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Chaco Canyon

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2003
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Chaco Canyon Culture Bound Syndromes Trepanation
Culture Bound Syndromes now has a separate page.
The phenomenon of physiology explored on this site is hard to believe.
It is fully explained in psychology lectures where college students don't believe it either.
Start with the Demonstration page which allows you to experience the phenomenon safely.
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Chaco Canyon
Chaco Canyon is the only place in the world where buildings are aligned to the rising and setting of the moon.
Introduction
The first thing you should understand about the phenomenon on this site, VisionAndPsychosis.Net, is that although in our modern society it is the business office and incorrectly installed computer work stations which cause the risk for this psychiatric injury, it is not an issue of tables/desks and chairs, or blinking lights alone.
Injury is created by the conflict between an evolutionarily developed warning system suited to hunter gather mobile societies, and our modern workplace which requires stationary posture and deep mental investment to complete today's office or knowledge work.
The Cubicle is the tool that allows us to overcome the conflict and work sitting in close-spaced workstations in modern business offices.
The "special circumstances" that allow exposure from Subliminal Distraction are so simple they can be created even in primitive societies.
While we can learn to ignore the concentration breaking vision reflexes we can't "stop seeing" anything in our vision field. There are no "off switches" for the sensor cells on the rods and cones of your retina. If stimulus strikes these cells neural impulses go to your brain
The motion detection system we call peripheral vision reflexes cannot be turned off because of this feature of physiology.
The subliminal threat-detection and your brain's subliminal attempt to force a startle and vision reflex is a Subliminal Distraction. That's the name for this problem in the Design field outside the United States. Here the term Cubicle Level Protection is used when discussing the phenomenon.
When the modern worker is positioned so that these reflexes are constantly triggered, many times each day for many days, a conflict arises in the mind leading to a mental break. The mental break happens as consciousness is subliminally bombarded by the repeating failed reflexes. That frequently repeating subliminal appreciation of threat eventually colors thought and reason creating paranoia.
The stimulus to cause the subliminal detection and reflex generation can frequently be the movement of other workers walking beside the unprotected worker. This is not detectable by the victim. (Anything that blinks or moves in peripheral vision is suspect.)
(See the Everquest Connection page for an explanation of the first semester psychology involved.)
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How serious is the mental event?
The Virginia Tech shooter had created the "special circumstances" for Subliminal Distraction when he used his laptop in the suite common room where roommates walked around him ignoring him. Interviews on Cable TV news programs revealed he increased the at-risk behavior in the month before the shooting.
The roommates mentioned it as an example of his odd anti-social behavior. They did not understand that what they had observed was Subliminal Distraction exposure. The victim of this exposure cannot detect it. They experience going crazy. But they are never aware of the subliminal stimulation of their subconscious.
Months of exposure and subliminal appreciation of threat created paranoia. When he had the same mental break as the 1960's office workers, the same mental break as natives who thought they were becoming the Windigo, and the same mental break as the Anasazi, he acted out the psychotic paranoid delusions by killing 32 people.
It is not the first time this has happened. The Redlake shooter left an on-line journal entry that mentioned what he had done to create exposure.
In 2001 Jason Weed took the Landmark Education seminar, The Forum. This seminar is known to cause mental breaks. When Weed had a psychotic episode he killed a mail carrier at his apartment. The psychosis disappeared within a week Psychiatrists claimed one dose of medication brought on the remission. But Subliminal Distraction is present in the way the seminar is conducted. The victims are sitting in the audience while the leader conducts interrogations of seminar participants. Concentration to a level of "suspension of disbelief" creates light dissociation for viewers. They subliminally detect small movements of others sitting near them.
Landmark admits the mental breaks happen but claim a rate of less than 1/1000th of one percent for serious outcomes such as suicides. If Landmark turned off the room lights the situation would be the same as it is in a stage play or movie theater. There would be no mental breaks.
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The modern problem that caused mass paranoia of the Anasazi.
This problem was fully explained in first semester psychology lectures, at least up to about 1990. You should find it under Psychophysics, Physiology of Sight, Subliminal Sight, and Peripheral Vision Reflexes.
But only the facts of physiology and the accidental 1960's discovery was included. No one had made the connection between Subliminal Distraction and mental breaks through history. Most instructors associated the phenomenon with early design problems in business offices.
Emails with Ph. D's in psychology and retired professors revealed that it has disappeared from those lectures.
Good luck finding this information there. Most first semester psychology classes now have psychobabble psychosocial explanations for the outcomes of this exposure. Stress is a popular explanation as is depression.
When the problem was explained to me in a psychology lecture the explanation given was, "as the subject continues to ignore the repeating reflexes a conflict arises in the mind, then builds to a mental break."
Those1960's designers and psychologists thought they were the first to cause this problem. But there are incidents through history that say otherwise.
Cabin Fever, a sudden berserk attack, had occurred among fur trappers of the 1830's, Jumping Frenchmen of Maine had been discovered in 1880, and the Belgian Polar Expedition had an episode of mass insanity in 1898. These incidents are best explained by exposure from Subliminal Distraction.
This site uses the fact of psychotic episodes associated with Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga for 3000 years, to argue that long term exposure will create a severely altered mental state resembling Schizophrenia. Bizarre beliefs from both exercises involve the person having superhuman or supernatural powers in a context of Asian, Indian or New Age religious beliefs.
Exposure that is persistent but too low to create the full mental break will create psychiatric symptoms.
In each of the two exercises eyes-open meditation and concentration allows the subliminal detection of threat movement due to others exercising near by in the group.
We can look to the psychiatric outcomes of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga failed experiences for the symptoms of Subliminal Distraction exposure.
Those symptoms are:
Somatic complaints including strange skin sensations;
Hearing voices although they may be considered contact with ancestors;
Un-attributed fear to the point of trembling;
Paranoia;
Depression and thoughts of suicide.
Culture Bound Syndromes are episodes of bizarre behavior that happen around the world. Although a poorly understood concept in psychology and mental health, they happen when a dissociative episode caused by Subliminal Distraction exposure is experienced, evaluated, and named within the context of the ethnic beliefs of a cultural group or cultural belief set.
Observing the reaction of primitive peoples today gives us some understanding of how the Anasazi would have reacted to this phenomenon.
Ghost Sickness appeared among many tribes across the plains of North America under different names. It is believed to be caused by too-close contact with the dead. But the listed symptoms include hearing voices. That means the victim had a dissociative mental break.
One good example is Windigo Psychosis. Over-wintering in too-small structures allowed Subliminal Distraction exposure. When the mental break began victims believed they were becoming the Windigo or being pursued by a Windigo. The Windigo is the ice-monster cannibal, boogey man of tribes in the upper northeastern United States and Canada.
This page argues that far from being a phenomenon of modern Knowledge workers only, it has always been present and manifested in primitive cultures through out history.
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Natives kept keen knowledge of seasons and the passing of time to schedule ceremonies, plant crops, or gather wild fruit. Ceremonial dress was a major part of these religious ceremonies.
Work to make ceremonial dress requires a level of concentration that would create exposure from Subliminal Distraction if that work were done in a location with the "special circumstances" for exposure.
Exposure created Ghost Sickness observed and reported with different names among the western plains native Americans. One of the first effects is hearing voices. This may be sounds of movement through dry leaves when there are no dry leaves. Today Navajo victims sometimes report hearing someone speaking in tongues.
Modern investigators attempt to place these Culture Bound Syndromes within the classification system of the DSM. (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness of the American Psychiatric Association.)
That does not work well because the symptoms vary due to ethnic understanding of the mental break this phenomenon causes. Each ethnic group reacts differently and there are no obvious common symptoms to gather and evaluate.
Ghost Sickness, Windigo Psychosis, and other strange episodes happened in many areas of Native American cultures. This phenomenon was not limited to Chaco Canyon. But Chaco Canyon is the single place there is evidence of mass paranoia.
These events and mental episodes still happen around the world as Culture Bound Syndromes.
A full color image of this Dakota's Dog Band Hidatsa warrior is available on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Moennitarri_warrior_in_the_costume_of_the_dog_danse_2.jpg
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What would have been present to cause mental breaks through pre-history?
A conflict in the physiology of sight.
With some normal variation, everyone has the same physiology. Everyone who ever lived had that same physiology. This raises and interesting hypothesis.
The question is:
Was there a previous outbreak of this phenomenon?
In today's world there is a constant problem of strange suicides and disappearances of college students.
The Virginia Tech shooter had created the "special circumstances" for Subliminal Distraction exposure.
There was a mass insanity incident lasting over thirteen months on the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898.
But can we find a large incident in prehistory and Native American history.
Are there historical events which could be theorized to have been caused by Subliminal Distraction?
Moving back in time about eight hundred years there is a story that might qualify.
The evidence is there. Natives experienced mass paranoia after a period of successful industry to build a wide area trade system.
The Anasazi abandonment of the four corners area in the Southwest United States is an unsolved puzzle of archeology.
In today's sophisticated world almost no one is aware that Subliminal Distraction exists. Workers complain of the confinement of cubicles without the knowledge of why they must be used. You can conclude, therefore, that all previous research at archeological sites and digs was done without an evaluation of how Subliminal Distraction might have caused problems in earlier societies.

If you view the risk elements for Subliminal Distraction as a template you can reduce the equation to:
a) stationary posture,
b) an activity requiring concentration or mental investment to a level of slight dissociation, and
c) a source of repeating detectable movement in 'Subliminal Peripheral Vision.'
The final risk element or element of the template is simple. Before electric or gas lighting workers were bound by the rising and setting of the sun. There was no other source of adequate lighting for detailed work. Persons performing craft work would have to sit by a door or window unless shaded work areas were built outside. Other group members would be subliminally detected as they walked by the concentrating worker.
Navajo spinning wool New Mexico, no date. National Archive Digital Sample Photo
The most difficult hurdle to understanding this problem is realizing that a primitive native worker weaving a basket requires the same protection as a modern office worker using a laptop in a business office today.
It's concentration to the point of light dissociation that engages the subliminally functioning brain system that causes Subliminal Distraction exposure.
Human physiology has always been the same, even 15,000 years ago when the history of the American native societies began.
Mental breaks in hospital intensive care units suggests that day dreaming to the point that you ignore every thing happening around you is enough to engage the phenomenon. Mental breaks in hospital intensive care units happen in about five days. There the exposure is every fifteen minutes around the clock as long as the patient is awake using eyes-open daydreaming.
The Large Group Awareness Training Seminar, LGATS, from Landmark Education can produce mental breaks in three days of ten to twelve hour per day sessions. Those victim are sitting in an audience while participating in the seminar. There is a very low rate of these serious mental events caused by "The Forum." Landmark knows they happen but does not know what is causing them. There are research papers on this problem going back to 1977.
What activities would use this template and supply exposure form Subliminal Distraction?

One of the hardest things to imagine is that primitive workers had the same exposure as business office workers sitting at a computer today.
Any number of jobs would be performed by one member of the tribe for everyone else. Basket weaving, arrow making, or pottery require skills that not every one possesses. This would require long periods of time spent performing work that requires the same mental investment as knowledge work today.
Those individuals then traded their products. Baskets, pottery, blankets, sandals, rope, skins, and a host of natural products were used in trade. Much has been made by some investigators of the fact that there are few artifacts in Chaco Canyon to show that this trade system ever existed. But most of these wares were used and consumed.
Food stores left in abandoned city sites puzzle investigators. But such food left behind may have been a common property not individual stores.
When workers began to hear voices and speak to imaginary people the belief that a location was cursed might occur. Nothing would be taken lest the new habituation be contaminated with the curse.
It might have also been the belief that the bizarre mental events were being cause by food grown in a cursed place.

This collection of Apache basket work is shown with it's owner Lt. L. P. Davidson, 11th Infantry, 1893.
Often work like this was done by women sitting in groups under shade shelters.
Note the pattern complexity. No two are the same. That requires complete mental investment.
Normal outdoor light would have allowed the detection of movement in peripheral vision when any group member concentrated to a point of slight dissociation while executing these intricate patterns.
National Archive Digital Sample photo.

Movement behind you is in a safe location. You cannot see anything happening behind you.
Different choices, where and how work was done, would create different levels of exposure. Some exposure below threshold levels for a mental break would be harmless and some would cause severe mental illness when that threshold was exceeded day after day.
Subliminal Distraction exposure is silent, painless, and invisible. Workers have no warning they are being exposed.
That is still true today.
These examples are from the turn of the twentieth century. But these native peoples have carried on this trade for thousands of years.
There is evidence showing human habituation on the North and South American Continent for 15,000 years. Current research argues that record should be more than 40,000 years.

In Smithsonian books about the American southwest and Pueblo societies there are statements that archeological excavations have found postholes in a square arrangement.
The suggestion made is that these were there to provide shade for work areas. The natives of this area are said to have developed an extensive trade area. They manufactured excess items, above their personal needs, for this trade. The production of trade goods would require sitting for long periods.
If this work was done as a group effort as a matter of cultural habit any work position which was situated so that several people walked beside a worker from behind each hour, that might be enough to create this problem.
Navajo hogan, 1903 National Archive Digital Sample photo
Is it possible to prove this connection? No, certainly not.... But nothing currently understood is absolutely provable either. We rely on the observations and judgment of experts to explain un-witnessed , un-recorded, history.
Conclusion
The thesis of this page is that the Anasazi became paranoid. They were their own enemy through mental illness.
The great buildings were built as worship or appeasement.
That didn't work, the mental breaks continued; so the buildings were abandoned.
They would have never conceived 'Cubicle Level Protection.'
They did not know putting several workers close together under a shade shelter would cause mental breaks.
They continued critical behaviors and the paranoia continued.
Today we can look to the psychiatric outcomes of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga to understand this phenomenon.
Those are, somatic complaints including strange skin sensations, depression, fear, paranoia, and thoughts of suicide.
The cultural beliefs, psychosocial elements, would determine how this was perceived by the Anasazi.
Culture Bound Syndromes gives some insight to that.
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Other thoughts about this abandonment continue down the page.
There are materials from this investigation and a page links section.
You may use page materials for non-commercial projects without permission.
If you quote large sections read the Copyright page for correct citation.
You may not copy and publish this work claiming it as your own.
A copyright certificate has been issued by the Library of Congress.
You can view videos sold by commercial companies and nonprofit educational organizations which explain primitive societies. While the exploitive commercial videos attempt to hype history in the American Southwest, they all tell essentially the same story. After a period of success and the building of a large trade system the natives of the area of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and areas north of those states, abandoned a large part of their home land. National Parks Service sites also tell this story.
Articles published on-line argue that something is missing from the story. Nothing completely explains the sudden departure of the native population.
Current work argues that the natives did not abandon the area but began to live in smaller groups. This would fit my theory. (I will cite the source for this new work as soon as I can complete the research.)
The first investigators on the scene noted that the dwellings looked as if the natives had just stopped what they were doing and left. Note that these sites stood for eight hundred years with little disturbance. It appeared that very few people had visited and removed property for those long years. What would cause this? Why would there have been no scavenging for valuables? These people worked in turquoise. There would have been items which could be used by people of the period, containers, tools, food. The simple explanation is that the remote location prevented discovery. But why didn't people of the period go there?
The construction of great houses are a mystery to everyone. Rooms were built then sealed. Investigators note that fires cannot be maintained in these rooms even after they are opened, no air draft. Roads were constructed even though there were no beasts of burden to use the roads. There were no wheeled methods of transportation. When viewed from aircraft the roads appear to be incomplete. They do seem to converge though. They seem to radiate from the great house or point to it.
The obvious conclusion is that these structures are not roads.
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Other observations from aircraft note patterns of rocks similar to patterns on pottery are arranged on hillsides where there is no possibility that anyone living at the time could have viewed the patterns from above. This is similar to the patterns of large images in South America. From ground level very little is apparent.
Baker Aerial Archaeology
This is the index page for the site http://www.nmia.com/~jaybird/AANewsletter/index.html
Jacobs website
http://www.jqjacobs.net/southwest/blythe.html
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When considered together these observations suggest the size of the great house, it's radiating "roads," and the arrangement of rocks in patterns was intended to be seen from a great distance. It would have been a form of worship or appeasement. What would cause this need to appeal to or appease some entity?
The sudden onset of the dissociative/psychotic mental events scattered through members of the society would do that.
NASA Photo
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Archeologists have discovered mass burials of entire groups of men women and children where the bodies and bones were crushed as if a punishment were to extend past death. (Rattlesnake Ruin - Discovered during a pipe line excavation.)
An earlier society was indicated and they are believed to have been basket weavers. That is the type work to engage the phenomenon. If several people in the same family group began to speak to imaginary people and do strange things they could have been believed to be possessed or dealing with evil spirits.
Although the work arrangements to place concentrating workers in close proximity is established by the construction of shade shelters, I am unaware of any information that would create that connection for the earlier basket weaver society.
Cannibalism is offered as an explanation
This article offers another viewpoint for the pits of crushed bones. Most were women and children. Rattlesnake Ruin is not mentioned.
"After the Chaco collapse and abandonment, many Anasazi moved into deep, remote canyons, building their dwellings in cliffs or on high, often fortified, mesas. A century later, they abandoned even these defensive positions, leaving almost the entire Four Comers region uninhabited. To some archeologists, it seemed as if the Anasazi had been seized with paranoia--that they were protecting themselves from some terrible enemy. But, no matter how hard archeologists looked, they could find no such enemy."
My highlighting for emphasis. This writer has hit the nail on the head but is still unaware that there is a problem with human physiology that can cause paranoia with very little required. (See the template above.)
The New Yorker, November 30, 1998 http://www.prestonchild.com/thunder/thunder_cannib.htm
US News
This article gives an excellent overview of the argument about cannibalism.
"Nonetheless, there's a growing awareness among archaeologists that something awful happened among the Anasazi. Soon after abandoning Chaco, they began building cliff dwellings from which they could stave off almost any attack. But what were they afraid of? Each other?"
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/anasazi.htm
Another article disputing cannibalism cites the study of bones stripped of flesh as only having seven bodies.
http://www.native-languages.org/iaq13.htm
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Other concepts derived from the phenomenon.
Around the world there are small mental events investigators call Culture Bound Syndromes.
Each ethnic group has activities or living arrangements that place adult workers close together or in a location where family member walk close beside a concentrating worker.
When these people experience the expected mental break the general sensations would be the same because the physiology is the same but each person's mind would experience this differently. (Examine Culture Bound Syndromes for an example of how different cultures view the onset of a temporary dissociative or psychotic episode.
The problem is still how that onset of the psychiatric injury, hearing voices, disturbed sleep, nightmares, and the sensation of being watched, would be perceived in the Pueblo Cities of the American southwest.
The answer appears in traditional stories from the Naive American cultures and their explanation of those mental events when they appear as Culture Bound Syndromes.
Accidental Operant Conditioning acts within the belief set and currently held beliefs or contemporaneous activity to shape thought and belief. The phenomenon does not create situations and bizarre beliefs from nothing. It acts to shape events out of the person's belief set. Hearing voices could easily be experienced as a vision from supernatural entities. Nightmares would be about something in the victims experience.
In our family experience nightmares and talking in sleep continue into delusional episodes through the day.
Hearing Voices
Instances of hearing voices can be created by ICU Psychosis in as little as five days. One in three hospital patients spending more that five days in a hospital ICU has a mental break. They have paranoia, exhibit violence, tear out IV tubes, and hear voices. Those patients can subliminally detect movement as nurses and doctors enter the cubicle while the patient is daydreaming, lost in thought.
The fact that Peripheral Vision Reflexes can usually only be created when movement is detected approaching from behind creates a feeling of being watched or of something being behind you. Repeated exposure, especially when the person is in a stressful or fearful situation, can explain the source of paranoia. It would be unusual to create a situation where repeating detectable approaching movement is coming from below or above even though humans have Subliminal Peripheral Vision surrounding both conscious sight and peripheral vision. While patients are in beds in a hospital ICU that situation is created. The vision field of a reclining person is rotated ninety degrees. It is not possible to approach a reclining person from behind relative to the plane of their normal vision.
In an odd way ICU cubicles create the situation when two or more people are confined in too-small living space during cold weather. In those cases one person engages an activity requiring mental investment and can subliminally detect movement of the other person in the cabin. During long cold weather isolation there are many opportunities to create those circumstances to cause exposure from Subliminal Distraction. Victims will eventually have the same mental break as those ICU patients.
Often instances of hearing voices is not recognized by investigators of Culture Bound Syndromes. Hearing voices is recorded and related to readers as cases of spirit possession, or talking to ancestors, or speaking as if they were the ancestor. In the case of Ghost Sickness, Navajo and other tribes, the victim hears some one speaking their language or speaking in tongues. Other sounds are heard and understood in terms of the normal life experienced. An example of this is the sound of something moving through dried leaves, when no leaves are present. (See Ghost Sickness below.)
Paranoia
We understand that peripheral vision reflexes only happen when stimulus approaches from behind us. We can understand that the subliminal stimulus would give us the sensation of being watched. This easily translates to the feeling that we have done something to cause others to watch us. As the subliminal stimulus continues the feeling of being watched colors thought until every action by other is seen as suspect. Severe paranoia follows. But how would that be manifested in the mind of that early native? Would it be the same?
Cabin Fever
Although today Cabin Fever refers to SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, it had a different meaning during the fur trapping period in the United States. Trappers, Mountain Men, preferred to over winter alone rather than risk that a partner would go berserk and try to kill them while snow bound for weeks in small remote cabins. No one has associated the conflict of physiology that caused the cubicle to be created with these incidents. Cabin Fever is not listed in Culture Bound Syndromes. It disappeared in the early 1800's when the fad for beaver top hats stopped, but it still appears there as Amok ,Going Postal, or Iich'aa.
Windigo Psychosis
Among the Cree Indians of the north in the United States and Canada Windigo Psychosis is a belief that your are becoming the Windigo Monster or that the monster is stalking you. Victims believe they are becoming cannibals. The onset of winter caused large groups to divide into family units and disperse so that they could survive on the lower level of resources available as animals hibernated or traveled to wintering grounds. Sometimes those family units failed to appear when the tribes reassembled in the spring. The small family groups would have used small living quarters to over winter. Conserving fuel required the entire family unit to live in a single heated room. Eventually while snow bound for long periods they would create the special circumstances to engage Subliminal Distraction. All that would be necessary is that one family member worked on some craft activity or daydreamed to pass time. Movement of the others in the rooms would be subliminally detected.
If a woman or child was the victim then the remainder of the group would survive to tell the story of what happened. But if the hunter provider was the victim the group starved. I have proposed that if that adult had an episode of berserk paranoia that the group might have been killed. The fictional story in the movie "The Shining," serves as an illustration of such possible events.
Ghost Sickness
When the Apache heard voices they believe that they have ghost sickness. This malady could be caught by viewing the dead or their possessions,. Deceased were buried on the same day they died. Those possessions not buried with the dead were burned and the family moved to a new location. They never returned to the grave site.
Navaho instances of hearing voices instilled a belief that they were hearing a visitation from an evil spirit. Sites that mention this phenomenon record instances of hearing someone speaking Navaho or of voices speaking in tongues. Other sounds were heard like something moving over dry leaves or of an earthen bank collapsing where there were no such terrain features. Iich'aa is an episode of sudden berserk violence among the Navaho.
Arctic Hysteria
Appearing under different names in cold snow bound areas of the far north, Arctic Hysteria is a Culture Bound Syndrome. Investigators of these mental events are unaware of the conflict of physiology and the sudden dissociative/psychotic mental break it can cause.
Belgian Polar Expedition
The phenomenon has occurred on scientific expeditions. When the Belgian Polar Expedition was trapped for months in ice the eighteen men aboard the small ship began to have psychiatric symptoms. One man became a deaf mute, one died of a heart attack the ship's doctor thought had been caused by the man's suddenly acquired fear of the dark. Another man hid in small areas of the ship to sleep believing that the others were plotting to kill him. No one solved the mystery of what happened to that crew.
Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga
The stimulation of the subconscious by Subliminal Distraction can cause the victim to believe they are being spoken to by God. In both Qi Gong an Kundalini Yoga the exercises use eyes-open meditation. When the performed in groups they provide the movement in peripheral vision createsthe circumstances to cause exposure to Subliminal Distraction. Participants are told that they are manipulating Universal Life Energy. In Qi Gong the goal is to balance Qi (chee) within the body. For Kundalini Yoga is is to achieve a higher plane of existence through the Awakening of Kundalini.
When the symptoms of the oncoming mental break are experienced they are explained as the effects of incorrectly performing the exercise or of failing to control the Awakening of Kundalini.
This quote from the Kundalini Yoga page may explain this concept.
Quotes from:
KUNDALINI YOGA - A DIVIN LIFE SOCIETY PUBLICATION--"This WWW reprint is for free distribution"
jhttp://www.sivanandadlshq.org/download/kundalini.htm
"Kundalini is the Goddess of speech and is praised by all. She Herself, when awakened by the Yogin, achieves for him the illumination....She is the source of all Knowledge and Bliss. She is pure consciousness itself. She is Brahman. She is Prana Sakti, the Supreme Force, the Mother of Prana, Agni, Bindu, and Nada. It is by this Sakti that the world exists. ..."
Note that unknown to the Yogi writing the statement, he is actually describing the onset of the dissociative episode caused by exposure to Subliminal Distraction and Accidental Operant Conditioning. For 3000 and more years this phenomenon has been perceived as evidence of contact with the Goddess Kundalini. You can link to the cited page and read the material. I suggest downloading for later reading. It is a very long text. Much of the writing assumes you have an acquaintanceship with Hinduism. Although obviously experiencing a narrowly focused altered/psychotic mental state these Yogis live within the normal cultural community and are revered as enlightened.
This is why the altered mental condition is undetectable in college students who commit "out of the blue" suicides. Until they experience the onset of an episode as sudden deep despondency causing the suicide, they appear normal to all their acquaintances. College Suicides
It may also reveal the reason cults can capture otherwise normal individuals. Indoctrination in small rooms would provide opportunities for exposure to the phenomenon. Close spacing of groups allows the subliminal detection of movement within the group. Operant conditioning happens when stimulation of failed peripheral vision reflexes causes subtle changes in beliefs. When Werner Erhard began his group seminars they eventually created psychotic episodes for some participants.
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What happened in Chaco Canyon suggests that the phenomenon was not well received. The crushed bones of Rattlesnake Ruin reveal that. One of the reasons that tools, utensils, and food were discarded might be the thought that anything taken from the area might cause evil to come with the groups leaving. Another possibility is that the initial groups leaving did not have ownership of the combined stores and those who left last were so disabled or so afraid that they did not take anything with them.
In two cases, three if you include my wife's case, un-attributed fear is produced by the phenomenon. In both the Mary Shotwell Little disappearance and the Mark Barton shooting they began to experience fear but could not say what they were afraid of.
There are sites in the southwest showing that houses were built on almost inaccessible cliffs. (These are not the usual pueblo buildings.) Food and water would have been brought to that site at extreme physical cost. Speculation is that there was conflict present creating the need for defense. Building these stone houses is not a simple matter. It would have been a long term project requiring cooperation to lift and position stones.
These pictures show some of the defensible structures. http://www.neartime.com/ruins/shaft.htm
http://www.neartime.com/ruins/simon.htm
http://www.neartime.com/ruins/split.htm
Understanding the phenomenon also reveals that outdoor workers would be immune. Those felling and transporting trees, building pueblo housing, or constructing roads would be unharmed. Only those crafts persons sitting for many hours concentrating on work with other tribe members walking around them would be at risk. Work requiring artisan's skills might segregate the psychiatric injuries to families. Such skills are often inherited. Here knowledge of the cultural customs regarding the division of labor among tribal members is necessary. I suggest that several cases of seeing visions, hearing voices, acting out delusions, occurring in a single family would have raised suspicion of witchcraft or other demonic activity. This might explain the discovery at Rattlesnake Ruin. If several members of the same group, basket weavers for example, began to hear voices, have seizures, believe that others had worked magic against them they might be the focus of preventative action by the larger community.
Human physiology exists at different levels of ability. Persons who easily startle would be likely victims if they do work that creates the opportunity for exposure to the problem..
This paints a picture of two groups potentially in conflict. One immune and one severely effected. Eventually something happened to cause abandonment of the geographic area.
If the people lived in much smaller groups there would be less exposure due to community members walking beside a concentrating craftsperson. This area would not have the seasonal requirement for long term confinement in too-small living quarters.
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Why is there no history of this?
You will find a line of thinking in many primitive cultures that speaking of evil gives it power to return. If it had been taboo to make any reference to the phenomenon or what had happened there would be no record in oral history.
The native population did not know what was happening to them. They experienced this as part of their normal lives.
There might be information in artifacts that would be discovered if experts were aware of this problem and knew to search for it.
There may be some indications of problems in Chaco Canyon. 'Secrets of the Dead,' a PBS series has an episode on that subject.
Click the TRANSCRIPT link at the bottom of this page. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/html/e4-resources.html
This page has the overview and links to other pages. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/html/e4-explore.html
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There are other groups in South America which abandoned ceremonial sites. Experts cannot agree on why this happened. The issue of conflict between groups of effected and immune members would only happen when the population was relatively small. In large cities such as those in South America it would have been hard to disrupt the whole community based on individuals having paranoid or psychotic idealization of city or village life. If high ranking members had this problem it might be a factor. Burials of persons with trepanations might lend insight. If the daily activity of the occupant in that burial can be determined by forensic examination of skeletons or burial materials, a link between that activity and the phenomenon could be made. Burial inclusions which show the deceased was a potter, basket weaver, workers in feathers, beads or a stone carver of glyphs, would make the link to the trepanation victim.
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Kivas
The round depressions found in these areas are described as ceremonial in nature. This site demonstrates that they were also residences
Title page LADLE HOUSE: SITE MONTEZUMA COUNTY COLORADO
http://www.fone.net/~jerry/ladlehse.html
Ladle House Report table of Contents
http://www.fone.net/~jerry/h/menu.html
This page allows you to view a kiva
excavation. http://www.fone.net/~jerry/h/kivaovr.html
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Yanomamo
The Yanomamo are a primitive tribe in South America. Today they number in the 20,000's scattered in villages from thirty or so to 300 individuals. They live in circular forts rather than hogans or mud waddle huts. A common roof is projected into the enclosed area and supported by posts. This means that visitors to each family group enters that living area by stepping from the center common area into the shelter of the roof. Light to perform craft work is supplied to each living section because there is no wall between that shared living area and the common center court.
This eliminates the shared single-room arrangement of longhouses. Exposure to Subliminal Distraction is still possible but it must occur while group work is done.
This Yanomamo section has just begun but I can't find any comment on Culture Bound Syndromes or mental illness among this group.
Napoleon Chagnon has extensive writings about his research of this group.
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Some of this material has been integrated to the text above. This section contains repeats but it has been left intact while the Culture Bound Syndromes page is being written.
Culture Bound Syndromes (Scroll Down) Culture Bound Syndromes now has a separate page.
The phenomenon and associated sudden episodes should be happening all over the world.
Although office furniture manufacturers are located world wide and build protected workspace in offices everywhere, the situation outside protected workspace remains the same. Certainly in less developed countries the number of people exposed would be less but the possible total exposure of an individual should be the same.
When a working position is created so that others walk by close enough to create a peripheral vision reflex that worker will be exposed at a rate determined by the traffic walking by the location and the number of hours spent in the location.
Physiology is the same everywhere. If a blacksmith in India incorrectly positions his anvil he might individually have the same exposure due to villagers walking by his shop as a high school student in west Africa sitting in a study location with others walking around..
Where are the cases?
They may be disguised as Culture-Bound Syndromes.
**********************************************************
Amok or Mata Elap Malaysia
Cafard or Cathard Polynesia
Mal de Pelea Puerto Rico
iich'aa Navaho
Going Postal American
All
the above named Culture Bound Syndromes involve attacks on people or things,
beliefs of persecution, automatism during the act, amnesia for the period of the
assault, then a return to near normal state. The onset is in males only and
usually involves a perceived insult. Does this sound like mass school shootings
to you? If there is a common syndrome there must be a common cause. The
cultures are different. Understanding or perception of insults would be
different. What could the common element be, ... what could it be? It must be
something about our physiology that all humans have in common.
Qi-gong psychotic reaction (Chee-Gung)
You have seen Qi-gong exercises on TV
commercials, and movies.. The psychotic reaction in the one case on the linked source
happened after a few days of intense therapy. The exercise is used enhance vital
force by projecting qi (chee) into the exercise practitioners.
Read New highlighted link below.
There is little known of this diagnosis by mental health professionals but it is listed in the DSM-IV, Chinese
Classification of Mental Disorders.
When the exercise is done in groups it is easy to see that participants would be
moving in each other's Subliminal Peripheral Vision. Why don't all the people
who exercise have this reaction? Remember that total exposure is the
determining factor. Group exercises for long periods daily for many days would be high risk. Solo exercise would
not have movement next to the subject thus no stimulation would happen.
In the one case linked from the Glossary of Culture Bound Syndromes the subject was being treated for kidney stones. He had several days exposure. Note that the account says he began to hear voices and believe he was in contact with beings from another dimension.
This case example would argue that heavy exposure compacted in a short time
frame is a factor in Subliminal Peripheral Vision Psychosis( SPVP).
While writing the Barney and Betty Hill Alien Abduction page it occurred to me that the benefit people experience from Qi-gong exercise is real. SPVP would have a beneficial effect if the 'accidental operant conditioning' worked to reinforce the belief that the concentration and direction of Qi in the body helps you. The eyes open concentrating meditating state cannot be maintained unless the subject can ignore distractions around them. This would be enough mental investment to fill the template (above). An absolutely stationary posture is not required in this instance.
On the other hand if you are a cult member and your belief set is reinforced by the repeating stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision the outcome is an unswerving belief in Cult teachings. If you have not recognized that there is a world wide cult Falun Gong, heads up. Mind control anyone? Reference new link below, next paragraph, then read this section from that link. Document 13: A First Look at the Forensic Psychiatric Evaluation of Falun Gong Cases
QiGong Psychotic Reaction and Kundalini Yoga now have individual pages.
NEW
This page is on the Human Rights Watch site. Shanghai Mental Health Center, Psychiatric Department, Shanghai Medical University -- The date given is Fall 1994. There are several sections and new cases. The paper is linked to several sites around the world. (First emails are out.)
This link is also on the Qi Gong page under cases. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/china02/china0802-17.htm
This link is to the source material for the description of Culture Bound Syndromes I used above.
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~thall/cbs_qigong.html
Boufée Deliriante
This syndrome is characterized by sudden outbursts, confusion, hallucinations,
paranoid ideation. The posting in the Glossary of Cultural Bound Syndromes
compares it to the DSM-IV brief psychotic disorder.
Does this sound familiar? Differences in observations and observations which are
clouded by cultural beliefs of the examiner can account for the miss matching of symptoms. Still, it has that all too familiar ring of
Subliminal Peripheral
Vision Psychosis.
The position of women in a culture determines
how complaints such as this are received and understood. Alternately the belief
system of men and women due to their perceived position in their society can vary enough that
the sudden onset of symptoms would be understood differently by men and women and categorized as as two
different syndromes. How each person's mind perceives the internal stimulation
is governed by that person's mental state, plus their personal beliefs and
fears.
There is no information on occupations or activities leading up to the episode.
No connection can be made.
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~thall/cbs_glos.html
Brain Fag or Brain Fog
This problem is thought to be limited to male high school and college students
in West Africa. The cultural belief is that it is caused by too much thinking.
Do you think schools in West Africa provide Cubicle Level Protection for student
study areas? As a cultural practice would male students study in groups rather
than alone? Do cultural prohibitions prevent mixed sex study groups in the areas
where this syndrome is found? Are women less likely to attend schools of higher
education in Africa?
Victims cannot determine that there is subliminal stimulation
happening. Each cultural group will attach different meaning to the sudden
dissociative or psychotic episode of SPVP. Mild symptoms might prevent the student
from studying (doing all that thinking) thus allow a recovery. Does this
disorder manifest where students must travel to a boarding school rather than commute
daily?
To establish a connection a record of the the study habits and behaviors of
victims would have to be made to establish a pattern and locate the source of
stimulation in these cases.
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~thall/cbs_glos.html
There is a new study listed for this CBS on the Culture Bound Syndromes page. Students who use traditional African apprentice systems do not have Brain Fog. Only those who use western style education systems do.
Windigo Psychosis (Sp Wendigo)
This mental event is associated with Native Americans of the upper United States and Canada. It is said to effect women during winter weather.. Close confinement in small over wintering quarters would provide opportunities for exposure to SPVP. Victims believe they are becoming, or are being chased by, the Windigo monster, a cannibal. The link below right is from the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Transcultural Psychiatry. On the last page it mentions that family groups dispersed from summer quarters to over winter in smaller groups. Sometimes the family failed to return in the spring, all members having died during the winter. Windigo Psychosis establishes that when the mental event happens to women or teenage girls the family group survives the winter. What would happen if the male support figure for the group was the victim? Events of this nature would be mixed with death due to starvation or natural accidents such as avalanches.
Another thought in the article is that cooperation is required to survive in harsh conditions and any conflict, arguments, disobedience could tip the balance between survival and death. Paranoia in victims of SPVP might be that tipping factor too.
One reference from a different source suggests that burning the feet was a treatment for this problem. Delusional wandering caused by hearing voices would cause victims to walk into the forest in cold weather. Unless they could be tracked before additional snow, they faced certain death from exposure. Such burning might have been a preventative measure. Cases on the Missing Students page indicate that some recent student disappearances were during cold weather and the student was not dressed for that weather. The case of Ron Tammen, Miami of Ohio, 1953, is one such case. He was observed in an altered mental state poorly dressed several miles away from school wearing a light blanket jacket. There was snow on the ground. He had used his car earlier in the evening but was on foot when sighted.
Books, biographies, and both true or fictional stories using true accounts on the fur trapping period in the American Rocky Mountains tell of trappers preferring to over winter alone rather than with one or more cabin mates. I don't recall full details but the problem was that one of the group might go berserk attempting to kill the other residents of the cabin. My memory is that this was named Cabin Fever. That name has a different meaning today. It generally refers to SAD. (Seasonal Affective Disorder)
This is an interesting read and can be accessed free. http://www.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2000/June/InReview5.asp
The Merk Source and Dorman's Medical Dictionary index page. http://www.mercksource.com/pp/us/cns/cns_home.jsp
Hint: Search under Disease or Syndromes
Latah, Jumping French Men of Maine, Maine
Syndrome, Myiachit
The same article linked above begins with a discussion of Latah.
Latah is thought to be a CBS of Malaysia.
The Merk Source and Dorman's Medical Dictionary (linked below) mentions that some of the events occurring and associated with these CBS's suggest Operant Conditioning rather than Culture Bound Syndrome. That is, there is often suggestibility even to perform dangerous, harmful activities. This site argues that the cause of the altered mental state is actually Accidental Operant Conditioning. Consciousness is bombarded by the internal brain signals intended to effect a peripheral vision reflex. Each culture experiences this differently. Each person has unique fears, concerns, and contemporaneous activity. Accidental Operant Conditioning acts to shape those belief sets and thoughts raising them to psychotic levels. The Everquest Connection page has that explanation and relates it to MMORPG play.
Myiachit is a jumping disease of Siberia.
About 1880 New York Neurologist George Beard visited Moosehead Lake in northern Maine to investigate stories of a condition similar to Latah in non-Maylay populations. He would have never heard of Latah or of SPVP. Remember that the conflict of physiology explored on this site was discovered in the 1950's/60's. He interviewed about 50 people including 14 victims in four families. He concluded the phenomenon struck mostly men, lumberjacks of French Canadian descent. There is no information available on what other ethnic populations might have been there working in the area. (Even today some occupations are common of certain ethnic populations. It may have been random chance that the major population of lumberjacks were French Canadian. The men may have preferred to live in Lumber Camps that had a majority population of their ethnic group.)
Using information about SPVP one might conclude that the high prevalence of cases in four families (14) may have been because of personal habits of the four families causing additional exposure to stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision or that the ability to startle easily was present as an inherited factor. (An inherited ability or sensitivity to movement in peripheral vision may be the causative factor to establish why 'mental illness runs in families.') Psychotic Mental Illness
Economy usually required that these men live in close quarters in bunk house buildings rather than individual houses or rooms such as modern apartments.
For a period these Jumper cases were thought to be associated with Tourette Syndrome. But as noted in the cited article Tourette is not associated with startle.
Same link as previous paragraph. http://www.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2000/June/InReview5.asp
Latah and Longhouses
Travel pictures on-line show longhouses are used in remote areas. This is the traditional housing. These structures have an open communal living space running through the center of the longhouse and work areas on the partially enclosed porches running the length of the house. In some of the pictures women are shown near an entrance door using the light to be able to see what they are doing.
In the Anasazi case at the top of the page we know that workers were placed close together because they sat under shade provided for them. Here an individual worker might pick a doorway that has heavy traffic in and out. . If they did work beside a heavily traveled door and sat for several days they would have exposure to SPVP.
Latah has switched from men to women and only in remote areas. This reflects the changing employment picture. Men now work for cash and women are left at home to perform household chores or work from the home. Women now have the exposure men once had. The longhouse is used in remote areas. Modern apartments and houses are in the cities.
These picture links may not be up long.
Browse the site for pictures
of longhouses and workers sitting beside doorways.
http://www.galenfrysinger.com/iban_longhouse.htm
These three pictures are in the same gallery. Longhouse interior http://www.borneotravel.com/gallery/gallery_people_11.html
You can link to the thumbnails for all of them. Basket weaving in a longhouse http://www.borneotravel.com/gallery/gallery_people_05.html
Click the Gallery link at the bottom of the page. Exterior view of longhouse http://www.borneotravel.com/gallery/gallery_people_09.html
Black and White photo but shows much better resolution than previous site. .http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/Malaysia/photo44524.htm
Gallery of shots from same site shows seating position beside door. http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/Malaysia/East/Sarawak/Batang_Ai/
The purpose of these links is to illustrate the situation for persons not familiar with the longhouse.
Conclusion
Exposure to stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision can be achieved by close confinement of two or more people in small over-wintering cabins in the northern temperate areas of the world. In the tropics longhouses place entire villages under one roof. Accidental selection of a work area near a door to have sufficient light, provides opportunities for exposure in those longhouses.
In the Anasazi example at the top of the page, construction of shade shelters placed workers in close proximity.
Additional correlations may be possible as this information is dispersed in the academic community. Once this problem is understood it can be used to make other connections.
There are other possible historical events to be evaluated. Mental breaks have changed the course of history. But the three elements necessary to conclude that SPVP was the triggering factor are not always evident.
In our modern world two person dorm rooms do this. Incorrectly designed dorm rooms place two persons close together while they engage deep mental investment studying and the study desks do not have Cubicle Level Protection.
Trepanation
Concentrations of trepanation cases may point to the phenomenon at work in primitive societies which would have engaged close work at arm's length requiring concentration.
Pathologies of the Bog Bodies
Contained in an article about bog skeletons found with trepanations in 1942, there is a comment about a girl also found with a trepanation. The text indicates that this find, body, was more than a skeleton. She had mild scoliosis. "…The tissue of her foot near her right big toe was found to be swollen while the toe next to it appeared to be calloused." This would mean she probably was not a very physically active member of her group. Carrying anything heavy or for long distances would have been difficult. She might have provided her share of maintenance, house keeping, activity in her village doing sedentary work. If that placed her in a position where others walked around her as she concentrated the phenomenon could have caused her mental decline. She might have begun to hear voices and cause disruptions because of paranoia. It is beyond the scope of this site to determine what cultural values would have been engaged. The paragraph states she died a violent death between 170 BC and AD 230. There is nothing in the short article to indicate the cause of death
Primitive societies would probably view hearing voices and speaking to invisible people as a sign of either divine or evil visitation. One of the male skeletons had a long puncture such as an ax would make. If a trepanation to release demons did not work the person could have been sacrificed or ritually executed. The victim would be unaware of the phenomenon causing their mental illness and would continue sitting, working, until mental illness prevented further activity.
The article is credited to Acädemic Hospital Groningen University. © 1997 by the Archaeological Institute of America
www.archaeology.org/online/features/bog/physical.html
Inca Trepanations
There have been about 1000 skulls found with trepanations in excavations of Inca sites. The Inca had an extensive manufacturing system for ritual paraphernalia, battle and ceremonial dress, and worked in gold. They would have many people performing close detailed work at arm's length and they would not have known to provide Cubicle Level Protection for any of those workers. (humor)
Articles on line indicate the belief that skull injuries caused by thrown or propelled stones accounted for the cases of "brain surgery" by the Incas. But you must remember that the phenomenon explored here is unknown and was unknown at the time those articles were written.
I do not have time to investigate this phase of the project. I will return to it from time to time.
Treatment
The extreme suggestibility demonstrated in the jumping diseases posits that almost any treatment would help as long as the patient believes that treatment is harmless and effective. (As long as exposure is stopped.)
On the Psychotic Mental Illness page there are several centers listed that treat psychosis, including schizophrenia, with a variety of modalities. All claim great success. They all probably work because the condition is the outcome of operant conditioning. (Links are being researched now for this list.) Any thing that breaks daily habits to eliminate exposure should do that.
But the severe altered mental states of Kundalini Yoga that result from many years exposure probably are irremediable. There is no cure when you "Wake The Dragon." Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga help pages say that working with an experiences teacher might help psychosis from short term over exposure.
Just finding the source of exposure and altering behavior to eliminate them will solve temporary episodes. There should be no long lasting disability if the exposure was of short duration.
Taiping Rebellion This section is missing a key piece of information.
Hung Hsiu-ch'üan was a school teacher in northern China. While studying for the imperial exams he had a mental breakdown. Accounts say he was in a coma for a week and then had episodes of raving and fighting with his family who restrained him until he recovered.
He began to have visions of an old man who complained to Hung that the people were no longer worshiping him and worshiped demons instead. Through a series of other visions and contacts with missionaries he began to believe he was Jesus' younger brother.
Seven years later he formed a religious sect, The God Worshipers. Hung gathered followers and amassed a treasury. He began to lead a rebellion against the Manchu government.
The rebellion was eventually put down by British and French forces. Accounts vary but the war lasted about twenty five years and cost the lives of more that thirty million.
What is missing?
Only two of the elements of the template for exposure to Subliminal Distraction are present.
Studying for the imperial exams would entail memorizing long texts written in Chinese characters. That is done with a brush. A stationary posture and mental investment are the two elements of the template that are present. Whether or not there was repeating detectable movement in his peripheral vision is not known.
What is needed?
To establish the probability that he was exposed to Subliminal Distraction to cause the mental break it would be necessary to have knowledge of the type living spaces persons of his situation would have in the 1840s in northern China.
On the Culture Bound Syndromes page the use of single-room living and working space allows situations to be created to provide that exposure.
This section will be relocated. It was temporarily placed here before the Cause of Mental Illness page was written.
ECT
ECT is the first line treatment for psychotic mental illness. If you visit sites from around the world the statistics there are reversed from those you will find in the United States. A careful reading of statistics in the US reveal that it is has little long term use for some diagnoses.
Why is this true? In the US doctors and the machine manufacturers assemble the histories and statistics. Outside the US government agencies compile those statistics. (New Zealand, and Great Britain)
There are only a few, possibly as few as four, ECT machine manufacturers around the world. Much of the positive information on ECT comes from those with a financial interest in those companies.
In every case there is an immediate apparent positive outcome. But many patients relapse. The level of relapse is different for each diagnosis. Some have an almost one hundred percent eventual failure rate.
One medical center in Alabama insisted that ECT was the only treatment for my wife. We were told that there had been great advances in ECT. But from my background in electronics I knew better. The advances are in the delivery of the treatment. Sedation and paralytic drugs are used to prevent broken bones and chipped teeth, which happened with the old machines.
Another thing you will be told is that now a pulsed wave is used instead of the old sine wave energy. A sine wave is a pulsed wave. It pulses at one hundred twenty times per second if it is timed to line current. I assure you that the difference in a sine wave and a square wave will make no difference. The factor of interest is the energy used. This is measured in Watts or Joules.
The power available in the new machines is almost double what the old machines could deliver. Alternating current(AC) formulas to measure power are not the same as direct current (DC) formulas. Alternating current requires the use of root-mean-square in the computation to average the energy transmitted by a sine wave. But the new machines use increasing voltage while holding current below a one ampere level to achieve seizure. Five hundred volts are possible for some machines.
There are movements to ban ECT for that reason and because some states allow forced treatments.
A question you should consider is would the successful ECT cases have resolved with no treatment?
There is an active dispute to stop ECT even within the psychiatric community.
Mayo Clinic on ECT
"Today,
although the procedure isn't risk-free, it's a far cry from the old methods that
helped give ECT a bad reputation — one that lingers on. Its use began in the
early 1930s, when researchers injected chemicals to induce seizures in people
with mental illnesses. The chemicals were soon replaced by electrical currents.
The success of ECT propelled it into widespread and sometimes indiscriminate use
over the next few decades, before the advent in the 1950s of medications to
treat depression."
"No one
knows for certain how ECT helps treat depression. What is known, though, is that
many chemical aspects of brain functioning are altered during and after seizure
activity. Researchers theorize that when ECT is administered on a regular basis,
these chemical changes build upon one another, somehow reducing symptoms of
depression or other mental illnesses."
"Despite its dark past, ECT is now a relatively safe and effective procedure. ECT can often work faster than psychiatric medications or psychotherapy can, and it can help when other treatments have failed. The risks are real but usually small."
Note the qualifiers, "No one knows, ...relatively safe, ...risks are real but really small." They aren't small if they happen to you. There are studies that claim to establish that ECT is not effective for risk of suicides.
ECT is not directly related to the thesis of this site. Except that claims of effectiveness for ECT may arise because the subject is a victim of exposure to Subliminal Distraction and would have recovered with no treatment in the same length of time the ECT treatments require. Drugs are not and cannot be effective for psychosis caused by exposure to Subliminal Distraction
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/electroconvulsive-therapy/MH00022
News Release, Study confirms long term memory problems with ECT.
"In a stunning reversal, an article in
the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in January 2007 by prominent researcher
Harold Sackeim of Columbia University reveals that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
causes permanent amnesia and permanent deficits in cognitive abilities, which
affect individuals' ability to function."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=59631
Text of the study is here http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v32/n1/pdf/1301180a.pdf
Dr. Breeding on ECT YouTube video -- Time 9:00
"ECT is a crime against humanity."
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BskoiBXJKFc&mode=related&search=
Diana Loper case video1 interview with Dr. Breeding YouTube video -- Time 9:02
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xCv7xq5lWyw&mode=related&search=
Diana Loper case video 2 interview with Dr. Breeding YouTube Video Time 12:24
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2N-N9DP1rME&mode=related&search=
Sixty second archive video of ECT YouTube Video time 1:08
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eXC6b0xy4ts&mode=related&search=
TV interview Gordon Elliot Show with Diana Loper
http://youtube.com/watch?v=C0CW9Nd71N0&mode=related&search=
Gordon Elliot Show ECT used to treat insomnia YouTube video Time 3:15
Hope Morgan relates her experience with ECT.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UthAbjInBCQ&mode=related&search=
Gordon Elliot Show YouTube video Time 1:51
Marcia Fink relates that drug resistant psychosis was successfully treated with ECT.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HYcbMna3U-g&mode=related&search=
Gordon Elliot Show YouTube video Time 0:46
Depression and suicidal attempts stopped by ECT treatment.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HYcbMna3U-g&mode=related&search=
Extra - -TV program YouTube video Time 3:50
Forty percent of patients relapse. A Marine Lt. Col. lost her complete life memory after twenty seven treatments of ECT.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CYX19KuZCNI&mode=related&search=
Deep Brain Stimulation Surgery to treat Depression YouTube Video Time 2:25
Health Edge Cleveland Clinic and Brown University
http://youtube.com/watch?v=x7b45qcuXWY&mode=related&search=
Lobotomy
You may find this hard to accept but lobotomy was once a treatment for mental illness. This site has some very interesting information on the history of lobotomy including the different procedures.
http://www.psychosurgery.org/index.htm
Drowning
Death and return to life through resuscitation were once thought to give the seriously mentally ill a new beginning. Metal boxes were constructed with holes so that bubbles of air could be observed. When the bubbles stopped the box was lifted out of a pool of water and the person revived.
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Links
Chaco Canyon Links
Chaco Canyon Anasazi - End of the Anasazi: Iron Deficient Diet-Anemia By Richard Fisher
"Drought, famine, erosion, deforestation, salinity, soil infertility, warfare, cannibalism, and general resource depletion have all been proposed as causes for the desertion. For the most part, these reasons have been found not to be a primary cause of abandonment."
http://www.canyonsworldwide.com/chacoCanyon/p23.htm
Page one - - - -http://www.canyonsworldwide.com/chacoCanyon/p1.htm
Annenberg Media- Chaco Canyon
"Sand Canyon was finally abandoned in the thirteenth century, the kivas were burned. Kivas were sacred ceremonial places; they would not have been systematically burned without cause."
http://www.learner.org/exhibits/collapse/chacocanyon.html
Data Base (searchable)
The Chaco World Great House Database
http://sipapu.gsu.edu/html/chacoworld.html
University of Colorado An on-line conference project.
Main Conference page. http://www.colorado.edu/Conferences/chaco/open.htm
Interactive map tourhttp://www.colorado.edu/Conferences/chaco/tour/chacomap.htm
Chaco Roads (Conference page.)
"An especially puzzling characteristic of Chaco roads is the construction of parallel road segments, which have been identified at places along both the North and South Roads. An extreme example is located north of Pierre's Ruin on the North Road (Nials 1983:6-29). Here, four segments spaced less than 40 m apart appear to be almost perfectly parallel. Little is known about these strange features, but evidence does indicate that one of the parallel segments typically exhibits significantly more use than its counterpart."
http://www.colorado.edu/Conferences/chaco/roads.htm
Roads
An Evaluation of Chaco Anasazi Roadways John Kantner UCSB
Long paper with maps and computer renditions of data.
http://sipapu.ucsb.edu/roads/full.html
Ancient Observatory
This site requires Flash Player and runs/downloads best using Broadband. The excellent high quality presentation puts you in Chaco Canyon including modern Native Dance.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/chaco/
Photos Anasazi
There are high quality photos of granaries and defensive houses and pueblos, Ray Rasmussen.
http://raysweb.net/anasaziruins/index.html
Rock art site http://raysweb.net/rockart/pages/gg.html
The Gallery - Mesa Verde Colorado and four corners Anasazi dwellings, J.Andrzej Wrotniak.
http://www.wrotniak.net/gallery/mesaverde-98/
Chronology of Southwestern Archaeology Dr David K Jordan Emeritus Professor of Anthropology UCSD
http://raysweb.net/anasazi/jordon.html#paleo
U S Parks Service
An Anasazi village misnamed Aztec - Aztec Monument National Park
There are numerous pictures of Kiva's here that appear to be the property of the U S Parks Service. Many date from just after the 1900's to 1980's.
http://www.nps.gov/azru/adhi/adhi1.htm
Utah History to Go
Ute and Paiute history related to Anasazi is discussed in this article.
Chetro Ketl Great Kiva
This home page link has many sites and information on Kivas and the Anasazi. There is a virtual tour of the Chetro Ketl Great Kiva.
http://sipapu.gsu.edu/index.html
This issue of Visions, BC's mental health journal, has an excellent article on Culture Bound Syndromes.
Adobe Reader Required http://www.cmha-bc.org/content/resources/visions/issues/09.pdf
Other resources
This is a beginning list of resources they are not citations for this page.
http://faculty.valpo.edu/jnelson/CCWebPage/Notes/CBPPOL.htm A site with a glossary of Culture Bound Psychopathologies
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~thall/cbs_glos.html A page related to temporary psychotic disorders.
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~thall/cbs_intro.html Culture-Bound Syndromes Glossary
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~thall/cbs_links.html Links page for Culture-Bound Syndromes
http://perso.club-internet.fr/tmason/WebPages/Publications/Lice_Men.htm Of Lice and Men --Interesting unrelated reading -- "Comparative hairlessness - the Naked Ape - the upright posture and the opposable thumb can all be understood as adaptations to the depredations of a particularly troublesome strain of lice."
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~thall/SSL_panth.html Psychiatric & Psychological Anthropology UCSD page of links related to anthropology
http://www.umanitoba.ca/anthropology/tutor/index.html This is Kinship 101, a Tutorial with basic symbols explained.
Chaco Canyon
http://www.nps.gov/chcu/ Chaco Canyon National Park
http://www.nps.gov/chcu/home.htm This is the links page for the National Parks Site
Other Southwest sites
http://www.jqjacobs.net/southwest/hovenweep.html Photo gallery Hovenweep Jacobs
http://www.jqjacobs.net/southwest/index.html Ring of sites by same author Jacobs
http://www.jqjacobs.net/rock_art/image_links.html Free stuff southwest Indian art and graphics from Jacobs
http://www.neartime.com/ruins/default.htm
This site has many pictures. This URL is an index of links.
If you have friends or family who use computers in unprotected workspace such as in homes, dorm rooms, student apartments, or small business offices have them read this section below. This problem is preventable with simple FREE precautions.
Prevention:
This section is now
repeated at the bottom of most site pages.
The
rare occurrence of the injury establishes that is difficult to create enough
exposure to cause an injury. But when it does happen the consequences are
serious, possibly fatal.
Our
personal experience was intermittent human traffic during eight-hour workdays
for thirty calendar days.
If
you have a tower CPU mount it under your desk. That's the way they position it
in a cubicle. The hard drive busy light is about the height of your low
peripheral vision if you put the tower on the desk. Desktop reading of text or
writing notes beside the keyboard on the side of the monitor away from the tower
makes the blinking hard drive busy light appear to approach from behind when you
turn to view the screen again.
If
you have a computer work station/desk in which you turn ninety degrees to write
or do other non computer work, turn off the monitor when you turn aside. Remove
screen savers in this instance. The movement, animation for example, in your
screensaver, two-dimensional movement, might well be detected by your peripheral
vision at close range. Alternately cover the monitor screen.
All
home, apartment, or dorm computer workstations are in unprotected workspace.
To change that put the computer in a quiet room with no possible movement. If
that is not possible in a dorm or apartment position the computer so that your
peripheral vision can see only stationary walls as you use the computer in a
busy room. In Cubicles and 'Systems Furniture' these protective features are
achieved with peripheral vision blocking panels and corner seating positions. It
is called 'Cubicle Level Protection.'
If
you use computer or CD-ROM games for many hours day after day, the game playing
position should follow the same rules as the computer workstation. Battery
operated games will not run long enough on a single rechargeable battery to
cause a risk for SPVP.
Although
a laptop does not have a visible blinking light in peripheral vision the same
rules apply to your work position. There
should not be human traffic moving to you from behind. There should be nothing
behind you, which could enter your subliminal peripheral vision field as you
turn your head while working at the laptop and be mistaken for threat movement.
Only
movement coming from behind you into your Subliminal Peripheral Vision can cause
a peripheral vision reflex. If the movement source approaches you from ahead
then enters your Subliminal Peripheral Vision from conscious sight there can be
no peripheral vision reflex.
Repeated
for Emphasis:
A
single session or rare sessions will not cause this problem.
It
is the same day after day long hours of play or computer use with detectable
movement in ‘Subliminal Peripheral Vision,’ which would form the basis of a
risk for SPVP injury.
Exposure can be cumulative
The brain’s detection system only evaluates movement. There is little recognition of the nature of the object in peripheral vision. If you have several hours exposure from human traffic at the library, while reading at an open table or seated in a reading room chair, followed by long hours watching TV with a critically misplaced ceiling fan sweeping detectable shadows around the room, the combination of those two behaviors might cause the problem. The suggestion is that either activity alone would not consume enough exposure time even if the critical movement is present.
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http://www.VisionAndPsychosis.Net . Please include
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