
The Mystery of Urban Psychosis - wallflower
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/07/the-enigma-of-urban-psychosis/491141/?single_page=true
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stewbrew
"the same factors that increase your chance of getting diagnosed with
schizophrenia also increase your chances of ending up in living in a deprived
urban area"

I wonder how much of this mystery is based on spurious correlation -- people
with mental problems fleeing rural areas and moving to cities, other (social)
factors that are more common in cities and influence the probability of
developing a mental illness.

~~~
DanBC
The article talks about that.

> But none of this conclusively proves that cities cause schizophrenia and
> some argue the causal arrow actually goes round the other way. People with
> psychosis, the alternative explanation goes, are just more likely to end up
> living in poor city neighborhoods—something first labeled the ‘social drift’
> hypothesis.

[...]

> . But we know this can’t explain what we see in modern studies because time
> spent in the city is also associated with your future chance of developing
> these experiences. A recent study led by Joanne Newbury at King’s College
> London even found this effect in children, who have little say where they
> live.

~~~
stewbrew
The hypothetic example of "people with mental problems" was only part of my
statement. The citation above doesn't cover mental problems as result of
concentrated social deprivation you only see in cities.

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jhallenworld
This, and other recent events, remind me of the "muckers" from John Brunner's
1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar)

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TheSpiceIsLife
> The two big psychological negatives of city living, social isolation and
> social threat, are already well studied in mental health.

I'm not familiar wit the the term _social threat_. Is anybody able to
elaborate on the meaning on this term in the given context, or link to an
explanation.

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gojomo
Surprised this article, and the researchers interviewed, don't highlight
contagious agents as a possibility.

There's a strong case that Toxoplasma gondii, a communicable parasite, can
contribute to schizophrenia or other mental illnesses:

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cat-parasite-toxoplasma-
gondii-l...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cat-parasite-toxoplasma-gondii-
linked-to-mental-illness-schizophrenia/)

Other viruses have been posited as contributors to mental illness, and there's
a relationship between schizophrenia and season-of-birth that may indicate
prenatal/youthful infection with some otherwise mild seasonal illness (like
flu) might increase the risk of schizophrenia later.

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Mendenhall
So much more goes on in city life than rural life. More interactions more
noise etc. etc. Perhaps with more things around that affect you, more odds of
psychosis.

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throw001away
I'm a regular reader of HN and a sometimes commenter. My other account is over
1100 days old. I'm going to write this anonymously because the content is
otherwise not well linked to my online profile.

I started writing this in response to @Gibbon1's comment: _Might be people
suffering an episode of mania in a rural area pass unnoticed by the various
authorities._

Which raises the question: which is better, to be noticed by the authorities,
or to have your episode of mania / psychosis, and then return to your
(slightly more?) centre way of being?

Presumably once you've had one episode that gets noticed by the authorities
you then probably get 'treatment'. Yet do we even know what these conditions
really are, and do the treatments work? If the definition of _the treatment
worked_ is that the person is too dulled or numbed to function well enough to
have another episode then, in my opinion, we aren't really treating the
condition, we don't understand it well enough to heal it.

The troubling thing is when the episode results in harm, or risk of harm, to
others. With reference @Hydraulix989 comment, perhaps the ominous house up the
road is a better place to be an in a city crawling with cops and
psychiatrists. There are, or tend to be?, fewer 'services' for mental in rural
areas, but maybe that's a good thing because I'm not convinced who the
services serve.

Urban mental health services are a form of institutionalisation of people with
mental health issues. The overwhelming dogma of the medical field is that
mental health needs treatment of some sort. More recently we're seeing that
treatment can include things like dietary or gut flora therapy, relaxation
meditation, that sort of thing.

I was adopted, I met my biological parents when I was 22. Biological father
went to high security prison for a home invasion and drug dealing / growing
pot, biological mother lost access to her children for a good deal of time due
to her wayward lifestyle. I ended up being charged with drug trafficking
myself, and only just avoided a sentence when the charges were dropped due to
the police's illegal methods. I have a couple of assault charges up my sleeve.
I've experienced several 6 month periods of injecting methamphetamine 4 days
out of 7, and longer periods of lesser usage. This one time I stayed awake for
6 days, my housemate was awake for 7 days. I have seen my own child a handful
of times since it was born.

I've always made it a point to be very careful who I talk to about my internal
experience, you don't want to reveal that sort of thing to the wrong sort of
people and end up on a court ordered medication program. Ordinarily I'm quite
normal and well behaved.

Through a set of pretty terrible circumstances I've moved away from the city I
lived in, stopped contact with almost everyone I knew, and now live in a
smaller city where I've had a stable well paying job for nearly 3 years, have
had pre-approval for finance to purchase a house, and just put in an offer to
buy a place. I would hope that, rather than end up on medication, or in a
cycle of treatment and poverty, I become that ominous house up the road - I
think that would be a better outcome for me. But perhaps I can live a
relatively normal life if I make the enough of the right choices enough of the
time.

I'm lucky that, given regular sleep, good nutrition, and plenty of exercise,
and having avoided all of the doctors medications, and never spent a day in
psychiatric care or prison, nor suicided, I can maintain my composure fairly
indefinitely, I hope.

I'm not very good at intimate relationships, they seem to be a trigger for, or
lead to a set of circumstances where I become unhinged, and having written all
of this down for the first time I think I'm going to make a commitment to stay
out of them.

~~~
brokenmachine
Amazing that you were able to get a stable, well paying job as a convicted
felon. I would imagine that would be very difficult.

That's one of the worst things about the war on some drugs in my opinion, it
creates a social underclass with a massively increased chance of reoffending.

Good luck with everything and thanks for telling your story.

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astazangasta
If you live in a city, you should read this essay:

[http://www.altruists.org/static/files/The%20Metropolis%20and...](http://www.altruists.org/static/files/The%20Metropolis%20and%20Mental%20Life%20\(Georg%20Simmel\).htm)

>Our psychic activity still responds to almost every impression of somebody
else with a somewhat distinct feeling. The unconscious, fluid and changing
character of this impression seems to result in a state of indifference.
Actually this indifference would be just as unnatural as the diffusion of
indiscriminate mutual suggestion would be unbearable. From both these typical
dangers of the metropolis, indifference and indiscriminate suggestibility,
antipathy protects us. A latent antipathy and the preparatory stage of
practical antagonism effect the distances and aversions without which this
mode of life could not at all be led.

~~~
dominotw
trivial observation packaged in flowery language to sound insightful ?

tl;dr: there is too much going on in the city to give a shit.

~~~
astazangasta
> The essence of the blasé attitude consists in the blunting of
> discrimination. This does not mean that the objects are not perceived, as is
> the case with the half-wit, but rather that the meaning and differing values
> of things, and thereby the things themselves, are experienced as
> insubstantial.

~~~
benevol
Sure, but here's the thing: The inter-subjective reflectivity of perceived
para-circular linearity is subject to radial normality of the urbanoid race
condition reflective of mostly pervasive stray projection, which, in 93
percent of all cases, prevails as the main subject of pre-relationary
trajectory analysis, as proven by the late Phil Corytorov.

