Posted on 01/08/2017 5:23:02 AM PST by SeekAndFind
On Tuesday, the U.K.'s Daily Mail reported that 23-year-old Anna Teshu of Staten Island, New York, has gone missing. Teshu's 15 minutes of fame began in 2015 when she was featured on the internet because her boyfriend was walking her around on a leash in public. Her boyfriend said: "The collar is like a ring for most couples. They use rings, we have a collar." Teshu reportedly enjoyed spending time in a puppy cage, as well. She explained, "The first time I put on a collar I thought, 'Now I need to find someone for the other end.'"
That same year, she was arrested for animal cruelty after allegedly leaving a dog in a hot car. Her attorney said, "She's a disabled person." She was found mentally unfit to stand trial and escaped conviction.
Now she's missing.
All of this makes headlines because the media and the public decided to treat a mentally ill person as a mentally healthy person making "alternative choices." Instead of Teshu receiving the help she so obviously needed, the media chose to treat her as a unique flower blooming, and the public nodded along in order to appear tolerant -- all the while laughing.
Teshu isn't alone.
In 2015, Sarah Boesveld of the National Post in Canada reported on a new phenomenon: "transabled" people, who feel that they've been born disabled people in healthy bodies. Some of these people cut off their own limbs. According to Boesveld: "Most crave an amputation or paralysis, though (one researcher) has interviewed one person wants his penis removed. Another wants to be blind. Many people ... arrange 'accidents' to help achieve the goal." According to the researcher, "this disorder is starting to be thought of as a neurological problem with the body's mapping, rather than a mental illness."
While Teshu and the transabled may seem fringe, transgenderism is quickly becoming mainstream. Media advocates for transgenderism as mental health say that men who believe they are women, for example, are actually women and ought to be treated as such, insisting that members of society refer to them using female pronouns. In December, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that an Ohio school district must let a young girl continue to use the restroom of her choice, stating that to prevent it would "further confuse a young girl with special needs ... and subject her to further irreparable harm." The young girl in question is a boy who believes she is a girl.
None of this is an argument for governmental intervention. It is an argument for society to stop treating mental illness as mental health -- for the good of the mentally ill. Delusions should not be treated as reality. And treatments that do not work (transgender surgery has no impact on suicide rate, for example) should not be treated as solutions, particularly when those treatments are applied to children.
That does not mean that good solutions have been found for many of these mental illnesses. But to stop searching for good solutions and deem the problem solved by virtue of instilling the normalcy of the illness is counterproductive and dangerous.
My grandfather was hospitalized for paranoid schizophrenia in the 1960s. He thought he heard the radio talking to him. Today's society would presumably determine that a lifestyle choice and celebrate his diversity rather than getting him the lithium treatment he required, which saved his family. A society that thinks itself kind while treating mental illness as "letting your freak flag fly" and all the while silently snickering at the supposed freaks is a cruel society indeed.
Isn't that what radios do?
Many mental illnesses are, in fact, based in neurological aberrations in the brain. In the case of "transgenderism", I think that one basic problem is that our society has been devaluing men for the last 50 years, and that some young boys are internalizing that devaluation. Biology tells them they should be dominant; society tells them that women have higher value (although women still are not really dominant), and the boys then decide that they want to be women in order to exercise the dominance that biology dictates to them. Fundamentally, boys and men who "identify" as women are trying to be a different person than they really are.
Not by name with personal specifics.
My grandfather was also paranoid schizophrenic. My mother always blamed it on a severe beating he received from union thugs for working as a baker and not joining the union. But in the 1920s, there was no lithium, so he was hospitalized and I have no idea what the treatment was. By the 60s, after several hospitalizations, he was living with us when suddenly, Johnny Carson began having in-depth conversations with him. Treatment must have improved, since he was again hospitalized and eventually could live on his own. Friends found him part-time work, he had SS, mom helped financially and he made it to 72 without hurting himself or others.
The mentally ill looking for the normal label
I've always felt that the real problem was not in hearing the disembodied voices, but in not being able to embrace the concept that they're only auditory hallucinations and should therefore be ignored. I therefore suppose that the voices are merely the "tip of the iceberg," and that the fundamental problem is the inability to distinguish reality from unreality and/or to think clearly (like in a dream-state).
I'm a layperson, so please don't "get on my case." These are only musings.
Regards,
“I think that one basic problem is that our society has been devaluing men for the last 50 years”
Agree. When I was very young, maybe 8 years old, I wanted to be black because it seemed very cool, at least from what I could tell with my limited contacts with blacks at the time. Not an obsession, but just a phase that I quickly outgrew.
I’m sure glad there wasn’t a term called Transracialism back then, much less surgery...I’ve been perfectly happy to be a Gringo since then.
We've become so confused that even the dissenters can't tell up from down.
“According to the researcher, “this disorder is starting to be thought of as a neurological problem with the body’s mapping, rather than a mental illness.””
Wrong... It’s consciousness programming in the soul.
I can prove what I am saying. For example, gender identity and sexual preference, either masculine or feminine are functions of the dominate spin pattern in the consciousness field that manifests the physical body. This is why gay and lesbian relationships still have one masculine and one feminine partner. Even in straight relationships, often there is a role reversal where the female is the masculine partner.
People are driven by intense emotions as a result of past perceptual programming.
An emotion, by definition is a feeling based upon the expectation of a future event as a result of past experiences. What people don’t realize is that a child in the womb can not differentiate between their own experiences and the experiences of their mother.
While the soul is very complex and there are many developmental patterns that can result in behavior outside the norm, I have often identified extreme anger of the mother toward the father while the child was in utero as a key influencing factor in lesbians.
I’m not discounting the neuroscience and biochemistry influence upon individual behavior and personality. I’m demonstrating the epigenitic influence and phenotype plasticity resulting from external environmental influences upon developmental consciousness programming which in turn influences individual behavior and personality through out a person’s life.
In some animal species, gender is determined by the temperature environment of the developing embryo during specific stages of development. In others, hormone levels impact the gender development of the offspring. There are locations in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania where 100% of the small mouth bass exhibit female characteristics and have eggs. Is that from hormones in the water from sewage discharge from women taking birth control pills? Who knows as research is still ongoing.
100% of the male small mouth bass exhibit female characteristics and have eggs.
Sounds like a recipe for the extinction of smallmouth bass in those stretches of river.
What’s the difference between neurological aberration and mental illness. Isn’t it just a form of mental illness?
Good article.
We do a disservice letting anyone incompetent live unsupervised and unprotected. We have good tests for mental competence. We need to go back to institutionalizing people and keeping them as healthy as we can (including meds they might not wish). We need to spend domestic tax dollars FIRST AND FOREMOST on our own helpless. Our injured vets, our mentally ill, our parents with dementia.
We need to support families to fully supervise and protect them at home when able, and have clean and inviting facilities for those who need more care.
We do not need to subsidize illegals. We don’t need to subsidize people who won’t work. We need to subsidize those who through no fault of their own can’t work. We love our brothers and sisters with mental illness and we must get them off the streets.
You described very well the difference between psychosis and sanity.
Strangely, I heard a “voice” once and only once in my life and have never forgotten it. I was about 9. It was a weekend and I had spent the entire day alone in my room, not speaking to anyone, just playing. As I was opening a drawer in the wall, I heard a powerful, authoritative woman’s voice telling me to do something. I don’t remember what it was. It freaked me out so much I raced out of my room, joined my family, and the general noise and bustle sort of erased it. I never heard the voice again.
Now, imagine that happening to someone who does feel he should obey the voice, that it must be the deity.
Far worse to me yet are those who become paranoid that every thought of their own is being broadcast to everyone. That would be quite unbearable.
What a sad world for the psychotic mentally ill. What a dangerous place. We owe them better than the streets.
Many people seem to think that a mental illness has no physical cause. In reality, there are physical causes for many mental illnesses.
Neurological conditions may or may not affect personality. For instance, someone who has a condition like MS or Lou Gehrig's disease might not suffer any intellectual or other mental disability.
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