Comment by sitkack
4 days ago
Reading it now, I am reminded of the importance of sleep. The only time I have experience "visual aberrations" is when I have been very sleep deprived. Items in my periphery would rotate, like my mind was attempting to dream. And then there is this description of one of the cases
> single male who works for the U.S. Postal Service, typically during the midnight shift.
People should be very very cautious about working swing shifts or night shifts.
https://time.com/3657434/night-work-early-death/
I am not that far in, but it looks to me like STPD is a precursor to full Schizophrenia, and that if caught early could avoid it entirely. This might be what the book says.
Oh the DSM, it seems chock full of ... spicey illinformed kinda right by accident correlation isn't causation kind things. After reading enough of it, I don't even see it anymore. I am sure there is still some phrenology in there.
Hazing as a bonding exercise is barbaric. I have seen scrapbooks of USN sailors that have crossed the Tropic of Cancer and Equator. Yeah, no.
Meehl's hypothesis is that some fraction of schizotypes, maybe 5-10% develop schizophrenia in early adulthood. I'm too old for that now.
It could be that I've compensated because my verbal intelligence is too high to measure. I got 800 verbal/760 math on the SAT and probably gave up 40 points to the line noise in my brain. I struggled to get more than 90% on math quizzes in high school because of that line noise but as my education progressed (physics PhD) I got better at not making mistakes on math. I've maxxed every verbal test and subscale I've taken.
I am worried that I won't be able to compensate so well when I am older; psychotic dementia would be a terrible burden on the people around me. I've seen people who aged well because they had good emotional habits, I can only hope I've got enough time to improve mine.