American girl comes to study in Ireland, leaves after 12 days and blames the country

Call Me Jimmy

No idea, but that is an action they should study (I think they are beginning to at least), because it definitely caused the desired effect in the brain. Study that intensely then come up with something. (says the non-scientist)

AngryHippie

Wibbs wrote: »

Actually GP's are rather quick to break out the SSRI's etc and I say that from personal observance here in Ireland and general western trends and there's far more where that came from. Hell, I know one bloke, a mate of a mate, who is getting doubled up scripts from two Irish doctors for his "mental illness". And unless Pfizer has come up with a cure for basic twattery, they're on a hiding to nothing, but he does have top level VHI so...

It's all fun and games until the pills run out !

I had to deal with someone near and dear doing a cold turkey SSRI withdrawal (I was completely in the dark until it was done as to wtf was going on) It's the closest I've come to wanting to wrap someone up in a duvet and gaffer tape. Very unpredictable gear to be handing out casually, considering the extreme withdrawal reactions (Hysterical depression, psychotic rage, bouncing mania on and off for 3 days, followed by a week of glum until the person I know returned) Particularly when they were issued for treatment of depression in the first instance.... It was not a fun time:rolleyes:

zetalambda

Venus In Furs wrote: »

Doesn't MDMA contain serotonin?

MDMA destroys your serotonin neurons.

Call Me Jimmy

oh **** :pac:

zetalambda

If you only take it occasionally, no need to worry. It's only people that over do it have resulting problems.

AngryHippie

zetalambda wrote: »

If you only take it occasionally, no need to worry. It's only people that over do it have resulting problems.

Bez ?

zetalambda

AngryHippie wrote: »

Bez ?

I'd say it's decades since any serotonin flowed through his veins! They were bringing van loads of the stuff into the UK.

Wompa1

Wonder if there's any stories of Irish people moving abroad and returning in less than a month talking sh1te about the place and the people??

AngryHippie

zetalambda wrote: »

I'd say it's decades since any serotonin flowed through his veins!

For sure, Fair play to him though, he's been through multiple bankruptcies, and all sorts of other sh1te right since the Hacienda days and he still gets out of bed and does his thing.

thegreatgonzo

Wompa1 wrote: »

Wonder if there's any stories of Irish people moving abroad and returning in less than a month talking sh1te about the place and the people??

Loads I'd say, the only difference is they didn't write an article about it on the internet.

Tearin It Up

aunt aggie wrote: »

Its the epic fail that wont stop failing...

Taking a look at the comments underneath her article, someone has added her tweets about her time in Cork. Poor girl giving out about the rain in Ireland. No pity.

In fact I'm just more confused what is Satan's neckbeard?? ...is it bad?

"I've never been so anxious about registration before, thanks Ireland"

"Why yes world I'm awake at 6 AM, Why you ask? Because Ireland is Satan's neckbeard"

"Due to the rain, lovely hike through Irish Countryside postponed. Instead, more of ugly as cork"

It sounds as if her parents sent her to boarding school in Cork and she just hates everything about the place, as you do if get sent somewhere against your will.

But its college and she choosed Cork,Ireland and she should have gotten out and about the place instead of trying to spend her days finding WiFi cafés.

New city is always spent doing touristy things and getting to know the place. Thought she would have been happy to get know the place since she signed up for it. There's loads to do in Cork, instead she spent her time moaning about how dull the place is.

Saw a picture on her twitter of St. Patrick's Street and she found her WiFi cafe place. If she put her laptop down and got talking to people it would have helped. Her college would have helped too.

thegreatgonzo

Well I believe her when she says she has mental issues, she writes like a person with not much self awareness and no coping skills at all. I feel sorry for people like her who don't have the cop on not to expose themselves on the internet because I can't imagine she'll be able to handle the nastier comments.

Spookyspook

I think she's the only American ever to not enjoy Ireland.

Mehaffey1

Obviously she's not all there.

Living in New Zealand here, working in agriculture which is a whole new career path for me, making new friends and enjoying everyday at it while studying as well. You need to have the right mindset for beginning a new part of your life in a new country and it's safe to say she didn't have a clue.

Maybe the sidewalks looked so narrow because they weren't build to cater to your average 25stone American?

Omackeral

Some parents with bratty children decide they have ADHD. "Ah, he has the ADHD, Jayden does".

Some adults with difficulty being social/taking responsibility for themselves blame it on self diagnosed issues.

For onlookers to immediately decide one way or the other is a bit premature. Don't take everyone's word for it automatically and, on the other hand, don't just dismiss it either.

TheBeardedLady

thegreatgonzo wrote: »

Loads I'd say, the only difference is they didn't write an article about it on the internet.

Someone here mentioned someone they knew who went to Australia for a short time and came back. I know of a few stories, including a fella I was canoodling in my late twenties, who did the same. His mate came back too. I know of a few others.

suicide_circus

Wibbs wrote: »

Actually GP's are rather quick to break out the SSRI's etc and I say that from personal observance here in Ireland and general western trends and there's far more where that came from. Hell, I know one bloke, a mate of a mate, who is getting doubled up scripts from two Irish doctors for his "mental illness". And unless Pfizer has come up with a cure for basic twattery, they're on a hiding to nothing, but he does have top level VHI so...

I would have to agree. From my own personal experience with GPs they seem to be doling out the SSRIs like Smarties.

Stojkovic

Omackeral wrote: »

Some parents with bratty children decide they have ADHD. "Ah, he has the ADHD, Jayden does".

I had ADHD as a kid until I got a back hander across the face. Then I didnt have ADHD anymore.

Wibbs

greenfrogs wrote: »

One doctor described it to me that at the moment they can't check what a person's serotonin levels are. But when it happens then doctors will be doing these tests and handing out SSRIs based on the results.

Which sounds great, but as the doc pointed out they can't directly measure the levels in the brain(they can test for byproducts in the blood, but how this relates to brain levels isn't so clear). Plus unlike cretinism where the condition is more straightforward serotonin is but one of many neurotransmitters involved and it's relationship to depression is anything but clear. You can have people with low serotonin levels who are fine and others with high who are depressed. There's a gender difference too, women have lower levels on average. SSRI"s themselves have more than a few issues and are becoming less effective over the years from when the first studies came out. Never mind and as has been pointed out in low to mid level depression they're as effective as placebo. However in high level depression studies show they do have a noticeably positive effect. What also seems to be happening in high level folks is that the placebo effect stops working which is interesting in of itself.

All in all it seems to me that current medical thinking and practice is playing fast and loose with people's conditions, based on quite a bit of fast and loose diagnosis, science and pharmacological research and doing so with a helluva lot of people.

Wibbs

suicide_circus wrote: »

I would have to agree. From my own personal experience with GPs they seem to be doling out the SSRIs like Smarties.

And worse, they're simply not qualified to do so. For all the talk on thread of "how can you make a diagnosis about this person"(which is a valid point BTW), GP's are doing so on a daily basis and often with less information than one could glean from a dedicated bloggist, twitterist with quite a large online footprint. A psychiatrist suggesting a course of SSRI's is a very different matter. They are qualified to make such a call and have a helluva lot more knowledge, training and clinical experience in the mental health field than a standard GP.

Egginacup

Aineoil wrote: »

I wish I was in college again too. Great days. I just need to win the lottery.....sighs.....dreams.

Nah, you just miss your youth.

Kev_2012

Everyone has issues with a new place. They may not be obvious at the beginning and it is tough adjusting to life in a new, strange place. This one sounds like a whinger, unable to give it a proper go or change her situation to suit her. It took me 3/4 months to adjust to life in Canada and by god it made me a better person. She wanted the easy way out from what I can see, but there may be underlying issues in her life, so I guess, who are we to judge?

kunst nugget

There are some things you know in ways you can’t express with logic. Did I come home because the program wasn’t what I thought it was? Was it because my eating disorder was kicking up again in nasty and unexpected ways? Had I finally realized that I had an utterly kickass life back in Minnesota and I wanted it back? There were elements of all of these things, but what it came down to was certainty.

Somehow I knew that this place was not good and it was not good for me. I also knew that if I had needed to, I could have stayed and survived. But there is no glory in living through a situation that feels horrible simply to prove that you can. I’ve done that before (see: having an eating disorder), and this time I wanted to choose to be healthy.

The next day I booked my ticket home.

Reads like Carrie Bradshaw: The College Years. Fecking Sex and the City and the internal female monologue…

The_Captain

Hi guys, I don't know this woman, her name, her background or anything about her. In fact, I've only read this article and have become aware of her existance for the first time today. I don't even know if she's really a woman, or if this written deliberately to wind people up.

However, as I have encountered people with mental illness before, I feel fully confident in assessing and diagnosing her problems, and in my in absolutely no way professional opinion, she hasn't got any mental health issues because she isn't like that guy with depression I talked to once a few years back, and the personality she seems to display in her article doesn't match with the symptoms of an eating disorder after I looked it up on wikipedia

Clockwork Owl

It might be insensitive, but-... 'EDNOS'? Is that a thing now?

SpaceTime

I don't like the article or the attitude expressed but this is seriously turning into a bit of a weird hatefest.

Too many people are piling on - it's beginning to look worse than the YouTube comments section.

happyoutscan

SpaceTime wrote: »

I don't like the article or the attitude expressed but this is seriously turning into a bit of a weird hatefest.

Too many people are piling on - it's beginning to look worse than the YouTube comments section.

Exactly. Time everyone got over it and moved on. It's just her bloody opinion ffs.

The Corinthian

Clockwork Owl wrote: »

It might be insensitive, but-... 'EDNOS'? Is that a thing now?

According to the article's author, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS) "is a diagnosable eating disorder". It's from the miscellaneous family of illnesses, closely related to vague syndrome.

I look forward to her debut in the new season of 'Girls'.

pmasterson95

Her eating disorder is to do with not getting the right quantity of caffeine

P. Breathnach

The Corinthian wrote: »

According to the article's author, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS) "is a diagnosable eating disorder". It's from the miscellaneous family of illnesses, closely related to vague syndrome.

I look forward to her debut in the new season of 'Girls'.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000579670400138X

The Corinthian

P. Breathnach wrote: »

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000579670400138X

How dare you bring science into this thread!

Wibbs

Aye, but did you read that "science" TC? TL;DR? "people who don't present with symptoms of established eating disorder diagnosis, may have an unspecified eating disorder, fcuked if we know". IMH more lazy, vague science looking for ever more nebulous reasons to label human behaviour. Bro science with extra qualifications. Then again quite the number of respected men and women in the field have raised concerns about where the DSM categories are going and how there is a great risk that they're further medicalising the "normal" range of human emotional and mental experience.

P. Breathnach

Wibbs wrote: »

Aye, but did you read that "science" TC? TL;DR? "people who don't present with symptoms of established eating disorder diagnosis, may have an unspecified eating disorder, fcuked if we know". IMH more lazy, vague science looking for ever more nebulous reasons to label human behaviour. Bro science with extra qualifications. Then again quite the number of respected men and women in the field have raised concerns about where the DSM categories are going and how there is a great risk that they're further medicalising the "normal" range of human emotional and mental experience.

Bollocks. If you read it, you read it with extreme prejudice.

bodice ripper

Far too many posts on this thread about her appearance.

zetalambda

pmasterson95 wrote: »

Her eating disorder is to do with not getting the right quantity of caffeine

It's a will power disorder.

Wibbs

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Bollocks. If you read it, you read it with extreme prejudice.

Negate my argument. Or would you rather just keep peddling this vague US DMV Kool-Ade as science, by being vague yourself?

RDM_83 again

bodice ripper wrote: »

Far too many posts on this thread about her appearance.

I've been defending her throughout this thread and I agree that the comments about her physical appearance are out of line because it shouldn't make a difference.
But if I had read the blog post without seeing any pictures she looks exactly as I would imagine her too, its possible to feel sympathize with her situation defend her from the nastyness but at the same time think her fashion sense/outfit is ridiculously cliched.
And god damn it as a man its my right to comment on a random womens appearance rather than listen to what she is saying

P. Breathnach

Wibbs wrote: »

Negate my argument. Or would you rather just keep peddling this vague US DMV Kool-Ade as science, by being vague yourself?

I have negated it to the extent appropriate: I said it was bollocks.

I cited an authoritative source; you dismissed it with cheap and inaccurate rhetoric. I prefer scholarship to unscholarly opinionating.

Wibbs

P. Breathnach wrote: »

I prefer scholarship to unscholarly opinionating.

It seems you find it easy to mistake the two.

beks101

Eating disorders are getting quite a bad rap here and it's more that a bit dismaying.

There is in fact such a thing as EDNOS and it's not about "white girl privilege" or "beans and toast syndrome" or "shur didn't we all have an eating disorder in college, har har".

Eating disorders are incredibly complex, unpredictable and mindfcuking illnesses that don't always follow the clear lines of starving oneself and avoiding food like the plague (anorexia) or bingeing and throwing up (bulimia).

Believe it or not, there are a variety of ways in which someone with a distorted body image and distinct lack of self-esteem can self destruct and it sometimes might include symptoms of both illnesses - EG starves for days, binges and goes for a 45 mile cycle, or normal-weight but doesn't eat for a week, followed by bingeing and including a variety of messed up behaviours such as chewing-and-spitting, excessive exercise, fcuked up rules about food or purging after a single morsel of food has been ingested, not just your bulimic-binge.

This may sound "pathetic" or "not quite as worthy of attention" as your standard anorexia and bulimia, but it doesn't make EDNOS any less destructive or devastating. It doesn't diminish the impact on the sufferer.

In fact, diagnosing eating disorders in the first place can be a lesson in absolute frustration if someone doesn't "tick all the boxes" and one can be in the depths of depression, desperate and dysfunction and still be sent on their merry way by many GPs with a pat on the back and a "just say STOP and NO next time you feel like starving yourself" just because one of the "traditional" criteria may be lacking.

I've found it's not quite possible to express or explain the complexities and the darkness of eating disorders to people who don't have any food problems. I'm loath to say it, but I see a common demographic - usually male, often of the older persuasion. I didn't talk to my dad about my own struggles because although he has a heart of gold and loves me to the end of the earth, he's never had a problem or a regard for food, weight, body image or any of that so expressing these things to him was virtually impossible. It's bordering on impossible to explain how or why you can't perform the simplest, most basic of tasks - to feed oneself - and to account for why that basic instinct seems to be lacking despite being an otherwise intelligent, resourceful human being.

So yeah. I don't know what the dealio is with this lady's food issues. But I certainly won't discount them just because I'm not familiar with EDNOS or it doesn't sound as "diagnosis-worthy" as the other ones.

bodice ripper

RDM_83 again wrote: »

I've been defending her throughout this thread and I agree that the comments about her physical appearance are out of line because it shouldn't make a difference.
But if I had read the blog post without seeing any pictures she looks exactly as I would imagine her too, its possible to feel sympathize with her situation defend her from the nastyness but at the same time think her fashion sense/outfit is ridiculously cliched.
And god damn it as a man its my right to comment on a random womens appearance rather than listen to what she is saying

all of which is fair enough, I meant more the "she looks like a dude" posts.

P. Breathnach

Wibbs wrote: »

It seems you find it easy to mistake the two.

Not at all. You have cited no authorities for your position on eating disorder.

Wibbs

General overview of the issues and concerns around the DSM categorisations as currently in play

The Aussie

SpaceTime wrote: »

I don't like the article or the attitude expressed but this is seriously turning into a bit of a weird hatefest.

But this is the funniest Thread on After Hours for ages...

Oh the nerve it touched in so many, you just can't buy that.

The laughs have been immeasurable, keep it classy After Hours.

P. Breathnach

Wibbs wrote: »

General overview of the issues and concerns around the DSM categorisations as currently in play

So your response to a scholarly work that is aimed at improving DSM is to point to concerns that DSM has its flaws? The work I cited is an effort to address some of those shortcomings.

JONJO THE MISER

She looks like one of those dumb idiots you see in starbucks all over north america, laptop in hand, drinking mochas and headphones on all while trying to look kool and having a short smart answer for everything, they know everything but dont know how to be social or make conversation and really cant deal with life problems.
Take them out of there starbuck shop and put them in a pub on there own and they would have a mental breakdown.

Wibbs

P. Breathnach wrote: »

So your response to a scholarly work that is aimed at improving DSM is to point to concerns that DSM has its flaws? The work I cited is an effort to address some of those shortcomings.

Clearly you didn't read the link. This work is increasing such shortcomings. That's the point.

humanji

One read of this thread will solidify her belief that she made the right choice.