[FlannelPancake]

It's a weird conundrum. He's obviously extremely mentally ill.

On the one hand that doesn't give someone carte blanche to do whatever they want. If he started stabbing people we'd (hopefully) put him in a place where he couldn't do that anymore, e.g. some sort of inpatient program.

On the other hand, it's a little hard to take anything he writes/says with any sort of gravity given the obvious schizophrenia. It's a little like if a very small (like, just learned to speak) child dropped an N bomb. I don't think most of us would attribute any malice to it, more just see it as a reflection of mental immaturity. Unfortunately, whereas you can correct a child, you can't really correct a schizophrenic.

So I guess the solution is just to draw attention to it but take it with a grain of salt? I dunno.

[orionblastar]

I suffer from schizoaffective disorder and I don't behave and act as Terry does. It ruined my career when I developed it. I could still do the work, but once you are mentally ill people start treating you like crap. A lot of my symptoms are like Asperger's Syndrome but I have enough social skills to get married so I couldn't be that, so they used Schizoaffective Disorder instead.

If I was diagnosed with autism it would be different, Microsoft and others have plans to hire autistic people. But schizophrenia and autism get treated with the same medication.

I learned meditation from Buddhism to screen out negative thoughts. You can correct a schizophrenic. John Forbes Nash Jr. was a schizophrenic and he got better over the years until he died recently in a taxi crash.

I can't explain Terry's racism, or his behavior. He does have programming skills and a high IQ and can produce results.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/schizophren...

Sometimes when you have a high IQ, you develop a mental illness as a side-effect.

People thought Steve Jobs was Schizophrenic: http://www.thoughtsontransitions.com/2011/11/reading-steve-j...

[FlannelPancake]

Hey! I'm sorry to hear that people treated you poorly. That's really shitty and in an ideal world people would treat you as an individual, and not as a representative of a disease.

> John Forbes Nash Jr

That's not really fair - John Nash was an exceptional person in a myriad of different ways. He's very much an exceptional case in the same way that Stephen Hawking is very much an exception when it comes to ALS.

In general, it's a pretty poor idea to confront someone suffering from disorganized thinking caused by schizophrenia about that disorganized thinking (maybe not in a clinical context, I wouldn't know). Just because John Nash was able to function to a high degree without medication doesn't mean that everyone will be able to, or that it's fair to hold everyone to that standard.

[orionblastar]

In my case I had panic attacks due to stress of being picked on, was told to 'snap out of it' and couldn't.

Most thought I was autistic and not schizophrenic, but schizoaffective disorder is rare and like a combo of bipolar and schizophrenia. It is not as bad as schizophrenia, and you have some schizophrenics who are in a mental hospital for life because they can't cope with it.

I used to earn a good salary as a programmer, but management didn't want someone sick with a mental illness working for them. I had worked so hard and stressed myself out that I developed the mental illness and ended up on short-term disability. When I returned two weeks later I was fired for having a panic attack and not snapping out of it. After that my career was over and it was hard finding work that wouldn't give me a hard time for being mentally ill.

[thaumaturgy]

> You can correct a schizophrenic.

How about, instead, "You can correct some schizophrenics"?

For me, that would put them on about the same level as Tea Partiers or AGW deniers -- I'd treat them as individuals and make a judgement call based on whether I might be able to have a reasonable conversation with that particular individual.

[orionblastar]

Yeah some but they have to want to get better and take a treatment plan and work to get better.

Tea Partiers and AGW Deniers chose to be that way, a schizophrenic didn't chose to be that way they developed a mental illness and it might even be genetic or due to environmental factors.

[DanBC]

> you can't really correct a schizophrenic.

I know many people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizophrenia style illnesses.

They're all kind of embarressed about the shenanigans they get up to when they're ill. I don't know anyone who wants to get a free pass on bad behaviour just because they have a severe and enduring mental illness.

Empathy and understanding and a bit of tolerance, yes.

[derefr]

A free pass, no. But I don't think that's what was meant. It's that, for someone suffering an accute "attack" of paranoid delusion et al, you can't really bring them back to earth just by telling them they're wrong. You can tell them they're wrong after the fact... but they already know that. So it's kind of pointless, in a consequentialist sense, to correct them.

[A_COMPUTER]

I know a schizophrenic too, my grandmother. She has similar outbursts. She is institutionalized and unemployable and for many people near-intolerable to be around. My mother has been dealing with it for over 45 years. We take my grandmother out and do things with her, but she will say inappropriate things. My mother will sometimes lose control and will be downright cruel to my grandmother in response. I hate it, but I understand it. For longer than my lifetime she has been dealing with it. I have empathy and understanding and I tolerate, but I accept that some people with mental illness cannot control it and will never get better.

[trentmb]

> I don't know anyone who wants to get a free pass on bad behaviour just because they have a severe and enduring mental illness.

How many of them want to be shamed, bullied, and ostracized for it?

[DanBC]

By suggesting that people with schizophrenia have no control GP post is contributing to the culture of fear and ostrasizing that blights many people's lives.

"He's schizophrenic so he can't control his outbursts" flows into "he's schizophrenic so we sadly can't employ him" - and we know from research that this discrimination happens.

Also: it is intensly frustrating that people leap to absurd extremes. Nothing in my post can be read as "it's okay to ostracize him".

[FlannelPancake]

That wasn't really my intention, and I apologize if it came across that way.

What I meant to say is that confronting a schizophrenic about their delusions or disorganized thinking is almost assuredly a futile exercise, save maybe if you're a very well-trained professional. He clearly suffers from some paranoid delusions[0][1], and I don't think talking to him about the perils of racism is going to prove fruitful anytime soon.

> "he's schizophrenic so we sadly can't employ him"

In some cases, that's probably true - Terry Davis very likely being one of those cases. Conversely, my uncle is quite schizophrenic (pretty severe delusions and paranoia) but responds well to medication and is now gainfully employed, mostly because he hasn't said anything like "Spoiler alert, CIA. Guess how this ends? I have God. I win. You unconditionally surrender and suck my fucken dick. That's how this ends." [2] in quite some time.

Some people will require a large amount of care and probably aren't well-suited for the workforce. Why is that a bad thing? Your employment status doesn't reflect your worth as a person. We can, and should (not that we always do) take care of people unable to work. We have more than enough productive surplus to support their needs.

0: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/38u4zc/flight_s...

1: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/38u4zc/flight_s...

2: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/38u4zc/flight_s...

[vinceguidry]

> In some cases, that's probably true - Terry Davis very likely being one of those cases.

It's less because Terry couldn't make a useful contribution and more that he not really interested. He's had jobs in the past where he was no more or less ill. From what I've read of his life history, he walked away rather than got fired.

[FlannelPancake]

Maybe. I think it would cause a very serious disruption to bring a guy like Terry into a normal team dynamic. The CIA delusions alone would make most people understandably uncomfortable, to say nothing of the racism.

With a very patient and understanding manager, a very isolated workspace or maybe a couple very patient and understanding coworkers, and probably someone filtering all of his communication, it would be workable. I can see why Terry would not want to be an environment like that, of course.

That's not to say that someone wouldn't take a chance on him given his strong technical ability, but I'm not sure most people would look on that decision in retrospect as a good one.

[thaumaturgy]

With all respect, I think you're doing a little leaping too, though your intentions are good. If someone thinks that schizophrenic means unemployable, that person is wrong and should be corrected. We shouldn't try to pretend that schizophrenia (and other illnesses) aren't what they are for the sake of the opinions of healthier people.

Here, think of it this way: how would you respond to someone that said, "He's paralyzed from the waist down so he can't control his legs ... and therefore he's unemployable"? (Assuming of course that the job doesn't actually require working legs.)

[DanBC]

What leaps am I making?