Speaking of mental illness, moral choices can be quite screwed up. BarbaraTherese

[Guest]

Auditory hallucinations (hearing voices) - some offensive language.  The video (a similarity only) is an example, while the variety of personal experience is probably considerable.   Not only those suffering schizophrenia can hear an hallucinatory voice or voices in a psychotic state. 

I can't get the video to insert as it should.  Google: "You Tube - auditory hallucinations" and it should come up.  I watched/heard the first one only.

 

[<3 PopeFrancis]

The article from New Advent was an excellent perspective from the Catholic ie. moral point of view for what is accountable and responsible for not only the mentally ill but those around them and who deal with them at a professional level. Thank you so much for your insight and resources -especially @BarbaraTherese, @CatherineM and others.  

I confess I haven't watched the videos of the simulated experience on the spectrum ie. mental illness/schizophrenia, autism, etc. because I am not yet prepared to.  I have expectant hope to do so.

@BarbaraTherese and anyone ever wants  or needs to chat please feel free to contact me on a personal level.  

[Jack4]

In most cases, I feel, those with MI aren't violent. They are victims of violence. 

[EmilyAnn]

When you say "mental illness", that's the same as saying "illness". You're talking about a wide range of conditions that vary dramatically and no two peoples experiences will be exactly the same, even if they have the same condition. It's important not to assume that all people with mental illness are the same.  

Even though my degree is in psychology, I've always stubbornly refused to think of myself as having a mental illness because I don't want the connotations and assumptions that come with that as a label. I was a self-harmer, so it's hard for me to hide that I have problems because I have very obvious scars across my arms. I wear a lot of long or 3/4-length sleeves so that I don't have to answer questions - even though it's fairly obvious what they are I still get people quizzing me. One summer at my old job I wore short sleeves and when a colleague asked me I just said "they're old now" and she tutted at me.

Stigma is a big issue, and mentally ill people generally are far more vulnerable to harm from others than they are to harming others.

 

[Guest]

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 4:18 AM, EmilyAnn said:

Stigma is a big issue, and mentally ill people generally are far more vulnerable to harm from others than they are to harming others

 

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 2:38 AM, Jack4 said:

In most cases, I feel, those with MI aren't violent. They are victims of violence.

Well said. Statistics support the above http://www.mindframe-media.info/for-mental-health-and-suicide-prevention/talking-to-media-about-mental-illness/facts-and-stats . 

Harm or violence is not only physical, it also includes the psychological from stigma (false stereotyping) which can be severe and have severe repercussions.  Gossip spreading, exacerbation of MI symptoms in sufferer , isolation, loneliness, lack of meaning in life, hopelessness, severe depression, self harm.........sometimes suicide. 

[<3 PopeFrancis]

Stigma hinders healing from mental illness.  If it were not for the stigma, people could be healing completely.

People are developing technologies beyond and despite the stigma.  

[Guest]

It is who is suffering right now that is my concern.....and all any now's and sufferers down the line as technology develops striving to outpace the major problem sufferers of MI face.  If it can outpace stigma or any other problem related to mental illness and if it is going to help sufferers, it has my vote absolutely....as long as we don't sit on our hands waiting for a 'silver bullet' in the meantime.

 

[Guest]

To round off this thread on 'screwed up moral choices', here are extracts from a paper which appeared in the United States National Library of Medicine "Free Will and Mental Disorder - Exploring The Relationship".

 

Quote

 

Free Will and Mental Disorder - Exploring The Relationship". https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2975916/

There are several reasons for the importance of a “first person” perspective on this matter. The first reason is that it is about psychopathological mental states. Such mental states are not easily accessible to everybody. Therefore, those who have had experiential access to these states or conditions should not be excluded from, but welcomed into, discussions on the relation between mental disorder, free will (in whatever sense), and responsibility. Notably, there are a huge variety of mental disorders, so being familiar with one of them is certainly not enough.

Conclusion

In this paper the link between mental disorder and free will was explored as it is present in two domains: philosophy of free will and forensic psychiatry. As it turns out, philosophers working on free will often view mental disorders as compromising free will and, hence, as threatening or reducing responsibility. In forensic psychiatry, mental disorders are also viewed as compromising the agent’s free will and legal responsibility. Meanwhile, in philosophy, free will turns out to be hard to define. However, three central elements or senses of free will are present in the philosophical debate. Consequently, the sentence “mental disorders are able to compromise free will” can have at least three different meanings. In order to explore the link between mental disorder and free will, we tentatively related each of these three senses to mental disorder. Based on our preliminary considerations, understanding the sentence in terms of the mental disorder preventing the person from being the actual source of the action could make sense both from a forensic and a philosophical perspective. Mental disorder, then, would affect the element of origination.

Returning to the “important loss of freedom” phrase in the introduction of the DSM-IV, which motivated this article, I conclude that freedom in the sense of free will could indeed be a meaningful understanding of this phrase. Both the philosophical debate on free will and forensic psychiatry suggest that mental disorders may affect free will. Yet, the sense of free will that may be affected by mental disorder in general and by specific disorders in particular remains to be elucidated. It is, therefore, important to further study this link, especially because of the value attached to free action and free decision-making in the lives of individual people and because of the impact of (not) ascribing praise and blame to an agent. It is noteworthy that the mental states associated with mental disorders are not immediately accessible to everybody. Therefore, further research should not only be conceptual in nature but also involve first person and firsthand accounts of people who actually suffered or suffer from mental disorder. Their experiences should inform the discussion on free will and mental disorder.

I wanted to highlight what appears below in my post at the conclusion of the paper - however, highlight would not work for me:

Quote

"Therefore, further research should not only be conceptual in nature but also involve first person and firsthand accounts of people who actually suffered or suffer from mental disorder. Their experiences should inform the discussion on free will and mental disorder."

 

Edited October 9, 2016 by BarbaraTherese
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