I promise you, I’m not trolling. I have a degree in psychology, so I have some training in this area. I hope you appreciate my right to free speech and difference of opinion. I genuinely think we make these matters worse by making it ok to humiliate mentally ill people. He really looks like he has a mental issue to me.
If the post appeared to make fun of any other minorities, I would speak out just as passionately. I genuinely can’t understand how someone watching this video could think he is a man of good mental health. It really boggles me, and on boingboing, which I consider to be a site where human rights and dignity are important.
Yeah, that ratio occurs because people with mental illnesses are just about as likely to be violent as anyone, but far, far more likely to be the victims of violence. People with mental illnesses aren’t more gentle or kind than people without them, but they sure are in a lot more danger.
Contrary to Hollywood bullshit, Tourette’s is not about comedic involuntary swearing. It’s primarily a movement disorder, probably based in dopaminergic dysfunction, that causes compulsive physical tics. Verbal tics are a lesser part of it, and sweary verbal tics only appear in a minority of cases.
Mental illness or not (and my vote is heavily on “not”; looks like an entitled drunken arsehole to me), it doesn’t excuse the behaviour.
Mental illness does not make you treat other people like shit. Being an arsehole does. And, unfortunately, there is no reason why someone can’t be both mentally ill and an arsehole.
You are not qualified to state that; if you were you would not dare do that based on a short video from the internet. Even if this guy has a mental illness it’s no excuse to act as an asshole; if he has a disorder he should be taking care of that disorder. If he isn’t, well fuck him. If he’s unaware, well this is his wakeup call. If he ignores it, again, fuck him.
Keep in mind that it’s much more likely that he’s just an asshole (shone to have P=1 here), and that if he’s an asshole with a mental illness P < 1 (I’d venture to guess much less than one).
Had he? I’m going of personal experience, but when I encounter people who are angry and full of vitriol they tend to not be humiliated at their actions. You’d really only be able to get that if you talked to him. Did you?
See above, it’s not likely. Adding a conditional always makes the whole less likely. Please go through the You Are Not So Smart podacast to learn more there; it was on one of the more recent ones.
This isn’t poor social interaction, this is being violent, harassing, vitriolic and all around nasty. Poor social interaction is me wringing my hands or fumbling over my words when I’m talking to someone; or saying something slightly off kilter because I wasn’t paying attention to what I said. This is assholery at its finest.
I doubt this will wreck his life. In fact it is a chance for it to be a wakeup call for him. Some people need a huge wakeup call.
Yes, your grandfather managed to get the help he needed. It should have happened sooner, but I’m glad he did. This guy needs help in one way or another. Either, on the off chance that he has some disorder I’m unaware of that will make one into a raging jerk or in the case as presented, that he’s a jerk. I hope he gets help, but I’m not going to hold my breath on that.
Generally, we should hold him accountable for it, yes. If you were to get into a car and drive and you had a grand mal seizure while driving and you killed someone, you would be held accountable for it. So should he. He has control somewhere down the line and can make choices; and he made bad ones that one way or another led him to be on a terrible tantrum. He should be held accountable for that, absolutely.
Live and learn. I mean I knew that the swearing stupid on screen is as much like real tourettes as psychopaths as portrayed in criminal minds are to real psychopaths.
That this is your specialty as a neuroscientist is news. Keep up the good work man.
I have a sister that is mentally stuck at childhood (largely.) She has only a basic grasp of a lot of things. An example is when she ran up the family’s tv bill by renting five hundred dollars of pay per view. Given she is unable to read past what a five or six year old can we feel she isn’t really accountable and that it was on us for not better explaining ‘if a thing pops up you hit this button to make it go away and find something else to watch’ and to set up a password for pay services.
On the other hand it is on her by how she acts, in how she will treat me different (and often worse) when nobody else is here (swearing, snideness, screaming, and then instnat backpeddling when parents come by going ‘I’m sorry. I apologize.’ She knows she did wrong so should be held accountable not just by the canned apology that means precicely nothing, but how her behavior will shift depending on who’s around.
'Fraid not. Ex-neuroscientist, medically retired due to psych issues, now living with Tourette’s as well courtesy of neural damage resulting from a spectacularly bad reaction to a common psych med.
Are you kidding me? Boingboing (and its commenters) LOVES sexism and racism, and perpetuates it constantly. It’s just rather specific about which sex and which race it’s acceptable to be doing the sexism and racism to.
