I read two interesting articles in the newspaper this morning. The first was about the original mass murderer, Howard Unruh, who in 1949 walked down a street in Camden, New Jersey, and killed 13 people in 20 minutes. Psychiatrists at the time tried to find out why he did it by giving him “truth serum.”
On Oct. 20, 1949, Camden County Court Judge Bartholomew A. Sheehan signed the final order of commitment for Unruh after a team of four psychiatrists classified him as a case of “dementia praecox, mixed type, with pronounced catatonic and paranoid coloring.”
In modern parlance, he was a paranoid schizophrenic, a classification that would appear again and again in Unruh’s records.
Read Inside the mind of a killer, on Philly.com.
The other article discusses an unintended consequence of many criminals receiving life sentences—a growing population of prisoners with dementia. The California Men’s Colony is teaching some inmates to care for the elderly prisoners—and they are succeeding.
Heriberto G. Sanchez, chief psychologist of the California Men’s Colony, said prisoners “were appreciative that someone from the outside world thought they could do this.” One wrote in an evaluation, “Thank you for allowing me to feel human.”
Read Life, with dementia, on NYTimes.com.
callmeathena
Sky,
I think your question to Oxy is a good one. You asked this:
”
I know that these PD’s and mental illnesses can be comorbid and that they can also contribute to crime. I was just asking if in YOUR PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE, you had ever encountered any person who was professionally diagnosed as schizophrenic but who did not appear TO YOU to have visual or auditory hallucinations.”
I understand that a SPLIT SELF contributes to both schitzophrenia and sociopathy. But I wonder where does one become one or the other. Where is the Y in the road? If both are issues of a split self, how does the spath become so much like the devil, and schitzophrenic is simply a split self.
?
Athena
skylar
Athena,
they are both “out of touch with reality” but it seems to be in different ways. The spath doesn’t hallucinate yet he has strange beliefs. AND he is often paranoid. The paranoia though is probably justified because he’s just watching his back from all the people he has screwed over.
Also, some of it is healthy paranoia, I think, because he KNOWS there are other spaths out there. Since I found out about spaths, whenever I take one of those online personality tests, the results come out a little paranoid. 😛
Before I knew about spaths, I lacked healthy paranoia.
Back_from_the_edge
skylar said it best:
“Mother issues and parasitical lifestyle are spath red flags. If I see someone doing that, along with bizarre behavior, I wouldn’t make fun of them. I’d move slowly toward the door.”
YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!!!!!
Giving yourself NO room to excuse their behavior.
Dupey
witsend
Sky,
No I don’t think he said anything that suggested that he was was crazy either. Yet technically the punishment he received wasn’t jail time. So back then they must have determined that he was crazy.
It would be interesting to see what the difference would be if this man went into the courtroom today.
Ana
Hhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c00xbrerRR8i LF Friends,
Here is a link I think you will find inspiring, at least I hope so. Blessings.
Ana
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c00xbrerRR8
Maybe this one will work!
skylar
A beautiful poignant song, sung with so much passion.
thank you Ana.
darwinsmom
Sky,
My cousin was medically diagnozed schizophrenic, but didn’t have hallucinations, neither auditory nor visually. The halluicination type is the most known form, because it’s so spectaculary strange… but it’s actually not the most common form.
But she had racing thoughts, delusions (in that she was out of touch with reality), apathy, poor affective contact (I witnessed this when I visited her with her newborn baby… proud like a queen to be a mom, but no affective connection to her son), highly disorganized, poor memory, would start a task and then end up doing somethign totaly different (going to buy food for the dog, but ended up going on some trip and left the animal by himself for 24 hours… which is why she was NEVER allowed to take her newborn son home with her). She could be violent at times. She hit my aunt couple of times severely.
In many ways it almost seems like a spath… but it was fear that made her violent if she was. She wasn’t actually mallicious.
Here’s a link to the symptoms
http://www.schizophrenia.com/diag.php#common
MiLo
PLEASE PRAY ~ 4 students at the school district next door to mine have just been shot, their conditions are unknown at this time. Grand’s school is in lock down.
We are a rural, safe community, this just does not happen here. Reports are that it was a student shooter.
MiLo
There were 5 students shot, 3 in critical condition. Student shooter is in custody.
Lockdown at Grand’s school is over. I am concerned as to where he was, because he was there early for band, then would have been walking to the school next door. It WAS NOT his school, but the district next door to ours.
The chopper is housed at the small airport in our town and Grand commented on it taking off when he and hubby passed.