From: "Nina Stratton"
<ninaeliza(a)gmail.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 05:04:38 -0800
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Could we tone down the language a bit?
Good point Daniel, and I'll go you one better. psychosis doesn't necessarily
means schizophrenia, and vice versa. I know 4 schizophrenics personally who
are active and productive members of society with almost full-time positions
that have a high degree of responsibility. One of them is my driver. I have
another staff member who is schizophrenic, and also a gentle, wise, lovely
person. The current crop of medications are literally revolutionizing
peoples lives.
When most people are talking about psychosis, they're talking about a
psychotic episode. I've had three in my life, and I'm just plain old
bipolar. Even then, violence has a tendency to be turned inward (see Margot
Kidder, Patty Duke, Carrie Fisher, etc.). Usually it's just random, bizarre
actions with no violence attached. Statistically, violence from people with
psychiatric disabilities is no greater than the general public, but violence
towards the mentally ill is much higher per capita (world-wide).
As far as Wikipedia is concerned, I've seen major depression (a tendency to
isolate from the "real world", both on and off Wiki), social anxiety
disorder (same thing), Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (endless fiddling with
user pages, compulsive copy-editing and wikignoming), sociopathy (harassment
of other users), ADHD (me), bipolar disorder (again, me), and paranoia
(everywhere). That's just off the top of my head. As Fred said, however, you
simply can't diagnose a keyboard. That's the beautiful thing about the
Internet, (with all them pipes).
It's nuts that there is no article [[Stigma (mental health)]] on Wikipedia.
I might stub it this morning. There is a giant hole in the encyclopedia on
Mental Health-related topics that I've been meaning to get to. This
encyclopedia just doesn't build itself - no matter how much I stare at the
screen.:)
Nina
A least one problem I envision with such MH Articles in WP is the fact that
you would, in some cases, have patients writing the textbook. There are many
aspects of mental, emotional, and behavioral conditions that are beyond some
persons¹ ability to accept. In the very first month that I signed on as a WP
editor I encountered such a problem. I wanted to upgrade an existing Article
on a chemical dependency-related subject, and immediately encountered strong
resistance from another editor. I was attempting to emphasize the disease
component of the condition, but the editor refused to acknowledge this fact.
Being very new to WP, after a least a week of back and forth with this
editor, of endless diatribes by them, and every one on my edits being
changed, I finally gave up, left the Article, and haven¹t looked back since.
I have practiced (one day I may get it right :-) ) in the fields of Clinical
Psychology and Psychotherapy for 42 years now. I wanted to bring some
expertise to the Articles in WP related to my fields, but have backed away.
I would love to see more, well-written Articles on all aspects of MH in the
encyclopedia. I believe they should be written by persons schooled in the
fields, and should be written so that any sentient person could understand
it. For me, the true measure of an ³expert² in something is his or her
ability to explain it to someone who isn¹t.
I would also like to see links to biographies of persons in the encyclopedia
who have suffered from these conditions.
Some thoughts.
Marc Riddell
On 1/10/07, James Hare <messedrocker(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Yeah, and I'm not happy that people are clearly being idiots and instead
of
being understanding you're all
"LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL STUPID IDIOT ROFLMAO GAHAHA GO
BACK
TO MYSPACE"
Which is very unprofessional and gives all of us a bad image and makes God
kill a kitten.
Remember, though, I have 1,000,000,000-year contract to serve Wikimedia so
I
won't leave over this. It'd be stupid thing to leave over, though.
On 1/10/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006(a)dpbsmith.com> wrote:
Someone on this mailing recently started a thread:
Subject: [WikiEN-l] psychosis and wikipedia.
I'd love to see some psychology-oriented individual do a case study
on what
kind of people are attracted to editing on Wikipedia. What
psychological
defects lurk behind the computer screens and the keyboards.
Could we please, please, _please_ try to tone down some of the use of
wildly exaggerated language and hype in this mailing list?
Psychosis means "A severe mental disorder, with or without organic
damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of
contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social
functioning."
As in schizophrenia.
It does _not_ mean a difficult person, a jerk, a bastard, an arrogant
adolescent, etc. Nor does it mean a person obsessed with an ideology
and a pitbull determination to inflict it on everyone.
I'm no psychologist, but in my fifteen years as a USENET participant,
I have perhaps _twice_ seen postings that I thought might, in fact,
actually have been made by someone suffering from schizophrenia. I
have yet to see anything similar on Wikipedia.
Words _do_ have meanings.
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