A first for me. I often look up patients new to the MH system on the web to see what I can learn about them. The paranoid, angry, psychotic young woman we admitted this morning posted several videos of herself on YouTube two weeks ago. I don't know when the videos were actually made, however. She was friendly and laughing then, except the last two have an eerie edge.
Things like this are going to become more common, and more helpful to us. I hope they are helpful to her as well.
It's become a great medium for attention-cravers, no doubt, but never thought about it in this way as well - being useful to analyze a patient's true state of mind. When they're by themselves, even if on camera, they're likely to let go and be honest about their thought processes - even if pretending to be someone different - than they are coming into a professional office to discuss themselves. So what a great discovery for you to help with her (or any) case.
ReplyDeleteEven better, we can see what she looked like when well, or when just starting to tip into the not-herself of schizophrenia.
ReplyDeletethat truly is a blessing then - must be neat to be on the cusp of a new frontier in tech/web diagnoses ... and with the proliferation of surveillance cameras and increasingly better image exploitation capabilities, I'd think the demand for professionals adept at critically analyzing people's state of mind can only grow greater these next decades. Thanks for this interesting post!
ReplyDeleteWas just there a few minutes ago - found a codger playing a YouTube theme song (first one below), and then tributes to some popular guy on it named The BoringDispatcer - who recently passed away:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxkuYeERt1c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe5HkUL8tlI&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ9YiQgoh6w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNfhgyA5dU0&NR=1
The first one was just right for this blog, TomG.
ReplyDeleteThose others are weird.
I agree - just ran across them and realized that YouTube has now become the same kind of cyber existence for some of its users as I've heard/read about Facebook, etc. But understood, thanks.
ReplyDelete