Jani's at the mercy of her mind

[daba64]

Out of curiosity I googled calalini and did not find anything particularly noteworthy. When I googled ca la li ni though I discovered a Lalini Ramanathan that is a sleep researcher at Neurobiology Research (151A3), Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Health Care System, North Hills; and Department of Psychiatry and Brain Research Institute, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California which I found to be an odd coincidence.

In the pdf at the link they of course use rats for their research.
http://www.semel.ucla.edu/sleepresearch ... 20john.pdf

Now it would be spookier than hell if they also used cats which were identified with numbers, like 400.

Do they do research on cats at UCLA? Yes they do.

Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Brain Research Institute, University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine, North Hills, California.

Hypocretin (Hcrt or orexin) somas are located in the hypothalamus and project widely to forebrain and brainstem regions, densely innervating monoaminergic and cholinergic cells. Loss of Hcrt function results in the sleep disorder narcolepsy. However, the normal pattern of Hcrt release across the sleep-wake cycle is unknown. We monitored Hcrt-1 release in the basal forebrain, perifornical hypothalamus, and locus ceruleus (LC) across the sleep-wake cycle using microdialysis in freely moving cats and a sensitive solid phase radioimmunoassay. We found that the peptide concentration in dialysates from the hypothalamus was significantly higher during active waking (AW) than during slow-wave sleep (SWS)......

If you were going to experiment on a cat, would you want to call it Snowball or 400?

And in case you were wondering -- yes, they experiment on dogs there too. *leaves to go join peta*

[Maddy]

Creepy.

[daba64]

And I guess it should come as no surprise that the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at UCLA is also where Britney Spears was held against her will.

LINK

[justdrew]

ya know... a lot of the names sound like usernames on a forum or sms or im screen names. or web based casual free mmo...

and a google search later...

The beginner quests are all similar, but often emphasis the game's casual feel. For example, new players must protect rats from cruel cat people in an area called 'Noobshire.' This is meant to parody MMORPG cliches which often have you killing rats during the early stages of the game.
http://mmohub.org/game/adventure-quest-worlds/

probably just a coincidence.

[justdrew]

uhh... speechless... trying to not be judgmental...

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.januaryfirst.org/Blog/Blog.html

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.januaryfirst.org/About_Me.html

[Penguin]

In the pdf at the link they of course use rats for their research.
http://www.semel.ucla.edu/sleepresearch ... 20john.pdf

Now it would be spookier than hell if they also used cats which were identified with numbers, like 400.


Do they do research on cats at UCLA? Yes they do.

Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Brain Research Institute, University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine, North Hills, California.

Hypocretin (Hcrt or orexin) somas are located in the hypothalamus and project widely to forebrain and brainstem regions, densely innervating monoaminergic and cholinergic cells. Loss of Hcrt function results in the sleep disorder narcolepsy. However, the normal pattern of Hcrt release across the sleep-wake cycle is unknown. We monitored Hcrt-1 release in the basal forebrain, perifornical hypothalamus, and locus ceruleus (LC) across the sleep-wake cycle using microdialysis in freely moving cats and a sensitive solid phase radioimmunoassay. We found that the peptide concentration in dialysates from the hypothalamus was significantly higher during active waking (AW) than during slow-wave sleep (SWS)......

If you were going to experiment on a cat, would you want to call it Snowball or 400?

And in case you were wondering -- yes, they experiment on dogs there too. *leaves to go join peta*

Ffuuuu...Certainly an angle, and not a nice one. (I mean as a thought-angle vs. the whole issue of "treatment", not necessarily in other ways)

People who do animal tests usually often are some cold fucks as well.
Half dead, stressed and mutilated by each other, caretakers notify a researcher to take care of his test animals - "Nah, Its fine, Im sure I can pull some data off em as long as theyre alive".

justdrew:

"At times it was so bad we both lost it and hit Jani as hard as we could."

Also known as physical abuse, battery, etc..

And, "We tried starving her."

They havent been arrested for this?

[justdrew]

omg

Jani came home and in less than week I tried to kill myself.

[OP ED]

indeed. sounds like they all need therapy.

[Nordic]

Whoa! This guy writes this stuff, and invites comments? He admits to hitting a child "as hard as he can?"

Okay .....

Check out this comment (this is just part of the whole comment)

David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International
As a young person in my teens, a dozen psychiatrists tried to help me -- I was going through extreme, overwhelming mental and emotional problems. They all insisted I had to be on psychiatric drugs. I was told flat out I had to remain on neuroleptic (antipsychotic) drugs for the rest of my life, period. No doubt about it, I was told.

My family was skeptical. And I am thankful. Because I have been off all psychiatric drugs for more than 30 years. And the medical record is full of stories about people who have gotten completely off of all psychiatric drugs.

Please understand I am pro-choice. If an individual or family makes a personal health care decision about a prescription, that's a private decision. I direct a nonprofit in mental health advocacy, and many of our members make personal decisions to take psychiatric drugs that have a lot of hazards.

That said, I am curious about why more families are not like mine, and not as skeptical of the mental health system. If families had been more skeptical of folks like Bernie Madoff, and investment bankers, perhaps some of the financial crises could have been avoided. Well, from what I've seen in my three decades, much of the mental health system has similar problems to our financial system.

When I watch a reality TV show like Super Nanny, I know that almost every child shown on there would -- if brought to many psychiatric professionals -- be put on neuroleptics, almost routinely and automatically.

If anyone says that your child has a chemical imbalance, ask for the lab test results. There are no tests.

Also, fairly recent studies show that the brain changes, all the time, even for adults. So how can we help brain changes for the good?

In the meantime, keep up your skepticism. If anyone out there has an ounce of American rebel in them, go ahead and google the following words:

antipsychotic brain damage

Again, I'm pro-choice, if someone wants to be on a powerful psychiatric drug, that's their choice. But were they and their family fully informed. NO INFORMED CONSENT SHEET I'VE SEEN HAS CLEARLY EXPLAINED THE RISK OF ANTIPSYCHOTIC BRAIN DAMAGE.

And I am talking about actual, measurable frontal lobe shrinkage. Before a defender of the industry says "that's caused by the schizophrenia," note two things: 1) Animal studies easily confirm that neuroleptics ('antipsychotics') can shrink frontal lobes, and 2) Mainstream medicine has by and large come to terms -- through countless studies -- that antipsychotics can lead to significant, non-natural brain changes, including less brain mass.

[MacCruiskeen]

Wait for me, Jani.

June 26, 2009

Amy- so how are you feeling?

Michael-Don't know yet. I miss her terribly but I am also grateful for the break from her.

Amy-You seem calmer when she's not there. you function better

Michael-Because I don't have to be scared when she is not around.


-copied from a chat between myself and Amy Solensky-Vo.


"And I feel like I'm drifting, drifting, drifting from the shore.
And I feel like I'm swimming out to her."

And I gave up. I stopped chasing Jani and gave up. I let her go on without me, because I could not keep up. The pain in my arms and legs was too great. She could swim forever. Jani could swim all the way to Australia. She could swim forever. But the ache in my side was too much. I stopped, choking, treading water. Jani paused, only for a moment, and told me it was okay. She understood. She told me to go back to Susan, that it would be okay, that she would see me again. And then she went on. And I stayed. I gave up. I rolled onto my back and floated, listening to her swim away from me, into the darkness.

(...)

When Jani was released on June 1st, Susan and I believed we could return to what we did for the first five years of Jani's life. We thought we could stimulate her every minute. We thought we could keep up.

But her illness has outrun us. The world is no longer big enough for Jani. No matter how many things we did with Jani or how many places we took her, it wasn't enough. When Jani was younger, the play areas and toy stores bought us time. Time to rest. Time to recharge. Now they buy us nothing. The value of life that we tried to provide for Jani had been reduced to zero. We could not keep pace with the inflation of schizophrenia.


(...)

Today, Susan and I agreed to put Jani on Clozaril. Clozaril is an anti-psychotic so powerful that it requires weekly blood tests to make sure it doesn't destroy all the patient's white blood cells. To put it more bluntly, this drug could give Jani AIDS (which is collective name for the illnesses that ravage the body after the immune system-white blood cells-collapse). If the blood tests show her white blood cell count falling, she will have to be taken off it. So the choice is either psychosis or risking AIDS. We don't even know if the drug will work for Jani. Even if it does Jani must walk the narrow path between physical death and mental death. What a shitty deal for a six year old.


Susan wonders if we are killing our daughter. I understand how she feels. But I also know Jani is dying anyway. She will swim until she drowns. She will never stop on her own. And we cannot keep up with her anymore. That is what the last three weeks taught us. We can no longer do what we once did. We once moved heaven and earth for Jani. Now we can't. Now she has to do it herself. All we can do is cheer her on from the boat, always with our hand out, ready to pull her onboard if she decides to take it.

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... _back.html

[Penguin]

Ive worked with autistic kids once upon a time...
One almost accidentally poked my eye out once as he got a fit when he had to be in a boring place for too long. I never considered that I should poke his eye out in revenge, or beat him up, or starve him...

Only method of physical restraint allowed is holding, to prevent injuries to the kid and yourself, and holding too done in a specific way, not with your knee on a kids back on the floor. Sometimes we needed two adults to prevent a child from banging her head on the floor, or pulling off their own hair, or hitting others around with flailing arms.

And certainly never in anger, or you have no business being anywhere near a child. Hitting, in any situation, would be a criminal offense. For good reason too.

[MacCruiskeen]

I finished my MA and spent the summer of Jani's fifth year freaking out over not having a teaching job. The local community colleges wouldn't hire me. Susan was pregnant with Bodhi.

Then the hitting began.

At first it seemed like a really bad temper tantrum. (What caused it??) Jani would fly into rages that would last 5-15 minutes. During this time, when we tried to discipline her, she would hit us, scratch us, bite us, and kick us. People thought we were raising a brat. Even our own families thought this. We were so worried about trying to explain ourselves that we didn't notice at first that Jani's eyes changed when she went into this rages. We didn't put it together that a five year does not swing from "I love you, Daddy" to "I want you to die!" in seconds. (Yes she does, as you've just demonstrated. And WHY does she do it?) Teenagers do that, not five year olds. Five year olds are still desperate for parental approval.

Sic.

Right, I'm going to venture an untentative diagnosis:

1. Apart from being impoverished and marginalised -- and probably largely because of that -- both of those parents are deeply sick (folie à deux, low self-worth, delusions of grandeur, confusing TV with real life, chronically depressed, chronically anxious, etc., etc., etc.). They are urgently in need of sane assistance -- which they're not getting and are very unlikely ever to get, because their sickness is not just personal but social, i.e. it is induced and encouraged by the society they live in.

They are certainly currently unfit to raise a child.

2. The psychiatrists now responsible for the child's welfare are instead hurting her, systematically and perhaps even more grievously than her parents ever did. The hurt includes severe and ongoing physical assault as well as emotional neglect.

3. Six-year-old January is in mortal danger and knows it. She is certainly not "schizophrenic" (a meaningless term); she has been and is being damaged, severely, by damaged parents and vicious or clueless charlatans. She is justifiably terrified, and struggling for her life as best she can. The only friends she has are imaginary ones, so it is entirely understandable that she spends an increasing amount of time with them.

Prognosis: Between them, unless they're stopped, her parents and the quacks are going to kill that child soon.

[justdrew]

Right, I'm going to venture an untentative diagnosis:

1. Apart from being impoverished and marginalised, both of those parents are deeply sick (folie à deux, suffering from delusions, confusing TV with real life, chronically depressed, chronically anxious, etc., etc., etc.). They are urgently in need of sane assistance -- which they're not getting and are very unlikely ever to get, because their sickness is social, i.e. it is induced and exacerbated by the society they live in.

They are certainly currently unfit to raise a child.

2. The psychiatrists now responsible for the child's welfare are instead hurting her, systematically and perhaps even more grievously than her parents ever did.

3. Six-year-old January is in mortal danger and knows it. She is certainly not "schizophrenic" (a meaningless term); she has been and is being damaged, severely, by damaged parents and vicious or clueless charlatans. She is justifiably terrified, and struggling for her life as best she can. The only friends she has are imaginary ones, so it is entirely understandable that she spends so much time with them.

Prognosis: Between them, unless they're stopped, her parents and the quacks are going to kill the child soon.

Münchausen syndrome by proxy, perhaps unwittingly... maybe. I've got to hope the wheels are starting to turn for getting her into a medical foster home situation, with a proper IEP and in-home tutors/assistance. but this is California, what are they going to operate the place with, IOUs?

I'm really not feeling good about this situation, but the thing is... multiply this story by a thousand and it wouldn't cover all the similar cases going on out there.

No one likes to admit it but the professional providers are basically operating on auto-pilot. go down the flow-chart, check off some boxes, write a boiler-plate report, write a script or two and... NEXT! If anything goes wrong and they deviated from conventional wisdom in any way, their careers may be over after the lawsuit. and no one can stand this, but of course, "there's nothing anyone can do about it, it's just they way things are" and so, like so many other things in our dying culture, it goes in the denial-box and never enters the mind again, except when the doubts come crawling up the back of the neck after midnight and sleepless, sometimes. It's hell all 'round.

[MacCruiskeen]

This man is mad, if anyone is. Or going mad. He needs help, urgently, and his child urgently needs to be protected from him, and from the quacks:

(...) When Jani is lucid, she is very cooperative. Those moments are becoming increasingly rare again. I think her delusions are getting angry that we haven't thrown in the towel and keep holding on to her by our fingertips, and so they are redoubling their efforts to take her. They make her throw her shoes when I ask her to put them away. They make unreasonable demands on her, and in turn on us, which they know we can never possibly meet, although we try. And I know all this because, again, when she is lucid, she is happy to help. She wants to be good. In truth, whether Susan or I discipline her has no bearing on her behavior. We can give her everything she wants and she will still hate us. And we can give her nothing and she will be fine with it. It all depends on whether the delusions decide to rattle the cage.


The hardest part is to keep going all the time. I brought Jani home after lunch, with the idea that we would go swimming. I was already exhausted from just getting Jani through Denny's and the Do-it Center Hardware store (to get play sand for her and Bodhi). We just bought a Mac mini and are using it with Dell peripherals and I knew Susan needs to print for Bipolar Nation and she would get frustrated and flustered and go spend money we don't have printing at Kinko's if I didn't get the Dell laser printer working with the Mac. So I figured I could take a moment to download and install a driver. Jani, already in her swimsuit, immediately began saying "Let's go." I tried to put her off a few times with "Just a second" but I ran out of seconds. Then I tried to tell her it was "quiet time" like she had in the hospital, but it took an entire staff to keep her in her room. Jani cannot be quiet until she is asleep because in the quiet the voices come. They tell her she has nothing to do, even though her apartment is filled with toys and activities. She cannot entertain herself. Alone, she is at the mercy of her delusions. So she started trying to destroy things. Why didn't I suggest an activity for her? I did, but it won't work unless I engage in it WITH her. Yesterday, when Jani found her apartment full of social workers, she ran. Joanna, the WRAP coordinator, told Susan to go after her. Susan was holding Bodhi. Susan asked was she supposed to drop Bodhi and chase Jani, put Bodhi gently down and leave him alone while she chased Jani, or run with Bodhi and risk tripping and slamming his head on concrete while chasing Jani?


That is what people don't understand. That is why I can't come to your social activities that my friends and co-workers kindly invite me to. That is why my world is getting smaller and smaller. That is why I do not think I can teach right now. Jani cannot be left alone. Not physically. Not mentally. That is why I write this at whatever time it is now.


In order to finish setting up the printer, I had to drag Jani into her room and lock her in until I was ready. When I told her to wait, the voices told her to run. I had to chase her down and drag her back. Eventually she will be too big for me to drag back. We are in the twilight of being able to physically control her. Time-outs do not change Jani's behavior. She cannot really learn anymore, at least not in the short-term. The skills that kids her age learn to deal with adults ignoring them will take Jani a lifetime.


In truth, I locked in her room to stop her from running away while I took a break, a few seconds to keep my sanity. It sounds horrible, I know, but there is nothing else to do. ...

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... rning.html

And so on, and on and on and on and on. That extract was chosen practically at random and is by no means the worst of it.

- Look, is there anyone here from LA who is a medic or knows a medic or a health administrator or a politician or a journalist, or anyone who can can do anything at all about this? That blog makes bone-chilling reading. The guy is torturing his child to death and doesn't even realise it. Worse, he's being aided and abetted in that slow murder by medical professionals.

Somebody sane has to intervene, urgently.

If you think I'm exaggerating, please read that blog. There's been much talk of abstract Evil on this board over the years, so what do you call what's going on right there, in plain sight? I prefer to call it sick, deeply sick. But whatever we call it, it's murder.

[nashvillebrook]

This thread caught my attention b/c my half brother had a mental disorder as a child. He still does. Now it's called paranoid schizophrenia -- it didn't have a name when we were young. This was during the 70s and we were poor, and his mother was even more poor than we were. I had been adopted by my maternal grandparents. His mother was my biological mother, but she had given me up for adoption. She also had childhood schizophrenia. I don't have children and this is a reason why.

Anyway -- I remember what it was like living with him. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't easy. There were no answers. There was no medication. We did the diet thing. We did the sleep thing -- as much as possible, b/c he simply wouldn't sleep. There was a little latch hook on the outside of the door to his room, and every night they locked him in, and every night he screamed bloody murder until finally he fell asleep. It seems incredible to me now that they did that. It seems completely wrong. But that's what they did.

I don't think he was anywhere near as disturbed as Jani. His name was Justin, btw. He was a beautiful child, blonde, skinny, intense blue eyes. But it didn't take long to realize something was not quite right with him. He had echolalia and auditory hallucinations. He talked to "himself" more than he talked to other people. He was always being "beat up" by whatever was running thru his head. His brow would furrow and he'd talk back, implore, castigate.

He turned violent when I was in the ninth grade -- so he was in the 4th. He had been able to go to school up until then. He attacked his teacher and the principle on a daily basis until first he was moved to a "special" school, and then moved out of the school system altogether.

His mother had much the same MO, only, she was brilliant, like Jani. And, she never became violent, that I know of. Instead, she became self-destructive (and, if you must know, that means sexually self-destructive).

As Justin got older and bigger, his violence became serious. He attacked my adopted mother (his grandmother) with a hammer while she was asleep. He attacked my adopted father (his grandfather) and tried to strangle him in his sleep. He stalked people. Finally, after many years, he broke the law enough times to wind up in jail, and then wrote letters to the judge telling her all the ways he was going to kill her. This letter was literally the best thing that ever happened. This action, above all the rest, kept him "in the system" where he got some medication and got some relief from the sickness. But, he'd go thru this for the rest of his life. A seriously mentally ill man with a 4th grade education doesn't have many options.

I'm telling you all this b/c like many of you, I read the article and watched the video and thought 'this girl is touched by something beyond mental illness.' I idealized her illness. The numbers, I thought, had to be meaningful. Perhaps her brain is hyper-wired. I also thought that it was a shame she was being treated like a criminal by her family and the mental health professionals in her life.

Then, I read the father's blog and it all came back to me about how the illness completely devastated two generations of my family. It bankrupted them the first time around with Joyce (my bio-mom), then, with Justin, it kept us on the far margins of society and sanity. There could be no "friends" of the family (you know, "a support system"). There were no quiet moments. There was no peace, and no mental space to be a family. Hell, we couldn't even sit down to dinner together b/c there would always be an incident. I couldn't have friends come over. No one ever spent time with me in the way I'd want to raise a child -- you know, going to the park, or museums, or on trips. There was no money and no energy for anything except survival.

So, I really 'get it' that it seems like the parents are out-of-whack. And, the father should really know better than to blog about losing control and hitting the child. But, I have to tell you, this family is actually dealing with this infinitely more effectively and humanely than mine did.

Imagine all the kids out there with this disease whose parents are fundamentalists and believe they are possessed by evil demons. Imagine the children of alcoholics (that was part of our trouble). Imagine all the situations where there's no money, no work and no apartment, let alone two. Hell, this family is on the verge of losing what little bit they have. All it takes is a few missed classes and this father will be unemployed and they won't even have a place to live.

I started out reading this and blaming the parents, and believing they were completely out of line -- and I GREW UP WITH THIS. It's THAT easy to forget what it was like. So-called 'normal' kids will make you lose your mind. Imagine what life is like for these people.

I don't have an answer. I didn't learn anything useful from my experience that can help these people. All I know is that I likely carry a bad gene and if I had a child I would be playing russian roulette with those genetics. As far as these people go, I have to disabuse myself of the notion that I can judge them, b/c I can't -- even with all the experience I've had with this... I simply can't judge them.

I'm glad as hell that I grew up, got out and never had to deal with that shit ever again. And that's really all I can say.