Behavioral Health

[Stella_Omega]

MISMUSED

I concern myself with the silliness that gets posted HERE. The DMS4 group can take care of itself.

Richard Feynman made an observation thats relevant here. He revealed that when participants in a dicussion dont know shit, and know they dont know shit, the discussion remains pleasant and harmonious. Because no one knows enough to have an opinion or disagree. When people do know what theyre talking about the discussion becomes dramatic.

Is that what you think is happening here?
Pretty funny, dude.

 

[impressive]

IMPRESSIVE

If you have some personal information about my virility please share it with us.

I feel so sorry for those who have to interact with you on a regular basis. I pray you don't have children, and if you do, that they are wise enough to seek their own knowledge rather than relying on yours.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

IMPRESSIVE

I have 4 children and 9 grandchildren. Each of them has been programmed to mate with your children.

Are you kidding? There are a couple of people here who spend more time on my MySpace page than I do.

 

[impressive]

IMPRESSIVE

I have 4 children and 9 grandchildren. Each of them has been programmed to mate with your children.

Please replace the following with the proper behavioral psych terminology:

EWWWWWW!

'Cause, like omigod, that's just WAY repulsive.

 

[Recidiva]

Please replace the following with the proper behavioral psych terminology:

EWWWWWW!

'Cause, like omigod, that's just WAY repulsive.

I'm totally going to MySpace to blog that bit of ew on a cracker.

Beyond that, though...in the interest of clarifying the areas of science from behavior...

Feynman dealt with physics. Fewer variables. Behavioral science is a bit like predicting the weather - hard, inaccurate. Feynman knew the uncertainty principle and the fact that you can't know specifics, only probabilities when dealing with one element in a chaotic system, that can't be slowed down or stopped to study it.

Behavioral health and observation are very different things from setting up an experiment to determine if light is a particle or a wave. Especially when you have experiments that can prove that both of these states appear to be true depending on the conditions you set on the experiment.

Dealing with bunches of matter is very different from dealing with bunches of emotions and situations that are in constant flux, and subject to death.

But Feynman's attitude regarding recognizing reality as it is, and not as you find it easiest to be, still stands.

I pick Oliver Sachs for my team.

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[Recidiva]

I {{{{{{{ }}}}}}} the Diva.

And I'm putting the new resident a**hole on ignore. I won't tolerate a complete idiot. The incompleted one we have is more than enough.

I have a clean ignore list.

I go in a cycle, I come to Lit lookin' for abnormal psychology (underachiever or overachiever) - when they start to annoy me I tend to put them on ignore to extend my visit.

But then I get so bored I wander off.

I'm still firmly in the "amused" state. When I lose that, I leave.

 

[Stella_Omega]

IMPRESSIVE

I have 4 children and 9 grandchildren. Each of them has been programmed to mate with your children.

Attaboy, you sure showed her!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

STELLA OMEGA

What? You lonesome or sumthin?

 

[Edward Teach]

However, it alarms me that someone with an unrelated degree can be hired, run through what amounts to a day-long training session, and then be considered "qualified" to assess a child's behavior, develop a behavior plan, and train direct care staff on the implementation of that behavior plan. Seriously. The people filling positions like the one I now hold are considered "experts" -- and they could know JACK SQUAT. They could be perpetuating -- or even instigating -- behavior problems due to complete ignorance, and it's completely legitimate in the sense that all regulatory requirements are being met.

Scary. Very scary.

Part Two: The Pondering

There is plenty of available research on positive versus negative reinforcement, and the prevailing wisdom is that positive is more effective in the long term. Makes sense to me. Still, the prevalence of people who've been conditioned to roll-over-sit-stay-speak to what amounts to emotional assault just boggles my mind.

Oh, well. I'm rambling now. Feel free to share your thoughts on the subject(s).

Negatilve begets negative and positive begets positive. Enough negative reinforcement will make a person psychotic and enough pain will make them docile.

 

[rgraham666]

Enough negative reinforcement will make a person psychotic and enough pain will make them docile.

Worked for me. Especially the psychotic part.

 

[Edward Teach]

Worked for me. Especially the psychotic part.

Most of us, Rob. Most of us.

of course that's merely anecdotal

 

[Recidiva]

Negatilve begets negative and positive begets positive. Enough negative reinforcement will make a person psychotic and enough pain will make them docile.

I try to make a distinction that there's a difference between mad and maddened.

There is also a difference between hurt and harm.

Categorizing them separately and treating them separately with different tactics is part of nuance for me.

There are people who thrive in painful environments, the same way some folks thrive on challenge and adversity. Too much positive makes them feel restless and bored.

There are folks that thrive on only the positive. All negative is considered bad and it wilts them like a hothouse flower that missed their 8:00 watering.

Pressure can create obsidian and diamonds, cultured care can create orchids and Bonsai.

There's beauty to be obtained in nearly any environment. The problem comes when an orchid grows underground and can't adapt and a would-be diamond ends up lounging on the beach, feeling like a lump of coal.

 

[rgraham666]

There's beauty to be obtained in nearly any environment. The problem comes when an orchid grows underground and can't adapt and a would-be diamond ends up lounging on the beach, feeling like a lump of coal.

The best book I ever read on how to run a business rejected the manufacturing paradigm used to run most companies and suggested a gardening paradigm instead. "Look after your people and you'll be astonished what they'll accomplish," he wrote.

I believe he is right. And that concept applies to more than just business.

Unfortunately such a paradigm is neither 'rational' nor 'efficient' and so will never be implemented.

 

[impressive]

I try to make a distinction that there's a difference between mad and maddened.

There is also a difference between hurt and harm.

Categorizing them separately and treating them separately with different tactics is part of nuance for me.

There are people who thrive in painful environments, the same way some folks thrive on challenge and adversity. Too much positive makes them feel restless and bored.

There are folks that thrive on only the positive. All negative is considered bad and it wilts them like a hothouse flower that missed their 8:00 watering.

Pressure can create obsidian and diamonds, cultured care can create orchids and Bonsai.

There's beauty to be obtained in nearly any environment. The problem comes when an orchid grows underground and can't adapt and a would-be diamond ends up lounging on the beach, feeling like a lump of coal.

Word.

 

[Recidiva]

The best book I ever read on how to run a business rejected the manufacturing paradigm used to run most companies and suggested a gardening paradigm instead. "Look after your people and you'll be astonished what they'll accomplish," he wrote.

I believe he is right. And that concept applies to more than just business.

Unfortunately such a paradigm is neither 'rational' nor 'efficient' and so will never be implemented.

I think this is the basic failing of those who want an easy answer.

The "tabula rasa" idea that children are born blank slates that are filled by their environment to me is a complete fallacy. My children had personalities in the womb, at birth, completely different from each other. Brain chemistry and genetics are infinitely more complicated than the theoretical vessel that you can empty or fill with your thought.

I like the gardening metaphor, because it acknowledges starting conditions. You just can't plant an African violet at the north pole and expect it to thrive. You can do what you can to understand the nature of as many plants and environments as you can, then try to narrow down what environment and goals work best for each plant/person, then provide it.

Some people are inherently going to need more of certain resources (silence, privacy, chaos, discipline, respect, leadership) than others, and none of them are going to bear their best fruit under identical conditions.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Dearest Imp and to all who follow in her footsteps,

I apologize first off for not being an over-inflated bag of wind, but a mere snack size baggie filled with confetti. I have no intentions of throwing about bits of terminology I have no use for, nor do I understand.

I'm here to applaud your efforts. Your life course changed and you took on the challenge and you decided not to be passive but someone who saw a need and decided to step in, not many would be able to walk in your shoes. I know I couldn't.

We need people like you who do CARE. I would bear your flag and the flag of anyone willing to take on the challenges that you take daily.

Keep on Keeping on Sister!

 

[feeeriek]

Dearest Imp and to all who follow in her footsteps,

I apologize first off for not being an over-inflated bag of wind, but a mere snack size baggie filled with confetti. I have no intentions of throwing about bits of terminology I have no use for, nor do I understand.

I'm here to applaud your efforts. Your life course changed and you took on the challenge and you decided not to be passive but someone who saw a need and decided to step in, not many would be able to walk in your shoes. I know I couldn't.

We need people like you who do CARE. I would bear your flag and the flag of anyone willing to take on the challenges that you take daily.

Keep on Keeping on Sister!

i you

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

RECIDIVA

You mean natural selection based on traits interacting with the environment.

 

[Recidiva]

RECIDIVA

You mean natural selection based on traits interacting with the environment.

You mean that you want to tell me what I mean.

I meant what I said, not what you heard.

"Natural selection" is a genetics term.

In autistic people behavior is often NOT affected by environment at all, nor does it select. It simply remains itself despite all input.

You might see examples of "fully functioning" people on the boards remaining themselves despite all input.

That is behavior.

Genes are keyed to the environment. They respond to environment or they fail. Behavior is keyed to the environment, it makes choices according to an environment, or it fails. When you care for someone with faulty behavior, you have to change the environment so they can survive in it as they are.

With the experience of autism, it suggests that brain chemistry and function can be more hard wired than you might expect, given that the norm is an expectation of adaptation.

When I recognized no adaptation, it gave me insight into the panorama of adaptation by choice, that I thought was "normal" because I took it for granted as being so.

Some of the normal choices are a great deal more aberrative than autism. Lots of "normal" behavior is not adaptive, it is destructive.

So I had to unlearn a great deal of what I thought of as natural and normal, before I could get to a place that made sense again, which explained hard wired behavior and its relationship to an emotional and physical environment.

Hard wired behavior is all around. "Choice" is a very relative concept. Some people have no more choice in their behavior than an autistic person does. Which reiterates why I believe that those who refuse to adapt to environments and expect their environments to adapt to them, are exhibiting social autism. And why I understand that they may have no choice in the matter. It's all in my perception of what I think "choice" is.

To compare the two, your attempts to help were entirely set back and burned out by your adaptation and choice to that environment. That's sane to you. You removed yourself from that environment.

To me, I had to become partially crazy, understand and forgive crazy, recognize it in myself and still function, in order to gain any compassion, enough to continue to want to survive and even thrive in an environment that made no sense to me according to "normal" expectations. I'm fine with doing what I need to do to get something done. I adapted to a "crazy" environment, and can still function and even thrive.

The main difference is that it IS my environment. I have no choice. I chose to stay alive, continue to do good, and find meaning and reward in it.

You adapted your way, I adapted mine. They're both equally valid, and to a large extent are apples and oranges.

I'm not telling you how to live in your environment. But I also am not going to take your advice about how to survive in mine, when it's inapplicable and leads straight to suicide and despair.

 

[mismused]

delete

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

RECIDIVA

The meaning of anything is the outcome you get. If you dont get the outcome you want change what you do.

If caretakers didnt exist natural selection would cull autism from the population.

My decision to leave mental health was based on marketers taking over the clinical decision making process. That is, it became obvious to me that my work was quickly degenerating to passing out cigarettes and awarding people gold stars. A clerk can do that. I was never a Care Bear to start with, and didnt get into mental health because I cared about people. I didnt care about them when I came or left.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

MISMUSED

Natural selection will kill you if your individual reality doesnt work.

 

[impressive]

If caretakers didnt exist natural selection would cull autism from the population.

"Experts" claim this about homosexuality, too.

 

[Recidiva]

RECIDIVA

The meaning of anything is the outcome you get. If you dont get the outcome you want change what you do.

If caretakers didnt exist natural selection would cull autism from the population.

My decision to leave mental health was based on marketers taking over the clinical decision making process. That is, it became obvious to me that my work was quickly degenerating to passing out cigarettes and awarding people gold stars. A clerk can do that. I was never a Care Bear to start with, and didnt get into mental health because I cared about people. I didnt care about them when I came or left.

Meaning to me is in the entire equation, not the outcome. I also recognize that meaning is not a stable thing, but symbolic, and as it is symbolic it's open to choice and interpretation.

If caretakers in the form of parents didn't exist, everyone would be culled. Which is why parents have to care for the helpless and the irritating and find meaning in it.

That's fine. It's like me saying I went to go play baseball because I wanted to make money. I didn't care about baseball, I didn't care about the fans, I don't "get" team sports. And ultimately I came to the determination that baseball was meaningless and I went to go open a bed and breakfast.

Your reasons for entering the field and staying and leaving are not "typical" or "productive" to those who love baseball and assign it meaning and purpose.