Tag Archives | Insanity

Ricin Mailer Believed He Was Exposing Illegal Organ Harvesting Conspiracy

By on April 23, 2013 in News 0

ricin mailerMississippi man Kevin Curtis was arrested last week after mailing letters containing the deadly poison ricin to Barack Obama and Mississippi senator Roger Wicker. Buzzfeed reveals what may be the bizarre inspiration for the plot — it would seem that for years, the hospital janitor and Elvis impersonator has been attempting to wage war against a global organ-snatching conspiracy involving the highest levels of government:

[Curtis's] writings document “the actions of…a secret shadow government in which I feel have been put into place by higher powers to be in order to hide the truth behind the illegal organ harvesting market which I began investigating in 2000.”

Curtis  wrote on Facebook:

I’m on the hidden front lines of a secret war. A war that is making Billions of dollars for corrupt mafia related organizations and people. (bone, tissue, organ, body parts harvesting black market) when we lay our loved ones to rest….we hope and pray their bodies are not violated but I am here to tell you, as long as the bone, tissue & organ harvesting indu$try is NOT REGULATED….on any level(s) whether it be local, state, federal or national………..your loved ones body parts are NOT $AFE.

… Read the rest

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Things That Could Get You Locked Up In A Nineteenth-Century Insane Asylum

By on March 29, 2013 in News 0

What makes someone a menace to the world? The Knitting Genealogist on reasons given for why people were committed to the Retreat, a progressive asylum two hundred years ago:

Whilst researching, I was fascinated by the reasons people were certified and admitted to the asylum. On admission, patients had already been ‘certified’ and these certificates were placed in the Admission records. A common reason for admission was “Religious melancholy” or simply “Religion”. Here are just a handful of the most interesting answers, from the 1820s:

“A violent attachment to a female not approved by his friends.”

“Perhaps attending overmuch to business.”

“By fright, caused by a man (unknown) getting into his Lodging room, secreting himself under some Linen in a corner of the room, and after about five weeks after this he was attacked with the first fit…”

“A tedious confinement with an affected family”.

“Suppose a fear of not being able to pay his just debts owing to the depression of the times”.

… Read the rest

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Aurora Shooter Could Be Given ‘Truth Serum’ To Establish His Insanity

By on March 15, 2013 in News 29

Instances of the age-old sodium pentothal technique in the criminal justice system is exceedingly rare. Could its possible use to get inside the mind of this high-profile mass killer kick off a trend? Via the New York Times:

The defendant in the Aurora theater shooting can be given “truth serum” if he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity, the judge in the case said Monday. James E. Holmes also could be given a polygraph examination as part of an evaluation to determine if he was legally insane at the time of the July 20 shootings.

Judge William Sylvester approved the use of a “narcoanalytic interview,” a decades-old process in which patients are given drugs to reduce their inhibitions. The prospect of such an interview alarmed defense lawyers, who filed documents opposing the technique. Mr. Holmes, 25, is charged with killing 12 people and wounding 70 at a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

… Read the rest

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If You Hear God You (Usually) Aren’t Crazy

By on December 31, 2012 in News 2

But then again you could be… Tanya Marie (“T.M.”) Luhrmann, a professor in the department of anthropology at Stanford University and author of “When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God,” explains at CNN:

In the Bible, God spoke directly to Abraham. He spoke directly to Moses. He spoke directly to Job. But to your neighbor down the street?

Most people reading the ancient scriptures understand these accounts of hearing God’s voice as miracles that really did happen but no longer take place today, or maybe as folkloric flourishes to ancient stories. Even Christians who believe that miracles can be an everyday affair can hesitate when someone tells them they heard God speak audibly. There’s an old joke: When you talk to God, we call it prayer, but when God talks to you, we call it schizophrenia.

Except that usually it’s not.

Hearing a voice when alone, or seeing something no one else can see, is pretty common.

… Read the rest

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We Are All Susceptible To Delusions

By on July 26, 2012 in News 11

Former psychologist Frank Tallis on “monosymptomatic delusion” — in which an otherwise sane person latches onto one big outlandish idea. It is possibly responsible for both demonic possession and falling in love. Via New Scientist:

Once a patient came in and said: “I am possessed by a demon.” This guy wasn’t insane, he wasn’t schizophrenic – he just had this particular belief. In my day we called it “monosymptomatic delusion”, but now it would be called something like “delusional disorder”. That’s when you’re completely sound and reasonable in every respect except you have one belief that is absolutely bonkers.

You have to have an openness to it. Lots of people are open to all kinds of spiritual and magical beliefs. An individual could have a perfectly harmless interest in the supernatural but then something happens that triggers this delusion and they get stuck with it, reinforcing it by piling up one misinterpretation after another.

… Read the rest

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Most People With A Mental Disorder Are Happy

By on May 23, 2012 in News 8

headA reminder that “normal” does not necessarily equal “happy”. Via BPS Research Digest:

It’s easy for us to slip into all-or-nothing mindsets. An example would be: a person has some psychological problems so their life must be miserable. But that’s a mistaken assumption. So argue a team of Dutch positive psychologists, who’ve studied over seven thousand people over a three year period.

Yes, those participants with a psychological disorder were less happy than those without, but the majority (68.4 per cent) of the mentally troubled said they “often felt happy” during the preceding four weeks. “The possibility of coexisting happiness and mental disorders is of clinical relevance,” write Ad Bergsma and his team. “A narrow focus on what goes wrong in the lives of the client and forgetting what goes well, may limit therapeutic results.”

… Read the rest

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Is One Out Of Ten Wall Street Workers A Psychopath?

By on March 2, 2012 in News 30

MCDAMPS EC020With clinical psychopaths dramatically overrepresented in finance, one can only assume that mentally healthy workers must learn to imitate psychopathic behavior to remain employed. Via the Huffington Post:

One out of every 10 Wall Street employees is likely a clinical psychopath, writes the trade publication CFA Magazine. In the general population the rate is closer to one out of every 100.

Journalist Sherree DeCovny pulls together research from several psychologists for her story, which helpfully suggests that financial firms carefully screen out extreme psychopaths in hiring.

A clinical psychopath is bright and charming, writes DeCovny. He lies easily, and may have trouble feeling empathy for other people. He’s more willing to take dangerous risks…the outcomes matter less than the gambles themselves — and the chemical rush of serotonin and endorphins that accompanies them.

This is hardly the first time that mental illness has been equated with a certain capacity for professional success — especially in the financial sector, where some stock traders have actually scored higher than diagnosed psychopaths on tests that measure competitiveness and attraction to risk.

… Read the rest

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Confessions Of A Serial Killer Groupie

By on February 20, 2012 in News 0

A look at the strange boundaries of love from First Person, a briefly ran, ten-year-old television series created by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, featuring interviews with notorious and strange people. Sandra London describes her idyllic days spent in high school and going steady with a serial sex killer, which lead to several decades of similar romantic obsession:

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How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy

By on February 10, 2012 in News 49

catnapIs a microscopic, mind-altering parasite spread by cats responsible for car accidents, hoarding behaviors, and schizophrenia? Respected scientists are now saying that “crazy cat lady” disease is real and millions of people are infected. Shocker from Kathleen McAuliffe in the Atlantic:

Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia?

The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis — the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease to the fetus, in some cases resulting in severe brain damage or death.

… Read the rest

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Color Preferences Of The Insane

By on December 6, 2011 in News 11

colorwheelDoes a shift towards favoring yellow, and then orange, occur among the mentally disturbed? This was the finding of an admittedly questionable 1931 study on the link between aesthetic preference and insanity. (Purple must be beyond all reason.) Via Neatorama:

The year 1931 stands out in the history of research about insane people’s favorite colors. That summer, Siegfried E. Katz of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital published a study called “Color Preference in the Insane.” The full citation is:

“Color Preference in the Insane,” Siegfried E. Katz, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 26, no. 2, July 1931, pp. 203–11.

Assisted by a Dr. Cheney, Dr. Katz tested 134 hospitalized mental patients. For simplicity’s sake, he limited the testing to six colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. No black. No white. No shades of gray.

“These colors,” he wrote, “rectangular in shape, one and one-half inches square, cut from Bradley colored papers were pasted in two rows on a gray cardboard.

… Read the rest

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