, we don't need to treat his Alzheimer's. He'll be just dandy without it because he'll still essentially be the same person." That's stupid. There are other reasons why Alzheimer's is bad than an appeal to dumb essentialism. The change that occurs in Alzheimer's patients in indisputably a bad change. This logic does prove that " but he'll be a different person!" alone is a bad argument, but it doesn't follow that we shouldn't teat Alzheimers or be upset when people get it.
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Jul 7, 2014 02:18
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Ogmius815 posted:That's stupid. There are other reasons why Alzheimer's is bad than an appeal to dumb essentialism. The change that occurs in Alzheimer's patients in indisputably a bad change. This logic does prove that " but he'll be a different person!" alone is a bad argument, but it doesn't follow that we shouldn't teat Alzheimers or be upset when people get it. Seriously. It's like the number of people who don't understand that it's a disease of progressive brain damage (that eventually does kill you) versus just screwing with your memory. The fact that it changes your personality is secondary and I'd argue unimportant compared to the actual loss of your brain from it.
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Jul 7, 2014 13:15
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Speaking as a fake autist (asberger) i can tell you that autism ruins marriages. My dad left my mom when i was 4 because he didnt want to deal with me and my brother. Last week he went and tested his son (2 1/2 years old) for autism and i feel sad because he is so gonna break up with his russian 20 something year old wife. I am proof. I am reality. All your arguments are null and void against eternal truth.
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Jul 7, 2014 14:28
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Michael Jackson posted:Speaking as a fake autist (asberger) i can tell you that autism ruins marriages. My dad left my mom when i was 4 because he didnt want to deal with me and my brother. Last week he went and tested his son (2 1/2 years old) for autism and i feel sad because he is so gonna break up with his russian 20 something year old wife. Sounds more like your dad's an rear end in a top hat.
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Jul 7, 2014 18:44
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SedanChair posted:Sounds more like your dad's an rear end in a top hat. His dad probably has the autism gene.
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Jul 7, 2014 18:47
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SedanChair posted:Sounds more like your dad's an rear end in a top hat. He is. But it is of no importance. The marriage was ruined. And most people are assholes. Therefore you are SedanChair. Clochette posted:His dad probably has the autism gene. It is probably some kind of Ur-Autism.
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Jul 7, 2014 18:49
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Michael Jackson posted:He is. But it is of no importance. I would have left too if you talk like this at home.
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Jul 7, 2014 18:58
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SedanChair posted:I would have left too if you talk like this at home. Don't neuro-shame.
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Jul 7, 2014 19:02
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SedanChair posted:I would have left too if you talk like this at home. Haha, i couldnt speak properly at all before i was 6 because i am half-deaf lol  That is so you SedanChair :3
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Jul 7, 2014 19:42
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forgive me if I find all this medication can fundamentaly alter your personality talk bullshit. Such fears kept me off of pharmaceuticals for years while i tried to work through adhd and severe depression via talk therapy alone. that was a terrible, terrible decision. All it did was increase my own self-loathing when i failed to make progress. let me tell you, when you suffer from mental illness your 'personality' is poo poo and i'd say it's an unambiguously good thing to alter it.
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Jul 7, 2014 20:59
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A big flaming stink posted:forgive me if I find all this medication can fundamentaly alter your personality talk bullshit. Such fears kept me off of pharmaceuticals for years while i tried to work through adhd and severe depression via talk therapy alone. SSRI FTW
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Jul 7, 2014 21:04
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A big flaming stink posted:forgive me if I find all this medication can fundamentaly alter your personality talk bullshit. Such fears kept me off of pharmaceuticals for years while i tried to work through adhd and severe depression via talk therapy alone. So duck monster's experiences are bullshit? Look, I can sympathize with your plight, I suffer from depression myself and I can't even treat it with drugs because I don't have insurance and I can't afford to see a psych or therapist or buy any drugs they might recommend. But I have seen first hand how medications can radically alter a person's personality both for the better and the worse. My father had to go through a ton of different medications before he found a combination that worked for his depression and panic attacks, but one drug they gave him caused him to fly into a rage at the slightest thing and he tried to choke me to death while on it. Luckily he stopped taking it immediately but we had to lock him in his bedroom until it wore off and it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. Just to be clear: I don't have any problems with researching Autism or trying to find cures or treatments, I think that is a great thing. It's just your comment about people having their personality altered by drugs being "bullshit" really bothered me.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:04
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A big flaming stink posted:forgive me if I find all this medication can fundamentaly alter your personality talk bullshit. Such fears kept me off of pharmaceuticals for years while i tried to work through adhd and severe depression via talk therapy alone. Meds are kind of an odd thing. I've been on and off anti-depressants myself and you make a valid point, but sometimes, the changes in personality aren't worth it. Other times you only need the drugs temporarily. It's case-by-case decision made by mental patients and and mental health professionals. Some people need them their whole lives, some people need them only long enough to fix themselves. You do which one is right for you. But yeah, meds fundamentally alter your personality. That's kind of the point. One of the issues with treating mental disorders is that they ultimately become attached to your personality. I have borderline disorder and I came to realize that certain aspects of my personality grew out of it and had to go. I'm in remission now and much less of an angry, hateful shithead.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:17
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I understood A big flaming stink's post less as a categorical statement that psychotropic drugs can't alter your personality, and more as a warning for the people who want to preserve their "core self" so much that they are going to avoid pharmacological therapy.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:31
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A note to factor into these issues is that the effects of many medications on lived experience are ego systonic, meaning that even if there are pervasive, fundamental changes to the individual's self, identity, personality etc aren't noticible to the person themselves- changes are rationalized and subsumed by the subconscious to create the perception of continuity. Often only other people can notice the changes in behavior.
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Jul 7, 2014 23:11
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Gantolandon posted:I understood A big flaming stink's post less as a categorical statement that psychotropic drugs can't alter your personality, and more as a warning for the people who want to preserve their "core self" so much that they are going to avoid pharmacological therapy. while that was implied, its more that during depression(and other mental illness) a core part of your personality is being tremendously unhappy. if it takes undergoing seismic changes in who i am to become a happy person then hell yes i will stuff my gullet full of pills. for a more extreme example stuff like ECT becomes alot less scary when you realize 'you know what i don't think i would mind forgetting about a good deal of my experiences' A big flaming stink fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 00:25
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There's a lot of discussion ITT about a hypothetical autism cure that doesn't exist yet, and not a lot about what we can actually do today to mitigate the effects of autism. I found out from this thread that Autism Speaks's solution to kids having meltdowns or panic attacks is to put weights on them.  But what about helping to teach kids and adults to manage those panic attacks in the first place?I was diagnosed with Asperger's when I was 13 (the whole family was on the spectrum so no one realised anything was wrong for years), so I was old enough to have some say in my treatment (and I was too young to have SSRIs back then). What really helped me was cognitive behavioural therapy to help me change the thoughts and beliefs that upset me, similar to what OCD patients get; and relaxation therapy, meditation and breathing exercises so I could stop a meltdown myself when I felt it coming on. No autistic person likes having meltdowns, we don't freak out and panic at things for fun, same as anyone with an anxiety disorder doesn't like having panic attacks, but they can be managed with pretty much the same treatment and therapy. There's certain things you can learn that help with social interaction too. I still can't read people very well, but I train myself to always think: "How would I feel if I were in this person's situation? How would I want to be treated?" and just act accordingly. Autistic people do feel empathy, but we just can't read people. If someone were crying, and we hadn't been taught that crying = sad, we'd probably just ignore them or be confused, but if that person said "I feel sad", we'd feel sorry for them and try to comfort them. Plus people love to talk about themselves, so you can just ask "how are you?" occasionally and they like it as long as you don't say it too often or at weird times in a conversation. And amateur dramatics, improv, role-play games or similar hobbies that involve acting somehow, are a good chance to practise social interaction. You read the play and you're told "This is how your character feels, this is their motivation, now try behaving like someone who feels that way". And as long as you respect the other actors' boundaries, you can practise socialising and expressing emotions and interacting with the other characters without any consequences. Lots of non-verbal autistic people have had success in learning ASL, ESL or Makaton too, so with a bit of study and practice from them and their carers, they can converse. There are lots and lots of things you can practise and try, usually initially conceived for treating other disorders, and not all of them work for everyone, but there's a lot out there that autistics can try out for self-treatment. It takes a long time and a lot of practice sometimes, and it's not a quick fix, but it helps the sufferer and their carers, family and friends. Autism Speaks has no interest in anything that takes time and effort, for all they recognise it's a lifelong condition they don't see that as being a whole lifetime to work on it and they don't support people in this kind of long-term practice and study. They just want quick ways to shut up an autistic kid having a meltdown and not focus on training them to handle the bad effects of their autism so they won't have any more in future.
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Jul 13, 2014 12:19
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Stottie Kyek posted:There's a lot of discussion ITT about a hypothetical autism cure that doesn't exist yet, and not a lot about what we can actually do today to mitigate the effects of autism. It's extremely hard to teach thoroughly non-verbal sufferers how to manage panic attacks - and those are the people you actually do hold down (or hug tightly etc, the point is that a firm grasp helps them feel safer).
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Jul 13, 2014 17:35
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Isn't putting weights on upset autistic people the principle behind the Hugbox?
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Jul 13, 2014 20:22
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I dunno I think heavy stuff feels really, really good. It's very comforting.
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Jul 13, 2014 20:54
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As someone who's personality was changed pretty heavily first by illegal drugs and then by legit prescribed psychology drugs I'd like to say that from my point of view who you are fundamentally as a person is more detached from your personality than a lot of people want to believe, and that your personality is much more fluid than a lot of people want to think. I'm not saying negative personality changes don't occur or aren't terrible (it definitely happened to me while self-medicating and all that) I'm saying that the whole thing is being framed like you pop a pill and are instantly replaced by a pod person who just looks like you, and you start dredging up all these weird existential fears that keep you from something that might genuinely improve your quality of life. I'm not saying force drugs on people to fix them either, but that I think people have this problematic image of psychology or psychiatry as somehow deleting them and replacing them with a functional person when (if done correctly and carefully) it's really not the case.
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Jul 14, 2014 05:16
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There's a lot of misunderstanding how antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications work, too. They don't suddenly make you happy all the time, oblivious to the world's problems. In the west I think one of our core values is "I'd rather be depressed but knowledgeable than happy but ignorant" and so anti-depressants seem like going against that. Anti-depressants don't do that, for a depressed person your brain (whether through biology or socialized thinking) to notice only bad stuff that happens and it grinds you down. You're already not getting a "true" viewpoint of the world, just an incredibly lovely one. Anti-depressants retrain your brain to at least notice when something good happens in your life so you're not so fixated on everything that's awful. It's not like you pop one and instant euphoria.
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Jul 15, 2014 14:47
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:As someone who's personality was changed pretty heavily first by illegal drugs and then by legit prescribed psychology drugs I'd like to say that from my point of view who you are fundamentally as a person is more detached from your personality than a lot of people want to believe, and that your personality is much more fluid than a lot of people want to think. I'm not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious. quote:You're already not getting a "true" viewpoint of the world, just an incredibly lovely one. Anti-depressants retrain your brain to at least notice when something good happens in your life so you're not so fixated on everything that's awful. It's not like you pop one and instant euphoria. *I recognise that this is a very different beast from severe depression.
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Jul 15, 2014 15:52
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Zephro posted:This is interesting. What would qualify as "who you are fundamentally as a person" if not your personality? Actually that's one of those things that psychology has been trying to sort out, as well as religion, neuroscience, and humanity in general. Given that change is inevitable personality is also mutable, but there are also limits based on brain architecture as well as brain changes altering personality traits. There is just no good, solid answer. There are actually different types of depression and different levels of it. drat near everybody gets depressed at at least some point their life and it's normal to go through a period of depression if you lose somebody close to you or get fired from your dream job or something. Some of it is purely circumstantial like that and sometimes you need a bit of therapy and some drugs to make it easier to deal with or get rid of. The other side of depression is an actual chemical issue in the brain that isn't temporary. These are the people that are depressed all the time no matter what because their brain doesn't function right. The weird thing is anti-depressants work in both cases. It goes back to the personality issue and the disorder thing I discussed earlier; how do you decide of somebody just has a melancholic, irritable temperament but otherwise functions and somebody that is clinically depressed? Generally speaking (and I've been through mental health stuff myself so I know a bit here) stuff only gets treated if it causes distress or problems. This is why there is debate and controversy over autism. Some people argue that autism is not a disorder and is just personality and, to a certain degree, they are right, but the issue is that some peoples' autism is utterly crippling. Trying to make one decision one way or the other for all autism is absurd.
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Jul 15, 2014 16:54
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Zephro posted:What if the reason you're feeling down is legitimately due to circumstances? When I've had mild depression in the past* it's usually been at least partly a result of circumstances, and the depression is a warning that something in my life is not going right. Changing that something usually alleviates the depression. Antidepressants aren't going to erase that. You're correct, depression is a warning sign that somethings wrong in your life and you need to fix it. The problem is when you become so obsessed with the lovely parts that you cannot even imagine it getting better. Optimism is an emotion that drives us to do things because if we didn't believe we had even a remote chance at something, we never would even try. My point is calling anti depressants "happy pills" is a misnomer because it doesn't make you euphoric even when the world is crashing around you, you wont go "Well I lost my job and my house is being foreclosed, but lets look on the bright side", but you won't be discouraged by every little bump in the road that comes your way, as people with clinical depression do.
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Jul 15, 2014 17:23
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Huh. My seven year old is HFA, and I take anti-depressants, so maybe that's a unique perspective from which to discuss autism 'cures'. I take zoloft because I am literally non-functional without it. I can't do basic things like go to the store, put gas in the car, pay bills, clean the house. Normal, everyday behaviors are basically impossible for me. With zoloft, I'm still not *happy*, but I have the energy to be a normal human. My kid is deeply weird, but basically functional. There are areas where he can't take care of himself, and we have to help him with those, but we also have seen him become more independent and better able to communicate and engage in basic self-care over the last few years. I wouldn't want to change who he is, but there are two caveats to that: * The comparison with antidepressants, if we accept it as congruent to what a hypothetical autism cure would do, means that I'd sign my kid up for that in a second. If it did to him what zoloft does to me, there's almost no down-side. * Right now he's a weird but functional human, which limits my interest in miracle cures, in any case. If he were to become non-functional to the degree that I am when I'm not medicated, I'd totally want to get him some kind of medication, regardless of whether it 'changed' his personality. It helps that he's one of those disturbingly smart HFA kids; it makes me more comfortable with imagining his life as an adult, knowing that he's likely to have people who want to help him manage his life issues. If he were not HFA, or not as smart as he is, I'd probably be more interested in advocacy for a cure.
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Jul 15, 2014 17:49
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I'm not really concerned about "becoming an actual different person" or some p-zombie psychobabble like that. I'm concerned because the brain is intricate enough that modifying it necessarily has side effects. Social skills are important, obviously, but they're not the skill-set I possess that's most important for my career. If the hypothetical autism cure improves my social skills, but in turn damages the skills I have that I'm currently very happy with, then it would not be worth it at all to me. It'd be like if a blind composer could cure his blindness, but risk losing his musical talent. Furthermore, the science of the brain is complicated enough that I don't trust the doctors in charge of such an experimental cure to accurately know whether there's a risk of such a thing - and I personally suspect it'd be inevitable, as autism is a complicated, poorly-understood condition that tends to correspond with other mental conditions, ranging from other disorders to positive conditions such as giftedness.
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Jul 15, 2014 19:12
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I was recently in an economic development group with Nancy Wiseman, an Autism researcher at FSU who occasionally works with Autism Speaks. She had some pretty interesting things to say about a "cure" for autism. The gist of her angle was "Right now the best way to deal with autism is to focus on early identification, caretaker support and training, and socialization." The "magic Autisim pill" that makes you into a different person or whatever will likely never exist, but apparently with the right kind of therapy and care, autistic children can have much more functional and self-sufficient lives when they grow up. Apparently the effects of early intervention were pretty massive, and if I remember properly they were achieving something like an 80% success rate for getting autism spectrum kids to be able to succeed in a normal classroom by first grade. Anyhow, if ya'll are interested here's a link to her site and some of her work on autism speaks: http://www.firstsigns.org/ http://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism/video-glossary http://www.autismspeaks.org/about-us/press-releases/autism-speaks-joins-florida-state-university-and-first-signs-launching-treat
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Jul 15, 2014 22:12
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RagnarokAngel posted:Antidepressants aren't going to erase that. You're correct, depression is a warning sign that somethings wrong in your life and you need to fix it. The problem is when you become so obsessed with the lovely parts that you cannot even imagine it getting better. Optimism is an emotion that drives us to do things because if we didn't believe we had even a remote chance at something, we never would even try. Just wanted to qualify this with the statement that the "something wrong in your life" often is depression itself, caused not by circumstances or problems but from lovely neuroplasticity (like mine  ), and that the depression / anxiety can then lead to other problems (drug abuse in my case woo) that leads to more depression and vicious cycle etc. etc.Anyway sorry I didn't mean to hijack this thread with depressionchat.
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Jul 16, 2014 07:47
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LaughMyselfTo posted:I'm not really concerned about "becoming an actual different person" or some p-zombie psychobabble like that. I'm concerned because the brain is intricate enough that modifying it necessarily has side effects. Social skills are important, obviously, but they're not the skill-set I possess that's most important for my career. If the hypothetical autism cure improves my social skills, but in turn damages the skills I have that I'm currently very happy with, then it would not be worth it at all to me. It'd be like if a blind composer could cure his blindness, but risk losing his musical talent. Furthermore, the science of the brain is complicated enough that I don't trust the doctors in charge of such an experimental cure to accurately know whether there's a risk of such a thing - and I personally suspect it'd be inevitable, as autism is a complicated, poorly-understood condition that tends to correspond with other mental conditions, ranging from other disorders to positive conditions such as giftedness. That right there is actually why mental health services are set up the way they are. Done properly there is a dialog between the professionals and the patient and the final say is almost always with the patient. Patients have a bunch of different options for whatever issues they have and they are well within their rights to refuse treatments for just those reasons, even if their disorders are completely crippling. The only time patients can have treatments forced on them is if they are genuinely dangerous to others which, I get a weird feeling, only extremely rarely applies to autism. This, though, does not mean a cure for autism or treatment for its issues should not be developed or worked on simply because some people would be all "I know the risks, let's do this anyway." The choice lies with the patient and it would be pretty awful to deny the people who do want the cure the cure. You do make a valid point and can make your own choice on the matter but, really, it's a thing that is up to individuals. In my case, for example, my therapist gave me crap about the fact that I'm reclusive and thought there was some social anxiety going on but, really, I'm just pretty solitary and not particularly social to the point where it would be considered a disorder in others. I chose not to have that treated or looked at simply because, well, I'm kind of a hermit and I like to have that extra time to work on stuff and get better at things than talk to people. Of course some people would find my largely solitary life with few friends to be depressing and awful. For them treatment and help exists. I didn't use them because they were unnecessary for me.
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Jul 16, 2014 08:36
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That right there is actually why mental health services are set up the way they are. Done properly there is a dialog between the professionals and the patient and the final say is almost always with the patient. Patients have a bunch of different options for whatever issues they have and they are well within their rights to refuse treatments for just those reasons, even if their disorders are completely crippling. The only time patients can have treatments forced on them is if they are genuinely dangerous to others which, I get a weird feeling, only extremely rarely applies to autism. Sounds like you're in denial  Anyway yeah that's a big thing a lot of people don't get about psychs, when done right they're basically people you can go to to talk about your issues, who also know how people work and how their problems work, and can help you solve your problems and better your life in ways you want. A lot of people have the impression that psychology is the attempt to make everyone converge to some ideal "perfect functioning homogeneous human" but really it's more "I want to get to a better place in my life or I have a problem and they have the tools to help me reach my goal for myself mentally". I mean that impression comes comes naturally from only having the whole "burly guys in white coats carrying off schizophrenics" image of psychology in popular media, and I also know a lot of people who were forced to see psychs in highschool by their parents, where generally the goal was "fix my kid" and not "help my kid." Bringing it back around to autism (and if I hopefully can talk about something I don't have personally and therefore can't possibly even imagine subjectively without making an rear end of myself) I get the feeling that any autism "cure" would be similar to other psychological medicines, you generally don't just pop a pill and magically your disease is switched off. There would likely be a whole range of treatment levels, and if applied correctly as I outlined above you should be able to choose what you want to do and how far you want to take it.
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Jul 16, 2014 08:48
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Personally I have high-functioning autism. I find it difficult to read some social cues, detect sarcasm and perform pragmatics. It also seems to be linked to allergies, as my brain functions not as efficiently if I were to eat wheat products. Heck, the penicillin in cow's milk made me lose several cognitive abilities when I was a baby until I stopped drinking it.
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Aug 31, 2014 05:23
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You're also bad at reading last posting dates in threads that are over a month old. And you're bad at supporting your wacky theory that autism is just an allergy, and penicillin (in cow's milk) caused you to lose some cognitive abilities. I mean I can agree though, after reading your post it's incredibly clear that you are somehow neurologically diminished.
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Aug 31, 2014 07:07
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Grouchio posted:Personally I have high-functioning autism. I find it difficult to read some social cues, detect sarcasm and perform pragmatics. It also seems to be linked to allergies, as my brain functions not as efficiently if I were to eat wheat products. Heck, the penicillin in cow's milk made me lose several cognitive abilities when I was a baby until I stopped drinking it. How did you know it was penicillin that did it? A tricorder?
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Aug 31, 2014 08:50
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I see fungified milk is all the rage with the kids these days.
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Aug 31, 2014 10:31
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Do they even give cows penicillin anymore? I thought pretty much everything a cow could get was already resistant.
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Aug 31, 2014 12:54
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GROVER CURES HOUSE posted:Do they even give cows penicillin anymore? I thought pretty much everything a cow could get was already resistant. Maybe he's 75? Did they still use penicillin in the 1940s? Or maybe he had a big bowl of Wheaties before he posted.
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Aug 31, 2014 15:27
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Goddammit guys, I was trying to let the thread die with some grace. Guess I should have just closed it already.  For those of you just joining us, I was an idiot. I said a lot of dumb things, and I'm sorry for them.
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Aug 31, 2014 17:10
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