M. Schofield (Jani's father) has made his blog ungooglable

[Col. Quisp]

The boy's "therapist" (she is not a doctor, but sort of play therapist) said he shows signs of autism but also she sees signs of schizophrenia. I was sort of half paying attention and don't remember if the physician actually said the kid is schizophrenic. It looked to me like he was play-acting. He probably saw all the attention his sister got from her illness (if you accept that she is schizophrenic) and decided to act "weird" too. Or maybe the dad has trained his kids to behave as if they're mentally ill so he can line his pockets. He came off as really creepy in the show.

At one point, he and Susan decided they needed to have a "date night" so the play therapist served as babysitter for them since they can't get regular babysitters. Then they went on a date to a nice restaurant, with cameras in tow, and he said all kinds of gooey things to his wife. I nearly puked.

[Wombaticus Rex]

This thread burned a tiny little hole clear through my soul. Arf.

It makes me sick to think of a child taken out of a troubled but loving environment

Both parents have hit her "as hard as [they] could", they "tried starving her" and "did EVERYTHING [they] could to try and break her". Doesn't sound like a "loving environment" to me.

^^Quoted for the sake of clarity from the previous thread. Important to keep the main issues in focus.

[Col. Quisp]

http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2010/04/jani-schofield-im-sorry-that-ill-have.html
Here's an interesting theory on some Australian woman's blog - she 's not an expert but it sounds plausible - Jani is a synesthete, which is an inherited condition. It would explain why her brother is showing similar signs now.

On edit:

Jani's diagnosis of child-onset schizophrenia appears to be based upon the fantasy/imaginary/delusional world that Jani enjoys living in a lot of the time. Jani even has a name for this place - the island of Calalini. Jani claims to have many strange friends (who only exist in her mind), who reportedly bite and scratch her. In her earlier years these “friends” took the form of rats, cats and playmates with names that unaccountably were units of measurement, numbers or other items that belong in learned linear sequences. For example, Jani’s imaginary friends included rats named Wednesday, 200 and Saturn, a cat named 61, and girls named 100 degrees and 24 hours. In December 2009 it was reported that Jani’s “hallucinations” are now personified numbers. At the very beginning of the June 29th 2009 video about Jani produced by the LA Times Jani tells an interviewer that her ambition for a job when she grows up is to be a veterinarian, then she thinks again and quickly says she wants to be a "number checker" whose job it is to draw blood from "numbers" and make them "feel better". Clearly Jani is imagining or experiencing personified numbers. Given what we know about Jani and her "imaginary friends" who are numbers etc, she would appear to be a case of ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP), which is a form of synesthesia/synaesthesia, which is a generally harmless neurological condition. Certainly most people who have OLP do not have their conscious existence dominated by it in the way that it seems to affect Jani, but there could be many reasons why there is so much focus on the more bizarre aspects of Jani's mental life in videos and articles about Jani. Jani and her family wouldn't be famous if she wasn't believed to be mentally ill. Jani's obsessive focus on numbers makes me wonder if Jani has some type of mathematical obsession typical of autistic, intellectually gifted or savant people, which her parents are either unaware of or do not wish to highlight. Many people believe that Jani is autistic, but her parents clearly embrace schizophrenia as an explanation for Jani's many unusual characteristics and behaviours, to the exclusion of all other explanations.

Does it ever actually happen that a synaesthete's synaesthesia is medically misdiagnosed as schizophrenia? I have read about some cases, and the famous neuroscientist and author V. S. Ramachandran has written about one such case in his 2011 book The Tell-tale Brain. On page 78 of the William Heinemann paperback edition can be found Ramachandran's account of the misdiagnosis of synaesthesia in a female patient as hallucinations of schizophrenia. The female synaesthete patient was apparently prescribed antipsychotic medication (similar to the type of drugs given to Jani), until her parents did some research, found out about synaesthesia and shared this information with their daughter's doctor. Apparently the synaesthete was promptly taken off the drugs when this dreadful misdiagnosis became clear.

A December 2009 Los Angeles Times article contains a hint that Jani’s “hallucinations” display a consistency that is the hallmark of genuine synesthesia “She told me her hallucinations always wear the same clothes.” Another hint that Jani experiences OLP is her violent objection to being called by her full first name. Jani reportedly hates the name "January". Is this because her OLP associations with this month of the year clash with her self-image, or are simply not liked by her? Synesthesia is an inherited condition. One has to wonder at the coincidence in which a child who appears to have OLP has been given a month of the year for a first name.

One could possibly argue that Jani does not have OLP because the personification of her imaginary companions goes beyond the limits of the typically reported experience of OLP – Jani’s companions reportedly talk to her, move and even bite her. It is hard to judge whether Jani’s accounts are a combination of OLP and imagination, or could possibly be confabulation to explain a confusing experience of OLP juxtaposed with other sensory types of synesthesia. According to the Jani’s Journey website Jani “experiences hallucinations in four of her five senses.” Another possible difference between Jani’s experiences and OLP is that Jani’s personifications have involved animals, while I am not aware of any report of OLP that does not involve human-like personifications. Whatever the case, I have read no explanation of why Jani’s mind has always been so extremely occupied with items that belong in learned linear sequences, while a number of different types of synesthesia (sequence->space synesthesia, number form synaesthesia, OLP and grapheme->colour synaesthesia) do involve items that belong in learned linear sequences. Reported experiences of synesthesia could easily be mistaken as hallucination or delusion or psychosis by non-synesthetes who do not know what synesthesia is. Synesthesia appears to be the most comprehensive explanation for Jani’s “hallucinations”.

I favour OLP, possibly combined with sequence->space synaesthesia, as an explanation for Jani's thing with numbers and other sequential items, but there is another possible cause for a person "seeing" numbers that aren't really there. This is a quote from the 2010 book The Mind's Eye by neurologist Oliver Sacks: "People with disorders of the visual pathway (anywhere from the retina to the visual cortex) may be prone to visual hallucinations, and Dominic ffytche and his colleagues estimate that about a quarter of these patients who hallucinate see "text, isolated words, individual letters, numbers, or musical note hallucinations." Such lexical hallucinations, as ffytche and his colleagues have found, are associated with conspicuous activation of the left occipitotemporal region, especially the the visual word form area ..." In a 2009 TED talk Sacks explained the difference between psychotic and non-psychotic visual hallucinations (at 10.50 minutes) - psychotic hallucinations address the person experiencing them, while the other type does not. The way Jani's experiences are described they seem to fit into the category of psychotic hallucinations, but there could be reasons why they are presented as such. I doubt that Jani could have an undetected visual disorder or visual disability that is serious enough to cause the type of visual hallucinations described by ffytche and Sacks, but I think it is still worth mentioning.

The show did say that Jani had some type of oxygen deprivation while in the womb, and that's why she was disqualified from being in a study of childhood schizophrenia...

[Col. Quisp]

I just remembered - young Bodhi was screaming "It's purple!" in terror...the blog post above said something about color synesthesia...I would think this possibility bears examination! Get those poor kids off the psycho drugs and away from their money grubbing parents!

[MacCruiskeen]

Thanks for bumping this thread, Col. Quisp. I am glad to see you are still around.

What has been done and is still being done to that child is unspeakable. Someday soon, presuming humankind survives, the diagnoses "schizophrenia" and "drapetomia" will be recognised as precisely equally valuable. That website is just absolutely fucking vile. I literally can't read it anymore.

M. Schofield got away with it, and now he's enjoying the adulation, humbly.

It turns out that his even tinier son has "mental health issues" too. How could he not? There's at least one further book deal in it.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I've just been catching up on his more recent blog posts. Unbelievable. I read the previous thread at the time (can't believe it's from 2009) and his original blog, and this thread too when it was brought back to the front-page. Never felt any need to comment before because Mac and Justdrew said everything that was necessary to say.

There have been some tiny improvements in the situation. Jani now seems to live in a separate apartment most of the time, with her mother, so he is hopefully unable to persecute, harass, and smother her constantly like he did back then. He says the Department of Children and Family Services have been asking questions too, which means he will probably at least refrain from beating her anymore for fear of losing revenue and status. That is also probably why he now lives apart from Jani at least some of the time - and why he hastily changed the "About Me" section of his first blog.

He complains of internet stalkers slandering him, and is praised as having the patience of a saint by his followers - whom he then screams "Fuck you all!" at on his Facebook page. No, seriously, he does. Frequently, by his own admission:

when I vent on my Facebook account, I am doing so because Facebook allows me let the world know. I know it is awful, but it is true. I don’t sit and stew with it. I can lash out. I will say things like “None of you understand what this is like. You can all fucking go to hell.” I am not speaking to anyone in particular. All my life I have had a tendency to lash out at those who love me most. I suppose it is part of my mental illness. “Fuck you all!” I will scream into my status update. I am not saying this to any of my 500 plus friends. I am saying to the world.

He says he lashes out at those who love him the most. Not at those he loves the most. But we already knew that.

But because of Facebook, the world responds now. Within seconds, no matter the time of day, responses start coming in. They are never angry. Generally they tell me to hang on. They share that they too feel like saying “Fuck you all!”

If only they would say: "NO, fuck YOU!"

He continually begs for rent money every month, before calling people out for not donating.

I want to share something interesting with you.

“The Road Not Taken (When You Were Young)” blog, where I express our financial difficulties at the end, was published on 4/27. Since then it has received 1331 hits. The total number of those 1331 readers who donated?

13.

Amelia (twice)

Laurie

Lisa

Melissa

Jacqueline

Cassie

Jennifer

Susan

Stephanie

America

Claire

Sara


The amounts range from $10 to $160, with the average being in the $20-$30 range.

On May 1st, I published “Standing on the Corner with a Cup in My Hand,” stating that we had enough for one apartment but not the other. Total hits in the brief time since it was published (today is May 2nd)? 493. 493 hits in just over 24 hours. Out of those 493, how many have donated?

2.

Sara and Tom....

...
So what about the rest of you who read my blogs and don’t give?

Some people tell me that it helps to get 501c3 status. Except that you can’t set up a nonprofit to benefit yourself. But that only applies to large donations. Nobody itemizes a $20 or 10$ donation. There is no point because it won’t get you over the standard deduction on your taxes to make it worth it. So unless you donate more than 10 grand a year, you aren’t itemizing your donations for the IRS.

If all 3857 people who have viewed “TeamIsaiah” gave just one dollar each, Isaiah would have $3857 dollars. If all 1331 people who read my blog gave one dollar, not to mention the 493 who read both, even accounting for what Paypal takes, I would have enough to pay rent on the second apartment.

So why can’t you give one dollar?

Everybody can give one dollar.

I just gave 460$ that I didn’t have.

I have thought about changing my block so people had to pay a dollar to read it (even though I have no idea how to do this) but all that would do is just drive down my readership, wouldn’t it? I would go from 4000-6000 hits on average down to probably less than one hundred.

So here is what I want. From now on, I only want people to make one dollar donations. Our paypal is on the front page or the address is donations@janisjourney.org. I will wait a week and get back to you on how many dollars came in. Let’s see how many of you really care and how many of you are just the people who watch a car accident scene as you drive by but never stop to help. I’ll be watching “Team Isaiah” too. I can track how many people hit that link.

Time to stop your car and get out.

Or keep driving.

But if you keep driving, don't bother coming back.

I keep wishing this was all some kind of attempt to portray the mind of a really terrible person in fiction. The blog is like a sort of long-running "Modest Proposal". The comments are almost pure Idiocracy now - no sense gets through the crowd, no criticism (or even advice) is allowed to stand. It just has the worst of everything in it. And it's real.

At least Jani is living apart from him some of the time, even if she is with her mother, who is just as bad in her own way.

But this is the worst part:

Then there is Bodhi, who has continued to get worse ever since he turned three and aged out of the Los Angeles County Regional Center services, like speech therapy, occupational therapy, child development, etc. He has been diagnosed PDD (Pervasive Development Disorder). At three, autistic spectrum children are turned over to the school district’s IEP program. He gets free preschool. But where once he got individual therapy, now he shares it with other children. When he started the Regional Center services, he used to bite his wrists, so much that we tried gloves and bandaides to protect his skin. Over the nine months of Regional Center therapies, he stopped. Now the biting himself is back, he chews on himself constantly.

And he cries. Constantly. For reasons we can’t figure out. It is so continuous that tonight I yelled at him to stop crying.

Just what Jani used to do. The whole reason we split the family into two apartments.

As far as I can figure out, Michael is looking after Bodhi on his own now, and... Bodhi is just like January.

It is horrible.

And wasn't Bodhi a completely normal kid at the start of his blog? Used as a contrast to Jani? Why was he ever put into "speech therapy, occupational therapy, child development, etc." to start with - before the age of three, even?

I thought occupational therapy involved work, a job of some kind, but I must not be right on that.

[MacCruiskeen]

As far as I can figure out, Michael is looking after Bodhi on his own now, and... Bodhi is just like January.

Well, of course he is. How could he not be?

Severe abuse in childhood may treble risk of schizophrenia

Research links sexual, physical and emotional abuse, school bullying and parental neglect to schizophrenia in adulthood

Alok Jha, science correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 April 2012 17.27 BST

Children who experience severe forms of abuse are around three times as likely to develop schizophrenia and related psychoses in later life compared with children who do not experience such abuse, according to a study that has brought together psychiatric data from almost 80,000 people.

The results add to a growing body of evidence that childhood maltreatment or abuse can raise the risk of developing mental illnesses in adulthood, including depression, personality disorders and anxiety.

Prof Richard Bentall of the University of Liverpool's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, who led the study, showed that the risk of developing psychosis increased in line with the amount of abuse or trauma a child had gone through, with the most severely affected children having a 50-fold increased risk compared with children who had suffered no abuse.

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/ ... izophrenia

File under "statements of the bleeding obvious". Yet none of it alters the fact that "schizophrenia" is a junk-word and a junk diagnosis - not just no aid in understanding but a huge hindrance to it.

Flashback to 1860:

A Remarkably High Incidence Of Drapetomania Amongst Slaves

In a study of almost 80,000 enslaved Negroes, alienists noted a remarkably increased incidence of the disease of drapetomania, as compared to an equally large sample group taken from the non-enslaved population.

What a pity they didn't have pills for it back then. They had to rely on whips and nooses.

[Project Willow]

Severe abuse in childhood may treble risk of schizophrenia

Research links sexual, physical and emotional abuse, school bullying and parental neglect to schizophrenia in adulthood.

There's no surprise at all. Many schizophrenics who are incapacitated by their symptoms, or less functional or acceptable to society, end up being dependent on the same family system in which the abuse occurred. Clinicians and caregivers consult and develop relationships with family, so in addition to the barrier of the genetic or medical model under which they're trained and a common natural tendency to avoid dealing with trauma, there are personal barriers to making the link. The most significant however, may be a social one, a desire to stand in opposition of the time when entire families were shunned or ostracized if they had a mentally ill child.

Hammersly and Read

In their review of the 33,648 studies conducted into the causes of schizophrenia between 1961 and 2000, they found that less than 1 percent of research budgets was spent on examining the impact of parental care.

I've posted before studies that argue for a trauma etiology of schizophrenia, somewhere around here. Most likely it is an unfortunate interplay of many factors, genetic vulnerability, family environment, social pressures, and trauma.

It's a wonder we all aren't schizophrenic.

Back to the OP, I recently read a case about child who presented symptoms, or who rather behaved very much like Jani. In that case however, there was no question that she had been abused. I wanted to post it here, now I can't find it!

[MacCruiskeen]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the child, except that she is (a) stuck with grossly abusive parents who are frightened of children per se and who have not an ounce of self-knowledge, (b) drugged up to the eyeballs and stuffed full of junkfood and junk ideas, and (c) now also trapped in a media-machine that manipulates her and encourages her to display her so-called "symptoms" because they can be exploited financially.

Sick:

[Burnt Hill]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the child, except that she is (a) stuck with grossly abusive parents who are frightened of children per se and who have not an ounce of self-knowledge, (b) drugged up to the eyeballs and stuffed full of junkfood and junk ideas, and (c) now also trapped in a media-machine that manipulates her and encourages her to display her so-called "symptoms" because they can be exploited financially.

Totally agree with your assessment here Mac.
I agree there is a general misunderstanding as to what shizophrenia is.
What I dont necessarily agree with is this-

"schizophrenia" is a junk-word and a junk diagnosis - not just no aid in understanding but a huge hindrance to it.

That may be true to the populace in general, but not to medical professionals, and I am being generous with the term professional, some arent.
Real families want real answers. And real people fit the criteria to diagnose them with shizophrenia. Not in order to label them, but hopefully in order to help treat them.
But looking at it this way(from wiki, a pretty good encapsulation)- tell me what more we can do?-

-Criteria

According to the revised fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, three diagnostic criteria must be met:[63]

1.Characteristic symptoms: Two or more of the following, each present for much of the time during a one-month period (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).
Delusions
Hallucinations
Disorganized speech, which is a manifestation of formal thought disorder
Grossly disorganized behavior (e.g. dressing inappropriately, crying frequently) or catatonic behavior
Negative symptoms: Blunted affect (lack or decline in emotional response), alogia (lack or decline in speech), or avolition (lack or decline in motivation)
If the delusions are judged to be bizarre, or hallucinations consist of hearing one voice participating in a running commentary of the patient's actions or of hearing two or more voices conversing with each other, only that symptom is required above. The speech disorganization criterion is only met if it is severe enough to substantially impair communication.
2.Social or occupational dysfunction: For a significant portion of the time since the onset of the disturbance, one or more major areas of functioning such as work, interpersonal relations, or self-care, are markedly below the level achieved prior to the onset.
3.Significant duration: Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least six months. This six-month period must include at least one month of symptoms (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).

If signs of disturbance are present for more than a month but less than six months, the diagnosis of schizophreniform disorder is applied.[63] Psychotic symptoms lasting less than a month may be diagnosed as brief psychotic disorder, and various conditions may be classed as psychotic disorder not otherwise specified. Schizophrenia cannot be diagnosed if symptoms of mood disorder are substantially present (although schizoaffective disorder could be diagnosed), or if symptoms of pervasive developmental disorder are present unless prominent delusions or hallucinations are also present, or if the symptoms are the direct physiological result of a general medical condition or a substance, such as abuse of a drug or medication.

Subtypes

The DSM-IV-TR contains five sub-classifications of schizophrenia, although the developers of DSM-5 are recommending they be dropped from the new classification:[64][65]
Paranoid type: Delusions or auditory hallucinations are present, but thought disorder, disorganized behavior, or affective flattening are not. Delusions are persecutory and/or grandiose, but in addition to these, other themes such as jealousy, religiosity, or somatization may also be present. (DSM code 295.3/ICD code F20.0)
Disorganized type: Named hebephrenic schizophrenia in the ICD. Where thought disorder and flat affect are present together. (DSM code 295.1/ICD code F20.1)
Catatonic type: The subject may be almost immobile or exhibit agitated, purposeless movement. Symptoms can include catatonic stupor and waxy flexibility. (DSM code 295.2/ICD code F20.2)
Undifferentiated type: Psychotic symptoms are present but the criteria for paranoid, disorganized, or catatonic types have not been met. (DSM code 295.9/ICD code F20.3)
Residual type: Where positive symptoms are present at a low intensity only. (DSM code 295.6/ICD code F20.5)

The ICD-10 defines two additional subtypes:[65]
Post-schizophrenic depression: A depressive episode arising in the aftermath of a schizophrenic illness where some low-level schizophrenic symptoms may still be present. (ICD code F20.4)
Simple schizophrenia: Insidious and progressive development of prominent negative symptoms with no history of psychotic episodes. (ICD code F20.6)

Differential

See also: Dual diagnosis

Psychotic symptoms may be present in several other mental disorders, including bipolar disorder,[66] borderline personality disorder,[67] drug intoxication and drug-induced psychosis. Delusions ("non-bizarre") are also present in delusional disorder, and social withdrawal in social anxiety disorder, avoidant personality disorder and schizotypal personality disorder. Schizophrenia is comorbid with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) considerably more often than could be explained by pure chance, although it can be difficult to distinguish obsessions that occur in OCD from the delusions of schizophrenia.[68]

A more general medical and neurological examination may be needed to rule out medical illnesses which may rarely produce psychotic schizophrenia-like symptoms,[63] such as metabolic disturbance, systemic infection, syphilis, HIV infection, epilepsy, and brain lesions. It may be necessary to rule out a delirium, which can be distinguished by visual hallucinations, acute onset and fluctuating level of consciousness, and indicates an underlying medical illness. Investigations are not generally repeated for relapse unless there is a specific medical indication or possible adverse effects from antipsychotic medication.

What is unfortunately not covered here, as a disclaimer to diagnosis, is the potential to induce psychotic symptoms in someone through insidious abuse, as appears to be happening in this family.

[Col. Quisp]

shaken baby syndrome?

[MacCruiskeen]

shaken baby syndrome?

Sorry, Col. Quisp, I have no desire to antagonise you, but that's another junk diagnosis. Does such a "syndrome" even exist? (What is a syndrome? Please explain. [Yes, I own a dictionary.])

"Autism" ... "Aspergers".. "Dementia Praecox"... ."ADD"... "Drapetomania".. "Schizophrenia"... "Hyperactivity" - all junk diagnoses.

Anyway, why is everyone in such a hurry to be such an expert? What is this, a lottery or what? Since when did these dumb-ass labels become explanations? And why and how has all this junk-psychiatric terminology become part of common speech?

Jani Schofield is an unhappy* child. Who wouldn't be, with parents like those.

*That's my diagnosis. Apologies if it's not scientific enough. Suggest a better one.

[Burnt Hill]

shaken baby syndrome?

Sorry, Col. Quisp, I have no desire to antagonise you, but that's another junk diagnosis. Does such a "syndrome" even exist? (What is a syndrome? Please explain. [Yes, I own a dictionary.])

"Autism" ... "Aspergers".. "Dementia Praecox"... ."ADD"... "Drapetomania".. "Schizophrenia"... "Hyperactivity" - all junk diagnoses.

Anyway, why is everyone in such a hurry to be such an expert? What is this, a lottery or what? Since when did these dumb-ass labels become explanations? And why and how has all this junk-psychiatric terminology become part of common speech?

Jani Schofield is an unhappy* child. Who wouldn't be, with parents like those.

*That's my diagnosis. Apologies if it's not scientific enough. Suggest a better one.

Shaken baby syndrome is a junk diagnosis? Is it that you prefer it fully explained as brain hemmorage resulting in death and or damage caused by violently shaking a baby whose neck muscles havent fully formed? Or is it that you disagree with calling it a syndrome? Or do you just think it doesnt happen?
Diagnoses are necessary in order to treat appropriately, thats all.

[MacCruiskeen]

Certainly Daddy shook and hit his baby girl. He boasted about it, on his blog. He said that his baby girl made him do it.

It won't have helped her, but luckily she appears to have suffered no lasting severe brain-damage from it. (But who can know?) Certainly she has suffered damage to her brain, her body, her emotions and her spirit from Daddy and Mommy, and not least from the shrinks who have made such a delightful profit off the parents' sustained child abuse by swallowing their crap and institutionalising Jani and stuffing her full of drugs.

She is fighting for her life and no one is helping her.

It's not inconceivable that someone might actually notice the life of a child (and the life of her parents), rather than wanking off about "syndromes" and "disorders" and (christ almighty) "schizophrenia". But there's no profit in it, so nobody does.

Medicine is social or it is worse than nothing. QED, yet again.

[Burnt Hill]

Okay, I am understanding you now.
And totally agree with you about this situation.
I know that kids can be incredibly resilient, and my hope is that when she is emancipated from her parents she will find her way.
Maybe even sooner, its worth hoping for.