Hmmph. I noticed the (dead) comments by SparrowOS a few days ago and was very curious about them. They didn't look like any sort of spam or advertising, because there were bouts of normal conversation amidst them.
I posted a "Ask HN" question inquiring about this user and his comments, and my post was marked "dead" within a minute. Only thing I've ever had marked dead on here (that I'm aware of at least).
Thank you for your explanation; I would have never guessed it was something like schizophrenia.
Alright, I did some reading on SparrowOS/LoseThos. See this page (http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html) to learn a bit about him and the amazing work he's done on his personal operating system.
In fact, it appears the nature of his posts has been discussed quite a bit on HN over the last few years. I'm still somewhat new here though, so I imagine as people continue to join HN questions about his postings will continue to be asked. And you can't really blame them for being asked (how was I supposed to know what that prose meant?). I suppose the best solution is that instead of downvotes and ridicule (as I found in many previous topics on here), linking to the same page I have above would eliminate a lot of contention and confusion.
EDIT: Yikes, I'm not sure I'm coming across like I meant to. I'm not implying being different is bad AT ALL. Sparrow, I really like your operating system and will download it tomorrow to learn about it.
There was about a year ago an Ask HN about losethos( now sparrowOS) about that very topic. There were perhaps 100 posts.
The general consensus is that he deserves to be treated like a human. He may, sadfully, have a mental illness. That's why further inquiries are shut down.
I also recommend reading the entire thread. The further you go, the more he opens up about the details of his work. He has accomplished some really interesting stuff.
I really liked the goal he started out with. Creating a 64bit C64 type environment for young programmers to mess around with and learn to build stuff.
We've got the opportunity to listen to this guy, whether we agree with him or not, or can parse out signal from noise or not, and we've instead said "Ah, fuck it!" and shadowbanned him instead of simply scrolling down.
You can still listen if you care to. You just have to enable "show dead". You just can't engage him in back and forth discussion. If you can track down some means to contact him individually, he might be interesting to talk with one on one. And it would be less likely to go to hell in a hand basket. A public discussion in a large forum is a very poor environment for trying to effectively accommodate such a situation. I wish I had some other answer. But I don't.
Not just a public forum, a very large public forum. If it were a small forum with more private posts, it might be possible to accommodate him in a way which would be productive for him and for the forum. But on HN, no matter how many "regulars" figured out how to talk with him humanely and respectfully and genuinely engage him as a person, too many people would pile on to kick the living shit out of him. There is essentially no hope it wouldn't be more damaging to both him and the forum than the current situation, where he is shadow banned, no doubt realizes it, and gets talked about like he isn't in the room, as if he can't possibly figure out we are talking about him just because he is shadow banned.
There are enough difficulties making this forum work with relatively "normal" people and relatively ordinary social frictions. Trying to add into the mix the need to compassionately tolerate someone whose posts are so inflammatory would become a nightmare for everyone involved. I wish I could say otherwise because I am not personally comfortable with banning someone merely because they have a mental illness. However, pg and others already lament how the forum has lost quality, already are beating their head against a wall trying to address the issues which caused that, etc. They aren't qualified to help someone like losethos fit in and get along. It is a tricky thing to do under the best circumstances and a very large, very public forum only magnifies the challenges involved. The way mental illness expresses itself is partly influenced by social factors. The social factors here would almost certainly make him behave worse, not better. Most people have no idea how to constructively interact with someone who is genuinely mentally ill and it is all too common for group response to the situation to seriously compound the problem.
If it were a smaller forum and if I were one of the moderators, including him might be constructive. But here, I don't think so.
I don't feel I am being very clear. I have a medical condition and am not at my best today. So, sorry if that doesn't clarify anything for you.
I have "insider info": I went through very public withdrawal online from prescription medication. So I have been the person who couldn't manage to stop being inflammatory, no matter how hard I tried. It didn't matter how much I apologized and explained, it still created problems. In fact, my sincere apologies ultimately turned me into the group scapegoat. I could say something completely uninflammatory, someone else could overreact in an asinine way and the group response was "there she goes again". I ultimately quit taking their shit, for which I was thrown off one list.
I see no reason to suggest that subjecting losethos to a similar debacle would benefit anyone. I wish it weren't so, but the reality is that most "normal" people just aren't as nice as they would like to believe they are and they don't hesitate to do truly gruesome things as long as they can find a way to pretend it isn't really their fault (distinguishing between "IRL" and virtual interaction is a convenient way many people justify being assholes online).
An entire forum ganging up on one vulnerable individual and blaming the victim for it is an all too common testament to this ugly underbelly of humanity. The people in charge here are wise to not allow a situation which would actively foster such ugliness. In the abscence of a better answer, the current solution errs on the side of at least not sending the message that lynchmobs are welcome here. The ugliness would not stop with losethos. It would spread and soon no one would be safe here.
it's not that simple. some of his posts are off topic, or outright offensive (rude, racist, etc). it is complex because this is an unfortunate side effect of the illness.
i'm not writing this off completely, but i should ask what you hoped to bring to the conversation by sharing this? i can't help but feel it's a bit exploitative. i've been familiar with losethos for a long time, and i respect the curiosity for experiencing schizophrenia on an eye witness basis. but, given the nature of schizophrenia, i couldn't imagine being thrilled finding a post like this. surely there is another source that could satisfy your intent?
The linked story is a story about love. My post is a story about rejection.
My intent is not gawking. My intent is to confront everyone with the reality that they're indirectly shunning one of their own (if anyone fits Hacker News, it's someone who wrote his own entire OS/language/demos/etc) due to mental illness. Due to the way that hellbanning works, he continues to reach out to us, and we ignore him.
I consider this to be one of the great failures of this community.
Furthermore, as you can see by some of my sibling replies, many people are _not_ actually aware of Terry or his accomplishments. SparrowOS is actually pretty amazing, for a number of reasons, and so I wanted to draw attention to them in a time when it's conversationally appropriate.
I am not religious in any way, but since Terry quotes the word of God so often,
> “Then the King will answer,
> ‘I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here,
> you also did for me.’
>
> Matthew 25:40
I'm not saying the right answer is to un-shadow ban him either. I don't know what the right answer is. But I can tell you that I think about him and it a lot. I wish more people would. Frankly, I saw http://i.imgur.com/USsN6.png this morning and almost cried.
I don't disagree with your points about SparrowOS.
But I don't agree in practice that HN is the best place to find discussion of things like a hobbyist OS written in ASM, because it is so strongly oriented toward the business end of the startup scene. It is very typical to see posts about how engineers are arrogant and socially inept, or how annoying it is that there is so much technical stuff on HN, or how RMS is dangerous and revolting, etc. So frequently the yardstick for judging things is popularity and money and ability to manipulate perceptions, rather than knowledge or playfulness or building things which are really high quality for its own sake.
So while (say) Zuckerberg's "Hacker" concept might go down well here, I don't think that old school "Hacker" values really have much place here.
Originally, this place was "Startup News," but it got changed to "Hacker News" to broaden its scope. That said, there's always a difference between 'in theory' and 'in practice,' and so I sorta agree and disagree with you at the same time.
I would like to see it more and more away from Zuckerberg and more and more towards old school, so I'm attempting to be the change I want to see in the world. ;)
Thanks for that explanation. I keep showdead set to on and have been puzzled by SparrowOS's comments, until now. Glad to learn about the SparrowOS project, and best wishes to its creator.
Anyone who's used Usenet will be aware of Mike Corley - the MI5 guy. He has been banned from most UK ISPs for breaching their TOS - his rate of posting to Usenet was prolific.
Responses to him ranged from people interested in him as a person, and in his treatment (or lack of); through to hostility at his very many posts and his attempts to evade filters; to really unpleasant baiting of a person with a mental illness or nasty mocking.
Your usage of 'they' makes me uncomfortable viscerally, but given that you may not know his gender, it actually makes sense. I think it's because 'they' produces an Other-ing effect as well. Just something to think about, and something I wanted to draw attention to off the bat. While I don't think what you said is _wrong_, something like "Someone who has schizophrenia can't..." instead. Or maybe not. Just figured I'd share.
Anyway, schizophrenia is a very complex illness, with five major subtypes and many related disorders. I am not a doctor, and I'm not privy to his medical history, but what I can tell you is that it affects individuals in different ways. It's entirely possible that Terry is only lucid when he's talking about CS stuff; I don't know if that's true or not.
One of the core things about schizophrenia is a loss in touch with reality, as if the suffering is literally in a world of their own. It might be that this world for SparrowOS doesn't do him well in everyday life but may be very helpful with endeavours which require a leap in thinking.
The OP does have an interesting question because a characteristic symptom of schizophrenia is a loss in train of thought. This seems apparent in his posts because they seem, in a lot if ways, to diverge away from the actual topic (such as meeting God, which also demonstrates delusional thinking).
It's interesting because such losses would make it hard to sit down and focus on writing something coherent, which seems like it'd apply to programming just as much as writing and speech. Though, if he becomes very lucid when discussing CS stuff, perhaps programming as an activity itself provides that lucidity.
Programming may be his therapy. Occupational therapy is often pushed in mental hospitals (I speak from experience).
Either way, it's not even a good idea to try and approach, even it with the best intentions, for you don't know of the damage you may be causing. It's hard to believe but you have to be very, very careful of what you say or you risk furthering his mental health problems. It sounds cruel but the best thing would be to let them be, or at most focus 100% on CS.
I speak from my experiences as a mental health patient and becoming very close friends with a schizophrenic.
> I read it and wasn't sure why you had used "they".
I actually used 'they' because I generally don't try to gender someone unless I know what pronoun they wish me to use. It's just default speech for me. You'll note that I replaced it with 'someone with schizophrenia' and tend to use "Terry" rather than 'he' even; "Terry" can certainly be a woman's name.
That said, something about the above sentence tripped my othering-detector, so I had a moment of 'ugh,' but as I said, it went away. I don't think it was incorrect/wrong usage, I was just sharing a strange moment that happened in my own head. I don't know why my brain parsed it as "those people can't have a normal conversation" instead of my usual genderless usage.
I have worked with people like this, seen marriages to schizophrenics (somewhat less severe that Sally), and seen families supporting children with severe autism. Many of these are wonderful people and you are blessed to be able to see this.
But you, yourself, are going to need help to make this work.
Doing this for 18 months is one thing but you are going to need to build serious structural support for yourself to make the long haul. Build friend and family relationships where you can talk about what you are going through and which are committed to helping you through it. Make money, save as much as you can and avoid debt like plague, you already have enough stress in your life. Get a life insurance policy, get a will that creates a trust for Sally and receives the proceeds of the policy. If you are of any faith consider building up your church community.
You are essentially married to a not-normal person. You're going to have not-normal problems. It's okay to feel sad and tired and frustrated. Have people around you to help carry the load.
You have taken on a vocation as mental health advocate and social worker. Case management, navigation of the health system, is actually a profession, if you look around you'll probably find tools and practices to help you deal with the enormous administrative overhead involved with services.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but you should go get yourself checked out for psychological and emotional dysfunction. You are clearly yourself not-normal, which is awesome, but take seriously the possibility that you've got weaknesses of your own that need work. If you had ADHD or depression meds would make enormous improvements in your functionality. Even if it's all good, being in therapy, even only once a month, might not be a bad idea. Having a professional who knows you and can spot signs of depression or stress or anxiety could be handy.
I can't say enough how much I admire your vision and determination. My apologies if all of this has already occurred to you. Please take care of yourself.
Do you really, honestly think the author will be happy - and for long (say more than 2 years, after the initial thrill of doing something odd and new)?
It does not looks like a sane relation to me, but more like a relation based on needs - such as the need to "save" someone (frequent with young upperclass women) or such as a profound emotional need to display love.
"I'll throw myself in front of a bus for her if she wants it" - this doesn't looks like a good thing to say about a relationship - especially about a relationship with someone hearing voices who might recommend such things.
Are normal persons (or life) so boring that one needs to import another person problems - especially unfixable problems given the state of our technology regarding schizophrenia?
(my cousin has a severe form and spends most of his time in various institutions)
I was diagnosed with schizo-affective and bipolar disorders when I was 19. I was on disability until I was 26 (I am now almost 31), even though I worked part time as a software developer through that entire period.
I've managed to live a pretty "normal" life so far, even with my health issues. I have both Bachelor's and Master's degrees. I've been with my wife for 5 years so far. I've held down jobs pretty well, with ever-increasing levels of responsibility. I have healthy hobbies that take quite a bit of attention but do not become overriding obsessions.
My wife and I have different struggles than most other couples. She is most definitely not with me because it's novel, nor to "save" me or any other sort of co-dependent nonsense.
Schizophrenia may not be fixable, but it is controllable to a degree and with care it doesn't have to mean a life in institutions or a life without a satisfying career.
First I have to say that my symptoms have been pretty well-controlled for years. After my diagnosis I lost a lot of weight and became very physically active. This seems to have helped in a miraculous way (according to several doctors). Managing stress, sleeping well, eating well and keeping active seem to work as good or better for me than medications.
I have mild hallucinations. Pretty regularly I have odd physical sensations, like the skin on my legs is sloughing off or very convincing body dysmorphia. Stuff like this is worst when it keeps me awake. Exercise or a hot shower tend to fix this.
When I am really stressed out I have some auditory (usually more or less ambient noise) and visual (usually motion at the corner of my vision) hallucinations. The visual/auditory hallucinations usually only kick in when working 50+ hours a week for extended periods and worried about personal things. To minimize these periods, I work super hard when I am working and try to keep complications to a minimum. I'm sure it has held my career back somewhat not to have the same capacity for work hours as others. (Yes, 50+ hours a week is minimal for a lot of people, but for me I need that extra time to relax and recuperate.) The last visual/auditory hallucinations I had were pretty recent. The past couple of months required some 60ish hour weeks, I had a good deal of disrupted sleep and my wife had some health problems.
I have strict routines. When they are broken I tend to get upset. For example, I have a rigorous exercise routine. When it snows and it makes it harder to get to the gym or out for a run, I get disproportionately angry. I eat things in a very particular way, if someone disrupts this I get angry and will probably tell them about it.
I don't like it when people repeat what I say unless I explicitly give them permission. An example is that my wife might discuss something with me and then discuss that with someone else, and include my view on the subject. That upsets me.
I do not struggle much (at all?) with paranoia or catatonia.
There is some more, but I'm not super comfortable sharing in a public venue where potential future employers are likely to see.
I recognize all of these things are not normal. Over the years I've built up a good set of filters that keeps most people from even noticing. That's not to say I bottle up the reaction, it's just that I've built in some mental processes that help keep the keel even.
In a lot of ways, that sounds very like the way I manage my dementia. It helps a lot to understand that the hallucinations, as I experience them, are simply a failure of the "normal" ability to simply not pay attention to ordinary signals (things "moving" in the extreme periphery of my visual field either while I'm reading or just doing the regular saccade thing, minor skin irritations being misinterpreted and taking on a life of their own, etc.). As long as I can interpret them at a higher level of thought and classify them, they're merely an annoyance (although, like that one mosquito in the tent with you all night, it can be one hell of an annoyance). Before I understood what was going on, and before I found medication to help me deal with the worst of it, those little unsuppressed signals were absolute hell—both on me, and because they affected my behaviour and beliefs, on the people around me. Unfortunately, my condition is progressive, so there will likely come a time when the meds can no longer help, and I'll find myself back in that world. Not looking forward to that at all, to tell the truth.
Thanks for sharing! You seem to have found a way to live in both worlds at once quite nicely. Feel free to delete the post while you can btw, if you're concerned about privacy issues.
I thought about deleting the posts. I'd really rather practice not worrying about what people think about it. It's a part of me and if others can't accept it, that's okay.
As someone who is in love with someone with Borderline Personality Disorder. Your general idea... the way the author is handling the relationship won't make him happy in the long run.
That phrase you highlighted ("throw myself in front of a bus") also impressed me when I read the post. It tells me that the author himself should get some help.
If there's something I've learned after more than a year of being together with someone with a mental problem is that you need to take care of yourself before you can take care of somebody else, otherwise you're both going to drown in problems.
> "I'll throw myself in front of a bus for her if she wants it" - this doesn't looks like a good thing to say about a relationship
I tend to agree. But it's something that common to many relationships, not just those involving people in unhealthy relationships.
> - especially about a relationship with someone hearing voices who might recommend such things.
I'm not sure people with a psychotic illness recommend directly that another person should throw themselves in front of a literal bus.
And I hope that OP has enough insight to recognise when the (metaphorical) bus is real or a product of illness.
> Are normal persons (or life) so boring that one needs to import another person problems - especially unfixable problems given the state of our technology regarding schizophrenia?
I am not talking about the OP here. With that disclaimer out of the way: sometimes life with someone who has a severe mental illness is just more fun; it's more exciting; there's more stuff to do. This can be useful - you go to different places and experience life in a different way. Or it can be unhealthy, with dependence and enabling and people wanting to "fix" others and getting locked into a cycle of recovery and relapse. The pre-mania phase of bi-polar can be incredibly productive for some people.
Is someone with severe health issues not allowed to have love in their lives? Mental illness presents unique problems to a relationship, but the one suffering is still a person, who deserves to have a bit of happiness.
The author said they'd already tried a bunch of dating outlets with no success, and then they found this wonderful woman that they fell in love with
Believe it or not people with mental illnesses have wishes and hopes and dreams too, and having a partner nearby that loves you can make some things a whole lot easier, and make life seem worth living even in the toughest times.
There are several red flags for me in this post. For example:
I could never say anything bad about her. (How could I? There's nothing bad to say.)
I'm sure she's a nice person, but no one is perfect. My concern when I hear someone say something like this is that they're in denial about the things they don't like about their partner; and those things will pile up, since they're not getting dealt with, and one day the dam will burst and all those things will spew forth.
I am not saying he shouldn't stay with her, but as others here have commented, it would be a very good idea for him to be in therapy. This is going to be a bumpy ride at times, and he is going to have to understand himself better so he can be there for Sally.
I posted before but I wasn't happy with it; you've about summed up what I had to say. I don't know OP or his girlfriend, but I was with someone with depression for over 2 years. Frankly, my need to help her made things worse; instead of getting out of bed and forced into the cold light of day, she could stay in and I would console her. We both missed class, and work, and there were whole days when I couldn't focus because she had an episode before I left, and I eas afraid she would harm herself.
Ultimately, I do think I love her deeply, but since we've parted we've both done much better socially, and she seems more motivated and focused on her treatment. Obviously schizophrenia is a very different situation, and I hope OPs story doesn't go that way, but there are definitely some of the same things I recognized in myself in the first year of our relationship in this post. Hopefully OP can maintain the balance between support and life-long self-sacrifice.
and God did you really not get that the bus thing was just meant to represent how much he loved this woman? This is something people say about others they love deeply.
>>Do you really, honestly think the author will be happy - and for long
I don't give that good odds for their happiness. But as good odds as I give my self.
It is 9 months in, the author and the woman are incredibly in love. Many people never get that, at all. Ever. I had it and lost it.
So I disagree with your dissenting opinion. It is worth trying.
The hard part is to leave failed relationships before getting so much scars that you will be emotionally dysfunctional after the mourning phase. If their relationship fails, I hope they get out ok. [edit: The failure modes here seems as _the_ scary part.]
And now a New Year resolution that will garner me many an upvote -- talk computer stuff on HN. :-)
Unfortunately this relationship has the makings of a codependent relationship. When you combine a man who is probably insecure since he searches for dates on craigslist and a woman with a litany of mental issues you generally have a codependent relationship. The insecure man needs to feel "needed" and the women needs to be "saved". Most of these relationships do not end well and lead to long-term unhappiness for both parties.
Well, yeah. That's certainly a risk here, isn't it?
And what shall the gentleman do? "Well I love you but it's probably a mistake because I'm probably a mess myself so let's just walk away from it?" Even were this situation as bad as you imagine that strikes me as a soul-killing response to problems.
I agree this looks rough but I've seen some very bad situations that ended up looking like something from Disney. Those situations had heroes and those heroes went through some crazy shit. There is hope.
So. The guy is going for it. Are we satisfied to comment that it will all end in tears? Or shall we look for some way to help it to a better end?
It isn't enough here to note the risk. You have to offer something constructive. I don't say "not hard", perhaps this relationship is a terrible idea and if it is so then it is no kindness to pretend otherwise.
But the OP simply isn't going to hear "dude, co-dependent, not good". If you see trouble clearly enough to say so then you have a duty to offer some path around it or through it.
> And what shall the gentleman do? "Well I love you but it's probably a mistake because I'm probably a mess myself so let's just walk away from it?"
It is OK to size up a potential relationship and make a practical decision about pursuing it before you actually fall in love with someone.
For most people, starting a relationship with a severe schizophrenic is a bad idea. You're letting yourself in for a lot of suffering and very likely you'll further injure your loved one when you eventually leave because you can't take it any more.
I think part of growing up is recognizing that not every person you feel attracted to is actually a good person for you to be involved with. Letting feelings of attraction trump one's better judgement causes a awful lot of misery in the world (usually in much less dramatic but much more common scenarios).
I'm speaking of the general case here. As you say, sometimes seemingly reckless relationships do work out. Kas clearly doesn't regret falling in love with Sally and I hope that they go on to have long and reasonably happy lives together.
Not sure if I've been banned here or not... my account seems to have been wiped out... but whatever.
I think part of what people are picking up on is that for all his generosity of spirit and love for Sally, he's decidedly unsympathetic to anyone else which suggests to me he's underestimating things. Was Mr. WoW a horrible human to begin with? Did he know what he was doing? Did he have the support structure you excellently advised about creating in your other post? Did he just love WoW or did WoW become his only escape from a situation he could no longer handle? Those aren't questions for anyone, just ones I might ask myself.
FWIW, I have a longtime friend with her share of mental issues, and I have a family history of codependency. I've tried dating her twice, and each time I've broken things off with something vaguely akin to "I love you, but we're spiraling down into codependency and this is not healthy for either of us, and so I can't be in a relationship with you or get close to you."
I'm still friends with her, but not particularly eager to try again with a relationship. We try to see each other once every month or two to catch up on each others' lives, but otherwise aren't in regular contact (because when we are in regular contact, bad things happen). Both of us are dating other people.
Also, back when I was a teenager I had many of the same mental issues she did. (Perhaps that's why I latched onto her, and why we have such a tendency toward codependency.) What helped me recover from them was not the people who did the darndest to help and bent over backwards for me, at the expense of their own well-being. That tended to actively make things worse. Rather, it was having adults in my life who served as solid role models, secure in themselves and their own lives, who would interact with me as a person but still set very firm boundaries. And they were relentlessly patient about this. It took about 5 years. You can't be relentlessly patient with someone for 5 years unless you are simultaneously taking care of yourself and carrying on with your own life.
"Sorry you're permanently broken as a person. Although i feel a strong affection for you, you're just not someone who should ever be in a romantic relationship. Because obviously you're just going to end up hurting anyone who gets close to you in the long run, and be hurt when they leave you. Have a nice life. Glad i don't have your problems!"
Literally no-one has the right to say such a hateful, awful thing to another person. Even if the content is even vaguely justified (and it might be), the speaking of such words is so awfully damaging that it crosses well over the line of abuse. There is such a thing as psychological abuse, and having someone that presumably you care and trust and know if you are listening to them speak about your personality attack you so viciously, so self-righteously is an incredibly traumatic act.
The simple fact is that you don't have the right to say that to someone, not ever. To consign someone to permanent failure, to even call into question their reality as a person ('broken') is unutterably cruel.
We all have the right to choose who is in our social life, and we have the right to choose our boundaries, as arbitrary and possibly awful - or healthy - as they may be. There really are people in the world that have serious mental illness, and it's okay to not want them in your life. But that does not give you the right to consign them to a label, and to predict their future, and to dehumanize them, calling them 'permanently broken'.
I'm surprised nobody else on his blog or on HN has mentioned this. I didn't find this post heartwarming as much as I found it gut-wrenching, but only because I've been there myself to a lesser degree (which was still terribly exhausting and heartbreaking in so many ways).
The author's story is very romantic, but I think this comment is probably the hard truth of the matter. It's an unhealthy relationship on both sides. It's unfortunate that this relationship is so tragic, but sometimes in life there are no happy endings.
I wish the author the best and hopefully something good comes from it, but my guess is that it will be a tragic relationship with tragic end results.
No doubt there's a lot of hard work ahead, for both of us. But you know what? I never saw anything in this life that was worth a damn that didn't involve hard work. The idea is not to shun the hard work but to embrace it. Embrace it with both arms, squeeze it hard, and accept it, not with fateful resignation but with the sure knowledge that if you do embrace it, good things will come, eventually. The alternative, giving up, is unthinkable.
That, exactly that, is what life is all about. If you don't get it don't bother living life until you get it. Simply put, because your existence won't have any meaning to drive yourself through the hard work ahead through the path that will change a life beside your own.
To the OP, people like you still give me hope about the mankind. All my best feelings and thoughts will be with you and your beloved one. I'm sure you'll get through that, and live happy. It's just a matter of time.
Be careful who you fall in love with. While it is easy to fall in love with a person who is objectively perfection, it is also possible to fall in love with someone who is deeply flawed. The strength of the bond is no less.
Sometimes the old method of having one's parents choose a mate appears to be the better thing. Some cultures will investigate a potential mate's family background several generations looking for physical or psychological problems, thus averting potential disaster or the bearing of flawed offspring.
On the other hand statistics show that when love strikes, such marriages last longer and result in more children than arranged marriages.
Can you choose who you fall in love with? Likely no, but you can know when it's happening and terminate the process if you see serious warning signs. In this story the warning signs were explicitly posted at the entrance gate.
Aren't you lucky you don't have a severe mental illness? Obviously anyone that does should be avoided like the plague, regardless of how many good qualities and virtues they have about them. If you're that broken, you just don't deserve romance and love. But obviously life is still worth living, so don't kill yourself silly!
> If you're that broken, you just don't deserve romance and love.
Woah, woah, woah. Surely you don't mean that anyone deserves my or your or anyone else's romance and love. These things don't mean anything unless they're freely given.
I bailed on a similar situation where I could feel myself falling for someone with schizo-affective disorder with a side of bipolar disorder. I certainly understand where you're coming from. I think the question is whether you can know someone apart from their mental illness. The woman in my case was extremely functional despite ongoing symptoms, but she also behaved destructively. She was skilled and enthusiastic at creating drama between people and heedless of the consequences of her personal behavior. She was good at creating beautiful things, situations, and emotions, but compulsive about destroying them.
This is a bit confusing to talk about, because the terms colloquially applied to such behavior (the insensitivity of which the current context makes clear) are "crazy" or "psycho." Every time she did something destructive, I had to ask myself: is she doing this because she's mentally ill, or because she's "psycho?" Meaning, in less offensive language, is this purely mental illness, or is she also a cruel, capricious, irresponsible person? I couldn't even be sure it was valid to ask the question, but my intuition said the latter. She was just as destructive to herself as she was towards everyone else, but then again, so are many people who simply have "issues" without major mental illness. On the other hand, she had ongoing symptoms including auditory hallucinations (her version of "well" was when she knew they weren't real), and she often made strange connections between things, strange jumps in conversation, which she couldn't explain coherently. I always felt guilty about holding her responsible for her behavior. After I cut off contact with her, I felt very guilty about it at first, because I had such intense feelings for her. I thought, "If I run away from her, who will ever stay?" When I caught myself thinking that way, though, I knew I had made the right decision.
The reason I tell my story is that it's possible Kas has satisfied himself on which aspects of Sally's behavior and personality are "her" and which aspects are due to her mental illness. He says she's "Guileless, straightforward, self-aware, good-hearted, open-minded, always truthful, always kind," which does not describe someone acting under the influence of schizophrenia. When he says he would throw himself in front of a bus if she asked him to, he's clearly not talking about the schizophrenic Sally, unless he has a death wish. If he has separated her from her mental illness, perhaps it's no different from loving someone who has any other disability.
This is all bound up in the question of free will, of course. People generally believe in free will, and they treat mental illness as a limitation on free will. If you believe that personal history is just as binding as mental illness, then any discrimination on the basis of a person's behavior is equally just or unjust whether they are mentally ill or not.
To the OP, thanks for encouraging others to think about mental illness and improving the situation in the US.
Side note to others - in my experience with people with schizophrenia, they usually prefer to be referred to as just that, "a person with schizophrenia", not "a schizophrenic". People are more than just their illness.
This is in line with the APA recommendation for referring to anyone with a disability - psychological or physical. They aren`t characterized by their disability; they`re a person foremost.
It's an outrage that a disabled person is expected to live independently on $661 a month.
Even in Canada where we have social assistance and state healthcare the disability pensions here are abysmal. I spent my adolescent years growing up with a single disabled mother and that's pretty much all she gets to this day; less than minimum wage. If it wasn't for me working long hours after school and the alimony from my estranged father we wouldn't have made it. It's frustrating that she cannot live close to where her primary health care providers practice and cannot even get to them on her own any more.
I wish we'd spend less money as a society on jails and war and more on eliminating poverty and researching ways to enhance the human condition.
It's kind of convenient that he didn't mention food stamps, section 8 (subsidized housing), and medicaid/medicare. All of which are on top of the $661 a month, and make it definitely livable.
Finding out that someone you already care about has a mental illness is really tough. What do you do? Run for the hills, or stand by their side? If they were physically sick, it would be a no-brainer: it could just as easily be you who's sick with the flu or cancer or what have you, and you'd want your friends to be there for you.
But when it comes to mental illness, it's different. Those afflicted are somehow no longer a part of our in-group, and it becomes easier to turn our backs on them. This post is a sort of therapy for me as well, you see, as I've turned my back on two similarly afflicted former friends. Difficult decisions indeed.
One of the most devastating things about this disease is that the majority of its sufferers refuse medication, based on the fear, distrust, and paranoia brought on by their condition.
To be sure, medication is not always effective for schizophrenia, but the disease's course without medication is a terrible one.
I'm not sure how schizophrenia is handled in other countries, but in the US you can't force medication except in a hospital (often via the ER). And there is a dire lack of facilities that specialize in treating and supporting people with schizophrenia.
"based on the fear, distrust, and paranoia brought on by their condition."
This is unfair. From my limited understanding, it's not just FUD, the medications do "dull" their wits and have very unpleasant physical side-effects that any person would legitimately not like. It may make them "more normal" to some extent, but at a cost.
Right, it's certainly exacerbated by the condition. I mentioned the unpleasantness of some of the drugs to help one understand why a person would suddenly stop taking them under a "supposedly rational" state.
Thank you for bringing this up. It's often looked over from those not experienced with mental illness. A close relative has been affected by mental issues and is too paranoid to get help from it. She's still well enough to talk to me and remember who I am, but is so far in another reality that there is nothing you can do to help. It's a terrible illness and for a lot of people it's all downhill.
In the UK there are several ways a person can be "detained under section of the mental health act" - there are a variety of short detentions that can be started by a qualified nurse and agreed by a doctor; or by a police officer to take someone to a place of safety; and longer stays for assessment; and then 6 month detentions that have to be agreed by two doctors and an Approved Mental Health Professional (usually a social worker).
Once on a section medication can be forced. But lack of capacity to make the choice is not automatic, and so people have to be careful when forcing treatment. This is especially true if there are "Rainy Day Action Plans" or "advanced directives" where the patient has (while well) laid out plans for their treatment when ill.
There are also community treatment orders where people can be forced to take medication while living in the community.
In theory there are protections for patients. In practice there's a scary amount of abuse of the system. Doctors use coercion (they say "go in voluntarily or I'll section you", with they must not do) or once in hospital patients are forced to take medication which they disagree with, and which they haven't consented to, and which they've had previous bad effects from, while not allowed to take a medication that they've used before.
The UK has a complicated system of NHS (free) health trusts buying provision from private hospitals. This especially happens with mental health services. Services for young people are underfunded and over crowded. Services for people with learning disability are the same. These are some of the most vulnerable people in our society; they may have suffered horrific abuse at the hands of a family member; and abuse may continue when they go to hospital. (There are a number of high profile cases in the UK that came to light last year.)
Having said that, we have good services for people with psychotic illness. And we've developed good services for "people with first episode of psychotic illness" because early intervention is helpful.
I'm in Australia but the system sounds similar. I've been scheduled before because I refused to come in as a voluntary patient. I've been in a ward before as a voluntary patient and based on that experience, I never want to be in such an environment again. I don't know what the private system is like but the public one is like a prison. Because I refused, they called the police after I left the hospital. Of course, the police turn up at my parents home at 4am in the morning.. my parents don't need that drama and neither do I. If I was having a heart attack, they'd send an ambulance but instead they sick their dogs on you to drag you back.
It's like a jail - at least the public system is. I was also threatened to be scheduled again by a person part of the team who do a follow up after you are released because I refused to allow them to visit my home (I agreed to this just to get the fuck out of the hospital). Shortly after you're admitted, they sit you down with a psych, his intern or some student and 2 nurses, ask you a bunch of questions and while the others sit there and watch you like an exhibit. It's such a game, one can't pretend they are 100% well otherwise they know you're lying while on the other hand, you can't be truthful because then you know they're going to force you to stay. I have insight into my delusions and I know which ones are real and which are not.
I managed to talk them into letting me leave and thankfully avoided the poisonous, mind numbing shit they say I should take. In the event they would force me to stay, I already figured out a way to scale the wall and leave. Of course, you can imagine the drama that would proceed that, thank fuck it did not come to that but I will not take their medications.
The first time I was in voluntary, they put me on zyprexa (pretty sure these medications have caused me numerous health issues) and I got out a week later and stopped taking that rubbish but the 2nd time they forced me into the hospital. Now, I won't contact them again regardless of what I need, you're best to keep it all to yourself because these people will kill you, it might not be their intent but they are so biased by the fact you're in there as a patient that they feel they need to give you something regardless of the reality.
BTW - being scheduled stays on your medical record. So now in the event that I actually need some medical assistance, they'll look at my history, think "oh he's been scheduled before, lets schedule him again!" I'm pretty sure I have some sort of brain problem (aneurysm, tumour, cancer, not sure) but I can't get help because the moment I mention this stuff, they'll assume it's because of my past history. I can die here or I can die there, which do you think I'm gonnna choose huh?
These places don't help the mentally ill, they just drug them up and shutter them away.
I accidentally tried an atypical antipsychotic once. No person, sane or insane, would voluntarily consent to taking drugs with such terrible side effects. I do not blame them one bit for refusing the current generation of medication. I would even argue that it's a stretch to call it medicine since it just masks the symptoms and makes a person placid enough to deal with. By the same metric, heroin is medicine for depression.
I take atypical antipsychotics (quetiapine to be exact), the first couple of weeks is horrible, after that it's not _that_ bad, but you definitely don't want to take them if you can possibly avoid it.
> It's an outrage that a disabled person is expected to live independently on $661 a month.
> It's the kind of thing that makes me ashamed of my own country.
I think the author is extremely ungrateful for having been born in a country that even provides _that_.
Do you know that _software engineers_ at Microsoft India, yes Microsoft of all places, get paid Rs. 30'000/month ($600/month) when they join in as a trainee?
People, we're talking about software developers under the monicker of "trainee"; people who've been through 4-year college _and_ been smart enough to get accepted to Microsoft India (in a highly competitive country) -- getting paid $600/month.
This guys has all his facts wrong when he says $600/month is bad in Gabon, and he's being totally ungrateful when he criticizes the U.S. gov. for what they're giving; not showing an iota of thankfulness.
Does the author know nearly 50% of children (hundreds of millions of children) in _India_ are malnourished?
In India, a completely healthy person who can't find a job, will be left to starve by both government and society. It's a ruthless, cold, heartless nation compared to the government of the U.S. In fact in India, even food meant for the poor is stolen by greedy politicians. It's a terrible country.
You should be thankful to be an American, instead of expecting even more from a government that far surpasses most countries in the world in terms of what it does.
I always find it a little silly that people assume their country is amazing without looking up the facts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state if you look at welfar expenditure by GDP you'll notice that it ranks around 26 assuming I counted correctly, behind most of the western world. This is not intended to hate on America, one of the wonderful and horrible things about America is that there is amazing opportunity and terrifying risk to living in the country. Most developed countries even out the risk and reward a little more. I find this fascinating and I wonder how many factors such as innovation, attitude, ambition, etc have related causation (rather than just correlation).
He also has a book called "Rethinking Madness" which is amazing.
Basically, there is no medical evidence for classifying schizophrenia as a disease. He believes that it is a state the mind creates for itself when it's surroundings stress the person out too much. There are very high recovery rates for schizophrenia in 3rd world countries, which he believes is due to the lack of medication.
If you're looking at scizophrenics then by definition you're looking at the ones who haven't recovered. My understanding though is that they don't just do better because they're given less drugs, it's also because of social differences in terms of how families interact with each other.
> If you're looking at scizophrenics then by definition you're looking at the ones who haven't recovered.
Well, yes, it's really easy to say that a disease doesn't exist if you ignore all the people who are suffering from it.
> they don't just do better because they're given less drugs, it's also because of social differences in terms of how families interact with each other.
What "social differences"?
Schizophrenics in India are far more likely to go undiagnosed and untreated, which only exacerbates the problems for them and their families. That's a big difference from saying that there's a high recovery rate, let alone that it's not a disease.
I'll mention this in passing for those who are interested. Carl Rogers, in _The Carl Rogers Reader_ explains how he and some other psychologists and volunteer staff set up a small residential treatment center for psychotic patients.
It was structured very differently from conventional psychiatric treatment centers. Most of the staff were volunteers and uniforms were not used. There were only a few clients/patients living there at any one time. The staff fostered an environment of trust and openness. They did not medicate the clients and instead they tried as much as possible to be open to the psychotic material of the clients. In such a supportive environment, most of the clients showed improvement in their psychotic symptoms in as little time as a week. Staff were picked on the basis of their personality and experience with altered states of consciousness as it was felt that would make them better able to connect with the psychotic clients. The doctors on staff did have the ability to medicate and sedate clients if absolutely needed.
So, while I do think schizophrenia has a heritable component, the current medical model may not always be most appropriate or effective treatment.
"Basically, there is no medical evidence for classifying schizophrenia as a disease."
I think the best way to think about it would be use the biopsychosocial model. It might start for psychological or social reasons, but it eventually causes biological changes in the person.
My late brother-in-law was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder last year. Unstable, paranoid, and off his meds, he took his own life a few months later, still in his mid-twenties. He left a surreal suicide note. His family wants someone to blame. It has been very hard.
Thanks for sharing your and Sally's experiences. It takes a lot of courage to do.
When reading your post it reminded of my own "sally". She is straightforward , kind hearted, truthful, caring etc. When we find such a person in our lives , the love that comes out is purely unconditional! We finally realise that no matter what this person says, looks, behaves, what she does or does not, or if the world may come to an end, no matter what we will love with uncondition love. Its a gift (love) to the pure hearted from god himself!
Thank you so much for having the courage to openly discuss your relationship with a person with a mental illness.
Your calm words will, I hope, do a lot to explain what it's like.
> I think most guys, on a first date, upon hearing a young lady talk seriously about being visited by aliens, would probably find some reason to cut the evening short. I merely listened. Sally "knew" the alien visitation wasn't real. But it felt real enough to her when it happened. So I asked her to tell me about it in detail. And I listened, without passing judgment. She ultimately laughed the whole thing off, but I knew it was an important part of her reality.
Talking to people who have hallucinations or who hear voices is sometimes fascinating. Sometimes they start the conversation and you don't know that anything is different, and because they are not lying the story sounds utterly convincing. And then, maybe, some odd details start creeping in. Or maybe the story is about alien visitation and it's obviously not true from the start, even though the person telling the tale it utterly believable.
> She didn't know that when a yellow car pulled in front of her on the road, it didn't mean there was danger ahead.
At their gentlest these paranoias and delusions seem similar to everyday superstitions. I think that's what makes it harder for people to understand just how strong the feelings are.
> As a disabled person (who can't work a normal job, because of the severity of her residual symptoms), Sally gets a monthly check for $661. That's it. That's all. No more. Here you go: $661 a month, now go take care of yourself.
This is the thing I really want to talk about.
I live in the UK. We've had a variety of different disability benefits over the years. Unfortunately those benefits have not kept current with modern treatment; nor with modern political directions; and now we're in the unpleasant situation of needing to cut our massive welfare bill, but not having any suitable alternatives for people yet, and not having adequate support for disabled people.
For example, in the 1980's people with bad back were told to not move, to lie flat on their back on a firm mattress. Many people were signed off work for years because of bad back. We know now that's terrible advice. If there's no underlying illness causing the backache (and there can be serious illness causing backache) you should carefully take pain killers, and keep moving. Some exercise will help recovery, and some other exercise will prevent relapse. So, now, with bad back you might need a bit of time off work to let the pain killers start working, and then a bit of time to get the exercise going, but then you can return to work full time.
Applying that to MH problems we see that people with mood disorders like depression were cocooned away from stress. "Don't go back to work, because you'll trigger another episode of illness". But many people want to work. They do not want to live a life on benefits.
Ideally you have a programme that finds people the work they want to do, and then gives them time-unlimited support for that work. That support would be things like helping someone sort out transport; explaining to a boss what reasonable adjustments (a legal concept) means; discussion about difficulties staying in work and how to resolve those; discussion about any prejudice that is happening etc.
Such programmes exist, but are patchy and usually very busy with long wait-lists.
And because our benefits system hasn't caught up people can get caught in nasty situations. There's a variety of benefit schemes to help people get back into work, but if you're working (even with a severe, enduring MH problem) they might take the disability benefits away from you, which can then shut down other parts of your support network; and which can be very stressful for some people. Coping with complex benefit and tax systems is not helpful when you've just started your first job in 12 years.
So, while we have made a lot of progress, there is still a lot of progress to be made. I wish you and Sally all the best for the future!
"I live in the UK. We've had a variety of different disability benefits over the years. Unfortunately those benefits have not kept current with modern treatment; nor with modern political directions; and now we're in the unpleasant situation of needing to cut our massive welfare bill, but not having any suitable alternatives for people yet, and not having adequate support for disabled people."
One thing that is being tried is more direct scrutiny of people on various disability benefits who are certainly capable of working and caring for themselves, but got 'in' under a more permissive system when the bills weren't as high.
I know this because of some acquaintances I know in the UK who have been on various disability benefits for some years, and they update us on the hoops they're having to jump through to requalify every so often. Keep this up and weed out the people who are capable, so there's more resources to go to those who truly need it.
The costs of weeding out the capable are high. Not just financially; you have to interview and assess people who might have severe and enduring mental illness and who might be very anxious about that interview and assessment process.
Unfortunately at the moment the assessment, while with a real doctor, is merely a box ticking assessment. You turn up in a clean shirt and tie (because you have a crippling OCD)? You don't get points. You turn up unshaved, unshowered, in an unclean t-shirt? You get points. At the end someone adds up all the points you get. If you get more than X (for physical problems) or more than Y (for MH problems) you get the money, otherwise you're fit to work.
Very many people who are deemed fit to work go on to win their appeals.
And that's the fundamental problem.
Is a wheelchair user able to work? Obviously, yes, there are many jobs someone in a wheelchair can do. Is a person who is totally blind able to work? Again, yes, there are many jobs that person could do. It's the same for people with mental illness; they might be able to work in a quiet office but not do anything customer-facing. The might be able to do many jobs, but need a bit of help to get those jobs.
Moving people off disability (disabled and not working; (we also have "cover extra costs of living because you're disabled benefits which get paid if you're in work or not)) benefits probably just moves them onto different benefits. They might still qualify for housing benefit and tax credits; the person caring for them might qualify for carer's benefit; etc.
I don't think the situation is as bad in the US, but the fundamental issue of "getting paid benefits to not work" has rarely been balanced on any useful scale with a system that says "are you working already? here are some useful support services?" (child care, medical, extra cash, etc).
We seem to only have systems that provide benefits/services to people who don't work at all. Going back 20+ years, I worked (at a burger king!) with someone who ended up quitting because it was 'better' for her to be on our state's welfare program. Why? If she worked, and earned more than (IIRC $120/week or something) then she would lose all her benefits, which added up to far more than she could buy on the $120/week she might earn working at BK.
What struck me then that would make far more sense is to offer a sliding scale of benefits, but phase them out if you didn't work at all. She could have stayed working at BK at, say, $120/week, and in return received another $100 in benefits, have been far better off, but instead, the system deemed it better to have her earning nothing, and living off the state for $150/week.
My numbers are probably off some - it's been 20 years since we had that conversation, but it was one of the first times it struck me how backwards our regulations and policies are. It's not gotten any better in those intervening 20 years.
It's a problem of perverse incentives. Intelligent single people without heath issues can live vary cheaply most of the US. But, covering your basis when things go wrong is expensive and many people will intelligently avoid that if there is any sort of a safety net. Especially when just heath insurance costs you more than rent or food.
On the other hand, if you want to be self sufficient both now and in retirement you need to make around 50% more. So, where is the break even point?
Diagnosis of mental illness is done by interview. There is no objective lab test demonstrating a "biochemical imbalance" in the brain. Diagnosis is subjective.
Yes. But for medical purposes diagnosis is usually done by a doctor who can apply some reasoning to the process. They use the DSM, but they do not just tick boxes.
Compared to the ATOS (the independent assessors) who are real doctors but who are forced to operate to a very strict, limited, set of tick boxes. That kind of works for some physical disorders.
"On my bad days I cannot stand for more than 30 minutes"; "On my bad days I cannot walk unaided more than 10 metres".
Thus, real doctors are not allowed to use their subjective experienced judgement.
Right. I don't know if I'd use the term "real doctors" in connection with psychiatry, though. Not when the diagnosis is subjective, without a hard medical test to back it up.
Subjectivity can be a problem, true. Few would deny that depression is a 'real' phenomenon that has a heritable component and can cause severe problems in someone's life. Yet, depression is always diagnosed by subjective questioning of the patient.
Applying that to MH problems we see that people with mood disorders like depression were cocooned away from stress. "Don't go back to work, because you'll trigger another episode of illness". But many people want to work. They do not want to live a life on benefits.
I think the problem is that white-collar professional hazing is designed to weed people out. It's built to separate and elevate the uber-reliable (who are often the least creative) above the rest by subjecting people to contrived stresses and subordination. Investment banking analyst programs (120+ hour weeks) are the worst for this, but it's far from limited to one industry. Most companies aren't interested in someone who can't show that he went through 3 years of stressful bullshit and came out a survivor.
If offices start accommodating people with these illnesses, then the whole hazing program has to be thrown out. I would argue that the hazing is not really necessary for most jobs, but my view is a minority position among the people in power. The hazing doesn't only come from above, of course. Subordinates and colleagues can "shit test" (one of many Game-isms that applies to white-collar employment) just as hard as managers. This is why "too nice" managers often end up with young wolf problems, and the eaten are the people who are less able to deal with the inane, nonproductive stress.
I say this as a person of extremely high creative talent with a mild mental illness (panic disorder) that has slowed my career considerably (now, less so, because the therapies work and I'm down to 2-3 serious attacks per year, although I'd have a lot more if I tried to compete on hours). In this corporate uber-reliability game, I'm one of "the weak" and I'm supposed to lose. The fact that I'm extremely strong in other ways (creativity, software, mathematical intuition, writing) is irrelevant to subordinate white-collar positions.
I absolutely agree that we should give these people meaningful creative outlets and allow them to have purposeful lives. No question there. However, this requires dramatically re-defining "Work". It requires eliminating the years-long wringer of nonsensical competition that people have to engage in before they're trusted to do anything real with their time. We have to blast centuries of social behavior, not all of which is the fault of "management", away outright. It's not something that can be done overnight.
Or you undervalue the potential of people who are capable of giving back in some manner and don't want to remain, unproductive, on the dole for the rest of their lives? I understand why this occurs, but it'd be nice if the moments of brilliance were better harnessed.
In the larger tech companies, the people I've known who have these sorts of problems seem to take hiatuses and come back when whatever episode is complete and they're ready to begin work again. I don't really know how it works on the HR back-end, though.
Humans are naturally unreliable. Everyone has a breaking point. If you need reliability, build it into your systems. I agree with you this far: reliability in systems is very valuable. That's a design problem, which requires (a form of) creativity.
The difference between the "weak" person who shatters at a 60 hour-per-week effort (over 12 weeks) and the "strong" one who can stretch to 85 is unimportant, because if you're smart, you don't push people to the rightward side of the decline curve unless it absolutely can't be avoided.
Reliance on differences is human reliability is like having a 50% faster processer but implementing an O(n^3) algorithm when an O(n) exists. It made sense in a few pre-technological professional contexts, but no more in the typical white-collar world.
You want the creative people who'll automate away the need for human reliability, which is limited even in the most stable people.
That is all true, but it doesn't change what I said. And I don't consider a person weak if 60 hour weeks exhaust them, this is called "normal." If your employer pushes more than 40 on a regular basis, find a better job, that one sucks.
Whether a 40- or 60-hour load is a normal person's limit is beside the point.
My point is that the white-collar office regime measures people based on their decline curves rather than their performance under good conditions, and that may have worked at one time, but now it selects for the wrong traits and, additionally, makes typical institutional work inhospitable for people like the OP's wife.
Obviously, there are exceptions. You want an uber-reliable person for U.S. President. For a software engineer, you care about overall ability and performance, not worst-case.
The reason for this is that when you have other people depending on you and you don't follow through on what they're counting on you to do, you waste their time too and make their work product useless. That's why corporations are so skeptical of unreliable people: they can be negatively productive on a team.
One alternative to this is to work on solo projects - there are many people with mild mental illnesses that can find some degree of success in artistic pursuits, academia, or small businesses. But you're explicitly talking about corporations, and there's a reason why organizations can't tolerate unreliable people.
I say this as someone who is much closer to the creativity end of the spectrum than the reliability end. I worked very, very hard to build up the sort of mental toughness and team awareness that lets people count on me to follow through on my commitments, because I knew that if I didn't develop those skills, I'd be marginalizing myself to working on unimportant projects. I'm still quite eccentric when it comes to work habits (I'll often waltz into work at 1:30 PM and have very irregular hours, and I hate it when anyone tells me what to do), but I make an effort to check e-mail and IM from my phone, even when not officially working, and take care of anything necessary to unblock somebody else before I work on my pet projects.
You don't have to design a work process such that failure of one deliverable jeopardizes the work down stream. Alternative is to make an asynchronous process - for each spent you only schedule to build things which don't depend on incomplete work. If there is something you need before you start on a particular work item, you schedule that prerequisite you need as a work item in itself, and then only schedule the downstream work when all prerequisites are complete.
You can't make all jobs like this, but that's hardly the point - lots of jobs can be like that, and they aren't only by choice.
Yeah, and such "off the critical path" work is very often where creative-but-unstable people end up. My current project is like that; I've done high-priority team work before, but I asked to be put on something off the critical path both so I could take more professional risks and so I could deal with some personal stuff.
My point is that if you can only do work off the critical path, you're marginalizing yourself because such work is by definition "on the margins". And if you ever discover something huge that's worthy of investment, they'll have to take it away from you and give it to somebody reliable to lead so that people can work under him. (Many startup founders find themselves in this position; they'll come up with a brilliant breakthrough and then VCs will kick them out and hire an outside CEO because they're fucking up the company. Hell, that's basically what happened to Steve Jobs at Apple the first time around.)
There are degrees for all this stuff. I'm probably average or slightly better for reliability because of my health problems (because I have health issues, I don't drink or use drugs, I exercise regularly, and I rarely allow myself to get less than 7 hours of sleep). However, I wouldn't want to be in a job where I have to compete on reliability. If I'm a 9 for creativity and a 5 for reliability, then I'd rather compete based on potential excellence than on my decline curve, knowing that while I won't be the first to drop off, I have no chance of being the last one standing.
Forgive my cynicism, but I think that 99% of what determines who can acquire trust in the corporate system is a person's decline curve. That's how people are tested. The winners are the extremely reliable and the sociopaths who can hack the system. Technology is more enlightened, but still corrupted by typical white-collar culture.
The importance of reliability depends on the job. You wouldn't want an emotionally unstable person as someone's boss, for sure.
I knew some truly great programmers who wrote great code most of the year, but occasionally were suddenly absent for a week because the police picked them up dancing naked in a garden.
Even though there are many companies who would immediately fire that person; they are missing out on a lot of potential by doing do.
I think the average employer favors reliability because it's not acceptable for an employee to ever freak out co-workers or clients or just disappear - even if 99% of the time they are fine. There are people who have odd personalities, but that is not the same as a person who has psychotic episodes. I have been around the latter and it tends to make people very uncomfortable, which is just not acceptable for certain jobs unfortunately. There is a gray area as well where some people are socially awkward or just enjoy being "weird." But it's not the same thing.
As for jobs like programming where some degree of eccentricity is acceptable - I think it depends on how amazing that person is. If you're a genius you probably will find opportunities that will accept a decent amount of erratic behavior. If you are a below-average programmer, your employers are not likely to be as accommodating.
I can't speak for psychotic episodes, because I don't know anything about those diseases, but I think that employers are at fault for this. These packed, open-plan work environments are awful and create a lot of mental health problems. Being fairly neurotic myself, I'd be a bit unsettled if someone was having a psychotic episode at a desk 5 feet from me... but there really shouldn't be a desk 5 feet from me.
I wouldn't want even a well-treated schizophrenic flying a plane, but for most jobs, I think it's possible to make an arrangement where the person's health problems don't pose a safety risk or freak other people out.
Regarding "99% of the time they are fine", how many people don't have 2-3 sick days per year? If nothing else, that rules out everyone with kids. I suppose it depends what they are doing during that other 1% and how easily they can manage it, and when it comes to psychosis (with which I have no experience or expertise) I am way out of my depth on that one.
I admit I'm not a fan of those office setups either. But I don't really know what they would do. Most of the time that setup is due to space constraints. Kinda my point - some people would not do well in that situation. They should find an employer with a different setup or work-from-home arrangement.
Brilliant post kas. I'm impressed by your loyalty and cogency.
If the two of you ever considered having kids, there'd be a few things you'd do well to prepare for. I am the child of a severe manic-depressive/alcoholic. I can't begin to tell you the myriad ways this has effected my development, but the influence runs deep and strong. Your children will grow up in an environment of chaos, where crisis is often the default state of affairs. I'm not saying your kids will, in the grander scheme of life, be any worse off for the potentially unstable environment in which they grow, but it can make them feel unusual, left out and alone in comparison to their peers. With any luck, they'll be as well-rounded, if not moreso than anyone else, not in spite of but because of their experiences with a close relative suffering from severe mental illness.
I wish you the best of luck and send all my love to you both.
Besides the story of unconditional love, I'm completely amazed that it happened through Craigslist, of all the places in which you can meet someone today
>Our meeting was the fluke of the century. I happened to be scrounging around on Craigslist one day looking for a furniture item. Sally happened to be on Craigslist looking for pet supplies.
Read: one person was posting to a personals section, the other browsing. Not much of a fluke.
As a small child, I used to have a strong association between numbers/letters and colors, though that has faded to the point where I barely remember them. The fact that 2 is yellow is strongest in my mind.
For the record, I do not suffer from schizophrenia.
My goodness...I am in a similar situation to the lady mentioned in this article, yet arguably more functional, and I haven't even come close to meeting someone who was this tolerant and accepting. Is this guy just very special? I can't figure it out.
I alternate between brutal honesty on my condition (the approach of this woman) and hiding it (what I'm going through now), and I'm not sure if it's better or worse either way.
Oh geez, I think I figured it out - I hadn't read the whole article fully.
I'm pretty aware of people and tend to stay away from "savior" types who think they can come in on a white horse and save the day. As well intentioned as they might be, the behavior often seems unhealthy. I don't know enough about this particular situation but the phrase "I'll throw myself in front of a bus for her if she wants it" seems like a typical thing one of them would say.
I often marvel at the dysfunction of seemingly "normal" people going around without any sort of diagnosis, compared to my actual behavior, which is always at least somewhat stigmatized. I hope that for their sake the relationship works out for them, but for my own peace of mind, I push those people away...
Good luck, OP. Major props for seeing someone with a horrible disease (that terrifies most people, hence the stigma) as a human.
You have a hard road ahead of you. Some advice, from someone with plenty of experience with bipolar disorder (family, romantic relationships, business partners):
* Study Eastern approaches to mental health and spirituality. Buddhism will accept you regardless of whether you have any metaphysical beliefs whatsoever. "You may not believe in God, but God believes in you." (Actually, Buddhism is theologically agnostic and compatible with theism or atheism, but that's an aside.) Don't expect miracles, because it takes decades to get good at this and mentally ill people can't "meditate out of" their illnesses, and but the insights into the mind from meditation and yoga can help both of you.
* You both should avoid all recreational drugs, including alcohol and tobacco. Both of you. Normal people can use drugs like psilocybin, marijuana and LSD with low levels of risk. You can't. Even if you're neurologically normal, your circumstances are abnormal and these drugs are unpredictable even in the best circumstances.
* You have hard travels ahead of you. It's probably good, even if your mental health is totally normal, for you to see a therapist.
* Exercise. It won't always clear everything away, but it will make the situation better.
I ask, gently and politely, what the alternative is? I'm genuinely interested in any ideas and I'm not asking to be confrontational.
I'm mostly asking about people who don't pose a danger to others, but who have several episodes a year where they might require a short in-patient stay in hospital.
Someplace where food, shelter and medical care are provided, but not locked or anything - people are free to come and go (including to a job) as they please.
Yes, throwing someone with crippling mental issues out in the street is far more "kind".
It's a stopgap, but one that exists because there are no good solutions. If you'd like to change the situation you're free, but sniping and scoffing is not mercy.
They've been writing their own operating system in assembly for the last few years: http://www.losethos.com/ and now http://sparrowos.com/
For more: http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html