What is the strangest mental disorder?

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M*W: It's more common than you think!

 

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for the jesus thing - he was crucified but his legs werent broken (you die quickly then), as sabbath was coming (you had to remove crucified people then) the soldiers went to break his legs but found him already "dead".. So handed him back to a priest who had secret designs for him.. Allegedly a sponge on the end of a spear containing coma-inducing chemicals was wiped on his face

 

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The strangest mental illness, I will call lemming disorder.
If the government says this is your enemy, you get angry at that enemy and you feel it is right to be taxed to kill that enemy. The disease interferes with intuition and healthy skepticism, causing sufferers not to notice discrepencies and selfish interests in those authority figures one follows. It also causes one to be very angry at those who are healthy because of the anxiety caused by realizing one is sick. Medication does not seem to have any effect, nor does counseling. Reason and passionate response seem only to strenghten the disease's hold on the patient.

The odd thing is impatience for quick solutions - a negative trait in reality based problem solving - can actually provide a temporary cure or remission until the next 'enemy' is identified.

 

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Thank you for that last sentence. The plastic surgeon, since he or she is making money for abnormal behavior, is not only sick but immoral. But I would argue that the surgeon is actually the sicker of the two. In most situations we think of the abuser as the one with the greater problem than the abusee who sees the abuse as natural. Like a battered woman. Sure, she definitely has problems that she is responsible for, especially if she repeats the pattern. But the guy who thinks it's OK to beat her is the real loon. To think it's OK to mutilate someone AND MAKE MONEY FOR IT, that's a call for help.

 

good choice, but I can beat it:
unilateral neglect

Its victums are conscious (or aware if you like) of only half the world. It can follow strokes in the parietal part of the brain. They eat only the food on one side of their plate as the other does not exist for them. Not uncommon when they first recover in the hospital (until they learn better), they may try to throw one of their own legs out of bed and are disgusted that a leg has been left in their bed. An artist victim drew his self portraite - he drew half a face. etc. If asked to draw a clock, from memory, they make the shape of a D and squeeze the numbers 1 thru 12 in around the arc.*
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The D would be with curved side on the left if the the stroke were on the left side of the brain. I.e. the side of the universe opposite to the side of the stroke ceases to exist. I tested an old lady victim about a year after her stoke. She was adapted to the fact I could cease to exist as I moved into her blind side, and no longer thought she was hearing voices with no body. My test confirmed her visual system was perfect.

I.e. I had her fixate an "x" on the center of the computer screen and then it briefly (0.5 sec) displayed, either to the right or left of the central "x," a small spot of color (alway either red or green) concurrently with a buz. She had to say "red" or "green" with each buz. (blue vs yellow should work as well as these pair are greatest and least neural discharge rates in two processing systems deep in the brain's color systems.)

At first she thought it silly to name a color with each buz when there were (to her) colored spots only half the time, but her choice was correct most of the time for the spots she did not consciously experience. - Proof that the visual system was intact.
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*I now realize I should have aske her to draw a wallclock while looking at one, but I am 99% sure that she would have also drawn a D shape and guess she would have put only 1 thru 6 on its arc. (perhaps 2,1,2,3,4,5 if the "1" of the top "12" did not exist for her.) I should have asked, but I was too concerned with completing my quantative test of her visual responces in side that did not exist in my few hours with her.

 

so strokes are a mental illness? or just a disorder?

 

I tend to think that mental illness problems have a physical basis., so unilateral neglect is both a mental illness problem and a disorder as is alzhiemers, compulsive behavior, depression, etc. (any thing you want to name.) This belief is based on the great success drugs, ECT, have had with mental illness problems compared to more traditional psychological approaches (which in my POV also make physical changes in the brain when they work.) I.e. IMHO there is no such thing as a "purely mental illness" without associated physical defect or disorder in the brain.

 

More of a disorder. Strokes are like heart attacks in the brain- blood vessel goes pop and the brain simply cannot function like it should. Your body subsequently starts to fail.
That's why strokes are often fatal- they destroy your body's ability to regulate itself.

 

Hacking off ones limbs sounds like a reaction to a condition. Like someone hearing voices and then hacking off there limbs. But I may be wrong, this may be a actual condition that I don't know of, though I doubt.

 

A stroke is actually an occurrence that is associated with an illness called Heart Disease. Strokes how ever can be caused by many things; another one is peripheral artery disease. Strokes, like I said, are occurrences that occur from one or more ailments just like heart attacks, which are a reaction to a condition, not a condition.

 

My vote goes for "koro" (listed as a culturally specific disorder in the DSM-IV):

"...an episode of sudden and intense anxiety that the penis (or, in females, the vulva and nipples) will recede into the body and cause death"

There is a similar disorder among men in parts of Africa, in which they believe their penis has been stolen or shrunken by a sorcerer. They are unable to see their penises (peni?) even though others can.

See also:
http://www.focusanthro.org/essays0506/schroer0506.htm

Some of the organic conditions related to brain trauma are also pretty weird. If you haven't read it Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat describes some truly strange episodes (it's an excellent read too)--the title episode involves a man who looks at his wife but sees a hat rack.

 

I still think people who think that expensive cars give them larger penises
and people buy brand name clothes
are hallucinating.

 

Lycanthropic Disorder - when someone actually believes that they turn into a werewolf.

 

What's wrong with brand name clothes?

 

They put a hole in my account

 

Brand name clothes do? Buy at Burlington, it's cheaper than Walmart and way better quality(and name brand).

 

Or go to Goodwill and buy rich kids clothes that hung in their closet and never got worn. My kids are living in Gap, Hot Topic, Tommy Hilfiger, Abercrombie, Mudd, etc and I haven't paid more than $3.99 for any of it.


back to talking about mental illness. What about those people that are vegans?

 

Hebephrenic Schizophrenia. Creeeeeppppyyyy.

 

strangest mental disorder is when the brain is dead. There is no mind left...

how is that for strange?

 

Considering the mind would be dead, it couldn't have a disorder.