5 % of us hear voices

Professor in neuro cognitive psychiatry André Aleman of the Neuro Imaging Centre in Groningen, the Netherlands, concludes after a lot of research that about 5 % of the people hear voices in their heads.

That must be a strange phenomenon: to be alone and to hear the voice of someone else.

It seems that often these voices in the head are related to schizophrenia.
Which means that the voice heard is not of someone else.
But it is one of the more than one voice that particular person has.

If this problem is recognized in time, in many cases a medication can stop the auditive harassment in the head of the victims.

It happens that people do weird things when they have more than one voice speaking in their minds and are not taking medication.
Last week a 20-year old Belgium boy walked into a day care centre for babies in the town of Dendermonde.
In his rucksack he carried a set of weapons and indeed, with a knife, he killed two babies and a nurse.
To walk calmly out of the day care centre, to mount his bike and pedal away.
Shortly after he was arrested by the efficient Belgium police and until now the boy is saying he doesn’t remember anything.

Obviously, the boy is sick in the mind.
This was well known.
When he was 16 he got deeply depressed.
It was so bad that his parents took him to the GP who directed the boy to a psychiatrist.
Who came to the conclusion that it was not that bad with the boy and the psychiatrist let him go.
If the diagnosis had been different, the boy might have had proper treatment and might not have destroyed and devastated many lives later.
Including his own.

Last week also, we have seen a woman, called Nadya Suleman, aged 33, give birth to 8 babies in the Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Centre, Los Angeles, USA.
Now Miss Suleman has 14 children.

Miss Suleman suffers of an obsessive-compulsive disorder, according to Diane G. Sanford, a psychologist and author specializing in women's reproductive mental health.
Suleman’s obsession centres around having children and being a mother.
This was very well known for many years.
All of her children were born after in vitro fertilization treatment.

After having 6 children she went to the hospital and asked for a new treatment.
There were frozen embryos left over after her previous pregnancies.
Her fertility doctor implanted not one, but several embryos.
Who multiplied because Nadya Suleman’s system was hyper stimulated for years with fertilization treatments and drugs.

So now we have a situation of a woman without a job and without a partner, but with 14 children to take care of.

As in the case of the boy in Belgium, we should look carefully at the role that has been played by the specialists.
In the California case, the fertility doctor.

Questions can be asked why the fertility doctor decided to implant embryos in a woman who already had 6 children.
And why to implant more than one, knowing they will multiply.
Why the woman was not send to a psychiatrist.
Instead of seeing and getting treatment of an irresponsible fertility doctor without scruples.

Like the boy in Belgium, the Bellflower woman is not to blame.
They are both persons that are sick.
Mentally disturbed.
Who should be taken care of.
Protected against themselves.
To protect the others.

"This woman could not comprehend the ramifications of having eight children of the same age at the same time," said Judith Horowitz, a Parkland, Fla.-based psychologist and author who works with couples on fertility issues.
"After Pampers stops delivering the free diapers, then what?"

Easy.
The fertility doctor should be made responsible.
He must not only pay for the diapers, but for the education of the octuplets as well.

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To learn more about the Neuro Imaging Centre, click on:
http://www.bcn-nic.nl/





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