From: "Nina Stratton" ninaeliza@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 05:04:38 -0800 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@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@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@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.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l