Tag: Mental Illness

This Is A Scary Thought

Under normal circumstances if anything were to happen to the president then the VP would step in to keep the government moving…..in that case logically Vance would graduate to the “big chair’.

But there are some think Donny would take a different route….a it is a scary scenario….

As questions continue to swirl around Donald Trump’s health, political analyst David Rothkopf believes the president is preparing to shift power to one of his most loyal sycophants.

Appearing on The Daily Beast Podcast, Rothkopf argued that one of the president’s most trusted aides—not Vice President JD Vance—could take charge of the White House if Trump can no longer handle the job; he identified that person as Stephen Miller.

“This is an 80-year-old guy who is obviously not physically or mentally healthy or up to the job he’s got,” the political analyst told host Joanna Coles. “Trump’s schedule is so micromanaged these days, and he does a couple of hours a day, he doesn’t appear on TV, he does fewer of these open press things than he used to do, and it’s because people are sort of easing him away.”

“This happened with Biden, by the way, where they just sort of don’t put you center stage. And it does raise a question, which is: If he declines further, if he is less capable of handling the job, who’s going to handle it for him?” he added.

Rothkopf said Miller taking charge like that wouldn’t be unprecedented, explaining that similar situations occurred during the Reagan and Nixon administrations.

“We have had multiple times in our history—after Eisenhower’s heart attacks, when FDR was in his declining health at the end of his term, when Woodrow Wilson was bedridden after a stroke—where other people did the job of president,” he continued.

“And I’ve got to tell you, you look at Donald Trump, you look at the bruises, you look at his behavior, you look at his age, you look at his family history, and we could be heading for one of these periods where somebody other than Trump is actually, behind the scenes, the acting president.”

Though Vice President JD Vance would become president if Trump were to resign or die in office, Rothkopf said that’s not exactly how it works in the White House.

“Power flows from the president, from the people closest to the president, from the people who control his schedule, from the people who send out his statements,” he explained, saying that Vance is not involved in any of that.

(yahoo.com)

Is it possible that the cue ball fascist could get the power if anything were to happen to our beloved leader?

This is something to think about…..Miller carves the power and he would be a horrible choice IMO.

Anyone have any thoughts about this?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Do As You Are Told

I had an idea back in the early days of AI where the program took over a person and made him/her do as they we told….I thought then it would make a great cheesy SciFi movie…..

I have made no secret that I do not like AI and will not use it for now…..Artificial Intelligence is like artificial insemination…..creation without the work…..far too many good people are depending on AI for their work….cannot work out good.

Now is it possible this will lead to a mental illness?

For months, we and our colleagues elsewhere in the tech media have been reporting on what experts are now calling “ChatGPT psychosis“: when AI users fall down alarming mental health rabbit holes in which a chatbot encourages wild delusions about conspiracies, mystical entities, or crackpot new scientific theories.

The resulting breakdowns have led users to homelessness, involuntary commitment to psychiatric care facilities, and even violent death and suicide.

Until recently, the tech industry and its financial backers have had little to say about the phenomenon. But last week, one of their own — venture capitalist Geoff Lewis, a managing partner at the multi-billion dollar firm Bedrock who is heavily invested in machine learning ventures including OpenAI — raised eyebrows with a series of posts that prompted concerns about his own mental health.

In the posts, he claimed that he’d somehow used ChatGPT to uncover a shadowy “non-government agency” that he said had “negatively impacted over 7,000 lives” and “extinguished” 12 more.

Whatever’s going on with Lewis, who didn’t respond to our request for comment, his posts have prompted an unprecedented outpouring of concern among high-profile individuals in the tech industry about what the massive deployment of poorly-understood AI tech may be having on the mental health of users worldwide.

“If you’re a friend or family, please check on him,” wrote Hish Bouabdallah, a software engineer who’s worked at Apple, Coinbase, Lyft, and Twitter, of Lewis’ thread. “He doesn’t seem alright.”

Other posts were far less empathetic, though there seemed to be a dark undercurrent to the gallows humor: if a billionaire investor can lose his grip after a few too many prompts, what hope do the rest of us have?

https://futurism.com/tech-industry-ai-mental-health

But if one falls into the AI trap there is help….

An unknown number of people, in the US and around the world, are being severely impacted by what experts are now calling “AI psychosis”: life-altering mental health spirals coinciding with obsessive use of anthropomorphic AI chatbots, primarily OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

As we’ve reported, the consequences of these mental health breakdowns — which have impacted both people with known histories of serious mental illness and those who have none — have sometimes been extreme. People have lost jobs and homes, been involuntarily committed or jailed, and marriages and families have fallen apart. At least two people have died.

There’s yet to be a formal diagnosis or definition, let alone a recommended treatment plan. And as psychiatrists and researchers in the worlds of medicine and AI race to understand what’s happening, some of the humans whose lives have been upended by these AI crises have crowdsourced a community support group where, together, they’re trying to grapple with the confusing real-world impacts of this disturbing technological phenomenon.

community calls itself “The Spiral Support Group,” in a nod to both the destructive mental rabbit holes that many chatbot users are falling into, as well as the irony that the term “spiral” is one of several common words found in the transcripts of many users separately experiencing AI delusions.

https://futurism.com/support-group-ai-psychosis

If one uses AI for their work then please seek help before it is too late.

I still think this would make a great script for a SciFi movie and with a little tweaking possibly a TV series.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

This Is Trumpism

For well over a decade there has been a wealth of articles and studies trying to explain Trump and all his biases and hatred…..I have posted most of them for I would like to make sense of this modern day phenom.

Right on cue there is yet another ‘explanation’….

It’s high time commentators stopped trying to shoehorn the American polity into a paradigm that doesn’t fit. Donald Trump’s brand of government is as new and unique as it is volatile and disturbing. Sometimes, history neither repeats nor rhymes. Sometimes, a whole new species bursts onto the scene.

What we’re seeing today with Trump isn’t dictatorship. Dictators control their countries. They don’t rely on the opposition party to pass budgets; they dictate where money is spent. They don’t get bludgeoned every hour in the press; they dominate the media. And they don’t have their key initiatives stymied in the courts; they control the judiciary.

Nor is this Nazism. Nazis don’t make Nazi salutes at rallies and then try (with mixed success) to downsize the government. Nazis make Nazi salutes at rallies and then go kill a bunch of innocent people. Nazis, moreover, don’t just slap tariffs on their neighbors. Nazis invade their neighbors.

This isn’t fascism, either. Fascists enforce a coherent vision of government through a murderous, totalitarian regime. They don’t flail around pursuing incoherent and contradictory policies that get blocked as frequently as they get implemented.

Sure, there are similarities between Trump’s presidency and these historical forms of government. Trump’s rhetoric, for example, is often lifted from the lips of history’s worst tyrants. His abuses of executive power, moreover, often resemble certain dictatorial techniques. But, overall, these political pegs don’t fit into the American hole. Having similarities with something is different from being the same thing. Both the mouse and the elephant have four legs and a tail.

No, what we have in America today is different. It’s new. It’s unprecedented. What we have in America today is Trumpism.

https://thefulcrum.us/donald-trump-leadership-style

I disagree that this a form of leadership….to me his government is a rudderless ship that is precariously close to the rocks of disaster.

On another hand….I personally think that Little Donny is not all there with his decision making capabilities…..the country is slow simmering on collapse and he spends too much time worrying about his golf game….but that aside this a meme going around about dementia.

Donald Trump is dealing with dementia during his second term as president, at least according to psychotherapist and author Dr. John Gartner.

Dr. Gartner has noted numerous symptoms Trump may be suffering from including his inability to “even finishing a sentence,” RadarOnline.com can reveal.

After previously claiming “there is absolutely no doubt” Trump has dementia, Dr. Gartner explained his reasoning to MindSite News in a new interview.

He said: “When we’re diagnosing dementia, what we need to see is a deterioration of someone’s own baseline of functioning. What we see that a lot of people don’t appreciate is that when Donald Trump was younger in the 1980s, he was actually quite articulate. He spoke in polished paragraphs; now he has difficulty even finishing a sentence.

“His thoughts were logical and related: now they’re tangential. He goes off on these ramblings where he is confabulating things – weird things in which he’ll talk about Venezuelans and mental hospitals, and then he’ll talk about sharks and batteries or the late, great Hannibal Lector and Silence of the Lambs.”

https://radaronline.com/p/trump-dementia-obvious-signs-suffering-from-alzheimers/

***Please understand that I am not claiming this is the definitive explanation only that it is being passed around….and I include it as an FYI for my visitors.***

Then we have some of his supporters….I know some that are claiming that they were duped for their vote….all I can do for these people is bust out in raucous laughter…they we told over and over and they chose to disregard the facts and vote for a person that lied to them on ever level.

I guess the old saying ‘Can’t Fix Stupid” is accurate to the nth degree.

Any thoughts you would like to share?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Entering The Sad Season

It is Sunday and I try to give my readers something to think about….this Sunday it is the problems that may occur during the holiday season.

Next week we will be entering the season, for some, is not a good thing…..sadness and depression can claim a few minds for various reasons…..mental problems like loneliness, sadness, a massive depression….but there is a way to ward off these feelings.

The referenced article is about the Covid isolation but I feel it could be used to battle the holiday blues as well.

Reading, writing and sharing poetry can help people cope with loneliness or isolation and reduce feelings of anxiety and depression, a new study shows.

Research by the University of Plymouth and Nottingham Trent University has found that many people who took to sharing, discussing and writing as a means to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic experienced “demonstrable positive impact on their well-being.”

The findings are based on a survey of 400 people which showed that poetry helped those experiencing common mental health symptoms as well as those suffering from grief. The research is published in the Journal of Poetry Therapy.

It was carried out with registered users of the website poetryandcovid.com (now archived as poetryandcovidarchive.com), who used the website to share their own poetry and/or read other people’s.

Just over half (51%) of respondents indicated that reading and/or writing poetry had helped them deal with feelings of loneliness or isolation, and for a further 50% it had helped with feelings of anxiety and depression.

Around a third (34%) felt that engaging with the website helped them feel “less anxious,” 24% felt that it helped them “feel better able to handle my problems,” 17% expressed that it enabled them to deal with issues relating to bereavement, while 16% said it assisted with ongoing mental health symptoms.

“These results demonstrate the substantial power of poetry,” said Principal Investigator Anthony Caleshu, Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at the University of Plymouth. “Writing and reading poetry, as well as engaging with the website, had a considerable positive impact on the well-being of the participants during the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11-poetry-people-cope-loneliness-isolation.html

I know there are many writers here on WP and I thought they might like to see that their efforts could be useful to others.

During this seasonal ‘blues’ there are other ways to cope (for lack of a better word)….

As the start of a week, survey participants were asked how much they agree with the statement, “I have felt able to impact, influence, or play an active role in how happy I generally feel.” A week later, they were asked the same question, and the difference was remarkable. Participants’ level of agreement with the statement jumped 27%, according to researchers of the BIG JOY Project. At the same time, participants saw a 26% boost in emotional well-being. So what had changed? Over the course of a week, participants were asked to perform “micro-acts” of joy, whether that was setting aside time to meditate or offering to do a favor for a friend. It was clear that these small acts could make a big difference, just as the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have proclaimed.

Participants who committed to performing these tiny acts of joy each day for a week saw a 23% boost in positive emotions, including hope, optimism, wonder, and amusement, while 30% more participants felt content with their relationships. There was also a 34% increase in participants’ level of agreement with the statement, “I am in control, on top of things, like I have been coping well.” Even sleep improved. “We’re really excited,” project leader Emiliana Simon-Thomas, an expert on the neuroscience and psychology of compassion, kindness, and gratitude at the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) at the University of California-Berkeley, tells NPR. “There are statistically significant, measurable changes [including] greater well-being, better coping, less stress, [and] more satisfaction with relationships.”

More than 70,000 people in over 200 countries have taken part, per NPR—and you can, too. Participants simply fill out a survey, then agree to perform daily activities shown to boost well-being. They might pay a stranger’s bill, congratulate a colleague on a promotion, choose to look on the bright side (positive reframing), or watch an awe-inspiring video. The preliminary results suggest that by acting intentionally, participants can feel they have greater control over their thoughts and emotions. Researchers plan to compare the results from willing participants with those from a control group assigned to take part. In the meantime, they say we can all learn to exert more control over our happiness, even amid suffering. As the GGSC notes, per the Deseret News: “Joy is an inside job.”

Hopeful these will help[ if you get the seasonal ‘blues’.

Have a wonderful Sunday and as always….be well and be safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ya Think?

Closing Thought–26Jul21

Let me see….a 30 something that lives with his Mama….has to have a special diet….dresses in shaman’s headdress…paints his bod…..howls…..and thinks he is related to Jesus…..would you think this dude is mentally ill?

The lawyer for the QAnon Shaman has confirmed that his client is off his nutter…..

One of the most recognizable members of the mob that stormed the Capitol has been diagnosed with multiple mental illnesses that include transient schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, his lawyer tells Reuters. Psychologists with the Federal Bureau of Prisons made the findings after testing Jacob Chansley, aka the QAnon Shaman, says attorney Albert Watkins. A shirtless Chansley was widely photographed in the Capitol building wearing a headdress with fur and horns. He faces six charges stemming from the riot, per Insider, but Watkins is now working on a plea deal in the wake of the mental health diagnoses. The test results mesh with what the US Navy found in regard to Chansley back when he served in 2006, Watkins adds.

“What we’ve done is we’ve taken a guy who is unarmed, harmless, peaceful … with a pre-existing mental vulnerability of significance, and we’ve rendered him a chocolate soup mess,” says Watkins. He says his client’s problems have been made worse because of solitary confinement. Prosecutors have generally pushed back against the notion that Chansley is harmless. They say video evidence shows Chansley inside the Senate chamber, where he called then VP Mike Pence a “f—ing traitor” and left behind a threatening note. Watkins, though, says his client is delusional and has expressed the belief that he is directly related to Jesus and Buddha.

Good!

Now put this d/bag in a rubber room for 20 years…..he deserves nothing for his part in the insurrection…..

Period!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–13Apr21

For awhile now we have been bombarded by the lame conspiracies fro that group of morons that call themselves QAnon….and then their part in the insurrection of 06 January is well documented….regardless of the many that disavow their part in the craziness of that day.

Personally, I believe that those idiots that embrace the QAnon BS are mentally challenged……much like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers….those overweight in-bred dickless idiots.

But maybe there is something to what I am feeling about QAnon……

Many who believe in QAnon, the notorious far-right conspiracy, may have mental illnesses. While QAnon followers believe in a lot of things, the central tenet of their complicated and ever-changing belief system is that national Democrats, aided by Hollywood and a group of so-called global elites, are running a ring devoted to the abduction, trafficking, torture, sexual abuse, and cannibalization of children — rituals of their Satanic faith. And former President Donald Trump is the only person willing and able to mount an attack against them.

Sophia Moskalenko, a research fellow in social psychology, Georgia State University, during research for ‘Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon’, a forthcoming book she co-authored with security scholar Mia Bloom, noticed that QAnon followers are “different from the radicals I usually study in one key way: They are far more likely to have serious mental illnesses.”

As per court records of QAnon followers arrested in the wake of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, 68 percent reported that they had received mental health diagnoses. This was analyzed by Michael Jensen and Sheehan Kane for ‘Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States’, a research project “dedicated to improving the understanding of the human causes and consequences of terrorism”.

https://meaww.com/most-q-anon-followers-mentally-ill-capitol-riot-68-percent-diagnosed-study-sophia-moskalenko-radicals

That does it for me.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Speaking Of Mental Health

The panels have been gathered and the media is having their typical discussions on the subject of gun violence….and they discuss…..and more will die.

Our Dear Leader has decided that a focus on mental illness is a cure for gun violence, this after a talk with the NRA……

President Donald Trump on Sunday emphasized a need for the country to focus on “a very big mental health problem” in the wake of two mass shootings in one weekend that left 32 people dead earlier this month as he appeared to defend current US gun control measures, stating “we do have a lot of background checks right now.”

“It’s the people that pull the trigger, not the gun that pulls the trigger so we have a very, very big mental health problem and Congress is working on various things and I will be looking at it,” Trump told reporters on the tarmac before heading back to Washington after a vacation at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
The White House, Trump said, is “very much involved” in the discussions Congress is having to address gun violence and while “a lot of things are happening on the gun level” he said “the concept of mental institutions” must be addressed.
 
These are people that have to be in institutions for help, I’m not talking about as a form of a prison, I’m saying for help and I think it’s something we have to really look at, the whole concept of mental institutions,” he said. “I remember growing up we had mental institutions, then they were closed — in New York, I’m talking about — they were, many of them closed. A lot of them were closed and all of those people were put out on the street.”
 
(CNN)
There is a method to this madness (pun intended)…..according to some…..
The U.S. president is widely mischaracterized as a cynical politician maneuvering for personal power and financial gain. Yet the situation is far more dangerous.
 
It is important to call these actions what they are: the personal decisions of an incontinent individual, not the result of legislative action or the outcome of any semblance of public deliberation. Remarkably, 230 years after its constitution was adopted, the United States suffers from one-man rule. Trump has rid his administration of anyone of independent stature, such as the former defense secretary, retired General James Mattis, and few congressional Republicans murmur a word against their leader.
 
That aside…have you ever listened to the president explain something to the media?
 
He sounds like a 8 year trying to justify his last lie while trying to remember what he said earlier…..his constant redundancies make him sound like a mental midget.
 
I agree with the findings…..Trump is a mental case that needs immediate help and institutionalization.
 
But I have no say in the problem….just my bitching and moaning….something we Americans do very well…..and as an old fart I do it better than most.
 
“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Suicide…The Other “S” Word

There is never good news when I read about a suicide…this time it is an American serving in Israel…..(do not get me started on that deal….the serving not the suicide)……

A 19-year-old American woman serving as a combat soldier in the Israeli army died by suicide last week.

Michaela Levit, 19, is the third Israeli “lone soldier” to die by suicide this year. Lone soldiers are largely expatriates who serve in the Israel Defense Forces while their parents live overseas.

Levit, whose parents reside in Miami, moved to Israel in 2017 and served in a mixed-gender combat battalion.

The Israeli military and soldiers’ advocates denied reports of a “worrying trend” of rising suicide rates among the lone soldiers following two suicides and a deadly drug overdose this year. 

The report I read states that there is a rise in suicides among young girls……

Boys are still more likely to kill themselves than girls are, but a new study has found a change in the established patterns, CNN reports. Suicide rates among girls are climbing faster. An analysis of a database run by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that, starting in 2007, the suicide rate for girls age 10 to 14 rose 12.7% per year, compared with 7.1% for boys the same age. For those age 15 to 19, the rate went up 7.9% for girls and 3.5% for boys, said the study, published Friday in JAMA. Suicide is the No. 2 cause of death among those 10 to 19 years old, per the CDC, after accidents and unintentional injuries. Rates of suicide have historically been higher for boys than girls across all age groups, and that remains the case now.

And boys age 15 to 19 still kill themselves with guns much more often than girls do. But girls employ hanging and suffocation in rates nearing those of boys. “What we’re seeing is alarming,” says Donna Ruch, one of the study’s authors, per Time. “On top of the fact that females are thinking about suicide more and attempting suicide more, now they’re actually completing suicide.” The reasons aren’t clear, but the findings illustrate the need for gender-specific suicide prevention strategies, Ruch says. An accompanying editorial also questions whether the rise of social media is playing a role, reports Bloomberg.

It is sad when a young person is so desperate that they think suicide is the only answer….

I sincerely wish there was an easy answer but there is not……we need to do more with our mental health policies and maybe we could help some of these young people before it is too late…..maybe not in Israel but in this country.

And Gaslighting Continues

Closing Thought–30Jul18

Never thought I would ever hear a politician, especially one in control, ever say the things Our Dear Leader said the other day….

Hours before President Donald Trump’s former lawyer released an audio recording of Trump discussing a hush-money payment to a former Playboy model, the president uttered a phrase that critics said seemed ripped from the pages of George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984.

“It’s all working out,” Trump told a gathering of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) in Kansas City, Missouri. “Just remember: What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

The remark was made as the president promoted his plan to hit China with new tariffs in an address that took on the form of a campaign speech. Trump’s escalating trade war has resulted in rising costs for some products that farmers rely on, as China has responded to Trump’s first round of tariffs introduced earlier this month.

“Don’t believe the crap you hear from these people—the fake news,” he said of reports of the negative impact of his trade policy.

(antimedia.com)

And the truly sad part is that I know people that will believe this slug on every outrageous lie he tells….without the least amount of proof…..what should be termed as the “mental midget brigade”…..people that will believe a lie over their own eyes and ears….yes 1984 comes to mind.  (Think that is a stretch then maybe reading a book would improve your mind)

“Just remember: What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”  (Ever heard the word “propaganda” used before?)

Lies to the Left, lies to the Right….the country suffers and no one cares…….the masses just keeps applauding for worthless slogans and booing anyone not in agreement with their limited understanding of reality.

Just what part of the statement has anything to do with democracy?  The last time I checked this nation was deemed a “democracy”…the statement that I am referring to is something that I have heard many times (I am old so it is many years)……people like Saddam, Andropov, Stalin, Idi Amin, on and on…..but never thought I would hear the leader of this country ever utter such nonsense.

Now the question is….how long will the American people allow this to continue?

The week begins and I do hope that my followers have a great week….be well, be safe….chuq

Closing Thought–03Jan18

With all going on with Iran, North Korea and Pakistan and the Tweets of the blowhard in the White House an all too familiar news report has fallen through the planks….gun violence….

Colorado authorities were contacted with concerns about the mental health of Matthew Riehl over a month before he shot and killed a deputy and wounded four others. But the 37-year-old man was never held for a mental health evaluation, the AP reports. Authorities say Riehl fired more than 100 rounds in his suburban Denver apartment before he was killed by a SWAT team on Sunday. University of Wyoming College of Law students had been warned about Riehl, a former student, because of social media posts critical of professors at the school in Laramie, reports KTWO-AM. A Nov. 6 email from Assistant College of Law Dean Lindsay Hoyt told students to notify campus police if they spotted Riehl or his car near campus. In addition, security on campus was increased for several days.

Campus officers called police in Colorado in mid-November to warn them about Riehl, suggesting his rants were indicative of mental illness, UW Police Chief Mike Samp tells the Denver Post. Samp says it’s possible that Colorado authorities faced the same issue as Wyoming officials when an apparently mentally ill, dangerous person makes indirect threats. “Wyoming statutes are pretty clear: If someone is not making an immediate threat, they cannot be held for a mental evaluation. They are very tough cases,” Samp says. Riehl, an attorney and an Iraq war veteran, had also posted videos criticizing Colorado law enforcement officers in profane, highly personal terms. Hundreds gathered Monday night for a candlelight vigil for Zackari Parrish, the 29-year-old deputy killed by Riehl, inside Mission Hills Church in Littleton, Colo.—the church he attended with his wife and two young children