Dealing With Life? Yes and No
I had a flibberty-gibbet the other night — the kind of thing that makes your companion want to take you to the hospital and tell you later, “It was like you disappeared. There was no one inside.” Mind you, there was plenty of activity: renting of garments, flagellation and an attraction to razor blades. But the Liz of the present was gone.
What prompted my meltdown was that I moved to a new place, alone, thereby disrupting my routine, my solid relationship, my daily contact with my hamster … I could go on. The only positive is that my dog and I are back together after a long time apart, and I can now talk to her all the time. Like, “So Hannah, should we call Comcast and yell at them for completely messing up our account? Or will we have to cancel altogether, despite their monopoly?” Then she lifts her lazy head from her pillow and looks at me as if to say, “I’m sorry we’re having so much TV trouble. I, for one, would really like to watch Animal Planet.” (She’s pictured here yelling at me for putting her in a fisherman’s sweater.)
So it’s a big adjustment. I haven’t lived alone since 2000 or 2001. Wowza. Having time to myself, without TV, just encourages me to think sad thoughts. The difference between being crazy in the old days and being crazy now is that it gets under control at some point — usually when I take the Seroquel and the world comes back into focus. Say what you will about that drug, but Lordy, it sure works for my psychotic episodes.
Forgive me, then, for posting less regularly right now.
liz | 10:06 AM | Uncategorized
Forced Electroshock: NEVER ACCEPTABLE
The latest on the appalling case of Ray Sanford. As a survivor of electroshock therapy, I can assert that it destroys memory and cognitive function. That’s not to say it isn’t valuable for some people, but it should never be forced on someone who doesn’t want it. As Sanford’s mother says, a woman with breast cancer isn’t forced to have chemo. It may not be a pristine analogy, but it’s certainly evocative.
liz | 10:30 AM | electroshock (ECT)
Catching Up With Cute Fixes
Watch this one with the sound off:
liz | 2:08 PM | cute fix
Autism in a Somali Community
More than almost any other brain-related disorder, autism’s origins continue to be mysterious and debated contentiously. Now a Somali community in Minneapolis is dealing with a concentration of cases that has parents in a panic. From the New York Times:
“I know 10 guys whose kids have autism,” said Ayub’s father, Abdirisak Jama, a 39-year-old security guard. “They are all looking for help.”
Autism is terrifying the community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, and some pediatricians and educators have joined parents in raising the alarm. But public health experts say it is hard to tell whether the apparent surge of cases is an actual outbreak, with a cause that can be addressed, or just a statistical fluke. … A small recent study of refugees in schools in Stockholm found that Somalis were in classes for autistic children at three times the normal rate.
…
In any case, many Somali parents are baffled and scared.
“It’s beyond denial,” said Hassan Samantar, a parent advocate at the Pacer Center for disabled children. “There was no word for this in Somali. We’ve seen Down syndrome and schizophrenia, but loosely termed — our word is more like ‘crazy.’ People are calling it ‘otismo’ or ‘the American disease.’ And some are saying it’s something you did or your parents did, and the curse is catching up with you.”
Many Somali parents here do not read English or watch American television, he said, so they first hear of autism only when a pediatrician suggests testing a child. Some send their children back to relatives in Somalia.
“They say, ‘There’s more sunshine, there’s less pollution, the food is fresher because the animal was killed that morning,’ ” Ms. Abdull said. “They say: ‘My kid won’t talk? Throw him in the middle of 20 other kids, and he’ll talk. They’ll tease him till he has to.’ You know the way kids run around in Africa? People are so isolated in their apartments here. They think maybe they’ll snap out of it.”
Of course, the biggest debate surrounding autism is that of vaccines and the contention that childhood vaccines may cause the condition. But some Somali parents have children here who weren’t even vaccinated, so appeals by vaccine-causation advocates is falling on deaf ears.
But there are also children like 8-year-old Shumsudin Warsame, who does not speak more than one word at a time, runs in circles and hurts himself jabbing pens into his face. He was born in Somalia, grew up in Egypt and arrived here six months ago. He started having seizures before he was a year old, his father, Abdiasis, said, long before he had any vaccinations.
To Mr. Warsame, finding something to blame is beside the point. He is a single parent, and he and Shumsudin were at a health center hoping to find a part-time home care aide.
“I have a friend from Somalia with three kids with autism, all born in Minnesota,” Mr. Warsame said. “I need help; we all need help. I don’t see a lot of people trying to help us. It’s better than it was in Egypt or Somalia, but it’s not what I expected.”
Tragic.
liz | 1:49 PM | autism
R.I.P. P-I
To all my colleagues out there in Seattle, congratulations on many years of good work.
Seattle Paper Shifts Entirely to the Web
liz | 10:50 AM | media
Fumo Guilty
As a lifelong Philadelphian, I have to say I feel a little triumphant to hear Vince Fumo has been indicted on all counts. Since I was a little girl — and I’m not exaggerating here — I’ve been hearing about Fumo’s being corrupt. Even a decade ago, you’d hear people saying, “No one will ever catch up with him. He’s Teflon.” Well, not anymore. And it pains me to hear other politicians declare their sympathy for him. Come on. Like you didn’t know what he was doing? Every yahoo in town knew Fumo was bankrupt ethically. I’m just surprised that anyone else is acting surprised.
Next up: Johnny Doc. I guarantee it.
liz | 4:11 PM | philadelphia
A Suicide Watch That Doesn’t Need Watching?
I’m a very stern advocate of suicide watches in jails and prisons; too often people die because of negligent guards and institution officials. But I admit that when I heard Austria’s Josef Fritzl was under suicide watch, I thought, “Well, it wouldn’t be the worst thing if he killed himself.” From the Guardian UK:
According to police, Fritzl held his daughter in the windowless, soundproof cellar beneath his house in the town of Amstetten, and raped her more than 3,000 times, fathering seven children with her. He is alleged to have drugged her in her bed when she was 18 and dragged her into the cellar which he had purpose-built over several years.
Three of the children stayed in the cellar with their mother, while the other three were taken upstairs to live with Fritzl and his wife Rosemarie, who was told that Elisabeth had run away to join a sect and, unable to cope with her children, had dumped them on the doorstep.
The crime came to light at the end of April this year when Elisabeth’s 19-year old daughter Kerstin became gravely ill, requiring hospital treatment. Elisabeth persuaded her father to take Kerstin to hospital where suspicious doctors called the police.
Following a nationwide appeal for Kerstin’s mother to come forward, Fritzl released Elisabeth from the cellar and she was able to tell police her story. The three children who had been held in the cellar were released on April 26, when they saw daylight and breathed fresh air for the first time in their lives.
Very uncharacteristic of me to support negligence on the part of the guards, but there’s a possibility he’ll only be convicted of incest, coercion and sexual abuse, in which case he wouldn’t spend more than six years in prison.
Six years for this guy, who shows an absence of remorse? He’s a danger.
Fritzl last month told a psychiatrist that he was “born to rape” and that his treatment of Elisabeth was a direct result of his experience of an abusive mother. He told her he had hatched the plan to incarcerate Elisabeth while he was serving a jail sentence for rape in the 1980s.
On the other hand, perhaps he will be convicted of a murder charge. See below.
liz | 12:11 PM | Uncategorized
Depression Confession: Matthew Good
The Canadian bandleader describes dysphoric mania like this:
“Imagine being put in a coffin with the things you fear the most, being buried underground and feeling it start to shrink, and multiply that feeling by 1,000. You think, ‘If I die now, that’d be cool.’”
Isn’t that a superb evocation? Good is speaking at a mental health conference about his experience with bipolar disorder, having become a real advocate on the subject. I like this song by him.
Vancouver’s Matthew Good speaks from the heart about his bipolar disorder [Vancouver Sun]
liz | 10:38 AM | bipolar disorder, celebrities
The Trouble With Spikol: Print Edition: Bonus Funny or Offensive
Spikol the Blog merges with Spikol the Column — OMGWTF!!!!
Schizo-phrenzy’s Sour Humor
I remember when the first arcade videogame touched down in Center City, around 1979. It landed at 18th and Spruce at Day’s Deli, a diner/convenience store. The game was near the cash register so the cashier could chastise us if we shook the machine (which didn’t work the way it did with pinball) or cheat by feeding it Canadian pennies. A year later, its novelty was gone: Videogame parlors crowded Chestnut Street—with everything from Asteroids and Space Invaders to Galaga and Ye Olde Pinballe in the back.
Those were days, I’ve been told, that videogame aficionados think of as a golden age, and it was the last time I could call myself an experienced gamer. Recently, though, I tried Adult Swim’s newest online game, Schizo-phrenzy, on the suggestion of Aaron Fisher, a reader of my blog. He thought the game was perfect for Funny or Offensive?, in which I ask readers if something is comical or just plain rude.
Let’s get you in the mood:
Example A: A few years ago, The Onion published an article headlined “GOD DIAGNOSED WITH BIPOLAR DISORDER.” It began: “In a diagnosis that helps explain the confusing and contradictory aspects of the cosmos, … God, creator of the universe and longtime deity to billions of followers, was found Monday to suffer from bipolar disorder.”
Funny, right?
Example B: In 2002, there was a fire at New Jersey’s Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and The Trentonian ran a headline that read: “ROASTED NUTS.”
Oh, boy. Offensive.
You could debate either one, and the same can be said for Schizo-phrenzy.
The premise of the game is that the protagonist, a private eye with schizophrenia, has paranoid fantasies about the mayor of the town, who’s pictured as a looming clownlike face. The P.I. fights multicolored gremlin-y hallucinations that come from all sides. The score is kept in terms of his “sanity,” which is measured, in part, by how many blue pills he takes. The less sanity, the more frequent the hallucinations, which also affect the players—only instead of cartoon gremlins, their hallucinations are gruesome photographs that flash, strobe-like, on the screen. Players also hear auditory hallucinations while they navigate Schizo-phrenzy’s landscape.
The game’s platform isn’t especially sophisticated; I’d put it at the level of Donkey Kong, circa 1982. But is it offensive?
I asked Kristin Bell, a popular blogger with more than 1,000 YouTube subscribers, to play the game. Having suffered with schizophrenia since she was 15, the 35-year-old talks frankly about her experience in her videos, and she does so with a great sense of humor.
“Part of how I’ve dealt with my mental illness is to joke about how ‘crazy’ I am and to try to laugh about something that is seriously devastating,” she says. “I’m well medicated, so sometimes I even forget that I’m so weird. And I try to accept that probably 98 percent of the world knows little to nothing about what it’s like to have schizophrenia.”
At first, Bell enjoyed the game. “I thought, ‘Well, at least it’s showing how irritating and ever-present the hallucinations can be,” she says. But the more she played, the less she liked it. “This game is operating within the context of a culture that doesn’t understand mental illness,” she says. “Do we really need another way to make fun of ‘the crazies?’”
liz | 3:45 PM | Funny or Offensive?, SCHIZOPHRENIA, media
German Shooter, Alabama Shooter — “No Known Motive”
Two tragedies in the news will, potentially, raise the subject of mental illness and violence. In Germany, a teenager killed 15 in a school shooting, and was then killed by cops. In Alabama, a man in his 20s went on a shooting rampage, killing multiple members of his family and other random people before killing himself. In both cases, according to current news reports, motives remain obscure.
I hate to say it, but I’ve rarely seen stories like this that don’t end up with a mental health “angle” — most recently, I’m thinking of Virginia Tech. Keep your eyes peeled.
liz | 12:17 PM | Uncategorized
