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Something occurring to me (ought to have thought of this before) has to do with our orienting instinct: we automatically attempt to orient ourselves in our environment and find out where we are and what we need to do. When that instinct is threatened we react with lots of panic. Think of yourself being disoriented and dumped in a dark room where you can’t see and don’t know where you are or where the furniture is or such. Your client must find great comfort when you show up, knows it’s you, and what is going to take place during the day.
It seems to me severe Alzheimer’s patients are in worse shape, when you show up they don’t even know it’s you, they don’t even know it’s them, they don’t know where they are, just a jumbled set of signals with no meaning shooting through broken neural pathways, complete disorientation. They are often in highly agitated states. Finally, their internal organ systems start to shut down because they aren’t being properly regulated. Like the poem says which more reflects the onset, “Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.”
On of my cousins husband has Alzheimer’s. It came on very quickly about 3 years ago (he’s mid-60s now) when they moved to Phoenix from Alaska where they had lived for years running a small fishing lodge (they only got electricity in the mid-90s). He first developed a major case of PTSD (relating back to Vietnam), and then the Alzheimer’s. My wife and I think that his living situation in Alaska (very routine, know what to do every day, no real surprises) acted as a buffer holding off the PTSD until the sudden change of finding himself in a large city in a hot climate. The comfort balance between routine and flexibility seem very different for different people.
Like we have said before, this forum has a wealth of knowledge and experience, I just thought I would tap into that and see if it threw any light on how best to help this man. We do have methods of working and we have the does and don’t set out by Clinical Psychologists, but they never bother to discuss the real issues with us plebs.
I’m curious, Martin. Do the therapies include the man touching another person (and perhaps various animals) with both hands, feeling over the face, perhaps the entire body, and in turn himself so that he can possibly learn to identify different people as blind training may entail and also understand his similarities as an identifiable human being and the differences between individuals and other species? Does he have this knowledge already?
I’m curious, Martin. Do the therapies include the man touching another person (and perhaps various animals) with both hands, feeling over the face, perhaps the entire body, and in turn himself so that he can possibly learn to identify different people as blind training may entail and also understand his similarities as an identifiable human being and the differences between individuals and other species? Does he have this knowledge already?
This gentleman is nearly forty now, he lives with his parents still and has a fairly tactile relationship with his mother. He does associate his mother with kindness and comfort but I’m unsure because of the learning difficulty what or who he would perceive her to be. Having no language to explain to him, it is quite possible that he thinks everyone is like he is, blind and deaf and having no language.
Were we in his position but without a learning difficulty we would consider that our own curiosity would make us investigate our surroundings etc, like Helen Keller did, but because of his damaged brain it is so hard to properly evaluate him. Also there is a reluctance on his part to cooperate in anything new, we do bring dogs, rabbits and other animals into his environment and he will gently but firmly push them away, the only real violence he shows is to anyone who he must deem responsible for altering his safe world to any great degree.
Some things are unavoidable, like respite care to relieve his parents for a week or so. He will usually go on hunger strike and undress, along with a few other unsavoury behaviours as a protest.
The thing that disturbed me about Jay’s question the most is not the question itself, but the rather malicious and cynical way it was expressed.
Yes, JayD can tend to paint with broad strokes, can’t he? One wonders which geographical regions are good and which bad for JayD. But not for long, of course.
Early-20th-century psychiatrists promoted euthanasia for people who are deemed to be unfit for life. If I remember my reading, the Nazis drew for their philosophy on the enthusiasm of American psychiatrists in this regard. In my opinion, regions that are economically stable need to help rather than kill the retarded, insane, epileptic, crippled, etc. (How do you like my politically improper word choices?) But humanity has a history of infanticide when economic conditions don’t allow for the luxury of such care which can be extraordinarily expensive, though it became considerably more affordable—at least in California—after the Lanterman Act came about which almost emptied out the massively large/massively expensive facilities that once housed most people with developmental disabilities. My home is able to care for two such residents for a little more than $100,000 per year. Many homes do it for considerably less, and funding arrives according to staffing needs of the residents. Social workers seek what they refer to as “least restrictive environments” that their consumers are able to handle, and my home is highly restrictive. Schooling and medical care add another $50,000 or more to the tally, depending on the health needs of the individual. Pre-Lanterman costs were $250,000-per-year on average. That’s a lot higher than now, not even accounting for inflation, but it’s still not cheap by any means.
The “Charitable Foundation for Curative and Institutional Care” set up by Hitler was responsible for 200,000 physically or mentally handicapped people killed by medication, starvation, or in the gas chambers.
His “Euthanasia decree” stated:-
‘Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. med. Brandt are charged with the responsibility of enlarging the competence of certain physicians, designated by name, so that patients who, on the basis of human judgement [menschlichem Ermessen], are considered incurable, can be granted mercy death [Gnadentod] after a discerning diagnosis.
The thing that disturbed me about Jay’s question the most is not the question itself, but the rather malicious and cynical way it was expressed.
Yes, JayD can tend to paint with broad strokes, can’t he? One wonders which geographical regions are good and which bad for JayD. But not for long, of course.
Early-20th-century psychiatrists promoted euthanasia for people who are deemed to be unfit for life. If I remember my reading, the Nazis drew for their philosophy on the enthusiasm of American psychiatrists in this regard. In my opinion, regions that are economically stable need to help rather than kill the retarded, insane, epileptic, crippled, etc. (How do you like my politically improper word choices?) But humanity has a history of infanticide when economic conditions don’t allow for the luxury of such care which can be extraordinarily expensive, though it became considerably more affordable—at least in California—after the Lanterman Act came about which almost emptied out the massively large/massively expensive facilities that once housed most people with developmental disabilities. My home is able to care for two such residents for a little more than $100,000 per year. Many homes do it for considerably less, and funding arrives according to staffing needs of the residents. Social workers seek what they refer to as “least restrictive environments” that their consumers are able to handle, and my home is highly restrictive. Schooling and medical care add another $50,000 or more to the tally, depending on the health needs of the individual. Pre-Lanterman costs were $250,000-per-year on average. That’s a lot higher than now, not even accounting for inflation, but it’s still not cheap by any means.
Isn’t the most scientific, humane and cost-effective solution to pre-emptively eradicate these conditions through genetic testing and abortion? Is there scientific data to back up JayD’s second assertion concerning the UK?
I was pleased that no one mocked me for my “Somehow…there has to be good in mental affliction…” comments. Later in the day, I realized that I am reluctant to face the ugly truth about suffering, which is that it is often senseless and destructive. I wonder if a hunger for optimism is a particularly “American” trait. I think it is….influenced by the youth of our nation, our affluence, and…yup… our Protestant heritage. Yes, there are crucifixtions….but there is always the Resurrection and Heaven! I wish a few Buddhists had immigrated here instead of all those Puritans & Pilgrims. The “LIfe is Suffering” concept is much more realistic than the “every cloud has a silver lining” stuff, even though that is implicit in Buddhism, I suppose.
Whatever. I’m not going to change. Even in a hurricane, I will keep looking for that damned silver lining. If I think about the world in any other way, I will get too depressed.
I apologize for changing the subject.
I can’t figure out my own consciousness, so wondering what reality is like for a severely mentally handicapped person is difficult. I guess I think of them as sort of floating around in NOW.
Sometimes I am envious of my special needs student because she never worries. Before the hurricane in September, I was racing around trying to prepare her house as well as my own for the oncoming storm. We bought provisions, candles. etc. but she just didn’t “get” that she was supposed to be concerned. She certainly knew what a hurricane was, but she assumed she’d be safe amd taken care of….which she was. She was more excited about the pre-cooked hotdogs that I placed in her refrigerator than anything else.
I wish a few Buddhists had immigrated here instead of all those Puritans & Pilgrims.
Too bad anybody came over. Native American Indians were doing just fine, and I’d be in Sicily right now. God forbid I’d be a Catholic ... probably an Atheist Mafioso.
Answerer: Too bad anybody came over. Native American Indians were doing just fine, and I’d be in Sicily right now. God forbid I’d be a Catholic ... probably an Atheist Mafioso.
Imo, Native Americans have been way-over romanticized. Some of them were wonderful, but some of them were awful and killed and enslaved thousands, esp. those vicious heart-eating Aztecs.
Martin, although Nhoj hasn’t met your client, I agree with your opinion that he’ll have something salient to say, assuming he finds the time. I’ve come to the conclusion that he needs to go on a lecture tour, teaching interested people how to communicate in Nhoj-speak.
I assume that your client is not able to digest verbal information very well and therefore really has no motivation to ponder how big the world is or much about how things work, etc. That’s just my very limited guess, though.
Saralynn, nothing wrong with excessive optimism. If we’re fortunate enough to have brains able to manufacture the necessary chemicals for such a mood-related cognitive attribute, our happiness and survival capacity seem to thrive on such nonsense.
Although I have nothing more than a wild guess about Martin’s client’s interior, I’ll relate a story about one of my residents, Angie. (You got my year-end report, didn’t you? So you know her somewhat, already.) Angie, who has severe autism, finds herself surrounded by gadgets and devices that are nothing short of miraculous and magical to her, I have to assume. The world these days is an amazing place, as we pull in information from our computers, receive driving instructions from an electronic voice nestled against the car’s windshield, and on and on. Well, Angie went about testing the apparent God-like power of Google one day a few weeks ago. It brings to mind some of the experiments that have been done with autism that explore the child’s understanding of the world and what sorts of things are hidden from his/her view.
It started with Angie asking me to read to her from her illustrated children’s dictionary, and she opened to the first page. One of the words was “accident,” accompanied by a drawing of a tipped-over bicycle on some gravel with a child next to it lying on his side. After we finished reading the page, she walked to one of her white marker boards and wrote in her beautiful printing, “bike accident Angie home.” We both looked at what she wrote and I read it out loud to her, which she likes for me to do. Later on she went outside, took her bike from its parking spot to the gravel driveway and set the bike down with a little bit of scraping, and seemed to lean down next to the toppled bike. It was dark out and difficult to see, but I knew she was up to something though I had no idea what. She then returned her bike to where it belonged, came back inside and went to the computer and googled “bike accident Angie home.”
I don’t know what she expected to find, but nothing of interest to her arrived reporting on her bike accident scene, and she went about her business. I suspect she wasn’t surprised, but apparently did at least feel enough curiosity to check out the power of Google. She also joked about the incident a couple of times later, for instance dropping a box of cookies to the floor and writing “Cookie accident,” then laughing.
Interesting, NV. Sounds like Angie had some idea that google magically knew things, maybe everything, and that it would know about her ‘accident’. I think we might have a lot to learn about ourselves by studying autism.
Answerer: Too bad anybody came over. Native American Indians were doing just fine, and I’d be in Sicily right now. God forbid I’d be a Catholic ... probably an Atheist Mafioso.
Imo, Native Americans have been way-over romanticized. Some of them were wonderful, but some of them were awful and killed and enslaved thousands, esp. those vicious heart-eating Aztecs.
Isn’t the most scientific, humane and cost-effective solution to pre-emptively eradicate these conditions through genetic testing and abortion? . . .
Yes, but autism has yet to be described and categorized with anything approaching completeness. It’s in the works but meanwhile, doctors can’t even predict at age 3 whether an autistic child will turn out to be a Temple Grandin or a drain on society’s resources. I don’t know about other conditions, but I agree with your overall sentiment, Answerer.
Isn’t the most scientific, humane and cost-effective solution to pre-emptively eradicate these conditions through genetic testing and abortion? . . .
Yes, but autism has yet to be described and categorized with anything approaching completeness. It’s in the works but meanwhile, doctors can’t even predict at age 3 whether an autistic child will turn out to be a Temple Grandin or a drain on society’s resources. I don’t know about other conditions, but I agree with your overall sentiment, Answerer.
Well, it’s a goal, and reason enough, research, that is, for prevention and cures, not to put to death special needs children/people that can have some measureable quality of life, although difficult but not totally miserable. What else do we have better to do while we’re waiting for Andromeda to collide with Milky Way?
Answerer: Too bad anybody came over. Native American Indians were doing just fine, and I’d be in Sicily right now. God forbid I’d be a Catholic ... probably an Atheist Mafioso.
Imo, Native Americans have been way-over romanticized. Some of them were wonderful, but some of them were awful and killed and enslaved thousands, esp. those vicious heart-eating Aztecs.
Here’s the concluding paragraph from the article by John Horgan in the URL above:
The Arawak and Wampanoag were kind to us—and by us I mean people of European descent. We showed our thanks by sickening, subjugating and slaughtering them. And we have the gall to call them more savage than us.
There is no doubt that the native Americans were warriors and certainly killed one another before the Europeans arrived. And of course the Mayans, the Incas, and the Aztecs had their own cruel and immoral traditions, but as the book “1491” clearly states, in the early 1500s the natives of Europe were far, far more cruel, vicious, and war-like than their “brothers” in the Western hemisphere. In the 16th century there are historical proofs of many cities and towns in Europe where the total populations were massacred in the name of the Holy Roman Empire. And this was not just eating the still beating heart of a sacrificial youth at an annual ritual to the great spirits, but the most atrocious killings: like live persons being pulled apart by their limbs (drawn & quartered) by horses, people by the thousands burned at the stake, people skinned alive, tongues cut off, limbs chopped off, heads beaten to a pulp . . . I mean, think of the worst and most horrific ways to die? Eyes gouged out, ears bled by daggers, genitals evicerated, this is the actual history of 16th century christian Europe! But oh those American Indians - they were savage beasts!
And this might sound like a romanticised notion, but the influence of the Arawak and the Wampanoag reached France and England when in the 17th century some of the chiefs toured the European capitals and visited with the elite and the educated in those nations. And they passed on the principles of their societies and their political systems, their morality and their humanity to the emerging French Philosophes (think of Voltaire, Diderot, etc.). And the American founding fathers were also greatly influenced by the new and egalitarian notions of the Native American cultures. Some of the “great new ideas” in the American constitution are directly borrowed from the structure of human life on this continent before the arrival of the bloodthirsty theists from across the Atlantic. (Whoa, what a rant!)
Not a rant. Thanks for the history lesson, zen. saralynn’s romanticism would be charming if she adopted her relative’s (Walt Whitman) acceptance of everything as good (except that of a “mean man”) instead of vascillation and nullification.
Martin, although Nhoj hasn’t met your client, I agree with your opinion that he’ll have something salient to say, assuming he finds the time. I’ve come to the conclusion that he needs to go on a lecture tour, teaching interested people how to communicate in Nhoj-speak.
I assume that your client is not able to digest verbal information very well and therefore really has no motivation to ponder how big the world is or much about how things work, etc. That’s just my very limited guess, though.
Saralynn, nothing wrong with excessive optimism. If we’re fortunate enough to have brains able to manufacture the necessary chemicals for such a mood-related cognitive attribute, our happiness and survival capacity seem to thrive on such nonsense.
Although I have nothing more than a wild guess about Martin’s client’s interior, I’ll relate a story about one of my residents, Angie. (You got my year-end report, didn’t you? So you know her somewhat, already.) Angie, who has severe autism, finds herself surrounded by gadgets and devices that are nothing short of miraculous and magical to her, I have to assume. The world these days is an amazing place, as we pull in information from our computers, receive driving instructions from an electronic voice nestled against the car’s windshield, and on and on. Well, Angie went about testing the apparent God-like power of Google one day a few weeks ago. It brings to mind some of the experiments that have been done with autism that explore the child’s understanding of the world and what sorts of things are hidden from his/her view.
It started with Angie asking me to read to her from her illustrated children’s dictionary, and she opened to the first page. One of the words was “accident,” accompanied by a drawing of a tipped-over bicycle on some gravel with a child next to it lying on his side. After we finished reading the page, she walked to one of her white marker boards and wrote in her beautiful printing, “bike accident Angie home.” We both looked at what she wrote and I read it out loud to her, which she likes for me to do. Later on she went outside, took her bike from its parking spot to the gravel driveway and set the bike down with a little bit of scraping, and seemed to lean down next to the toppled bike. It was dark out and difficult to see, but I knew she was up to something though I had no idea what. She then returned her bike to where it belonged, came back inside and went to the computer and googled “bike accident Angie home.”
I don’t know what she expected to find, but nothing of interest to her arrived reporting on her bike accident scene, and she went about her business. I suspect she wasn’t surprised, but apparently did at least feel enough curiosity to check out the power of Google. She also joked about the incident a couple of times later, for instance dropping a box of cookies to the floor and writing “Cookie accident,” then laughing.
Yes NV, I think Nhoj could possibly see which parts of this mans cognition didn’t function because of sensory deprivation and what possible effect that would have.
This bloke is deaf and blind so has no comprehension of language as we know it. I can do the deaf/blind sign for toilet on his chest, or the sign for walk on his leg and because of repetition he does respond. He is autistic in the most but can be very loving and cuddles me quite tightly when I help him with his coat, but not always I must add.
I like your story about Angie, it just reinforces the fact that we can’t completely predict how these folk see the world, she must see google as if it’s a self writing history book that updates as events unfold, that’s very interesting.
Isn’t the most scientific, humane and cost-effective solution to pre-emptively eradicate these conditions through genetic testing and abortion? Is there scientific data to back up JayD’s second assertion concerning the UK?
Yes, the data is, in the UK (of which unfortunately I’m a citizen) euthanasia is illegal, they promote torture by taking painstaking and zealous measures to stop prisoners committing suicide. and they keep people in comas alive indefinitely even though there’s a good chance that many of these people are conscious and are trapped inside their own bodies (and possibly in a state of constant physical agony as well).
It doesn’t matter, because the sole interest of the ruling class in the UK is in looking nice and fluffy.
So, I had a similar thought as Jay. Wouldn’t it be better if these people were killed at birth or soon thereafter? Trust me….I didn’t WANT to have this thought. It’s Nazi-ish and disturbing.
Socialism is also associated with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Does that mean you have to give up all your left wing politics?
Perhaps you should learn what an argument is instead of basing your opinions on gut feelings.
