Mental Illness is an altered mental state.

Copyright 2003 -  Revision  Sunday March 16, 2008 19:48 -0600

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This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected  until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read  ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long  term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong  Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

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Mental Illness, An Altered Mental State

This project began, in part, to find out why a simple problem known to cause mental breaks in business offices

 is unknown in any area of mental health services.

This text is a first draft of an article about Subliminal Distraction as the source of an altered mental state we understand as mental illness.

The original page with research materials is still available here.

At this stage the reference items are numbered but not in place.

Surf this site for pages on Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga.

First, this is not my pet theory or my invention. I encountered this material as an engineering student forty years ago. I heard  the material again in a psychology lecture on psychophysics in about 1990. When my wife had a psychotic mental break in the payroll office of the University of Alabama in 2002, I saw for the first time what this phenomenon can do.

Connie's story reveals that this phenomenon cannot be distinguished from mental illness. (1)

If you have begun to have psychiatric symptoms such as vague psychosomatic complaints including strange skin sensations, panic attacks, un-attribituted fear - possibly to the point of trembling,  paranoia, or depression with thoughts of suicide you may have exposure from Subliminal Distraction.

But your first action, (repeat first action), must be a complete neurological examination. There are serious physical problems that will produce similar symptoms and while most are treatable some are fatal if not treated; small strokes from high blood pressure or arterial plaques limiting blood supply to the brain for instance. Attend to that examination before you do anything else.

As that physical inquiry is happening you can apply the material on this site to search your activities for exposure from Subliminal Distraction.

There is no cost, treatment, drugs, or talk therapy involved. It will not interfere with any treatment you now have. When you find a place of exposure and a source of repeating detectable movement in your peripheral vision at that site, slight changes in behavior will eliminate exposure.

Recent onset symptoms should stop within a week or so. Long term sufferers will not have an immediate result. You must un-learn the behaviors of mental illness. This is why talk therapy often works as well as medication.

This is information you have never encountered before and possibly will not believe. The true facts of human physiology related to the vision startle reflex are so bizarre most people do not believe them the first time they hear this. I assure you this is from first-semester college psychology psychophysics.

This article and site applies that known information after an exhaustive five-year investigation of Subliminal Distraction.

In the 1960's designers, engineers, human factor scientists, and psychologists accidentally discovered a "conflict in the physiology of sight" when it caused mental breaks for office workers. The knowledge workers were using the first prototypes of close-spaced workstations. There had been an extensive research program to design the "perfect office." The intention was that these desks, tables and filing cabinets would be moved around easily to form work-groups within larger businesses. The "bull pen" system as well as large rooms with many rows of desks, drafting tables, and large calculating machines were in use at the time.

Some of those workers using the new design began to have mental breaks. Designers and engineers had to solve the problem since so much had been invested in the new workstation design.

Herman Miller Inc. introduced the 'Action Office 1' in 1964 but had to modify it by 1968. They added peripheral-vision-blocking panels creating the first cubicle.

What they had discovered was that a normal feature of every one's physiology of sight had operated in the "special circumstances" their new design created, to cause the mental breaks. (2)

I had known of the problem most of my life. I thought everyone knew the story of why the cubicle was created. I soon found that there is no knowledge of this in any area of mental health services. At first I believed this lack of knowledge was ignorance in Alabama. But further research revealed the same lack of knowledge everywhere.

I did not see the potential of that for several weeks. I continued to search for anyone to treat Connie. I could find people who had seen the problem on TV programs but no medical professional knew of it.

Today this phenomenon is treated as a harmless nuisance in the design of crowded office workspace. This is because the episode seen with typical office exposure is a temporary period of confusion and psychotic-like behavior. Most victims recover with no treatment once the problem is remedied and the subliminal stimulation of the subconscious stopped.

Designers understand that episode, as caused by Subliminal Distraction exposure. They would not connect their "harmless problem" to an episode where someone comes back from a late lunch and shoots every one in the office.

The Virginia Tech shooter had created the "special circumstances" for SD exposure when he used a laptop in the common room where roommates could walk by ignoring him. Interviews of suitemates revealed that he increased the behavior in the month before the shooting. Those months of subliminal detection of threat-movement had colored thought and reason creating the psychotic paranoid mental state that allowed him to kill 32 people.

Method

When I realized the almost unbelievable possibility that this small problem is at the bottom of most mental distress in the United States I began to search for the phenomenon.

The first effort was to find psychotic episodes connected to an activity. The activity was then examined to determine if Subliminal Distraction exposure was present.

Users of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga have first psychotic mental breaks as well as fixed altered mental states that resemble schizophrenia. If the use of the exercise is stopped or reduced the first psychotic episode remits with no treatment and no apparent after effects.

When examining the method of performing the exercise, eyes-open meditation supplies the concentrating mental state and slight dissociation necessary to engage the subliminal movement detection system that creates the startle reflex. The movement to trigger subliminal reflex attempts is supplied by others in the group performing the exercise kata near by.

Stop a minute and look at what you must believe when you perform Qi Gong for health improvements.

A group of people stand and wave their arms and legs in unison and think this gives them the power to control Chee. That's suspect on its face. It is essentially a belief in magic. We all view African and South American natives who practice magic for treatment of physical and mental illness as ignorant and backwards. But that same belief in magic is being practiced on college campuses and in corporate exercise facilities when Qi Gong taught and used.

Now, didn't you know that there was a simple explanation for the psychiatric effects of Qi Gong that did not involve magic or Chee?

I admit it is difficult to understand at first reading. The groups of moving, meditating people are replicating those 1960's failed office workstation designs. (3)

In Kundalini Yoga meditation before the exercise period trains the mind into the same mental state. If that light dissociation is maintained the movements of others in this exercise are also subliminally detectable to trigger reflex attempts.

Each person's experience is different since not everyone can maintain the "bank mind" or Zen meditating state while  performing the exercises.

We all have the ability to ignore something in our vision field. But because there is no way to stop sensor cells on the rods and cones of our retina from sending neural signals to the brain, we can't "stop seeing" the thing we learn to ignore. That's a "conflict in the physiology of sight," related to the vision startle reflex. 

When we recognize that movement in our peripheral vision is harmless, not a danger to us, we can consciously ignore it and the startle will stop. But the subliminal operation of the threat-detection system prevents your being aware that your brain is still detecting movement, because you can't stop seeing it, and attempting a "startle reflex."

That action is a Subliminal Distraction.

The repeating subliminal appreciation of threat eventually colors thought and reason creating paranoia, fear, depression and the other outcomes I listed in the opening statement.

This is operant conditioning and there is no treatment for it. Drugs cannot help. Talk therapy only helps if the sessions change behaviors to reduce Subliminal Distraction exposure.

Drugs will appear to help if your exposure level from SD drops while you take the drug. That's why so many drugs must be tried before a satisfactory outcome is reached.

Anti-depressants only help ten percent of those who take them. In drug trials fifty percent get better on placebos. Sixty percent stop the drugs within four weeks. Six in ten anti-depressant users have adverse effects. Small wonder that the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness is in serious doubt.

There is a certain economy in human physiology. The vision driven warning system evolved with primitive pre-human hunter gathers. They had no activity that would have required them to sit for many hours each day while others in the family group walked close beside the concentrating person.  No protection for SD exposure was developed.

The second step.

Next I searched for activities where people sit too-close together for hours each day. That activity was examined to determine if there are psychiatric outcomes connected to the activity.

Classrooms are an obvious place people sit too-close together for hours. There is even a concentrating mental state when the student performs math, reads, or does any other activity requiring mental investment. But teachers in primary grades have students do the same things at the same times so there is rarely large detectable movement in peripheral vision while that concentrating is done.

ADD, ADHD, Indigo Children, and Schizophrenia are mental events that can be connected to classrooms. So how does exposure happen?

Exposure due to detecting slight movements of children in the next row would be light. ADD, ADHD, and Indigo Children are evidence of that light exposure.

The growth spurt of puberty makes bodies larger. The relative separation between the rows of students does not change so that those slight movements become easier to detect. That's why schizophrenia onsets in adolescence Subliminal Distraction exposure spikes after puberty.

 Increased classroom use in colleges increases SD again.

Although the full psychotic episode does not happen in normal classroom exposure there are occasional stories usually attributed to mass hysteria in third world countries.

There is a classroom-like situation that does cause mental events..

Since 1977 there has been investigation to find out why users of Landmark Education's seminar, The Forum, have mental breaks. These participants are just sitting in the audience at the seminar. Three days of ten or more hour lectures each day provides intense SD exposure to cause psychiatric symptoms.

A hidden camera video from a French TV program shows this participation. The seminar is a drama performed in a lighted room for ten straight hours.. Stage performances and movies take place in a darkened room so that it is not possible to detect small movements in peripheral vision there.

 A simple way to view this to understand it is that when you engage complete involvement in a lecture to the point that you form mental images from the text and story of the speaker you dissociate slightly as If you were performing knowledge work. In the field of Communication that complete investment when you read a book or watch a movie is called "suspension of disbelief." The mechanics of your eyes following words on the page as you read fades way and you become an observer participant in the story. That level of investment will allow SD exposure if you choose a place to read where others walk by the chair or table.

To be continued.....

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