Could somebody explain what mental illness Todd suffers from?

Did the APA recently identify a mental illness known as Desperatecollegerepublicanlosingelectionandblameablackguyaphrenia and nobody told me about it?

Is it an offshoot of Obamaisterroristmuslinlawnsignosis?

Or Compulsive Tire-slashing Disorder?

Restless Hockeymom Syndrome?

a tendency to stir up racists and incite violence

Was she under a psychiatrist's care or what? If she is so ill, why did the Republicans send her to PA to work for McCain?

republicanism.


dp

With a little racism on the side.

This Dr. concurs.

Her voice grates on his brain like an icepick being shoved in his ear.


Why do you think he races dogsleds?


Days and days of silence!




I'll be he goes hunting without hearing protection, just so the ringing in his ears drowns out THAT VOICE.

:rofl:

than stay at home with her?

Really, is there that much difference?

Ya know like Reagans trickle down economy was just recycled Hoover nomonics. Or the republicon ideal that deregulation would work after 1929 showed businesses need regulations or else they screw everything up in their need for greed. Or those who voted for GW in 2000 and 2004 when it clearly showed * was destroying the country.

just to get attention. I can't think of the name of
it, but she seems like a near classic case.

Or some variation of it.

... where they harm another, usually their child.

People suffering from Munchhausen's Syndrome don't attempt to bring down Democratic candidates - they're just looking for sympathy. They tend to actually harm themselves and milk the attention. They don't refuse medical care - they love the attention. They usually insist on going to the hospital and being admitted.

What Todd has can also be a non-medical condition called Malingering, which means in lay terms, faking injury or illness (mental or physical) to self-serving purposes (not intended to get attention as a sick person), as a means to a nefarious end, or simply to get attention.

Wikipedia's description:

Malingering is a medical and psychological term that refers to an individual fabricating or exaggerating the symptoms of mental or physical disorders for a variety of motives, including getting financial compensation (often tied to fraud), avoiding work, obtaining drugs, getting lighter criminal sentences, trying to get out of going to school, or simply to attract attention or sympathy. Because malingerers are usually seeking some sort of primary or secondary gain, this disorder remains separate from somatization disorders and factitious disorders in which the gain is not obvious. Legally, malingering is often referred to as fabricated mental illness or feigned mental illness (see United States v. Binion).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malingering

In other words, I don't think Ashley Todd suffers from any real mental illness; she's just faking it.

'Stupidneedyattentionhodramaqueenwhitegirlfromprivelegeracistenia'.

But, I'll shorten it to 'Dumbassrepublicanosis'.

I have absolutely no fucking sympathy for her and I think the people who do are the ones who are "mentally ill".

She is a pretty, young white girl. Of course people are going to make up bullshit excuses for her. Par for course in racist America.

I would suspect bipolar disorder. I am not a mental health professional. I do not know her. I am basing this on knowing at least a half dozen people with bipolar and dating two, one of them for four years.

She seems very passionate about politics and highly social from what has been leaked. This has been true of those that I've known with bipolar. From an outside perspective, they seem happy, active, better than normal. An outsider wouldn't see the depressive phases. She is obviously prone to elaborate lies and victimization, which has been true of some of those with bipolar that I've known. She also has some delusions of grandeur, occasionally dark ones - yet another thing I've noticed in those I've known with bipolar. Selfish. Ditto. Cannot see the consequences of her actions, even if they are harmful to her. Ditto. I could go on.

Like I said, I'm not a mental health professional, I've just unfortunately spent, geez, 20% of my life in serious relationship with those who have the disease.

I actually thought this was going to be a serious discussion of her possible illness, but then I remembered where I was.

I'm not a mental health professional either, but I think you're probably right about her having some degree or form of bipolar disorder.

She's the right age for her first episode.

Selfish. Ditto. Cannot see the consequences of her actions, even if they are harmful to her. Ditto.

Those apply to every human I've ever met, bipolar or not.

I've just unfortunately spent, geez, 20% of my life in serious relationship with those who have the disease.

Not a fair way to judge the rest. Your own bad experiences may or may not be common to others with the disease. You're letting your own past relationships cloud your thinking on all bipolar people (understandable, but still wrong).

Some of the other things you talk about are correct though (I'm bipolar...I know some of them well), and I do think it's possible that there's some chance she has bipolar disorder, but it's also possible that it's just Delusional Disorder, which is quite different from being bipolar.

Because I deal with bipolar disorder myself I'm a little sensitive to how it's portrayed, and I hate seeing it used as an excuse for some bad things, as if the disease is the only thing that makes people do bad things, and they'd be good citizens otherwise, if it wasn't for that pesky disease. It's quite possible that this girl is just a shit for brains Republican and has nothing wrong with her (outside of being a Republican, that is).

and I stated twice that I'm not a pro and I am using personal experience.

Sure, normal people have selfish, boneheaded moments. It's the intensity here. Yes, part of it was to help McCain, but, especially when she added the sexual assault part, it was also attention-seeking and playing the victim.

I agree with you that bipolar disorder is not an excuse for someone's actions. Not at all. And actually I'd say all but one of the people I know with bipolar are good people. The first person I dated with bipolar had not been diagnosed yet. I've kept in touch with him some and he seems to have really taken control of it and is happy and making those in his life happy. The second person I dated with bipolar is by all accounts someone that would be an ass no matter what. He was consistently abusive and while most of it was emotional, not all was. I have never considered the violence to be a result of his disease.

I have no problem with people who have bipolar and try to keep it under control so it affects them and those in their lives to the least possible extent. I do have a problem with people who do nothing about it and let it cause them to destroy other people's lives. But that basically goes back to most people being decent human being but a few being real asses.

No doubt she has shit for brains. She really seems troubled as well though.

*Edited to add: Rereading my original post, I want to clarify that I know I was comparing her to someone I would consider an extreme example and someone who would not be a good person if there was nothing wrong with him. I should have stated this. I do consider the rest of the people I know with bipolar as friends, so my feelings are not all negative.

Just wanted to add my own perspective to yours. I thought you actually had good points for someone who isn't bipolar yourself, and you showed more understanding than many do.

Thanks for explaining yourself better, but we're cool anyways.

Welcome to DU, btw! :toast:

Thanks for the greeting! I need to learn the smilies because a beer would be quite excellent right about now.

...right above your subject line click on "Smilies lookup table". It'll show you what to type to use them. Some are pretty cool. I like this freak one. :freak:

If I can handle typsetting, I think I can handle this :think:

I think that people are missing the point of her actions. This is not an instance of somebody seeking attention for themselves. People seeking attention don't refuse medical care - they insist on it!

This woman claimed to be attacked in an effort to make Obama's campaign look bad. She attempted to smear all Obama supporters by "proving" that they are nothing but vicious thugs.

This very much plays into a call for attention. She refused the medical attention because she knew she was lying and didn't want that part to be known, but she still knew the attention would be there. Helping McCain could just be a "positive" means to an end in her mind. Wanting to help McCain doesn't preclude the need for attention.

was to make Obama look bad.

I won't argue about her mental state, etc. However, I think it's important to keep our eye on the main purpose of her actions. The main purpose was not a plea for attention. It was a dirty trick designed to make Obama look bad and scare people into voting for McCain.

She's an employee of College Republicans and they've done this kind of thing before.

until she alleged sexual assault. That sounds like a real cry for attention.

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in response to the myth that black men were raping white women. That's central to the entire racist theme.

The Elmhurst student and that other girl in Palos Heights. Her story is almost exactly like theirs. There was also that fake Dayton Gassing incident supposedly perpetrated by African American terrorists, but that's slightly different. Point is, these false accusations are like a viral disease. The more media attention they attract, the more attractive they are to people craving attention.

People are too prone to medicalizing this and to psychoanalyzing the perp. She did it to help McCain, just as all of us do things to help Obama. She was willing to break the law, and she was not a very smart criminal.

than the mental problems of black offenders who show up in the same courtroom. Which I suspect is none.

Self-inflicted injury for secondary psychological gain -- in this case, attention AND political effect. And a pretty stark case of it.

--p!

But she is certainly hoping to get attention.

Was it an old injury, or just makeup? If it was just makeup, that would be laughable.

The backwards "B" didn't hurt much, but could be considered self-cutting.

People with Munchausen are aware what they're doing is wrong at all times. There's scant evidence she's done this for attention as she's avoiding the media. This is an attack on Obama, not a desperate search for attention.

... that I'm excusing her behavior.

It's an atrocious act, but/and she's seriously screwed up.

The two are not mutually exclusive. Pathology only "excuses" a perpetrator when it destroys their conscience -- which typically requires the loss of a lot of cortical tissue. A CT or SPECT scan, or an MRI will tell us if she has the kind of brain damage that would make her inculpable, but since she was able to plan and execute a fairly complicated scam, the chances of that are very, very low.

Mental illness is common in criminals. I don't know why we try so strenuously to parse through it, unless it is to attain some kind of pardon for the failures of our legal system. In this case, there will probably be a prison term with mandatory psychiatric evaluation and treatment.

--p!

No, certainly not.

:eyes:

It can also be a condition called Malingering, which means in lay terms, faking injury to self-serving purposes (not intended to get attention as a sick person) or to get attention.

Wikipedia's description:

Malingering is a medical and psychological term that refers to an individual fabricating or exaggerating the symptoms of mental or physical disorders for a variety of motives, including getting financial compensation (often tied to fraud), avoiding work, obtaining drugs, getting lighter criminal sentences, trying to get out of going to school, or simply to attract attention or sympathy. Because malingerers are usually seeking some sort of primary or secondary gain, this disorder remains separate from somatization disorders and factitious disorders in which the gain is not obvious. Legally, malingering is often referred to as fabricated mental illness or feigned mental illness (see United States v. Binion).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malingering

Can't tell the players without a scorecard these days... :eyes:

The children who have come of age over the last eight years are Legion. The damage to the national psyche is great and the healing may never come for those whose values and impressions were formed by the media outlets and religious institutions during this period.

They don't think, they can't think, they haven't been taught to think, they've been discouraged from thinking. They listen and obey...anything else is un-American.

Sophomoric prank with national attention played by a group of kids who never learned to think is my take.

Garbage in garbage out.

:D

You never waste any time. :)

:D





:hi: :hug:

I think she has many issues at play in this, none of them good.

"assault" she would have taken the stand and made sure he went to prison.

or more seriously, Borderline Personality Disorder.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_Personality_Disorder

(snip)

DSM-IV-TR criteria
The latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), the widely-used American Psychiatric Association guide for clinicians seeking to diagnose mental illnesses, defines Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) as: "a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image and affects, as well as marked impulsivity, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts."<13> BPD is classed on "Axis II", as an underlying pervasive or personality condition, rather than "Axis I" for more circumscribed mental disorders. A DSM diagnosis of BPD requires any five out of nine listed criteria to be present for a significant period of time. There are thus 256 different combinations of symptoms that could result in a diagnosis, of which 136 have been found in practice in one study.<14> The criteria are:<3>

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving).
Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself.
Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
Chronic feelings of emptiness, worthlessness.
Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms

(more)

Palinsanity

Republican Personality Disorder

McCainia

Believing she can tell outrageous lies and break the law with no consequences.

borderline personality disorder with some paranoid delusion thrown into the mix.