Posted on 08/14/2007 7:07:09 AM PDT by SkyPilot
"When I was lying in my bed that night, I couldn’t sleep because my voice in my head kept echoing through my mind telling me to kill them."
You're reading the words of 12-year-old Christopher Pittman, struggling to explain why he murdered his grandparents, who had provided the only love and stability in his turbulent life. He was angry with his grandfather, who had disciplined him earlier that day for hurting another student during a fight on the school bus. So later that night, he shot both of his grandparents in the head with a .410 shotgun as they slept and then burned down their South Carolina home, where he had lived with them.
"I got up, got the gun, and I went upstairs and I pulled the trigger," he recalled. "Through the whole thing, it was like watching your favorite TV show. You know what is going to happen, but you can’t do anything to stop it."
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
In some ways, I can see God's purpose in the suffering, but only through the prism of years gone by. I was able to relate to other people I encountered in life with similar experiences of having a loved one so afflicted in ways that I could not possibly have done without going through it myself.
From the article:
In fact, we're popping so many SSRIs that their breakdown products in urine, gushing into waterways, have accumulated in fish tissues, raising concerns that aquatic animals may be getting toxic doses, according to recent research at Baylor University.
When we've gotten to the point of poisoning fish, you know we're talking about a lot of drugs. And that's counting only antidepressants. What about all the other types of psychiatric meds we consume, including the tens of millions of prescriptions for Ritalin and other controversial stimulants taken by children and adults diagnosed with ADD (or ADHD) – a condition that didn't even exist until the 1980s?
I see things and hear voices every night---when I'm asleep and in REM sleep. The mind manufactures very convincing experiences. Sometimes I remember my dreams. Are dreams demonic oppression? If not then why are a schizophrenics voices demonic in nature?
I've never seen a demon and don't know if they are any more real than alien greys portrayed on the X-files.
More likely with schizophrenia is that the brain goes on dreaming when the subject is awake and he can't tell the difference between reality sensory input and the dreams or is confused about which is which. I sure believed my dreams were real when I dreampt them. Sometimes after I wode up, I wished they were.
Occassionally I have a lucid dream, I realized I am dreaming while dreaming. Maybe lucid dreaming is the reverse of schizophrenia and schizophrenia is the inability to realize you are dreaming when wide awake.
Could be. But if that was the case, wouldn't the "voices" be more disorganized and garbled? It seems very strange to me that schizophrenics report the voices as being uniformly and persistently malicious.
How many schizophrenics think that they're being followed around by a big bunny in comparison to the number that are urged by voices to harm themselves?
One of my professors explained recently that he been been doing some personal research into the effects of anti-depression drugs on young people. It appears that depression runs in his family and he’s had to deal with it. I don’t remember the details, but he said that these drugs work in layers and one of these layers inhibited/removed inhibitations and did so in a different order in kids than it did in adults. So these kids had inhibitations removed before the depression was improved, thus making it more likely that they might commit suicide. LOTS more research needs to be done.
BYW, Jason, thanks for your thoughtful post. I’m glad to read that you’ve figured out a lot of this and I wish you the best as you continue to release your anger.
I really like your list of ways to help us deal with life. You’ve suggested a lot of things that we too often forget on our drive to the psychiatrist. My mother worked for a psychiatrist decades ago and she (the psychiatrist) often said that if more people went to church, she’d be out of a job.
If legion lived in modern America, he would have been shot.
As far as demonic possession goes, I agree with Malachi Martin. It is the perfectly possessed who are the most dangerous. It is only in hindsight ,after they have done all the damage, they can do that they are recognizable.
OK, that's a good point. But --sorry to repeat myself-- the "voices" in your dreams probably aren't persistently urging you to harm yourself or others.
The seeming randomness of the dreams that we all experience would be more of what I would expect from a malfunctioning brain, rather than audible voices constantly urging harm.
Evidently they are clear enough. The central nervous system could be doing this as easily as it presents dreams and with just as much feeling of reality. Anyway, neuroscience has been making great progress with the latest imaging equipment as well as laboratory experimentation with nerves from sea slugs and other creatures PETA wouldn't be excited about.
Jason, I don’t think there’s any one cause for these illnesses. I do believe it can be demonic oppression, but I don’t think it necessarily is. I’ll give you an example of one that I think was. I had a roommate in college who was schizophrenic, although I didn’t know it for years. Later when she told me about it, I remembered how she had spent her earlier college years consciously seeking a middle eastern religious experience by appealing to some guru who was her “source of light.” She had to use her mind to visualize all this stuff—don’t remember details. To this day, I honestly believe she opened herself up to demonic possession which took years of work, not all successfully, to overcome. But I only came to that conclusion based on my knowledge of her earlier activities. I wouldn’t necessarily come to that conclusion unless I had reason to.
It does if ones approach to guns are that they are a tool, which they are, and not some evil creation, which they aren't. I don't lock my hammers up, aside to keep them from being stolen, why should I have to do the same with a gun?
In this case, I am not saying that more precautions didn't need to be taken; they probably should have in retrospect. What I am saying, is that once the decision to kill was made, the 12 year old could have just as easily taken a baseball bat to them in their sleep, or carved them up with a butcher knife.
It seems to me that it’s possible that a person treated with medications could become violent whereas if he were not taking the medications he would simply suffer.
To stay in business or to attract government funding you must demonstrate not only a problem, but a growing crisis. That's why the homeless coalition in Chicago is in such a snit over a headcount that could identify only 24 homeless in the entire city.
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bump for later
I choose not to "bash" pharmaceutical companies - they provide a great service and they are favorite whipping boy of the Left.
The Liberals contend they are 'evil' because they stand to make a profit. Big deal - I would say "welcome to Capitalism."
The article has this to say about drug treatment for the mentally ill:
We are talking about human beings who have somehow developed a secret inner life dominated by exceedingly dark thoughts and compulsions. Wild mood swings. Horrible, consuming resentment teetering on the edge of violent frenzy. Paranoid delusions fueled by intense emotion. Satanic visitations and inner voices that torment people mercilessly, sometimes for years, commanding them to commit murder or suicide – or both. Does this really sound to you like a physiological problem in need of drugs? Sound like a disease? A biochemical imbalance in the brain? Neurotransmitter activity that's too sluggish? Or does it possibly sound like something much more mental-emotional, even spiritual, in origin? The truth is, if we think we can solve problems like these with pills, we might be just as delusional as the people we're trying to help. Before we go on, let's state the obvious: There are genuine, organic brain diseases that may benefit from drug therapy – but these are relatively rare. And there are also instances where an individual is so psychotic as to pose a direct danger to him/herself and others, where sedation might be appropriate. But what I'm writing about here is the overwhelming majority of cases where psychiatric drugs are unwisely relied on to fix Americans' mental-emotional-spiritual problems.
My complaint is against the many Psychiatrists who really don't know what they are doing.
In the article he also says this:
The truth is, most mental-health pill-dispensing practitioners don't really understand why people become "clinically depressed" or why some women experience "postpartum depression" and the like. Go search WebMD and five or 10 other websites on postpartum depression (or most any other psychiatric condition for that matter). You'll be stunned at the lack of real substance and insight with regard to what causes it. Instead, you'll read something like, "The causes haven't been pinpointed yet," along with reams of authoritative-sounding data on symptoms and predisposing factors and what drugs to take and how valuable it is to have a support group and what vitamins help in recovery and so on. But no one will tell you what on earth would make a woman want to kill herself after she gives birth to her child. They don't know.
I meant *with (for) their patients*. I suppose that makes the Pharmacists the most guilty. All of their "patients" use meds! :)
Utterly bizarre.
Written by a man who has never been pregnant. Having suffered PP Depression I can assure him that it was not a spiritual crisis that brought it upon me. It was a planned pregnancy and no one was more excited about having a baby than I was.
I can recall no time before my son's birth when I was depressed about his impending arrival. But a C- Section with a good deal of blood loss (similar to Brooks) has me convinced that this event precipitated my depression. Once the depression hit (in the hospital) it took months to shake. Thankfully I realized it was a temporary condition and would eventually pass. But I'm sure women who suffer a greater degree of post partum than I did could be frightened by the intensity of the depression.
To say that PP Depression is not in God's plan is naive at best.
I also find that playing soulful blues guitar on my telecaster at obscene volumes for several hours a day to be very therapeutic as well.
And now that I think of it hunting seems to be quite cathartic too.
But nothing, and I mean NOTHING is more joyful and liberating than the presence of the Holy Spirit brought on by prayer, answered prayer and/or a good worship service.
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