I was just following orders…
Are you complicit in using similar rhetoric to achieve your aim and hide your intentions?
Are you complicit in using similar rhetoric to achieve your aim and hide your intentions?
“I need help,” Mcdaggot admitted.
Worst of all, the media shows people with mental illness as incompetent, dangerous, and undeserving, which deters everyone from understanding each other. Enough is enough!
Whatever the stressor, life’s negative turns can be due to the impact of mental health symptoms or just tragic extraneous circumstances.
William (Bill) Anthony, Director of the Boston Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Professor at Boston University has died. He was 77. Everyone does not know his name, but many of his ideas have helped people recover from Mental Wellness and Chemical/Drug Addiction and leading successful lives. Several years […]
We’re survivors”, Ruth said, reminding me yet again that this too shall pass. I worked alongside Ruth at a mental health clinic down in the barrio, 3rd Avenue. The Bronx, as south as it gets before the bridge into Manhattan and slightly further, Queens, Astoria country. Ruth had […]
I worked alongside Ruth at a mental health clinic down in the bario, 3rd Avenue.
As 2020 fast approaches, I can’t help but think its necessary to reflect on what was the most ambitious, self-directed, and awe-inspiring ten years of my life. There wasn’t a moment I would re-live, so much to celebrate, and nothing I’ll ever be able to forget. The decade […]
The system is broken. We all know it. We all preach it. When reflecting upon my experiences, both personal, and professional, I remember this short exchange between myself and a big wig, a clinician-craft, in the system of care. “You’re not easy to serve” the director of care […]
“In the future, further work should deconstruct categories of medicine, psychiatry, and social work and encourage strength based approaches that will supplant new-institutionalization and create a new gold standard in treatment” (Maxwell Guttman, Mental Health Diagnosis: Axioms, Continuum, and Future Directions) 2018 “Congratulations, Jacques, on your publication!” Jonas, […]
The Kindness Rocks Project, founded by Megan Murphy, is about discovering the beauty and profound possibilities of hope in acts of kindness, and has become a grassroots movement. Megan Murphy is the author of A Pebble For Your Thoughts and goes on to explain her work in her […]
On episode 7 of Behind the Mind, Max Guttman joins the show to share his experiences with schizophrenia and details the adversity he overcame to live a happy, healthy and productive life. He also shines light on the common misconceptions about schizophrenia and the manner in which the disorder can be treated. This was one of the most inspirational stories I have ever heard, and I can’t thank Max enough for his bravery and willingness to help me reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness.
This article was originally published in NAMI’s the Advocate Spring 2019
When I first began writing about mental health, and topics concerning my own experience with schizophrenia, I was a bit naive. I thought since I lived through “this”, meaning, the various incidents, challenges, and pitfalls of my disorder people who struggled with similar hazards in their life could […]
Interviewer: I am here with J. Peters, author of University on Watch and Small Fingernails. Mr. Peters, can you say something about the difference between these two books? J. Peters: These two books couldnt be more different, and yet, in the end, they are the same book. Interviewer: […]
Peters: A very small clique. My friends from college. At New London University. These are the people I characterize in the book. The book is about my experience interacting with these kids, about six or seven of them. Some of these people were given more airtime than others. The people I really thought weren’t even worth talking about, I didnt. Others, that I spent more time with, got some air time, and others, who I liked, were given praises in the book. You’ll know who I dont like, and my favorites, quickly, when reading Small Fingernails.
I have traveled all over the world. Before, after, and during my most psychotic episodes, I have been privileged in the realm of touring, traveling and seeing the world at large. After I attempted suicide in high school, my parents took me on a Caribbean cruise on a […]
Handcuffed in front of my house, with broken glass from my car all over the place, I knew I had entered into a whole new phase of contesting admission. This new phase would not only take all my strength, but new mental powers which seemed to be emerging […]
The time is upon us! I need to address the ongoing rumors circulating around my writing. Ever since I have announced a second novella, Small Fingernails, Even Less Love 💕 , there has been undeniable chatter in the literary world. Upon hearing the new novella was, in fact, […]
I have been accused of several crimes, socially unacceptable behaviors, and a litany of outrageous transgressions during my mental illness.
Research must be wholly beneficial to the public, it must be free and rife for regard for society. As a prosumer and mental health interventionist researcher, I have sought nothing but a bold new model that works for the masses. Therapy that is both targeted, yet beneficial to […]
One of my biggest struggles as a social worker in human services is challenging learned helplessness.
There is no question that family participation in a person’s mental health treatment is beneficial and critical to manage the long-standing problems that surface during a person’s recovery from a mental health disorder. This message was communicated to my parents Jane and Frank Guttman when I was an […]
his writer has a profound fascination with attention-seeking behavior(s). Also, profoundly astute at capturing the attention of peers, family, and friends, this writer is also no stranger to these histrionic red flags into a possible personality disorder.
Let us be completely honest, some of know, without too much consideration and thought, exactly how to gain our peers, friends, and family’s attention. Conversely, some of us could not get the attention they were seeking if their life depended on it. The level and intensity of attention-seeking behavior begin and ends with the ability, tenacity, and creativity of the person seeking attention. Attention seeking behaviors can be attributed to various mental health diagnoses. To correctly identify which diagnosis, the clinician will need to evaluate the behavior very carefully closed.
For most personality disorders, including, but not limited to Narcissistic Personality disorder, Histrionic, and Borderline, the clinician will need to evaluate the intentions or motives of the person seeking attention. Motives, intentions, and the general goals of anyone seeking attention should be the primary indicators that someone is seeking attention is trying to make up for, or satisfy a character-logical deficit. I am suggesting that if the motive is clear, the intention purposeful, and the aim is to gain others’ attention. Then, satisfy an individual’s thirst and make up for their shorting comings or lack of insight into an interpersonal situation gone awry then beware.
In terms of NPD, the reason or rationale for seeking attention is probably, first and foremost, to satisfy a personal deficit in self-worth or self-esteem. For people carrying a diagnosis of Histrionic personality disorder, the aim is creating hysteria to mask whatever set of bad decisions or personal choices occur or require concealing and hiding to shift the focus to something more benign and innocuous. In terms of patients carrying a borderline diagnosis, the attention-seeking behaviors are aimed at splitting and causing such chaos around them, that the ability to take ownership or accountability takes a backseat to the clinician focusing primarily on the week’s crisis.
Nevertheless, these diagnoses are not the only ones in which attention-seeking behavior is by the patients who carry the mental health disorder. Thus, patients with personality disorders are primarily attributed to enacting attention-seeking behaviors above other less performative. We, as clinicians and friends of people carrying a mental health diagnosis, need to remember why? From an epidemiological standpoint, diagnoses are merely the markers of the incidence and distribution of symptoms in patients. From a mental health perspective, we clinicians and friends need to remember all humans seek behavior at different levels, even at cross-purposes, and always to connect with other people fundamentally. While this should be a given axiom in mental health, it is not! Only when these behaviors create extreme distress, for the person exhibiting or displaying the behavior, and the people in their social world is truly diagnosable and problematic.
As stated before, mastering grabbing the attention of peers and other colleagues is simple. After going through such extreme lengths to capture attention, and experiencing the police show up at the door. Rigor, persistence, and aim were so alarming and off the mark in terms of purpose that everyone was puzzled. Again, this is when attention-seeking goes awry. Over the years, since this writer has been in mental health and learning to scale back, and generally decrease the intensity and viability of behaviors. This writer is very good at gaining a peers’ attention without making it clear as day from when I began to enter the social scene.
As a society, we have begun to truly mark, identify those seeking attention, and shame them for such behaviors. Not entirely sure this is the right path or the best way to handle such behaviors. Collectively, we need to make it clear that such behavior is unwelcome, unwarranted, and not necessarily appropriate. We give the person seeking such behavior precisely what they are looking for when displaying such untoward or visibly obnoxious scenes.
I believe people need to take a more psychologically sound and driven approach when putting the blinders up. Actively ignoring and minimizing or better yet, making it clear through our body language and words, these sorts of displays are ineffective in capturing our attention and keeping it.
I was asked to write down three things I cannot live without on a piece of scrap paper for a seminar on interpretation.
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