7 ms·

TFA does seem to draw an arrow loneliness->psychosis, but as the headline only stated 'linked' I had initially thought of the obvious connection in the other di

TFA does seem to draw an arrow loneliness->psychosis, but as the headline only stated 'linked' I had initially thought of the obvious connection in the other direction: "being the weird kid"->loneliness. (Donald Knuth, a man known for deep —and sometimes obscure— interests, spoke of "finding his tribe" upon encountering CS in the 1960s. Did God create the discipline for Don?)

PaulHoule 3y ago
I see the connection of (1) 5-10% of people are born with the genetic predisposition of schizotaxia, (2) most of those people are going to experience negative social learning that leads to the schizotypal personality organization, (3) 100% percent of people who develop schizophrenia spectrum disorders were born with schizotaxia, perhaps 10% of them will go on to develop serious psychosis. I think what they are observing is the co-occurrence of (2) and (3) See https://www.amazon.com/Loners-Life-Path-Unusual-Children/dp/0415066654 https://www.amazon.com/Loners-Life-Path-Unusual-Children/dp/... and https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experimental-Psychopathology/dp/1606238655 https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experim... The latter book is a bit controversial because it sees schizotypy as "you have it or you don't have it" and there are many reasons to believe it is dimensional as pushed here https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-dimensions-Advances-Mental-Research/dp/0415722039 https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-dimensions-Advances-Mental... but the dimensional team can't tell compelling stories around the practical psychopathology the way Lenzenweger does. Notably Bleuler, who named schizophrenia, found that the parents and family of schizophrenics were a bit "odd" and socially withdrawn more than 100 years ago. It irks me that you can find just a handful of conference proceedings on a condition which affects tens of millions of people in the U.S and that both ADHD and Autism have boomed in popularity because they both are associated with expensive or addictive treatments. Since nobody has a way to monetize schizotypy (if anything antipsychotic drugs could make you more unhinged) there is no budget to popularize it.
- skywhopper 3y ago
  It's false to characterize ADHD medication as "addictive". At prescription-level dosages, this just isn't true, and despite a lot of misinformation from scaremonger writers who illegally tried their roommate's Adderall in college and thought they got high because their heart was racing, the folks that truly benefit from such meds actually experience the effects in quite the opposite way, because it provides a major calming effect on the mind of many people who have ADHD.
  - nicomeemes 3y ago
    Amphetamines are addictive, regardless of dosage.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    I've seen promotional material from the stimulant industry that makes it sound that by writing a prescription a doctor is doing some magic transforming a dangerous drug (as it would be to kids who shook you down for your meds) into something health-giving, much like the priest magically transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Whatever else might be true about those drugs it is true that they are performance enhancing drugs for most people in many respects. There's probably nothing wrong with taking a Dexedrine and taking the day to clean your whole house from top to bottom but taking it for a lifetime is something else. I have a friend who was one of the earliest adopters of ADHD medication and he gets a bottle of pills each month that looks as much like a small trash can as a large pill bottle and has had his teeth all rot out. He says he can't get anything done without his meds but he can't get anything done with his meds. I'm certain he has problems of a wider scope than "ADHD" but so long as there is a system to tag kids that don't fit in with a label and that profits from a solution, other diagnoses will be neglected.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 3y ago
    As a person with bad ADHD and years of experience on and off adderall, I have no clue how anyone can claim that the stimulant ADHD meds don’t genuinely get you high. They indeed are not physiologically addictive, but can be easily relied upon mentally because of how good they feel.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
  The newer ADHD meds are not stimulants and are not addictive. Maybe ADHD has "boomed" in """popularity""" because a disorder that used to be diagnosed as hyperactivity and a deficit of attention actually turned out to be a quantifiable problem with executive function which exists in a known part of the brain, can be quantifiably treated with medication and therapy, and if untreated results in very confusing problems with emotions and motivation for as long as you live. It's not as if ADHD doesn't exist. I'm speaking off of what was apparently state of the art 10 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfCdBBqNXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfCdBBqNXY I'm hoping today, in a matter of hours, to get prescribed one of these new non-stim drugs, because the stuff described in that video very much matches my experience. Maybe thinking that ADHD is made up has boomed in popularity because of the South Park and King of the Hill episodes that downplay it. Imagine learning medicine from cartoons.
  - sneed_chucker 3y ago
    What are the non-stim drugs being prescribed for ADHD?
    - juliangoldsmith 3y ago
      Strattera, an SNRI, is one.
  - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
    A big thing with ADHD is as society optimizes, there's less "unproductive" spaces for people to exist in. I think of my own experience. I can focus long periods of time on something interesting that solves a problem, but when most work is simply business logic and reinventing the same uninteresting wheel at a desk for 40hrs a week, I feel like a caged animal and cannot focus whatsoever. The behaviors associated with ADHD are quite literally anachronistic. The ability to take in a lot of stimuli and react on it would have been extremely useful during say, a hunter-gatherer time. Someone to try to figure out what those weird berries are useful for, fiddling with some sticks and ending up with a tool, etc. We're really not meant to sit around all day being "productive".
- kurikuri 3y ago
  > It irks me that you can find just a handful of conference proceedings on a condition which affects tens of millions of people in the U.S and that both ADHD and Autism have boomed in popularity because they both are associated with expensive or addictive treatments. Because they are associated with expensive or addictive treatments? That is quite a claim in its own right; I’d argue that ADHD boomed in the US because we now understand how it affects people throughout their lives and it is no longer a ‘little boy’s’ disease. One implication of your statement is that many (some significant portion) people diagnosed with ADHD shouldn’t have been, and that the reason for this over-diagnosis is drug seeking or pushing behavior. Because of this implication, groups like the DEA make the manufacturing and distribution of these medically useful medications difficult and paradoxical to what they intend to treat. In some states, the patient with ADHD has to call monthly to get a refill because their provider isn’t allowed to prescribe more than one fill at a time, nor could the provider automatically send out a refill without contact with a patient. It is quite inconvenient for a patient who suffers from what is effectively time blindness. This also maintains the narrative that the patients are seeking drugs for some form of abuse or diversion, causing the patients to feel like criminals. This is absurd. So please, stop with this implication.
bookofjoe 3y ago
What does "TFA" stand for?
- echelon_musk 3y ago
  The Fucking Article. As in RTFM.
  - bookofjoe 3y ago
    Ah. Thank you. What does "RTFM" mean?
    - Thiez 3y ago
      Read The Fucking Manual. And did typing that comment really take less time than typing RTFM in your search engine of choice?
      - bookofjoe 3y ago
        Yes, because I didn't have to leave HN to type that comment.
        Apocryphon 3y ago
        PEBCAK
        ben_w 3y ago
        You don't have a digital Húsvættir to answer questions you speak aloud?
        082349872349872 3y ago
        thx; TIL
        bookofjoe 3y ago
        Is that like a Humane AI pin?

PaulHoule 3y ago

I see the connection of (1) 5-10% of people are born with the genetic predisposition of schizotaxia, (2) most of those people are going to experience negative social learning that leads to the schizotypal personality organization, (3) 100% percent of people who develop schizophrenia spectrum disorders were born with schizotaxia, perhaps 10% of them will go on to develop serious psychosis. I think what they are observing is the co-occurrence of (2) and (3) See https://www.amazon.com/Loners-Life-Path-Unusual-Children/dp/0415066654 https://www.amazon.com/Loners-Life-Path-Unusual-Children/dp/... and https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experimental-Psychopathology/dp/1606238655 https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experim... The latter book is a bit controversial because it sees schizotypy as "you have it or you don't have it" and there are many reasons to believe it is dimensional as pushed here https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-dimensions-Advances-Mental-Research/dp/0415722039 https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-dimensions-Advances-Mental... but the dimensional team can't tell compelling stories around the practical psychopathology the way Lenzenweger does. Notably Bleuler, who named schizophrenia, found that the parents and family of schizophrenics were a bit "odd" and socially withdrawn more than 100 years ago. It irks me that you can find just a handful of conference proceedings on a condition which affects tens of millions of people in the U.S and that both ADHD and Autism have boomed in popularity because they both are associated with expensive or addictive treatments. Since nobody has a way to monetize schizotypy (if anything antipsychotic drugs could make you more unhinged) there is no budget to popularize it.

skywhopper 3y ago
It's false to characterize ADHD medication as "addictive". At prescription-level dosages, this just isn't true, and despite a lot of misinformation from scaremonger writers who illegally tried their roommate's Adderall in college and thought they got high because their heart was racing, the folks that truly benefit from such meds actually experience the effects in quite the opposite way, because it provides a major calming effect on the mind of many people who have ADHD.
- nicomeemes 3y ago
  Amphetamines are addictive, regardless of dosage.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  I've seen promotional material from the stimulant industry that makes it sound that by writing a prescription a doctor is doing some magic transforming a dangerous drug (as it would be to kids who shook you down for your meds) into something health-giving, much like the priest magically transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Whatever else might be true about those drugs it is true that they are performance enhancing drugs for most people in many respects. There's probably nothing wrong with taking a Dexedrine and taking the day to clean your whole house from top to bottom but taking it for a lifetime is something else. I have a friend who was one of the earliest adopters of ADHD medication and he gets a bottle of pills each month that looks as much like a small trash can as a large pill bottle and has had his teeth all rot out. He says he can't get anything done without his meds but he can't get anything done with his meds. I'm certain he has problems of a wider scope than "ADHD" but so long as there is a system to tag kids that don't fit in with a label and that profits from a solution, other diagnoses will be neglected.
- BriggyDwiggs42 3y ago
  As a person with bad ADHD and years of experience on and off adderall, I have no clue how anyone can claim that the stimulant ADHD meds don’t genuinely get you high. They indeed are not physiologically addictive, but can be easily relied upon mentally because of how good they feel.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
The newer ADHD meds are not stimulants and are not addictive. Maybe ADHD has "boomed" in """popularity""" because a disorder that used to be diagnosed as hyperactivity and a deficit of attention actually turned out to be a quantifiable problem with executive function which exists in a known part of the brain, can be quantifiably treated with medication and therapy, and if untreated results in very confusing problems with emotions and motivation for as long as you live. It's not as if ADHD doesn't exist. I'm speaking off of what was apparently state of the art 10 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfCdBBqNXY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfCdBBqNXY I'm hoping today, in a matter of hours, to get prescribed one of these new non-stim drugs, because the stuff described in that video very much matches my experience. Maybe thinking that ADHD is made up has boomed in popularity because of the South Park and King of the Hill episodes that downplay it. Imagine learning medicine from cartoons.
- sneed_chucker 3y ago
  What are the non-stim drugs being prescribed for ADHD?
  - juliangoldsmith 3y ago
    Strattera, an SNRI, is one.
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  A big thing with ADHD is as society optimizes, there's less "unproductive" spaces for people to exist in. I think of my own experience. I can focus long periods of time on something interesting that solves a problem, but when most work is simply business logic and reinventing the same uninteresting wheel at a desk for 40hrs a week, I feel like a caged animal and cannot focus whatsoever. The behaviors associated with ADHD are quite literally anachronistic. The ability to take in a lot of stimuli and react on it would have been extremely useful during say, a hunter-gatherer time. Someone to try to figure out what those weird berries are useful for, fiddling with some sticks and ending up with a tool, etc. We're really not meant to sit around all day being "productive".
kurikuri 3y ago
> It irks me that you can find just a handful of conference proceedings on a condition which affects tens of millions of people in the U.S and that both ADHD and Autism have boomed in popularity because they both are associated with expensive or addictive treatments. Because they are associated with expensive or addictive treatments? That is quite a claim in its own right; I’d argue that ADHD boomed in the US because we now understand how it affects people throughout their lives and it is no longer a ‘little boy’s’ disease. One implication of your statement is that many (some significant portion) people diagnosed with ADHD shouldn’t have been, and that the reason for this over-diagnosis is drug seeking or pushing behavior. Because of this implication, groups like the DEA make the manufacturing and distribution of these medically useful medications difficult and paradoxical to what they intend to treat. In some states, the patient with ADHD has to call monthly to get a refill because their provider isn’t allowed to prescribe more than one fill at a time, nor could the provider automatically send out a refill without contact with a patient. It is quite inconvenient for a patient who suffers from what is effectively time blindness. This also maintains the narrative that the patients are seeking drugs for some form of abuse or diversion, causing the patients to feel like criminals. This is absurd. So please, stop with this implication.

bookofjoe 3y ago

What does "TFA" stand for?

echelon_musk 3y ago
The Fucking Article. As in RTFM.
- bookofjoe 3y ago
  Ah. Thank you. What does "RTFM" mean?
  - Thiez 3y ago
    Read The Fucking Manual. And did typing that comment really take less time than typing RTFM in your search engine of choice?
    - bookofjoe 3y ago
      Yes, because I didn't have to leave HN to type that comment.
      - Apocryphon 3y ago
        PEBCAK
      - ben_w 3y ago
        You don't have a digital Húsvættir to answer questions you speak aloud?
        082349872349872 3y ago
        thx; TIL
        bookofjoe 3y ago
        Is that like a Humane AI pin?