First Psychotic Episodes are Caused by...

VisionAndPsychosis.Net©

In Montgomery Alabama

First Psychotic Episodes

If you reached this page from a search engine and there is no menu

on the left margin click HOME to enter the site

Please read the Copyright page for generous permissions.

< ------- Menu

< ------ Cursor over for pages

Scroll Down One Screen for the Top of Page

This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

This page is undergoing an edit and there may be duplications of material while this is happening. (2/02/10)

The material is duplications of material on other pages until we begin Cascading Style Sheets as a site organization. The best wording will be retained.

The second part of the edit will pare down this page.

First Psychotic Episodes

First things first, warning:

If you have what you believe are psychiatric symptoms the first recourse is to a full medical workup. There are medical conditions, including stroke, that will produce these symptoms and they should be eliminated first. The information on this page and site will not interfere with that investigation and you will not have to stop any treatment you now have to take advantage of this information.

The authors of the DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness, freely admit they don't know what causes mental illness. This includes first psychotic episodes.

Sudden mental events sometimes called First Psychotic Episodes have happened through history. They still happen today. They appear with different intensities and last different lengths of time.

Recently in news reports both Mischa Barton an Brittany Spears had such episodes. Little is known about them but they are covered when the subject is a well known celebrity. From these examples we can see that the subject usually quickly recovers and may never has another episode throughout their entire life.

Other mental episodes that happen around the world are called Culture Bound Syndromes. Each ethnic group experiences the event differently due to their culture and understanding of reality. Volumes exploring and explaining psychosocial reasons for CBS's have been written. (See the Culture Bound Syndromes page here to explore them.)

During the early half of the twentieth century "nervous breakdown" was a common name for such an event. Typically the health and mental fragility of the victim was blamed.

Unknown by the general public these mental breaks have happened on scientific expeditions for over a hundred years. From the mass insanity event on the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898 to a psychotic break on Soyuz-21 the victims have what appears to be a full mental break. They quickly recover when the situation that led to the break is changed, Never the less, even with these common features, no one has connected them. Astronauts & Insanity

I plan to do that through this site and psychology project. As of February 2010 it has been running seven years.

In the 1950's designers and engineers were hired to modernize business offices. They introduced their first products in 1964 and some of the workers using them began to have mental breaks. No one connected this development with nervous breakdowns or mental illness. The events were not called first psychotic episodes. See the Modern Cubicle site page here.

Because they knew what they had changed designers were able to isolate the problem and hired experts to find out why those changes sometimes caused mental breaks.

The victim in offices recover quickly with no treatment. Designers see only that episode and think the phenomenon can only cause a harmless temporary episode. They treat knowledge of it as proprietary.

No one in mental health services is aware that this discovery ever happened.

No one is screening incoming patients for this exposure before beginning treatment for believed mental illness. If you recover spontaneously while under treatment, the treatment or drug will be credited.

Designers and engineers solved the problem of mental breaks in offices in about four years.

When a similar problem, called ICU Psychosis or Hospital Psychosis, appeared doctors are still arguing about the correct name for the it rather than solving it. A simple examination searching for the elements of Subliminal Distraction demonstrate that both problems are the same event. (Google ICU Psychosis.) Visit the ICU Psychosis page here.

My wife, Connie, had a psychotic break in the payroll office of the University of Alabama. Each doctor we saw arrived at a different diagnosis with the identical set of facts and medical/psychological test results. They discarded information they didn't understand or want to use to reach a favorite, or financially beneficial for them, diagnosis.

I provided doctors at the University of Alabama Psychiatric Surgical Hospital the phone number of an engineer there in Birmingham to verify the problem was real. They refused to contact him and insisted my wife needed ECT. Eventually they resigned the case when I refused to allow ECT. This is the premier medical school for the State of Alabama. On the advice of one of my doctors we moved to Georgia and Emory University medical school. (This is expanded on the Personal Experiences page.)

I have since written and emailed the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins. None of the clinics and hospitals I contacted is aware the problem exists or could exist.

Typically they reply that it should not be a problem unless the subject already has undiagnosed Schizophrenia. To a person they refused to admit that Schizophrenia is only a diagnosis in the DSM not a disease. See the DSM page here. (under construction)

This site offers the suggestion that it's visual subliminal distraction exposure that causes most first psychotic episodes. There is no treatment for this exposure. The solution is to find where you have exposure and make changes to eliminate it.

Unaware of SD exposure doctors will attempt to treat the onset of mental illness.

Subliminal Distraction is explained in first semester college psychology under the physiology of sight. Acoustic SD also exists because the facts of physiology for sight and hearing are similar. But there is no potential psychiatric component to Acoustic Subliminal Distraction.

Hearing is sensory adaptable but sight is not. Your sensor cells for hearing can deplete lowering the strength of neural impulses created from repeating vibrations through the air to your ear. Micro movements of your eye refresh the sensor cells on the rods and cones in your retina. The neural impulses for sight do not diminish with repeating input. If they did stationary objects would fade away.

This site argues that there are other mental events that may not happen as a psychotic episode. They manifest when someone begins to exhibit bizarre behavior or have strange beliefs. In the beginning these beliefs may not arouse attention if they are close to normal. I could not detect the onset of a psychotic episode until my wife began to say things that were not possible. Later she said the birds outside were talking to her. Obviously a psychotic delusion.

Low-level long-term Subliminal Distraction creates fixed altered mental states. This happens when Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga users begin to believe they have superhuman strengths and supernatural powers. See the Qi Gong Psychotic Reaction and Kundalini Yoga pages.

There is YouTube video of someone with this altered mental state. It is taken from a National Geographic Channel program "Is It Real?" If the video is removed you can still see the segment aired on Cable TV. The episode is called "Superhuman Powers."

AS YOU WATCH THIS VIDEO, observe the back ground activity. Some of it is in Dillman's peripheral vision. Some of the movement is in selected audience member's peripheral vision. That movement of one audience member detected by another is a subliminal distraction as well as a stimulus to reinforce belief in the observed activity. That is how they come to see Chee as a force they can learn to control.

You should consider it as a subliminal form of operant conditioning.

G. Dillman on National Geographic's video link Total clip time 9:06.

The 'Third Eye,' a belief from Qi Gong, is mentioned at time mark 1:29. At time mark 3:41 he claimed telepathic powers, being able to control the actions of people waiting in line at Starbucks. At time mark 6:13 a test demonstration of Chee begins. Dillman explains the failure of a trial of his powers beginning at time mark, 7:11.

YouTube URL for this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsSzSflkns8

Dillman is not mentally ill yet if any other person said these things that person would be held for observation. What is the difference? The degree to which daily functioning is effected is the determining factor to allow the diagnosis of mental illness. Dillman is a successful business man who believes he has supernatural powers. Those diagnosed with mental illness have lost intellectual capacity.

In Schizophrenia there is brain atrophy. Twin studies showing increased ventricle size and thus loss of brain material are used by some who make claims of causation. There are cases of diagnosed schizophrenia without atrophy. That leads to question whether brain atrophy and the loss of mental capacity causes mental illness or does the onset of mental illness cause atrophy? Is the decrease in brain volume a separate issue being caused by disease co-occurring with mental illness.

This site offers the suggestion that sudden episodes that have beliefs like Dillman's can be mistaken for first psychotic episodes. Another choice is that they may be first psychotic episodes.

Conclusion

First psychotic episodes are an unsolved problem. No one knows or can prove a cause. Each practitioner has his or her own theory as to causation. None of them is aware of a simple problem discovered because it caused mental breaks in business offices. Exposure is silent, painless, and invisible. Because of the bizarre way the human vision field functions and reacts or detects movement to trigger the vision startle reflex we cannot consciously experience this exposure.

If exposure stops the symptoms will stop. If you have experienced a first psychotic episode examine your activities in the weeks before that event to determine if you might have had Subliminal Distraction exposure. Avoid problematic behaviors or make slight changes in places you use a computer, study, or sometimes daydream, to prevent SD exposure.

Such an examination will cost nothing and it will not interfere with any treatment you have.

Since you cannot detect this exposure that is the only way to prevent it. Read Prevention at the bottom of each page on this site.

While any lessening of exposure will help you may not see an immediate improvement if you have had several such episodes or if you find your exposure has been long term.

Editing is paused at 2:15 AM on Feb 2, 2010. There is a conversion to cascading style sheets ongoing.

Research Links for this page. Site links are an Internet Explorer "Favorites" export page. (Off page link.)

Psychosocial Treatment for First-Episode Psychosis: A Research Update
David L. Penn, Ph.D., Evan J. Waldheter, M.A., Diana O. Perkins, M.D., Kim T. Mueser, Ph.D. and Jeffrey A. Lieberman, M.D

"Psychotic disorders, particularly schizophrenia, are the mostdisabling of all mental illnesses. In fact, schizophrenia isincluded among the world’s top 10 causes of disability-adjustedlife-years. ..."The largest expenditure for mental health in the United States is for schizophrenia , with an annual cost of $32.5 billion . Most of this cost can be attributed to repeated hospitalizations following relapse.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/162/12/2220

This site argues that relapses are caused by behaviors or accidental events that increase exposure from Subliminal Distraction.

Vision Links from Peripheral Vision page.

I recommend this site. But you will have to browse several pages.

"Early in evolution, human ancestors had only peripheral vision. The role of this early vision system (still preserved in our eyes) was to detect motion and set off protective reflexes."

http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm

Peripheral vision Lego tester

Adobe file with tester construction and data results sample

http://www.edex.com.au/lego/support/activities/032_peripheral_vision.pdf

Nightwalking

"In The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman of 16th century Japan, implies that he fought his greatest duels with his eyes crossed, and goes into considerable detail about developing and using this strange abitlity."

The method suggested to engage peripheral vision is to suspend an object from the bill of a baseball cap and practice staring at it rather than looking straight ahead as we all normally do.

The site has a page on the physiology of the eye and sight. It describes the normal field of vision.

http://www.navaching.com/hawkeen/nwalk.html#Anchor-The-59125

Institute for Innovative Blind Navigation

Don't let the site name put you off. This site has several pages which explain sight and how the brain deals with two vision systems.

http://www.wayfinding.net/index.htm

This page has the vision material. http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm#four

Speed Reading (peripheral vision)

http://www.ababasoft.com/wider_eye_span/

Vision, is a set of brain level subsystems

This page explains the M & P pathways and vision processing.

http://www.wayfinding.net/visanal.htm

The Red Myth

Color in Vision

http://stlplaces.com/night_vision.html

University of Missouri

The first paragraph on this page refers to psychological factors effecting pupil dilation.

"Interestingly, the pupil/iris combination also changes in response to psychological factors. One sign of activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is a system important in arousal, fight, and flight, is dilated pupils. For example, sexual interest results in pupil dilation. (This piece of information may come in handy some time.)"

http://web.umr.edu/~psyworld/eye.htm

University of Utah

John Moran Eye Center -- Anatomy

http://webvision.med.utah.edu/

Kimball's Biology Pages

A simple explanation of the eye and sight.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html

Understanding Human Vision

This site deals with color.

http://www.pitir.com/pentile/Human_Vision.html

Vision and the Brain

Block diagrams of vision paths through the brain explain the M and P channels.

http://www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_02/i_02_cr/i_02_cr_vis/i_02_cr_vis.html#2

Study Notes Vision

http://www.utmed.com/studynotes/neuro/VisualProcessing.pdf

++ Use your [Home] key to return to the top of the page and site navigation.

Prevention: This section is now repeated at the bottom of most 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.

This URL home page is http://www.visionandpsychosis.net Please include it if you print out portions of text or the whole page for off line reading. Please read the copyright page on this site. Do not duplicate the one copy allowed each reader. We want everyone, even non-computer users, to have the information but do not want old versions of revised material in circulation.

Tell everyone you know and send them to the site.

##########