Preventing, Predicting, & Dismantling Problems Ahead
Asking yourself: “What issues seem to pop up consistently?”
Asking yourself: “What issues seem to pop up consistently?”
hen the worker finds him or herself front and center in the life of the client. Becoming the object of their desire and madness, emotions and even feelings of safety become subsumed into the client’s new playground.
Either we disband every manual out there in mental health, or we must only use the DSM-5
I once understood levels of care as abstractions when sifting through a clinical grey area. I now understand each of these precious stops in the system of care as levels of hope.
So, I was just reading an article by Neesa Suncheuri called: How My Schizoaffective Disorder Helps Me Help Others In this article, the author likens the side effects (no pun intended) of not working and responding to the impact of paralyzing mental health symptoms as a strength. This […]
Planning for the future means knowing what went wrong and why,?
The peer world is divided. Okay, so that’s not news. Either are the divisions within the mental health community on how to best advocate and push for better health care. However, are we really as divided as it seems? Or are we overlooking fundamentally important aspects about providing […]
The next step in Contesting Admission seemed rather obvious to me. Pummel the English Department into submission. In the words of President George W. Bush, this will be “shock and awe”. The plan was simple. Bombard the department with paperwork over all kinds. Inundating them with busy work […]
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.
Preface The Revisionist describes events I experienced beginning in 2008, the year that I graduated from college at New England University. However, the actual writing began shortly after the completion of Small Fingernails Even Less Love, which chronicles the impact of my mental health condition on events leading […]
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 […]
My perception was shifting everyday. At first the shift was gradual, eventually dramatically altered. The community appeared different. People seemed to behave differently and have different motives. All I wanted was to connect with the changing world around me in Liberty. This was increasingly difficult to do when […]
As a clinical social worker, I am always interested in the level of care abstraction that defines systems in medical and mental health facilities. As a person who has had more hospitalizations than he can remember, I have learned how to navigate and understand the systems of care […]
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 […]
When you carry a mental health diagnosis, you are in almost constant fear of relapsing. Whether you have a chronic long standing condition, or are suffering from a new diagnosis, the fear of symptoms re-activating, or worsening, is real problem for those of us that suffer from mental […]
When you carry a mental health diagnosis, you are in almost constant fear of relapsing
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’ve said it before and I will say it again. I am an overweight Jewish man from New York State with an active schizophrenia diagnosis. I have been committed to involuntary treatment numerous times for different length of stays at both local and state psychiatric hospitals across New […]
I was asked to write down three things I cannot live without on a piece of scrap paper for a seminar on interpretation.
Sometimes, school crises erupt on college campus’s unexpectedly. Other times, there is a slow build up of tension before the crescendo. The crescendo can be violence, hate speech, or any number of plausible incidents that can manifest on a college campus. Ten years ago in Binghamton, I was […]
There is very little myself or anyone knows about the life or even whereabouts of Dr. H today. I can only speak for ten years ago. And very little information, even from back then, explains how Dr. H became so involved in my life, friends, family, academic life, […]
I have said before that there is no universal way or signified to capturing or expressing in words the experience of psychosis. I might have been wrong about this claim. All of this depends on your definition of capture, and experience, to really inquire into the validity of […]
I have witnessed the most obscene, ornate, loud, and grandest displays from people I work with both clients and colleagues. Center-staging isn’t just about the magnitude and lengths gone through to create a circus around him or her. Instead, it is the seductive pull and mystique about enacting […]
Psychosis is experienced by people carrying its active constellation of corresponding and altogether unique symptoms differently. At different times, along a spectrum, psychosis symptoms exist in a dark harmony, sometimes feeding off one another, and sometimes, working in complete isolation. The spectrum intensifies in many cases over time […]
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