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Orchid Book Club

Orchid's 
​Book Club Recommendations:
Val's Take & Conjecture
  • This is Dr. Chris Palmer's highly influential "Brain Energy."
  • He conceives mental illness as a Metabolic Disorder of the Brain.
  • ​Dr. Palmer  is a big proponent of a Medical Keto Diet to address these Energy issues as are various researchers around the world.
  • This is a shot across the bow of Mental Health --- and Palmer and some others at various research institutions are not shy about saying Mental Health has outdated paradigms.
  • This is a critical piece of the puzzle that we've been missing ---- among other critical pieces of the puzzle.

  • To me, Neuro-Diverse people often have MORE SYNAPSES but they struggle to have enough ENERGY to run them.
​
  • Often there is Damaged Mitochondria as a result of Dysregulated Microglia as a result of IN UTERO Maternal Immune Activation (& Paternal Immune Activation) --- and additional Inflammation during the LIFESPAN and a system ill+prepared to handle the additional Stress and Inflammation.
Val's Take
  • I think people, maybe especially criminal prosecutors and defense attorneys should be aware that this 2023 book is out there --- published by the ABA Criminal Justice Section.

  • I strongly feel that trying to have a discussion about some perceived circumscribed notion of Classic Mental Illness, especially in the Criminal Justice System --- breaks down pretty quickly given the science --- AND
    • Let's move this DIALOGUE ALONG.

  • Specifically, we need to include Neuro-Developmental Disorders, Substance Use and Brain Injury
Deanna M. Adams currently works for the California judicial branch.
  • She has previously worked with the Council of State Governments Justice Center, and
  • the Chief Probation Officers of California.

She is vice-chair of the ABA (American Bar Association) Criminal Justice Section Alternatives to Incarceration and sits on the Board of Directors of the Forensic Mental Health Association of California.
Daily Show --- Trevor Noah interviews Michelle Zauner regarding her book "Crying In H Mart"
"An Immense World" (2022)
  • One of the themes I have been developing that the dramatists knew a long time ago: 
    • It's easier to SEE THINGS IN THE EXTREMES
  • It's easier to SEE DIFFERENCES in SENSORY PROCESSING when we're looking across DIFFERENT SPECIES.
  • When we're talking about NEURO-DEVELOPMENTAL DIFFERENCES we're often talking about DIFFERENCES in SENSORY PROCESSING that are leading to:
    • Differences in EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING, and
    • Differences in EMOTIONAL REGULATION.
Einstein is the EXTREME CASE:   He didn't talk until he was 3 and he was famously ABSENT-MINDED.>>>
"I Contain Multitudes" (2017)
  • This book is about the world of MICROBES
  • When we start to appreciate the COMPLEXITY of our own BIOLOGY ----
    • Not just hundreds, thousands, millions or even billions of potential factors and their inter-relationships---
    • BUT at least now realizing TRILLIONS of FACTORS and their INTER-RELATIONSHIPS.
  • This has many implications for HEALTH.

Universal Music's Handbook for embracing Neurodiversity in the Creative Industries

Creative Differences

Are Music Companies Hiring Enough People Who Think Differently?

Artists from Florence Welch to Billie Eilish have opened up about their neurodiversity. Now the industry is starting to respond
If not the DSM, what?

The American Psychiatric Association and the National Institute of Mental Health have struggled with how to address a DSM that lacks scientific "validity."

In the meantime, some academics around the world are acknowledging that we don't know everything, and what we do know is different than the DSM.

Those academics have moved to publish Textbooks and Manuals --- that is more helpful in the short term than trying to wait until we have completed NIMH's Research Domain Criteria Initiative --- which is important --- BUT is NOT addressing immediate needs to replace the DSM.
​

​<<<The Agenda with Steve Paikin -- Feb. 2021

It's one of most paradigm-shifting and powerful stories in the history of medicine,, writes Donna Jackson Nakazawa. From MS to Parkinson's to Lupus and depression and schizophrenia the microglia, a tiny brain cell, is changing how we understand physical and psychiatric illness. Nakazawa joins to discuss her book, "The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell That Changed the Course of Medicine."

"Microglia are involved in first line innate immunity of the CNS [Central Nervous System].... When activated, microglia can be potent immune effector cells, able to perform a broad range of functions, and they mediate both innate and adaptive responses during CNS injury and disease while remaining quiescent in the steady state."
Nov 18, 2009

​The Role of Microglia in Central Nervous System Immunity ...www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › pmc › articles › PMC3786731

Chelsea Handler Telling it like it is --
Life will be the death of me -- ANd You TOO!

Terrie Williams historic book:  "black Pain"

Dr. Gail Saltz's "The Power of different"

"Power of Different"  talks about Strengths & Weaknesses in terms of a 80/20 split -- 80% of the time spent on strength development and 20% of the time spent on work-a-rounds for weaknesses.
​CNN - EXCERPTOur default, Saltz says, as a society and even for parents whose child has learning difficulties or mental health disorders, is to focus on the weakness.

"We're very invested in fixing, and we tend to be focused on the negative, whatever the negative is. Make it better so everything is good.

It's an understandable means of reacting, but it becomes so embedded, and it's not really the best path."

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/09/health/learning-disabilities-mental-health-genius-parenting/index.html

Stanford Professor Dr. Robert Sapolsky's "BEhAVE"



DR. ROBERT SAPOLSKY IS A PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, NEUROLOGY AND NEUROLOGICAL SCIENCES, AND NEUROSURGERY @ STANFORD UNIVERSITY:  ​ "You are never really going to understand what is going on if you get it into your head that you're going to be able to explain everything with this is--
​
  • the part of the brain
  • the childhood experience
  • the hormone
  • the gene
  • or the evolutionary mechanism​
---That explains everything.

"It doesn't work that way.  Instead any behavior is the result of biology that occurred a second ago, hours ago, days ago -- a million years ago."
.  . . .

"O000h it's complicated.  Well, that's very useful. 

"How 'bout, 'OOOh it's complicated and you better be really careful and really cautious before you think you understand the causes of a behavior, especially if it's a behavior you judge harshly.' "
.                                      ------Prof. Robert Sapolsky                                                                                   Stanford

Insane Consequences

Description of D.J. Jaffe's "Insane Consequences"
"This well-researched and highly critical examination of the state of our mental health system by the industry's most relentless critic presents a new and controversial explanation as to why--in spite of spending $147 billion annually--140,000 seriously mentally ill are homeless, 390,000 are incarcerated, and even educated, tenacious, and caring people can't get treatment for their mentally ill loved ones. 

​"DJ Jaffe blames the mental health industry and the government for shunning the 10 million adults who are the most seriously mentally ill--mainly those who suffer from schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder--and, instead, working to improve "mental wellness" in 43 million others, many of whom are barely symptomatic.

"Insane Consequences proposes smart, compassionate, affordable, and sweeping reforms designed to send the most seriously ill to the head of the line for services rather than to jails, shelters, prisons, and morgues. It lays out a road map to spend less on mental "health" and more on mental "illness"--replace mission creep with mission control and return the mental health system to a focus on the most seriously ill. It is not money that is lacking; it's leadership. 

Check Out Neuro-Diversity Works 

Work is one of the most important things in human life.  In modern society most adults spend more time @ work than with their families. 

All human beings have abilities and deficits, but the more unexpected those abilities and deficits are -- the more difficult it is for the workplace to accommodate them.

Invisible "disabilities" or "differences" present some of the most difficult challenges for workplaces and that difficulty is often excruciatingly painful for individuals, not to mention financially disastrous.

Like a lot of things, checklists and a systematic approach really can help.

Luckily, the federally funded Job Accommodation Network has done a lot of work in this area.

                               askjan.org


                   -----Orchid
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Click Image to go to Amazon
 A Madman's Poetic Path
By Ryan Pettigrew, 8 years in solitary in a Colorado prison to mindfulness teacher.
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Ryan Pettigrew's Book on Amazon
 The Punisher's Brain
By Morris B. Hoffman, a Denver District Judge.  He is also a judge-in-residence at the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research
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Morris Hoffman's Book on Amazon