September 7, 2023

"For almost a century, scientists have known that people with schizophrenia struggle to regulate their body temperatures."

"In the 1930s, two doctors in Worcester, Mass., placed people with and without schizophrenia in a small, windowless room with eight electric heaters. Under hot conditions, the researchers noted, the patients with schizophrenia’s body temperatures rose farther and faster than the control group. 'Schizophrenic subjects,' they wrote later, 'are unable to comply normally … with the regulation of heat.'... Schizophrenia has also been linked to problems regulating dopamine, the chemical that makes the body feel good; altered levels of dopamine can also prevent the body from effectively cooling itself off.... Many antipsychotic medications... also make their users more sensitive to heatstroke....Then there is the tendency of patients with schizophrenia to wrap themselves in layers upon layers of clothing, even in boiling temperatures.... Experts also say that people with schizophrenia lack insight into themselves and their condition — in medical terms, this is known as 'anosognosia.'... Under psychosis, a patient might walk for miles engaging only with the voices and characters in their own mind. Under normal conditions, that might simply be dangerous. In Phoenix, it’s deadly."

22 comments:

rehajm said...

In the 1930s, two doctors in Worcester, Mass., placed people with and without schizophrenia in a small, windowless room with eight electric heaters.

Massholes.

iowan2 said...

NASA has shared that over the last 40 years the number of forest fires worldwide is down 20%

Add that date point to the astroturfed climate hysteria.

BUMBLE BEE said...

"May be" and "one man" form the spine of this tome. Publish or perish at work?

Scott Patton said...

"patients with schizophrenia to wrap themselves in layers upon layers of clothing, even in boiling temperatures"
boiling?

farmgirl said...

So true.
How sad.

Jaq said...

Still and again, cold kills many times more people than heat every year.

Darkisland said...

This week in global whatsit:

My wife is a high school teacher.

No school tomorrow for students. There is an all day meeting to discuss what to do about the hot weather.

My wife tells me this is the hottest summer in 11 years. I asked how much hotter she has no idea but claims to feel it.

The claim is about 0.1 degree hotter.

I also asked her "do you know what being the hottest summer in 11 years means?"

"no."

"It means 2012 was even hotter"

Classrooms are air conditioned so even if we are getting global boiling, it is still 75 or so inside.

I also pointed out that she taught in the 70s,80s,90s and 00s without ac.

She decided she didn't want to talk about it.

AITA?

John Henry

Lyle Smith said...

Move all your he schizos to Alaska. Problem solved. Let’s go!

gilbar said...

climate changes.. women, minorities (and special groups) hardest hit!!

gilbar said...

you Mean to say.. That crazy people aren't very good at taking care of themselves? WOW!!
next you'll say that a crazy person in Madison in the winter might not know to come in out of the cold!

gilbar said...

as John Henry points out:
"do you know what being the hottest summer in 11 years means?"
"It means 2012 was even hotter"


i DO wonder what crazy people did in 1939?

Darkisland said...

Next week they will meet to address the idea that, due to global whatsit, rain is now the wettest it has been in 23-1/2 years.

A full day of teachers and administrators yammering about it will certainly fix the problem.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

John Henry

tommyesq said...

Hey, for the first time women and children were not hardest hit!

Jaq said...

This guy writes about how he couldn't get his papers published tin the big journals unless he edited them heavily to fit the climate narrative:

The first thing the astute climate researcher knows is that his or her work should support the mainstream narrative—namely, that the effects of climate change are both pervasive and catastrophic and that the primary way to deal with them is not by employing practical adaptation measures like stronger, more resilient infrastructure, better zoning and building codes, more air conditioning—or in the case of wildfires, better forest management or undergrounding power lines—but through policies like the Inflation Reduction Act, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

So in my recent Nature paper, which I authored with seven others, I focused narrowly on the influence of climate change on extreme wildfire behavior. Make no mistake: that influence is very real. But there are also other factors that can be just as or more important, such as poor forest management and the increasing number of people who start wildfires either accidentally or purposely. (A startling fact: over 80 percent of wildfires in the US are ignited by humans.)


https://www.thefp.com/p/i-overhyped-climate-change-to-get-published

The guy just killed his career, because our scientific community today is in the grip of some cross between Lysenkoism and a cargo cult.

Darkisland said...

Re temperature stories:

Back in the 70s when I was maintenance manager in a pharma plant, we had a front office with 15 or so admin people working in it. All open plan.

the 2 women who ran accounts payable were in a sort of alcove and were both pregnant at the same time and in similar stages. They were NEVER happy with the temperature. It was too hot or too cold and they were always asking for it to be adjusted. We verified with a recording thermometer and the temp was rock steady but they still complained.

And before anyone complains, I sympathize with all pregnant women and understand that it can be difficult to be comfortable.

So one saturday, I had a tech mount a thermostat in their alcove with a conduit going up into the false ceiling. On Monday, I confidentially showed them what we did, gave them a key to the thermostat and explained how to adjust it to whatever made them comfortable. I swore them to secrecy telling they I would get in big trouble if anyone found out and otherwise puffed it up a bit.

I never heard another complaint from them.

The thermostat was not connected to anything.

I thought this pretty nifty until a few years ago I mentioned it in a workshop I was teaching. I've done something similar with speed controls on packaging machines. 2 of the attendees raised their hands and told me they had done something similar with thermostats with similar results.

I chalked it up to GMTA.

John Henry

Lincolntf said...

I'm from Worcester, Mass. Lived there for the first 35 years of my life, give or take. I can picture the mental hospital on top of Belmont Hill where this study was likely conducted. Worcester is "famous" for a few things, among them the Smiley face logo (created by Harvey Ball as a promo for a financial company that I worked at in the 1990's), the birth control pill and Robert Goddard (his house was a block or two away from my cousins house). Sadly, the City is largely a shithole these days.

Darkisland said...

OT but amousing:

I just got this from my HOA administrator.

It is very important to stay prepared and safe for the possibility of atmospheric events in the next couple months. We must take preventive measures wich includes:

I am tempted to email back and ask her what "atmospheric events" she has in mind. Rain? Snow? Hail? Cold? Low barometric pressure? High levels of nitrogen in the air?

From the list of preventive measures, it would seem that she is talking about hurricanes. September is the high season. BUT WHY THE BLOODY HELL CAN'T SHE SAY SO!!!!!

She's a nice lady and does a great job so I will keep quiet. But stuff like this jacks my jaw. It is not translation either. The email is bilingual and in the Spanish part she says "eventos atmosféricos"

Thinking about it, she may just be passing along something from a govt bulletin or the newspaper. I don't know if that makes it better or worse.

I really hope she is not talking about roads icing up. I live on a hill and might not be able to get home.

John Henry

Darkisland said...

Speaking of crazy inm Worcester, my father might have been.

In 1957 I was 9. My father and 2 of his friends went to take part in a boat race in Worcester. They took me along. Kids were not allowed in the pits and there was nobody to take care of me so my dad gave me a few dollars and sent me to am amusement park overlooking the lake. By myself, about a 2 mile walk.

The amusement park was on old timey kind of place with rides from the 30s where part of the amusement was death, maiming and injury. All by myself, nobody to tell me I wasn't big enough to go into the pit with spinning disks or ride the giant coaster.

I had a great time!

Sometimes I think back on my boyhood and other incidents like this. I wonder if my father was clinically insane.

I generally conclude no. He just thought I should be able to have adventures on my own. The more I think about it the more I love him for it.

We had a bit of a rocky relationship, never real close. He passed in 82 and boy do I miss him now.

John Henry

Tom T. said...

Think of Dustin Hoffman's mentally ill Ratso Rizzo character in Midnight Cowboy, dying of illness brought on by the cold weather.

Lincolntf said...

John Henry, that was Lake Quinsigamond, a mile or two from the mental hospital. The amusement park was called "White City". By the time I was born it was a shopping center with a pretty decent-sized movie theater. The lake is perfect for regattas, very long and narrow, I rowed Crew for my high school there.

Big Mike said...

If schizophrenics have trouble controlling body temperature I predict they’ll have an easier time in Washington, DC, in the summer when the ambient temperature is 98 degrees Fahrenheit than in Fairbanks, AK, when the temperature is 40 below zero.

gilbar said...

what "atmospheric events" she has in mind. Rain? Snow?

i should think, that a serious blizzard with about 3 feet of snow, would PROBABLY be The Most Horrible Weather "event" to strike Puerto Rico... EVER!
I'm thinking that deaths would be in the Hundreds of Thousands.. Maybe MILLIONS, if there are that many people on the island.

St Peter: So, why are you here?
Puerto Rican: It got REALLY cold!
St Peter: Then what?
Puerto Rican: then i froze to death! I tried rolling my sleeves down.. But it didn't help at all!