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Smartphones To Monitor Schizophrenics
the_newsbeagle writes Psychiatrists have realized that they can collect vast amounts of data about their patients using smartphone apps that passively monitor the patients as they go about their daily business. A prototype for schizophrenia patients is being tested out now on Long Island. The Crosscheck trial will look at behavior patterns (tracking movement, sleep, and conversations) and correlate them with the patient's reports of symptoms and moods; researchers hope the data will reveal the "signature" of a patient who is about relapse and therefore needs help.
Maybe we should have explained to psychiatrists that Is The Government Spying On Schizophrenics Enough? was a joke, not a roadmap.
These people are still human beings with dignity aren't they? or are they just diseased chattled to be mitigated?
When, say, your daughter suddenly takes off for Florida, convinced that she will succeed in her new life as a monkey trainer, because the voices in her head said so, then she does need help. Period.
There are blunt ways to put it, and sugar coated ways to put it, but the brain is malfunctioning and it needs help.
Giving a paranoid person a sense s/he is being observed 24/7...
As someone who used to answer the 911 psych calls for our volunteer FD in a rural area, a voluntary app like this could be really useful. Where we lived back then first responders were the only regular checks a lot of the psych cases ever got. By the time someone called 911, they were way off the sanity reservation. Then law enforcement got involved and packed them off to primary care. They'd stabilize on their meds, the hospital would cut them loose because they didn't have insurance, sometimes with a couple days worth of meds, and we'd start the cycle all over again. Anything that would alert medical personnel that someone was having a problem and find a way to get them some help before we got a call that they were chasing cows around in the pasture bare ass naked would be a good thing.
I learned that rural areas are full of crazy people because the cost of living is lower and they could be crazy and not bother as many people. It was kind of surprising to find out how many of our neighbors were genuinely, seriously out there howling at the moon loony tunes (technical medical jargon).
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I am doubtful of the smartphones role in this. One must be able to carry the phone without believing it is SPYING on you for the men who want to control you.
I can see smartphones being discarded or traded and the best laid plans of ex-spurts falling to poo.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Your brain is malfunctioning and you need help. You don't believe me? That's because your brain is malfunctioning and you need help!
The entire fraudulent pseudoscience of psychiatry depends upon circular reasoning? You only think it does, because your brain is malfunctioning and you need help!!
Except that schizophrenics generally know that their brain is malfunctioning. And they're not happy about it. They may reject help, but they know they're not normal.
Now when a state-appointed psychiatrist declares that you are insane because you don't love this most perfect of all nations, that's a different matter.
>The entire fraudulent pseudoscience of psychiatry
You bought this andi-psychology Scientology crap? Fuck you.
I was born with an inability to synthesize serotonin, and lived in a Hell of chronic severe major depression for 54 years until somebody invented a drug (Viibryd) that turned my life from hopeless anxious suffering to a thriving and much more pleasant existence that now makes me glad that I DIDN'T kill myself all through those years.
Some psychology is bogus, some practioners are bad at it or quacks, but not all psychology can be dismissed because you don't want to address your own issues and find denial and anti-scientism an effective avoidance technique.
Again, fuck you.
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