Psychics help Yale psychiatrists understand the voices of psychosis (1 Viewer)

[Laron]

As reported by Yale news, an interesting study was published on Sept. 28 in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin. The Yale Department of Psychiatry and the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation provided primary funding for the research. (Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut.)

"People with psychosis are tormented by internal voices. In an effort to explain why a Yale team enlisted help from an unusual source: psychics and others who hear voices but are not diagnosed with a mental illness.

They found that the voices experienced by this group are similar in many ways to those reported by people with schizophrenia, with a few big differences: Psychics are much more likely to perceive the voices as positive or helpful and as experiences that can be controlled, according to a new study published Sept. 28 in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.

“We have known for some time that people in the general population can have the experience of hearing voices—sometimes frequently—without the need for psychiatric intervention,” said Albert Powers, a psychiatry fellow and lead author of the study."
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So basically psychologists enlisted the help from psychics to determine the state of people suffering from psychosis.

"Powers and Philip Corlett, assistant professor of psychiatry and senior author on the paper along with Yale neuroscience graduate student Megan Kelley, studied a group called clairaudient psychics, who report receiving daily auditory messages. The subjects who reported hearing voices were given tests from forensic psychiatry designed to identify those who falsely claim to be hearing voices in order to avoid criminal prosecution. Both psychics and psychosis patients had similar scores on tests meant to detect false claims of hearing voices. However, patients with schizophrenia were much more likely to report negative experiences when hearing voices or discussing the voices with other people.

By comparing the psychics’ experiences with those of people with schizophrenia and a control group of healthy subjects, the authors claim to have found some clues as to what may be protecting this group of healthy voice-hearers.

“These individuals have a much higher degree of control over the voices. They also have a greater willingness to engage with and view the voices as positive or neutral to their lives,’’ Corlett said. “We predict this population will teach us a lot about the neurobiology, cognitive psychology and eventually treatment of distressing voices.”"
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I think that this is an interesting topic to discuss as I have always been curious around the source of the messages that people would receieve who were diagnosed with mental disorders like schizophrenia.

It's also interesting to see that psychiatrists validated the psychics, meaning they are taking them seriously. It's good to see the 'official' science/psychology world taking more notice of the metaphysical world.

 

[Snowmelt]

A positive step, as you say. But, (yes, there is a but) a group of people who have no mystical knowledge or experience in quieting their mind and hearing the still, small voice are setting themselves up to judge good or bad, mad or evil. Similar to a group of asleep people sitting around a transistor radio with the knob turned to off, and happenstance, a passer-by has their transistor radio knob switched on. What a hubbub then ensues!

 

[Laron]

Similar to a group of asleep people sitting around a transistor radio with the knob turned to off, and happenstance, a passer-by has their transistor radio knob switched on

Indeed! I can picture that now. =)

 

[Lila]

Wow, I missed this post when it first came out but it make perfect sense to me.
Glad to hear there is some openness to studying this

 

[Snowmelt]

A friend of mine has a son with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) also known as Multiple Personality Disorder, who died this week at age 39. Obviously someone with identifiable disturbances who lives in a depressive or mind-isolated condition will need medical intervention, but I do wonder how a medical profession can intervene when they have so little understanding of what may really be going on. I realise the differences between hearing voices (or schizophrenia) and this disorder, however the person suffering DID associates with the voices they hear until they wear them as personalities, changing one for the other at different times. My friend's son had 4 or 5, and it shaped his whole life into one of persistent medical intervention.

Now that people in metaphysics are looking at quantum levels of existence, including concurrent life experiences in more than one form, perhaps the study of DID and schizophrenia needs a whole re-rinse and re-evaluation.