"mental health" house and planets?

[Mandy]

Secondary to that, I was reading recently that mental health is programmed during gestation. Not a bad link, but I'd prefer a scientific paper. Maybe I'll google one up later;

http://www.mothering.com/community/a/navigating-stress-in-pregnancy

This is a cutting edge area of developmental neurobiology. I studied it back in February. I am short on time now but I can forward some (class) lectures by leaders in the field to you by the end of the month. Here is a start: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/26/26/6897.short

 

[dr. farr]

This is a cutting edge area of developmental neurobiology. I studied it back in February. I am short on time now but I can forward some (class) lectures by leaders in the field to you by the end of the month. Here is a start: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/26/26/6897.short

Makes me think of the oldtime astrological "pre-natal epoch" concepts, and of the "blood-line" ideas (related to astrology) of certain esoteric traditions...

 

[Mandy]

The other form of depression is not as severe, meaning the vast majority are not suicidal or destructive, and that is typically treated with SSRIs or SSNIs, because it is believed -- but not proven --- to be caused by an imbalance of serotonin (or a combination of serotonin and other hormones)...

Just to say that there is this issue of physiological reasons for symptoms. Separately to that is the issue of differential effect of drugs on treating brain disease. Currently, there is research that can take a single cell from your skin, or hair, place it in media, inject the cells with a special set of proteins and revert it back to its "pluripotent" state: the state it was when you were an embryo, before it became a "differentiated" cell. These are not just cells. They are your cells, from now to your embryonic days.

The deal is that these (pluripotent stem) cells can be differentiated (instructed to develop), via simple genetic instruction, into neural cells, specific to certain brain regions and layers of the cortex of your brain. For example, they can become dopaminergic neurons from the striatum, which become affected in Parkinson's Disease. These cell cultures can be taken to test the efficacy of pharm. treatments that are tailored/peculiar to you. Given that these cells hold this memory of their past state, the question arises ... when, in the development of the brain, was a certain fate determined? Is it influenced by nutrition? Yadda, yadda...

Here is a brief introduction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9-4SMGiKnE

This is so cutting edge that we are eons away from forming sound conclusions, particularly about depression. With that said, these types of studies are also done with inhibitory GABAergic neurons and excitatory glutamatergic neurons, that are implicated in the pharm. treatment of depression/anxiety etc. In respect of SSRIs etc. I think this is waste of time for the organism, it is not a solution, because there is always the development of tolerance. What is interesting for this discussion, as it relates to depression etc., is that with the use of our own consciousness, together with cognitive bias modification paradigms, outside of the petri dish, we can impose electrical biofeedback back into neuronal populations, which can be a very effective, drug free, treatment, not to disguise the process of personal growth and development, but to alleviate redundant effects, and it cuts out the middle man. Effectively, one works with their own (independent) energy.

Utahn: I offer my sincerest condolences.

 

[wilsontc]

Deleted attacks and response to attacks

All,

I have deleted an attacking post and responses to that attacking post. While the attacking post contained astrology, it also contained many attacks, which is against the AW Forum rules, so I deleted the entire post. Also responses to attacking, no matter how helpfully meant, simply expand on the problem, so they were deleted as well. Remember, do NOT feed the trolls! If you see someone attacking or trolling, please report them to the Moderator team or click on the "!" to the top right of all posts.

Warning,

Tim

 

[greybeard]

Re: Deleted attacks and response to attacks

I'm curious....

What is our definition of "mental health/mental illness"?

In other words, What are we talking about here?

I don't accept "You know, Everybody knows what mental illness is."

How can we assign houses to something so un-defined?

Take a bell curve. Draw a vertcal line from the peak. Almost no one will fall on that line.
Almost everyone is "not normal".
How far from center before you are declared "mentally ill"?
And what are the criteria for meaurement?

In horary astrology it is demanded that the question be properly framed...
This question is not properly framed: It is vague and ill-defined.

 

[waybread]

Re: Deleted attacks and response to attacks

For mental illness, I think you would need a psychiatric evaluation by a M. D., and then some illnesses like depression are extremely common.

See the Canadian Mental Health Association website at: http://www.cmha.ca/mental-health/understanding-mental-illness/ .

But mostly we are not talking about people who are different from the norm. We're looking at people who are so profoundly unhappy that they can't function normally, can't support themselves as adults, have difficulty communicating with others, or people who are apt to harm themselves-- and others. Some people with schizophrenia hallucinate and hear voices that tell them to harm someone else. Sometimes people have had head injuries that prevent their brains from working in a way that gives them a good quality of life, like soldiers with debilitating PTSD. Oftentimes, mental illness has a biochemical cause.

I've looked at a lot of charts of people with mental illnesses, and like anything else, there are signatures that show up a lot, yet not everyone has them. An afflicted moon is often involved. Interesting, in that our English words (perjorative ones) lunacy and lunatic have the lunar word root.

I don't think a particular house is more involved than any other. Sometimes people who are bi-polar have big oppositions, but not always.

If you go to www.astro.com and look on the Astro-DataBank, they sort charts by mental illness as one of their variables.

 

[Mandy]

Re: Deleted attacks and response to attacks

Incidentally, I was having a similar conversation with my neighbour. I said that being around schizophrenic people really creeps me out. I try to put myself in their shoes and do not like what I feel. He alluded to this being a healthy expression/purpose of the ego, so to separate. In spirituality, we often refer to oneness, but it is also healthy to want, or necessary to have, separation. Yet the conversation reminded me that schizophrenic people are not different to us, they are just an expression of human experience along a continuum. But in speaking of ego and separation, we do cannot know the circle, we can just know it from our perspective. Whilst I do not dispute that some people need to be locked up, I cant help but feel that attempts to objectify mental phenomena, over time, as in western society's idea of "mental illness," become distructive to their purpose. If the whole world was like that, we would lose Shemanic healers et al.

OP, remember that mental illness is a cultural product, bottom up from socialization and top down from diagnostic values. It seems clear, when looked at chronologically, that mental illness serves some purpose, which may be related intrinsically to any of the houses for the native. The concept of (majority) mental illness is a cost-effective invention of today's society to stifle those purposes, to stifle self-development, to rob people of personal power (lol, I sound like I am on a rampage). If you could reverse all of what is wrong with society and all of the ill effects this has at the level of the individual, you arguably could also reverse mental illness, as concept and expression. Each native is first and foremost an intrinsic product of their society, which should be also evident within the horoscope and which may also be functional as any of the 12 houses. Perhaps deleating mental illness, as any other change, such as death, necessitates looking at the charts of several somehow related people, for patterning consistency.

 

[waybread]

Re: Deleted attacks and response to attacks

Mandy, you raise some good points. Again, we aren't talking about functioning adults who are eccentric or outside the norm, but people with problems that prevent them from functioning at a healthy level where they can support themselves. Of course, disorders range from mild to life-threatening. (Young women die from bulimia and anorexia, for example.) Even the mild forms can make the individual miserably unhappy-- or the people who care about her.

If anyone wants to get mostmodern about it, the French grand-daddy of mostmodernism, Michel Foucault, wrote that in a pre-scientific era, Europeans with mental illness and disabilities were cared for at home, or by the community. (You know the expression, "the village idot," or perhaps saw the films by Federico Fellini about the characters in small-town Italy, or saw the man with a mental disability in the film Zorba the Greek.) In reality these people sometimes were abused (notably the girls) but when the system worked well, they were mainstreamed and looked after. Then social science and psychiatry took hold, and as more people worked outside the home and in cities, people with mental disorders were placed in institutions as the more modern treatment plan.

Thankfully, we are somewhere between those two treatment modes now. But if someone has a serious psychotic episodes and is likely to harm himself or someone else, we don't just want him loose on the street.

"Neuro-normality" works or worked differently in some traditional hunter-gather societies, where signs of "mental illness" in a youth indicated his potential to become a shaman. On the other hand, the eastern/northern First Nations legends of the Windigo show that not all mental illness was helpful or benign.

Autism is yet again changing our views of "neuro-normal." Have people here read the books by Temple Grandin (a high-functioning autistic woman) or The Horse Boy?

Some people with mental disorders that make them dangerous to themselves or others can be helped with medications. But some people prefer to live secluded lives to avoid taking tablets with unwanted side-effects. I assume everyone here knows the story of John Nash, the Nobel Laureate, from the film A Beautiful Mind; yet may also remember Ted Kaczynski, the "unibomber" or the Manson "family" murders. The latter cases indicate the extreme dangers of some untreated mental illnesses.

I hope the link I posted above is helpful.

 

[greybeard]

Re: Deleted attacks and response to attacks

Experience with real people, and not necessarily from the astrological point of view, has shown me that some serious mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, are more a disorder of perception than of the other functions of mind. The mind itself -- the ability to deal rationally with circumstances -- is not particularly impaired. But the perceptions of reality are not in tune with the reality. The subject perceives the world in a way that causes him or her to act in what a normal person sees as irrational, because the perceived world is not what is perceived by so-called normal people. The irrationality does not stem from a deviant mental process, but is rooted in the aberrant perceptions.

In a very real sense, we might say that a schizophrenic (at least some of them) lives in a perpetual state of hallucination. The subject responds to the hallucination rationally, but the hallucination is a form of alternate reality (want a parallel universe?) and so the responses that are rational in that reality are irrational in our normal reality.

Even milder forms of mental disorder seem to me to have a strong perceptual component, because even in normal people (is ability to function the criteria?) the main obstacle to spiritual growth (which I correlate with mental health and sanity) is skewed perceptions (often taking the form of self-delusion.)

 

[Mandy]

Re: Deleted attacks and response to attacks

I am familiar with some of the literature which you mention, Waybread. However, aside from those cases, which are diagnositically clear cut, one of my issues with mental illness is that it is dependent on an objective and balanced judgement which is too often not possible. Take, if you will, the expression of narcissistic personality disorder. These people slowly destroy their vulnerable victims from the inside out. Whereas a delusional or paranoid schizophrenic may settle their anxieties through overtly criminal behaviour, a narcissist obtains "narcissitic supply" through adoration by others and humiliation of them often via very intelligently scuplted, implicitly targeting (e.g., silent treatment), strategy. The disorder is notoriously difficult to diagnose because the patients are intelligent, excellent manipulators. The behaviour is not criminal or deviant in any obvious way other than to the receiver who is caught up in their web of emotional abuse. The worst thing is, it is the receiver who receives the diagnosis of some sort for the damage that has been inflicted on to them and the narcissist never sees the inside of an interview room and never seeks help. In these cases, who is to judge and how to judge or diagnose a narcissist? Surely, if they are such a threat to vulnerable people they should be not allowed to work with children or father children, only to abuse them emotionally as a product of their making. This is another thing that perhaps should be looked at, charts in relation to mother/father etc. houses as potential sources of dis-order.

P.s., Waybread, would you mind to expand a little on the Windigo people, please? Which mental illness was not benign? I've never heard of Windigo people. However, I am aware that some, but not all, mental health has neurological origins. I understand, of course, the argument that all mental phenomena must have a neurological causality. But so far there is no evidence for that. Some dis-orders seem to be reliant principally on the mental/spiritual dimension and that includes some variations of depression, with theraputic measures like mediation and NLP to back it up. Of course there is nothing benign about Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, as there is nothing benign about narcissists. However, Alzhemer's and Parkinson's have (so far) distinict neurological causality. Whereas narcissistic traits seem to not. Rather, they seem on the rise as a product of our society. And there does appear to be a survival of the fittest instinct at play.

 

[poyi]

I think we all experienced mental health/illness at some point in our life just simply because of the transits moving around and somehow gets lucky and hit the right angle. And with extra luck....along with natal tendency and progression that will be a long term issue. But everyone does get a taste of it sometime in their life.

 

[waybread]

Mandy, I applaud your educated and careful look at the issues. For sure "mental illness" always occurs in a cultural setting. And this can change, as we know from the bad old days when same-sex orientations were treated as mental illness if not moral deviance.

The windigo (wendigo) legend involves either supernatural demons who supposedly infect people with cannibalism; or actual humans who, during the long and lonely winter nights, lose their sanity and become cannibals. As I indicated above, this is the stuff of legends, although the fear of windigoes was real enough. As usual, wikipedia is about as good an introduction as any:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo#Modern_applications_of_the_term

I raised it simply as a less benign example of traditional societies' views towards mental disorders because there is a tendency to romanticize shamanism.

And we have to be careful. When Joan of Arc heard voices, what was that all about in modern clinical terms?

I take Graybeard's point. Ted Kaczynski had a Ph. D. in mathematics and had even served a stint as a math professor. He was fully functional within the small, controlled world he created for himself in a backwoods cabin. After he was arrested for killing people with mail bombs, he was determined to be schizophrenic, a diagnosis he had long resisted.

I see so much emotional pain on astrology threads expressed by people who announce in their OP or who later note that they have a mental disorder. Sometimes they can't lead the normal life they want. Sometimes they feel that there is something really, really wrong with them. I once had a long conversation with a man who was afraid to leave his home but felt the tablets prescribed to help him gave him terrible side effects, so he simply coped in his own little world, but he wasn't happy about it. I recall another conversation with a woman who suffered a meltdown and was hospitalized for it. This is why we have to be careful about the idea of mental illness is a cultural product. Of course it is, but real lives are hurt by mental illness.

Which you are saying! I thought about narcissism and some of the less life-threatening forms of mental disorders, but I did want to make the point more starkly that we are not confusing mental disorders with eccentricity or personal uniqueness.

 

[demetraceres]

Although I really enjoy reading this conversation I do not agree that life is hurt by mental illness. People are hurt by harsh conditions of life, hurt by abnormal circumstances and what our society defines as mental illness are coping mechanisms to such circumstances.

This is the modern society ideology - reverting causes and consequences.

 

[waybread]

I respect your opinion, DC but I just can't agree with it. Having family members and friends whosed loved ones have mental illnesses, the emotional and sometimes physical pain is very real.

We are friends with a couple where the husband has early-mid Alzheimers. He caused a car accident that injured his wife, totalled their car, and could have been a lot worse. Anyone can make a driving mistake, but it was exacerbated by his inability to think quickly. Another friend has a husband who is bi-polar, went off his meds, and his behaviour became so extreme that she nearly filed for divorce. Thankfully he is back on them now. My mother went into severe depression at the end of her life exacerbated by alcohol abuse. My siblings and I had no end of grief, unable to help her, and watched horrified as she stopped bathing, cleaning her apartment, and began smearing feces on her bathroom wall. (I had the pleasure of cleaning her bathroom after her death.) I have a mild case of PTSD that is usually fine, but it can flare up horribly if I am under a lot of stress and too little sleep. I was "splitting" so badly at one point in my life that I caused a minor car accident and had difficulty functioning-- with a demanding job and two children at home. At one point in my therapy, my psychologist recommended that I commit myself to a mental health institution for several weeks.

Shall I continue in this vein?

What we are not talking about--so far-- is the need to see mental illness as an illness. Period. Once we drop all of the old stigmas about it, we can see it as an illness comparable to having a broken leg, arthritis, or scarlet fever. In Canada where I live, it is illegal to discriminate against people with mental disorders or disabilities in employment, housing, or services.

This is why I think some people try to paper over mental illness: because they are still coming from the antidiluvian belief that mental illness is a kind of moral failing or that it means one is deeply flawed as a human being. It isn't this, and once we normalize mental illness as an illness-- nothing more-- than we can begin to mainstream it more sensibily.

To get back to the OP, because mental disorders manifest different ways and affect different areas of life, I don't think the house is as significant as what is going on with the planets, notably the moon.

Speaking of Ceres: square Saturn, she may be associated with anorexia. Square Pluto, Ceres may relate to bulimia. People die from these disorders, notably the singer Karen Carpenter, who had Ceres square Saturn.

 

[demetraceres]

I can totally relate to your situation, Waybread. I also have a mild case of PTSD, or at least I had it, due to being raped and probably due to previous emotional abuse. With constant job insecurity and too little children jumping around me. I just wanted to say that too much pressure, too many demands or too destructive enviroment cause human suffering and crashes of the system. All the consequent symptoms are just reaction to this.

I think creating so demanding society where people must retreat in mental institutions in order to function properly, is bizzare, it is not normal. Our society is not normal if the criteria for normality is environment where people can care for their needs. The symptoms people are mostly suffering today are really cultural product. We produce more and more illnesses and more and more problems. Psychiatrisation of society won't help. It is the way we live, our standards and values that causes damage, different kinds of disorders are just the consequence. I can't agree that depression itself, for example, causes damage. What happened before the depression caused damage - maybe some kind of abuse, loss of job, of loved ones, or combination of all this.

Astrologically, I agree with everything, I believe too, that Moon is very important in defining essential emotional security and emotional comfort.

My Ceres is in the twelfth house, conjunct Ascendant. So, speaking about mental health, it shows certain psychological problems, as well as nurturing issues. I never had eating disorders, but the inflation of this disorders is also the cultural product - it is typical for modern society and our problems with identity.

 

[waybread]

demetraceres, I agree with much of what you say. Certainly modern western society puts a lot of stresses and strains on people. On the other hand, people 200 years ago who lived in a war zone or who faced a massive crop failure would have been pretty stressed out, also. Beating children for infractions of discipline was common, girls were forced into arranged marriages with men they hated, and so on. This kind of experience can cause massive emotional trauma for people. So we can't really point to some "golden age" when mental health wasn't a big problem for some people.

Some mental disorders are hereditary. Some are caused by problems with the neural circuitry in the body. Not all, but some. To date nobody knows what causes our autism epidemic. Some disorders like PTSD are caused by trauma-- which can happen through an inadvertent accident. The causes of mental disorders aren't identical. Many of them have physical causes, and nothing to do with the sorry state of today's society.

In my case, my pschologists recommended residential treatment-- not so I could be "locked up" as a crazy lady, but so that I could get some intensive therapy with experts, away from the distractions of everyday life. The facility she recommended was not in my home state, so I couldn't go there as an outpatient. Given my family, job, and financial situation, I decided not to go.

Real depression (not just sadness) creates massive feelings of worthlessness and misery in its sufferers. If a person with severe depression commits suicide, it is a big issue for her. Suicide has been called a "permanent solution to a temporary problem." It is a huge issue for loved ones who are stricken with guilt about whether they could have done something to prevent it.

I don't think we should imagine away mental disorders or blame them on society. The society that we have is this one-- with all of its imperfections. If we feel strongly about social causes of mental illness, then we should work to correct them.

My argument is that a mental illness is in the same category as a physical injury or Type 1 diabetes. We need to remove the stigma about mental illness, that is all.

 

[*emma*]

I am not a fan of locking people up with mental *problems*

We have all seen the horror of people being incarcerated, had their freedoms removed in the past more so and awful things done to them....I remember that film with Jessica Lange, Francis...it shocked me what ones own family as well as the state can do to people...BUT when someone is of a violent tendency then they have no right to be let out in the community...such a guy, michael stone stabbed a mother and daughter, megan and lin russell to death in broad daylight....they SHOULD be locked up

 

[GEMINI78]

I was just diagnosed with bipolar mania because I had a so called " manic" episode. I decided last month to quit my job sale all my belongings and move from PA to Texas to find better work. My new Phyc Doctor put me on a double dose of meds but I only take a single dose. I feel like his diagnoses was a little premature and I will get I second opinion before I up the dosage.In my chart I have moon in the 12th H I like being alone and I suffer from mild depression. I have Saturn in the 1st conjunct Mars conjunct ASC ruff early life.

 

[Neptunia]

For mental health I always think about the 12th house and the 3rd combined in a way.. Also mabye the 6th. Like; Mercury in the 3rd square Moon in the 12th, or something like that..


~ Neptunia

 

[theV]

the water houses no brainer