Due to the rain and floods I have been staying in a small community caravan park in a small Victorian town for about four weeks. I stayed here previously for an overnight stop two years ago. There is no on-site management and the site is owned by an incorporated body made up of townspeople who seem to have a "hands off" approach to the place. There is a small daily charge to stay here, posted into an honesty box.
There is a guy (a permanent it seems) in a dilapidated caravan in one corner who was here two years ago also. He spends virtually the entire 24 hours every day in his van, I never see the windows or doors open for ventilation, I guess neither his hair nor beard have been cut in five plus years. Hard to tell his age, between 65 and 80? I never see him use the facilities block and I doubt his van has toilet or shower. Roughly once a week he raises the bonnet of his old car and puts a charger on for 12 hours or more - stuffed battery no doubt. Then he drives (I guess) to the local shop and returns with a bag or two. I have tried to approach him once but he clearly didn't want to talk.
In a nutshell; he functions day-to-day but it seems to me a pretty dismal existence in all regards. I surmise he cannot afford a new car battery but if he is receiving a pension then, given his living costs, he should be able to so it may be he is not receiving the benifits he's entitled to and it may be social services could help improve his income and/or housing and who knows what else?
On the other hand: as I said, the bloke operates adequately on a day-to-day basis, he doesn't cause trouble, he doesn't (afaik) drink to excess so it may be he is content with his lifestyle and doesn't wish to become involved with "The Authorities" and maybe he has good reason for that?
My feeling, just, is to mind my own business, what are your thoughts?
dorian said
12:41 PM Nov 5, 2022
Mind your own business. One day that guy could be me.
Santa said
01:24 PM Nov 5, 2022
Keep schtum Mike, don't get involved, these things have a way of turning around a biting you.
Cuppa said
01:55 PM Nov 5, 2022
If you are up for it, try to engage with him again, but if he appears to be managing in his own way , no reason to contact the authorities without his permission. His brush off to you may be not because he doesn't crave company, but because he is embarrassed/shamed by his situation. If there were a way of inviting him to join you rather than vice versa, maybe that might help. A camp fire cook up with too much for you to manage alone & don't want to see it go to waste perhaps??
-- Edited by Cuppa on Saturday 5th of November 2022 01:56:57 PM
Mariner30 said
03:00 PM Nov 5, 2022
Someone in the area will know his actual circumstances.
Causing no problems.
Leave him alone.
Possum3 said
04:22 PM Nov 5, 2022
Many reclusive persons suffer a range of psychological disorders, many are not on Government systems owing to their immigration status or Police/Legal status, some just want to be alone far from society and it's complications.
I would do what Cuppa has suggested; try another casual engagement - The old "I have too many fish" or "I bought extra for visitors that didn't come" - would you do me a favour and take some to save me wasting them? Is always an opening.
86GTS said
08:06 PM Nov 5, 2022
Best left alone unfortunately.
Whenarewethere said
10:08 AM Nov 6, 2022
Keep out of it. If you happen to catch the person's eye, say hello, but be extremely conscious & diplomatic to let things go.
There are a few people in my area which one simply avoids, they don't cause any issues. One, I heard through the grapevine that his wife took most of his money, but he is surviving.
Personally, I think I would arrange a fake x family murder of myself.
Anyway, how are your solar panels performing with all this miserable weather.
Mike Harding said
03:53 PM Nov 6, 2022
Thanks people for your responses, I am surprised, but somewhat pleased, the majority said leave well alone and that is what I have decided to do. I figure the guy is functioning on a daily basis and there are normally people in the vicinity if things go seriously wrong for him.
I am a big advocate of living our life as we choose providing we do not impinge upon others but I do suspect he may not be receiving the state benefits to which he is entitled - ho hum... cannot save the world. I'll try to connect with him again before I leave in a few days but I'm not hopeful.
Bobdown said
05:32 PM Nov 6, 2022
He might be world's second dirtiest man if he doesn't tub....and look what happened to him when someone interfered and he had a wash
Many reclusive persons suffer a range of psychological disorders, many are not on Government systems owing to their immigration status or Police/Legal status, some just want to be alone far from society and it's complications.
I would do what Cuppa has suggested; try another casual engagement - The old "I have too many fish" or "I bought extra for visitors that didn't come" - would you do me a favour and take some to save me wasting them? Is always an opening.
I agree, nothing to lose by being friendly.
dorian said
05:44 AM Nov 8, 2022
Some time ago I spoke with a woman who ended up in the mental ward of the local hospital. She said she had no idea why she was sent there. She had been sitting on the grass on a hillside on the coast when the police turned up and took her to the hospital. Obviously I don't know the full story, but the experience seemed to have traumatised her.
As for the mental ward, it's not a place for healing. It's simply an area where people can be confined and kept under observation to prevent them from harming themselves or others. A pyschiatrist assesses their condition after a brief interview, and then experiments with a ****tail of drugs until s/he arrives at a combination and dosage that achieves the desired objective. There is no genuine empathy, nor can there be, unless you have experienced the suffering for yourself. The mental ward in effect makes you a prisoner of your mind and can only exacerbate an already difficult situation.
My own personal experience, and my interactions with others, leads me to believe that health care professionals have no real solution, nor do they have a real understanding. As an example, I was speaking with a young autistic teenage girl who had been sent to the mental ward. I asked her why she was there and she replied that she hit her mother. I asked her, "Do you love your mother?". She said yes, and then I asked "Why do you hit her?". With tears in her eyes she replied "I don't know", and then she threw her arms around me. Remember, this is an autistc person, and the prevailing wisdom is that autistic people cannot express or understand emotion in the same way as "normal" people. Clearly, she was able to sense my genuine empathy, and she was aware that I had problems of my own. It took me all of two minutes to make a connection with her, which is something that the professionals could not.
I had a similar experience with a neighbour who began to behave aggressively toward me. I visited him and was told by his partner that he was bipolar. I explained to him my own personal problems and suggsted that we should help each other. As before, he threw his arms around me and we became friends. That also only took a few minutes.
Cuppa said
09:43 AM Nov 8, 2022
I have to reply to your post Dorian. As you know I worked in mental health for many years & I know that your description of how you found it is accurate. This is the dominant 'medical model' in psychiatry & whilst it helps a few, I feel, like you, that it does more harm than good. Incarceration & drugs are pretty much all it offers. It is the result of two things - primarily the 'medical model' (the realm of the expert) which is based upon the belief that all mental illness stems from physical causes (eg. brain chemical interactions) even if those causes are not well understood. This is what led to many of the often awful, but occasionally successful 'physical treatments' which remained prevalent in my early days of training. ECT, modified insulin therapy, anti-psychotic drugs & lobotomys, along with anxiolytics & anti-depressants. All of those had/have a place, but were commonly used because that was all there was/is to try within the 'medical model'. Some have improved over the years, but the significant part of what is often still missing is precisely what you have identified. Empathy & time.
I was lucky enough to work in areas where 'talking therapies' (Psychotherapy) dominated for most of my career, & subscribed to a movement within psychiatry which became known as 'anti-psychiatry. More specifically my work within family therapy was informed by what became known as systemic & narrative therapy. Expertise was a different sort, it was expertise in developing useful understanding together with the client rather than one of 'knowing' & doing stuff to them.
In one place one role I had was as 'Intake worker' for a number of years. All referrals came to me. Together with colleagues we developed a model of triage which had therapeutic aims, in an environment where waiting lists were becoming ever longer. We called it SST - Single Session Therapy, in the belief that sometimes we could provide what was needed in a one off session without need for damaging labelling (diagnosis).If the single session proved inadequate the person/family went back onto the waiting list, but often the SST was remarkably worthwhile. It didn't sit well with management though, because government cutbacks had reached a stage where Mental health funding was required to have a diagnosis before funding was made available, & here we were doing our very best to provide what was needed whilst keeping the potential patients out of the Mental Health system.
There is a circular pattern in psychiatry which comes & goes according to government views & the country's prosperity or otherwise. Medical model is cheaper, especially when diagnosis can be reduced to checklists of symptoms. Talking to people is more time consuming & costly. When money is short talking & time are viewed as unnecessary luxuries.
One (of many) similar experiences to yours:
As the intake worker I had received a cross referral from the education & social services department who were pulling their hair out over an 11 year old boy who's behaviour was described as as 'out of control' both in the classroom & in the locality where he was living. He was aggressive & uncontainable in the temporary 'respite' social services facility where he had been placed.
Based upon the info I was able to obtain, learning that the boys parents had been through an acrimonious divorce with the only child, the boy, having been weaponised by both parents & then placed with a grandmother it seemed pretty obvious that rather than the diagnosis of ADHD or Behaviour Disorder which was being bandied around that his behaviours were a childish means of letting anyone & everyone know that he was distressed & unhappy. I chose not to meet with him, on the basis that he had already had enough folk giving him the message that he was 'damaged goods' & I felt continuing to 'make him the problem' was unlikely to be helpful. The professionals who were pulling out there hair needed to debrief - but they already had regular consultations from our service where they could do that. Instead I chose to offer an appointment to the grandmother.
It was a long session, almost 3 hours if I recall correctly, just her & me. It became clear during that time that she felt her parenting of her daughter had failed, & this in part contributed to her daughters failed parenting & failed marriage, but more than that she had never expected to once again be thrust back into a parenting role with her grandson, & whilst loving him very much felt many uncertainties about whether she was up to the task. I could see her love & I could see her fear. What I couldn't see was any acceptance on her part that there was something wrong with the boy. This was a beacon of light within the whole sad & sorry situation.
My primary intervention, apart from 'hearing her' was a tearful (on both our parts) hugging her & telling her that in different circumstances I would have been more than happy for her to have been parenting a child of mine. Corny? perhaps, but it was precisely what was needed. No labels, no diagnosis confirming to the young lad he was the problem everyone else was telling he was. No psychiatric history to haunt him.
I bumped into the grandmother in the street some 6 or more months later. Embarrassingly I didn't recognise her, but she recognised me & was very keen to tell me me how much difference our meeting had made. Her grandson had been living back with her since shortly after our meeting, & he had now settled right down & was attending school without any problems, in fact doing quite well. A different school where the previous history did not dominate, & knowing he was wanted & welcome living with gran. Social services were no longer involved.
In another setting the boy could have very easily have been diagnosed with ADHD & put on Ritalin but I feel confident it would have had a far less positive outcome for him, his family & the ongoing support services which no doubt would have remained part of his life for a long time.
This is one tiny anecdote among many which corroborates Dorian's post, but hopefully also informs there is a stream which exists within psychiatry which dislikes the mainstream Medical model. My story is from a Child psychiatry setting, but I have friends still working within small pockets of adult psychiatry ready to expand their services if/when funding models next allow it.
-- Edited by Cuppa on Tuesday 8th of November 2022 09:56:40 AM
Ivan 01 said
01:47 PM Nov 8, 2022
What a beautiful story of success even if the method you used was not mainstream so to speak. It is a big achievement to be able to disregard the norm and just *do it your way*
Your story above displays so much empathy.
snip>
This is one tiny anecdote among many which corroborates Dorian's post, but hopefully also informs there is a stream which exists within psychiatry which dislikes the mainstream Medical model. My story is from a Child psychiatry setting, but I have friends still working within small pockets of adult psychiatry ready to expand their services if/when funding models next allow it.
The mind boggles as to how many other proven practices of the diagnosis of mental illness can be just cast off with articles from Wikipedia.
The author of the book in the second link certainly appears to base that book on the treatment of the human disorder without drugs even though in almost all cases there use is usually the last resort.
I would be most interested if he could give his explanation of how his methods might be applied to treat someone successfully with
Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
If he could actually do this it would change the world.
@Mike Harding,
If it were me I would just adopt the practice of just live and let live.
-- Edited by Ivan 01 on Tuesday 8th of November 2022 02:13:55 PM
86GTS said
02:20 PM Nov 8, 2022
There are some strange goings on out there.
We camped at Wenhams Camp in Warby-Ovens National Park using our tent top camper trailer.
When we arrived there was one caravan & a small cheap igloo tent with rubbish strewn all around it.
The caravan left the next day.
We were camped about 50 metres away from the tent between it & the drop toilets.
We thought that the tent was abandoned until we heard the faint sound of a transistor radio.
During the day no-one came out but after dark a huge guy emerged into total darkness.
This happened for 3 nights until on the 4th night after we'd turned our lights off & gone to bed we heard a deep creepy voice close by say ''they've gone nightie nights''.
We expected a knife to come slicing thru the canvas like a scene from a horror movie & hardly slept a wink.
Next morning we packed up & moved to the other campground in the park.
A day later we spoke to a Park Ranger about our experience.
He said that the mental health services place people in their care out in the bush with a tent, canned food & water after the patients allotted number of care days per month/year had been used up.
Cuppa said
04:14 PM Nov 8, 2022
Ivan, your assertion about drug use being the last resort is completely opposite to what occurs in most psychiatric services where drugs are generally the first, & often only treatment.
My link to the wikipedia article was simply to show that the professional approach which informed my practice is a respected movement worldwide & to show that that there are divisions within psychiatry regarding the aetiology of psychiatric conditions & consequently their treatment.
I have not said that drugs are bad, but I also have no doubt that they are over used & that there would be far less use of them if they were generally considered a last resort.
Sometimes they can be helpful. More often they only provide a 'mask' either for the patient or for those around them.When used they should be used in conjunction with a therapy which addresses the cause. Mostly this does not happen because the 'cause' is considered to be something innately wrong with the person & considering their history & environment is placed in the too hard or not relevant basket. Just give'em the drugs.
Another little example from my time in training. We were taught about two basic types of depression - endogenous (from within) & reactive. A favourite treatment for depression was Electro-Convulsive Therapy - not pretty, but sometimes helpful. The real problem was about when that 'sometimes' was. Accepted understanding back then was that it was useful with endogenous depression but of no value for reactive depression. Nevertheless the busloads (literally) of patients lined up, often against their will, to have ECT were 95% folk suffering from reactive depression. Folk in abusive situations, folk who had experienced trauma & loss etc etc, for whom anti depressants hadn't helped. Hardly surprising they remained depressed when the circumstances they were reacting to remained unlooked at & unchanged. But the drugs hadn't worked, their depression worsened & so they were given ECT. Mostly it too didn't help at all, but it kept being given because there was 'nothing else', such was the mindset of the medical model . I know of men & women who's ECT 'treatments' numbered more than 50! It is the same mindset with which drugs are prescribed so freely to so many people with little benefit. Some of the newer drugs are truly horrible, but I think often the companies which produce them have no interest in cure only in maintenance. If their products worked they would have put themselves out of business!
Perhaps you should do some further reading to assist with what appears to be your obsession with one particular diagnosis from the DSM 5
-- Edited by Cuppa on Tuesday 8th of November 2022 04:16:06 PM
Due to the rain and floods I have been staying in a small community caravan park in a small Victorian town for about four weeks. I stayed here previously for an overnight stop two years ago. There is no on-site management and the site is owned by an incorporated body made up of townspeople who seem to have a "hands off" approach to the place. There is a small daily charge to stay here, posted into an honesty box.
There is a guy (a permanent it seems) in a dilapidated caravan in one corner who was here two years ago also. He spends virtually the entire 24 hours every day in his van, I never see the windows or doors open for ventilation, I guess neither his hair nor beard have been cut in five plus years. Hard to tell his age, between 65 and 80? I never see him use the facilities block and I doubt his van has toilet or shower. Roughly once a week he raises the bonnet of his old car and puts a charger on for 12 hours or more - stuffed battery no doubt. Then he drives (I guess) to the local shop and returns with a bag or two. I have tried to approach him once but he clearly didn't want to talk.
In a nutshell; he functions day-to-day but it seems to me a pretty dismal existence in all regards. I surmise he cannot afford a new car battery but if he is receiving a pension then, given his living costs, he should be able to so it may be he is not receiving the benifits he's entitled to and it may be social services could help improve his income and/or housing and who knows what else?
On the other hand: as I said, the bloke operates adequately on a day-to-day basis, he doesn't cause trouble, he doesn't (afaik) drink to excess so it may be he is content with his lifestyle and doesn't wish to become involved with "The Authorities" and maybe he has good reason for that?
My feeling, just, is to mind my own business, what are your thoughts?
Keep schtum Mike, don't get involved, these things have a way of turning around a biting you.
If you are up for it, try to engage with him again, but if he appears to be managing in his own way , no reason to contact the authorities without his permission. His brush off to you may be not because he doesn't crave company, but because he is embarrassed/shamed by his situation. If there were a way of inviting him to join you rather than vice versa, maybe that might help. A camp fire cook up with too much for you to manage alone & don't want to see it go to waste perhaps??
-- Edited by Cuppa on Saturday 5th of November 2022 01:56:57 PM
Causing no problems.
Leave him alone.
I would do what Cuppa has suggested; try another casual engagement - The old "I have too many fish" or "I bought extra for visitors that didn't come" - would you do me a favour and take some to save me wasting them? Is always an opening.
Keep out of it. If you happen to catch the person's eye, say hello, but be extremely conscious & diplomatic to let things go.
There are a few people in my area which one simply avoids, they don't cause any issues. One, I heard through the grapevine that his wife took most of his money, but he is surviving.
Personally, I think I would arrange a fake x family murder of myself.
Anyway, how are your solar panels performing with all this miserable weather.
Thanks people for your responses, I am surprised, but somewhat pleased, the majority said leave well alone and that is what I have decided to do. I figure the guy is functioning on a daily basis and there are normally people in the vicinity if things go seriously wrong for him.
I am a big advocate of living our life as we choose providing we do not impinge upon others but I do suspect he may not be receiving the state benefits to which he is entitled - ho hum... cannot save the world. I'll try to connect with him again before I leave in a few days but I'm not hopeful.
He might be world's second dirtiest man if he doesn't tub....and look what happened to him when someone interfered and he had a wash
Leave him be....
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/worlds-dirtiest-man-dies-aged-94-months-after-taking-his-first-shower-in-67-years/news-story/257c86cf8ba484dc5c90add6a5c95136
I agree, nothing to lose by being friendly.
As for the mental ward, it's not a place for healing. It's simply an area where people can be confined and kept under observation to prevent them from harming themselves or others. A pyschiatrist assesses their condition after a brief interview, and then experiments with a ****tail of drugs until s/he arrives at a combination and dosage that achieves the desired objective. There is no genuine empathy, nor can there be, unless you have experienced the suffering for yourself. The mental ward in effect makes you a prisoner of your mind and can only exacerbate an already difficult situation.
My own personal experience, and my interactions with others, leads me to believe that health care professionals have no real solution, nor do they have a real understanding. As an example, I was speaking with a young autistic teenage girl who had been sent to the mental ward. I asked her why she was there and she replied that she hit her mother. I asked her, "Do you love your mother?". She said yes, and then I asked "Why do you hit her?". With tears in her eyes she replied "I don't know", and then she threw her arms around me. Remember, this is an autistc person, and the prevailing wisdom is that autistic people cannot express or understand emotion in the same way as "normal" people. Clearly, she was able to sense my genuine empathy, and she was aware that I had problems of my own. It took me all of two minutes to make a connection with her, which is something that the professionals could not.
I had a similar experience with a neighbour who began to behave aggressively toward me. I visited him and was told by his partner that he was bipolar. I explained to him my own personal problems and suggsted that we should help each other. As before, he threw his arms around me and we became friends. That also only took a few minutes.
I have to reply to your post Dorian. As you know I worked in mental health for many years & I know that your description of how you found it is accurate. This is the dominant 'medical model' in psychiatry & whilst it helps a few, I feel, like you, that it does more harm than good. Incarceration & drugs are pretty much all it offers. It is the result of two things - primarily the 'medical model' (the realm of the expert) which is based upon the belief that all mental illness stems from physical causes (eg. brain chemical interactions) even if those causes are not well understood. This is what led to many of the often awful, but occasionally successful 'physical treatments' which remained prevalent in my early days of training. ECT, modified insulin therapy, anti-psychotic drugs & lobotomys, along with anxiolytics & anti-depressants. All of those had/have a place, but were commonly used because that was all there was/is to try within the 'medical model'. Some have improved over the years, but the significant part of what is often still missing is precisely what you have identified. Empathy & time.
I was lucky enough to work in areas where 'talking therapies' (Psychotherapy) dominated for most of my career, & subscribed to a movement within psychiatry which became known as 'anti-psychiatry. More specifically my work within family therapy was informed by what became known as systemic & narrative therapy. Expertise was a different sort, it was expertise in developing useful understanding together with the client rather than one of 'knowing' & doing stuff to them.
In one place one role I had was as 'Intake worker' for a number of years. All referrals came to me. Together with colleagues we developed a model of triage which had therapeutic aims, in an environment where waiting lists were becoming ever longer. We called it SST - Single Session Therapy, in the belief that sometimes we could provide what was needed in a one off session without need for damaging labelling (diagnosis).If the single session proved inadequate the person/family went back onto the waiting list, but often the SST was remarkably worthwhile. It didn't sit well with management though, because government cutbacks had reached a stage where Mental health funding was required to have a diagnosis before funding was made available, & here we were doing our very best to provide what was needed whilst keeping the potential patients out of the Mental Health system.
There is a circular pattern in psychiatry which comes & goes according to government views & the country's prosperity or otherwise. Medical model is cheaper, especially when diagnosis can be reduced to checklists of symptoms. Talking to people is more time consuming & costly. When money is short talking & time are viewed as unnecessary luxuries.
One (of many) similar experiences to yours:
As the intake worker I had received a cross referral from the education & social services department who were pulling their hair out over an 11 year old boy who's behaviour was described as as 'out of control' both in the classroom & in the locality where he was living. He was aggressive & uncontainable in the temporary 'respite' social services facility where he had been placed.
Based upon the info I was able to obtain, learning that the boys parents had been through an acrimonious divorce with the only child, the boy, having been weaponised by both parents & then placed with a grandmother it seemed pretty obvious that rather than the diagnosis of ADHD or Behaviour Disorder which was being bandied around that his behaviours were a childish means of letting anyone & everyone know that he was distressed & unhappy. I chose not to meet with him, on the basis that he had already had enough folk giving him the message that he was 'damaged goods' & I felt continuing to 'make him the problem' was unlikely to be helpful. The professionals who were pulling out there hair needed to debrief - but they already had regular consultations from our service where they could do that. Instead I chose to offer an appointment to the grandmother.
It was a long session, almost 3 hours if I recall correctly, just her & me. It became clear during that time that she felt her parenting of her daughter had failed, & this in part contributed to her daughters failed parenting & failed marriage, but more than that she had never expected to once again be thrust back into a parenting role with her grandson, & whilst loving him very much felt many uncertainties about whether she was up to the task. I could see her love & I could see her fear. What I couldn't see was any acceptance on her part that there was something wrong with the boy. This was a beacon of light within the whole sad & sorry situation.
My primary intervention, apart from 'hearing her' was a tearful (on both our parts) hugging her & telling her that in different circumstances I would have been more than happy for her to have been parenting a child of mine. Corny? perhaps, but it was precisely what was needed. No labels, no diagnosis confirming to the young lad he was the problem everyone else was telling he was. No psychiatric history to haunt him.
I bumped into the grandmother in the street some 6 or more months later. Embarrassingly I didn't recognise her, but she recognised me & was very keen to tell me me how much difference our meeting had made. Her grandson had been living back with her since shortly after our meeting, & he had now settled right down & was attending school without any problems, in fact doing quite well. A different school where the previous history did not dominate, & knowing he was wanted & welcome living with gran. Social services were no longer involved.
In another setting the boy could have very easily have been diagnosed with ADHD & put on Ritalin but I feel confident it would have had a far less positive outcome for him, his family & the ongoing support services which no doubt would have remained part of his life for a long time.
This is one tiny anecdote among many which corroborates Dorian's post, but hopefully also informs there is a stream which exists within psychiatry which dislikes the mainstream Medical model. My story is from a Child psychiatry setting, but I have friends still working within small pockets of adult psychiatry ready to expand their services if/when funding models next allow it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry
https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Psychiatry-Electroshock-Biochemical-Theories-ebook/dp/B017RC8FZA
-- Edited by Cuppa on Tuesday 8th of November 2022 09:56:40 AM
What a beautiful story of success even if the method you used was not mainstream so to speak. It is a big achievement to be able to disregard the norm and just *do it your way*
Your story above displays so much empathy.
snip>
This is one tiny anecdote among many which corroborates Dorian's post, but hopefully also informs there is a stream which exists within psychiatry which dislikes the mainstream Medical model. My story is from a Child psychiatry setting, but I have friends still working within small pockets of adult psychiatry ready to expand their services if/when funding models next allow it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry
https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Psychiatry-Electroshock-Biochemical-Theories-ebook/dp/B017RC8FZA
<snip
Mmmm! Interesting links.
The mind boggles as to how many other proven practices of the diagnosis of mental illness can be just cast off with articles from Wikipedia.
The author of the book in the second link certainly appears to base that book on the treatment of the human disorder without drugs even though in almost all cases there use is usually the last resort.
I would be most interested if he could give his explanation of how his methods might be applied to treat someone successfully with
Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
If he could actually do this it would change the world.
@Mike Harding,
If it were me I would just adopt the practice of just live and let live.
-- Edited by Ivan 01 on Tuesday 8th of November 2022 02:13:55 PM
We camped at Wenhams Camp in Warby-Ovens National Park using our tent top camper trailer.
When we arrived there was one caravan & a small cheap igloo tent with rubbish strewn all around it.
The caravan left the next day.
We were camped about 50 metres away from the tent between it & the drop toilets.
We thought that the tent was abandoned until we heard the faint sound of a transistor radio.
During the day no-one came out but after dark a huge guy emerged into total darkness.
This happened for 3 nights until on the 4th night after we'd turned our lights off & gone to bed we heard a deep creepy voice close by say ''they've gone nightie nights''.
We expected a knife to come slicing thru the canvas like a scene from a horror movie & hardly slept a wink.
Next morning we packed up & moved to the other campground in the park.
A day later we spoke to a Park Ranger about our experience.
He said that the mental health services place people in their care out in the bush with a tent, canned food & water after the patients allotted number of care days per month/year had been used up.
-- Edited by Cuppa on Tuesday 8th of November 2022 04:16:06 PM