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QAnon Strikes again

Just to add a note of agreement to Hans' #18.

Spotting signs of even quite florid psychoses can be hard, as quite a few folk will try to hide what is going on and some forms of psychosis can be so specific that the circumstances are not often there to bring out the features (something like Cap Gras springs to mind, especially having worked around a few lads with that one, who one would not suspect of being psychotic on interacting with them and then you read their histories...And get very, very scared...).

Peter Sutcliffe would be a very good example, as Sonia, apparently, had no idea what he was up to nor his thought processes. (Yes, I know fine well that there are folk who disagree that he was psychotic, but the official line is that he was and a couple of mates who worked around him thought he was, which was enough for me.)
 
Not only might people miss signs of schizophrenia but we also know that there is common or garden denial that seems to attend just about every potential problem in a relationship from alcoholism to abuse etc….
 
Some can really be hard to notice even for people outside. People seem to have this crazy idea that 'schizophrenia' only means the likes of the hobo living under a bridge, wearing a cardboard sign warning that the Democrats are aliens. Or at least is that obvious to spot.

The woman in my anecdote was a lawyer who had graduated with good grades, was happily employed as an expert in corporate law, and whose company was representing at least one major manufacturer. And who I met by paying her for legal advice at one point.

If there were any signs that she's seeing ghosts trying to enter through her nose and steal her soul, not only I must have missed them, but a lot of people must have missed them. I mean, someone saw no problem with letting her talk to a judge or meet clients, including important corporate ones. That's literally how far she had to be from giving obvious red flags.


But generally, the even more concise version is this: about 1% of the population has schizophrenia at any given time. Even just going by numbers alone, the VAST majority of them are not under a bridge or in some mental institution. The Dunbar number for humans being around 150, chances are you know one or two people that you never knew had it.
 
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8enotto said:
In Mexico a prisoner depends fairly heavily on his family for any hint of luxury like cigs and better food.

From what I have seen, fortunately only from outside, is it's gang or cartel affiliation as to how one is accepted by the inmates.

This dude is utterly screwed.
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It appears that he was arrested in the U.S. on federal charges.
Matthew Taylor Coleman, 40, of Santa Barbara is facing a federal charge of the foreign murder of U.S. nationals, the U.S. attorney's office said in a statement.
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Bob001 said:
It appears that he was arrested in the U.S. on federal charges.
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That's gone a bit back and forth depending on the sources I've read. I've read that he was charged in the US but Mexico is looking to extradite, since it happened on their soil.

I'm not sure where he'll end up.
 
HansMustermann said:
Some can really be hard to notice even for people outside. People seem to have this crazy idea that 'schizophrenia' only means the likes of the hobo living under a bridge, wearing a cardboard sign warning that the Democrats are aliens. Or at least is that obvious to spot.

The woman in my anecdote was a lawyer who had graduated with good grades, was happily employed as an expert in corporate law, and whose company was representing at least one major manufacturer. And who I met by paying her for legal advice at one point.

If there were any signs that she's seeing ghosts trying to enter through her nose and steal her soul, not only I must have missed them, but a lot of people must have missed them. I mean, someone saw no problem with letting her talk to a judge or meet clients, including important corporate ones. That's literally how far she had to be from giving obvious red flags.
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I would posit there would have to be a little bit of a difference between how a schizophrenic having a harmless delusion like that interacts with the subject of their delusion, and how one whose particular delusion requires them to kill their immediate family to save the world from evil, interacts with that family.

But I suppose it hardly matters. Someone with paranoid schizophrenia being hypothetically indistinguishable from someone without, is not really an effective argument that this person had paranoid schizophrenia. Believing an outlandish conspiracy, and being motivated to commit crime by that belief, isn't the actually same thing as being delusional.
 
Myriad said:
Sure glad we didn't miss the important part of this news story: the pervasive problem of white murderer family photo privilege.
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There's probably something to be said about the way the press, and society more generally, mollycoddles white people who commit atrocities, but I mostly meant this as a bit of levity. Lighten up.
 
Checkmite said:
I would posit there would have to be a little bit of a difference between how a schizophrenic having a harmless delusion like that interacts with the subject of their delusion, and how one whose particular delusion requires them to kill their immediate family to save the world from evil, interacts with that family.
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Such delusions don't spring up in action fully formed from the start. You don't just flip like a switch from sane to thinking you must kill the lizard people. It first goes through it just being harmless delusions of reference or whatever.

E.g., Herbert Mullin (although he did go get himself hospitalized some years before, so it's not the perfect equivalence, but then again that was over his depression and fears that he might be gay, and the doctors didn't think it necessary to keep him there) also spent something like 3 years of just harmless stuff before becoming convinced that he needs to sacrifice people to prevent an earthquake, and over 10 months between that and actually going and killing anyone. And even after he started killing random people, he could continue for another 4 months or so, in which it wasn't obvious to anyone that he's the homicidal nutcase.

Others were really even less obvious even after starting killing.

E.g., David Berkowitz was able to keep at it for well over a year, without anyone even suspecting anything. In fact, even at the trial they didn't believe he was schizophrenic, that was only diagnosed later while he was incarcerated. And we're talking about a guy who killed 6 people and wounded 7 more, because the neighbour's dog told him to. Also apparently that he's in a secret cult of Satan run by that dog.

So, again, the notion that (1) his psychosis would mainfest from the start in its final form, and (2) it would clearly be recognizable, is IMHO still very much misguided.

Checkmite said:
But I suppose it hardly matters. Someone with paranoid schizophrenia being hypothetically indistinguishable from someone without, is not really an effective argument that this person had paranoid schizophrenia. Believing an outlandish conspiracy, and being motivated to commit crime by that belief, isn't the actually same thing as being delusional.
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Well, I clearly have no way of diagnosing that over the internet, without even talking to the guy, even if I had the necessary diploma, which I don't. I will just say though that between the clear delusions and clearly crossing the threshold at which he was an imminent danger to others or himself, which is an actual criterion... yeah, it at the very least sounds plausible.
 
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plague311 said:
A complete and total dip **** bought into some QAnon asshattery, which then gave him the idea to drive down to Mexico (he lives in California, I believe Santa Barbara) and kill his 2 year old, and 10 month old children with a ******* spear gun. Though, I've read other articles that he also stabbed them multiple times with a wooden stake. I'm not sure which one is true.

I can't believe people are stupid enough to get duped by this ****. Anyway, he's going to go to a Mexican prison for life. Which isn't bound to be any fun, not that any prison is a hoot.



Link
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There are followers of Q and Illuminati conspiracies and then there are guys who can be convinced that his wife is possessed with serpent DNA and had passed it on to his children. There's a difference.
 
I think it's telling that Q conspiracy theories are so alluring to people who are having full on delusional breaks from reality and paranoid episodes. The line between "mainstream" Q crankery and outright mental illness is razor thin.
 
HansMustermann said:
Such delusions don't spring up in action fully formed from the start. You don't just flip like a switch from sane to thinking you must kill the lizard people. It first goes through it just being harmless delusions of reference or whatever.

E.g., Herbert Mullin (although he did go get himself hospitalized some years before, so it's not the perfect equivalence, but then again that was over his depression and fears that he might be gay, and the doctors didn't think it necessary to keep him there) also spent something like 3 years of just harmless stuff before becoming convinced that he needs to sacrifice people to prevent an earthquake, and over 10 months between that and actually going and killing anyone. And even after he started killing random people, he could continue for another 4 months or so, in which it wasn't obvious to anyone that he's the homicidal nutcase.
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Yes but - again - Mullin didn't actually live with the people he murdered, that were the villains of his delusion. All of his victims were impulse killings of people he didn't know more or less right after meeting them for the first time, with the exception of one person who he had known in high school but hadn't seen for several years. The people he WAS actually living with at the time - his parents - were aware that he was psychotic before he started killing (that's why they had him hospitalized, initially).

HansMustermann said:
Others were really even less obvious even after starting killing.

E.g., David Berkowitz was able to keep at it for well over a year, without anyone even suspecting anything. In fact, even at the trial they didn't believe he was schizophrenic, that was only diagnosed later while he was incarcerated. And we're talking about a guy who killed 6 people and wounded 7 more, because the neighbour's dog told him to. Also apparently that he's in a secret cult of Satan run by that dog.
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According to the Wikipedia article about Berkowitz, he admitted that the dog story was made up. Berkowitz wasn't mentally ill at all; he just claimed to be in an attempt at an incompetency ruling which failed when he was examined and found competent.
 
Checkmite said:
Nope.
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Well, considering that some of that does meet the medical definition of a delusion, I'll at the very least agree that the line between the two is rather thin.

As in, really, the only thing that stands between that and qualifying for being diagnosed with schizophrenia is is the criterion of whether it causes enough present distress or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom. And if that risk is considered imminent, it's also the criterion in most states for qualifying for a mandatory all-expenses-paid vacation in a mental institution.

Which really is also why I say that this guy probably would have qualified for schizophrenia. If a doctor had established that he's about to kill someone based on those delusions, I do believe that he'd have quite literally qualified for a court order to put him in a psychiatric hospital.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, considering that some of that does meet the medical definition of a delusion, I'll at the very least agree that the line between the two is rather thin.

As in, really, the only thing that stands between that and qualifying for being diagnosed with schizophrenia is is the criterion of whether it causes enough present distress or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom. And if that risk is considered imminent, it's also the criterion in most states for qualifying for a mandatory all-expenses-paid vacation in a mental institution.

Which really is also why I say that this guy probably would have qualified for schizophrenia. If a doctor had established that he's about to kill someone based on those delusions, I do believe that he'd have quite literally qualified for a court order to put him in a psychiatric hospital.
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I'm not so much stickling over diagnostic criteria here, insofar as filling the "impairment" criteria or time requirements, etc. I don't think he was delusional at all.

From the sound of it, he just believed a conspiracy theory and took it to extreme conclusions. For the second time, believing a kooky conspiracy theory, and even being motivated enough by that erroneous belief to commit a crime, is not the same thing as having a delusion.
 
Just from a personal point ofview, I have purposefully avoided the whole QAnon/anon concept as I couldn't be ****** looking into it.

Should probably bite the bullet and read about the thing.

Anyone have a link yto a non biased either way explanation of what it is/means?
 
Checkmite said:
I'm not so much stickling over diagnostic criteria here, insofar as filling the "impairment" criteria or time requirements, etc. I don't think he was delusional at all.

From the sound of it, he just believed a conspiracy theory and took it to extreme conclusions. For the second time, believing a kooky conspiracy theory, and even being motivated enough by that erroneous belief to commit a crime, is not the same thing as having a delusion.
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Err... Seriously, what do you think "delusion" actually means?

In DSM-III and IV, delusions were defined as “false beliefs due to incorrect inference about external reality”. The DSM-5 definition is: “fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence”.

The notion that yeah, he believed that his wife and kids were some kind of shape-shifting alien lizard, and was convinced enough to act on it, but you "don't think he was delusional at all" is just nonsense.

Yeah, surprise, that kind of firmly believing crazy BS is exactly what a delusion is. By definition.


And generally, by now I'm curious what do you think schizophrenia is, how it manifests, or how it's diagnosed. It's not COVID where you can stick a swab up someone's nose, and see if some solution changes colour. It literally just means in having delusions, and/or hallucinations (in the case of paranoid schizophrenia), and/or bizarre thought patterns, and/or disorganized speech, and/or a lack of motivation. (Source, for example, https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/schizophrenia/what-is-schizophrenia )

If you have fixed crazy ideas and they can't find another source for it (such as hallucinating because you take drugs, or have trouble speaking because of some neural damage) and it crosses the threshold of causing sufficient anguish or impairment or danger to yourself or others, congrats, you qualify. It's in fact pretty much the bucket diagnostic for when you DON'T have some more accurate idea why the hell does that guy have crazy thoughts.

That's all it means.
 
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cullennz said:
Just from a personal point ofview, I have purposefully avoided the whole QAnon/anon concept as I couldn't be ****** looking into it.

Should probably bite the bullet and read about the thing.

Anyone have a link yto a non biased either way explanation of what it is/means?
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In a sense you might be asking the impossible, because while QAnon is a more specific set than "Trump supporters", one of QAnon's defining attributes nevertheless is that it is a personality-cult devoted to Donald Trump, and that devotion is in fact so central to QAnon that any objective description of it is susceptible to being handwaved as biased against Trump, Trump supporters, or both.
 
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