Slats

Huh? Where in realation the the active hospital was this building?

Motts, Please do a book of your Awesome Phototraphy ! !!

I wouldn't have worried about those patients. No one would have believed them anyway...

Nauseous, you goose! Of course we pay attention to people in hospitals. You learn pretty quickly what is real and what is delusional for each person. Besides, visual hallucinations are pretty rare - they are associated more with organic conditions and hallucinogenic drugs, so if someone says they see something in an adjacent building and it is someone who has never talked about a visual hallucination before you would certainly check it out. Of course, this is assuming you have enough assigned staff to do it and take care of the folks on your caseload at the same time, which is more of a concern.

It was a joke. Geez....

Oh, I'm sorry. :-(

Read the study "Sane in Insane Places" by David L. Rosenhan on diagnostic labeling and patient bias.
Visual halluncinations are the most common after auditory hallunctinations in severe schizophreniacs. Visual halluncinations can also be a result of psychosis and psychosis can be linked to anything from PTSD to depression.

*That was a great study by Rosenhan. I was in my first year of college when that study came out (1973), so you can see how ancient I am. :-) Don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but these days due to the various laws and due to insurance and federal and state funding, it is very difficult to get someone in a mental health facility involuntarily and even if you WANT to be there, funding lapses pretty quickly, so what they described in this study is less likely to happen. All you had to due was blink and you might get an involuntary commitment and it was VERY difficult to get out. The current legal demonstration of "danger to self or others" is quite strict, so this can be positive or negative depending on whether you want/need services or want to avoid them. However, his point that we all tend to judge people based on what we hear about them before we meet them (whether correct or incorrect) still holds true and probably always will.

*As regards visual hallucinations, in schizophrenia if visual hallucinations occur they generally co-occur with auditory hallucinations - they rarely occur alone. There are 5 senses. When we say that visual hallucinations come in second after auditory hallucinations that doesn't necessarily mean that there are a large number of them, just that they are reported MORE often than gustatory, olfactory, or tactile hallucinations, the last three occurring almost exclusively as a result of organic causes (unless they are all occurring together in someone who has frankly decompensated). This is a good way to differentiate the organic syndromes such as Lewy body dementia, Charles Bonnet syndrome, vertebro-basilar artery syndrome, head injuries, epilepsy, electrolyte imbalance, DTs, medication side effects, etc., from schizophrenia. As well, it is helpful when people are malingering (pretending to be psychotic). If someone comes to you and says they see things but aren't also hearing things and haven't shown signs of overall deterioration, you are then able to rule out or decrease the chances that someone has certain disease processes, such as schizophrenia.

*My initial point was to tease Nauseous about a patient reporting that they saw Motts but the staff thinking the patient had made it up, because, as I said, if someone has not shown an overall gross deterioration, is not currently experiencing both auditory hallucinations and visual hallucinations, a well-trained (there's the rub) psychiatric technician would know right away that perhaps something needed to be checked out if they claimed to see someone in the area where Motts was.

*However, I did a poor job and the point obviously suffered and died in translation. :-(

http://www.medic8.com/healthguide/articles/schizophrenia.html

"Visual hallucinations are more characteristic of organic states if occurring alone, and olfactory or gustatory hallucinations in particular should stimulate a search for organic pathology, particularly temporal lobe epilepsy."

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/325/7365/644

"The main differential diagnosis of delirium is from a functional psychosis (such as schizophrenia and manic depression) and from dementia. Functional psychoses are not associated with obvious cognitive impairment, and visual hallucinations are more common in delirium."

http://www.aafp.org/afp/20030301/1027.html

"While visual hallucinations can occur in patients with primary psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia, they are much less common than auditory hallucinations. In primary psychiatric disorders, visual hallucinations would be associated with other, more characteristic signs and symptoms of the disorders."

I still love ya, Lynne, and buttons too!

:-)

That is a weird little area in the wall... I wonder what they used it for.

Me too

You're not ancient Lynne, just a recycled teenager, like me.

My brother suffered from schizophrania and , even on medicine, he used to talk to people that weren't there and see things that weren't there. It was very scarey! I really never felt his condition was treated properly. Til the day he died, he was never the same.

There is such agony in the death of your brother. There is no answer that can sooth away the pain. I can only say I pray that your heart hears the love of God.You are his child. He hears your agony and self judgement. There is no way he would ever judge the ill guilty of the disease that over comes them. He did not come to punish the cripple, or the insane, he came to save them. God Bless You

Nancy, I can definitly relate. My Grandmother suffers from schizophrania. It didn't "get ahold" of her until after she had four children. She heard voices, saw things, and felt things that weren't there. Her "friends" told her to do bad things. She spent a lot of time yelling at them and telling them that she wouldn't do what they want. She never hurt her children and only once did she almost act on what they insisted she do. My Grandfather woke one evening and she was leaning over him with rather large knife. Luckily he was a strong guy and wrestled the knife from her. My mother says that she was in and out of institutions (not happy or fun places at all) and has been given many, many different drugs over the years. Some of the drugs did more worse then good. She has had many harsh therapies over the years including electroshock therapy (didn't help, actually made things worse, this was a good thing as she only had to go through it once!). Her medication seems to be pretty steady now (thanks to medical advancement on the subject). I remember as a child not knowing that Grandma was supposed to talk (she never did). At the time her treatment was basically to "drug the hell out of her". Now she is permenantly mentally damaged from drug effects but she talks, has conversations, and she is connected to the rest of the world. It is hard to believe that she was once a beautiful woman that men used to fight over to go on dates with, had an excellant eye for fashion, was a shrewed card player, an above average pianist, a most excellent seamstress, and was an all around fun-loving person. I wish that I knew this Grandmother better.

This picture is precisely what I think my Grandmother's mind would have looked like 20 years ago. Today? Maybe sweep up, unblock the window and let some sun in, put up some pics of the family, and add a telephone.

What is this door?

Datura Devil's Trumpet Stinkweed Thorn Apple Devil's Snare Devil's Seed Ditch Weed Stink Weed Gypsum Weed Jamestown Weed Jimson Weed Korean Morning Glory Angel's Trumpet Mad Hatter Devil's Balls Malpitte Crazy Tea Zombie Cucumber

Lynne,your knowledge and compassion continue to impress me! I'm training to be an Art Therapist and your comments fascinate me. Thank you
Motts...great pics as I have said a zillion times before

lol, don't mess with lynne!

btw mott's, this is the 3rd time i looked through this album, i think its my favorite location!!

The "Lonely toilet brush" shot !

It looks like a fire hose box.

At first I thought you were kidding...holy cow...dodging activity is no small thing for any urbexer short of an expert - which you apparently are!