madbook ~

TIME WARPS
Oliver Sacks has an essay in a recent New Yorker, speaking about human perceptions of time |
     Some of his findings are not new to me; athletes with a hyper-attuned sense so fine they often "hear" a starting bell "before" it goes off | The examples of self-experimenters using drugs ~ ranging from nitrous oxide to marijuana, mescaline and LSD ~ are well documented and abundant | But my concern at the moment is closer to my line of work; namely what happens with people's time perceptions when confronted with disease |
     Sack's extensive work, chronicled in Awakenings, with people who had survived enchepalitis is another point to explore the pehnomena of time warping | Although I oughtn't be, I was less familiar with the impact of Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's and Attention Defecit Disorder | And if I'm unfamiliar with this, I expect that so are many others |
     This ignorance of the time reality of others can be critical when working with people identified as mentally ill |
     It's bad enough when no thought is given to the impact of a fistful of meds, but such insensitivity is even worse taking this into consideration |
I can't count the number of occasions I've heard staff abruptly tell individuals "...snap out of it!" "Pay attention!" and [worst of all] "...get a move on or we're going to restrict you!"
     Often, such edicts and restrictions are imposed with a rapidity that the imposer could not have complied with the edict swift enough themselves | The effect, if not the intent, of such action against one experiencing a dramitically dissonant perception of time, is punishment, pure and simple |
     I plan on writing more about this | A link to the appropriate page or pages, shall be put there when it's done |

posted by Will Brady @ 08:54