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There has been a serious problem of the disappearances of college students. Ahmad Arain, Michael Negrete, Maura Murray, Kristen Modafferi, Suzanne Lyall, Amy Bradley, Cindy Song, Josh Guimond, and Joseph Morse, all disappeared from college campuses in recent years. Four years later Morse was discovered to have died in Miami Florida, the day after he disappeared from Georgia Tech. Only Ahmad Arain recovered and returned to UCLA.

What is the connection? They were all high achieving college students and heavy computer users.

For years there had been speculation that computers are somehow causing college suicides and other strange events. It isn’t the computer. It’s a workstation problem that was discovered almost fifty years ago.

In the 1950’s a group of designers and engineers were hired to redesign the business office. When the first examples were introduced knowledge workers began having bizarre or psychotic episodes. The phenomenon was researched and solved. Subliminal Sight and Peripheral Vision Reflexes acting in special circumstances had caused what was believed to be a brief dissociative/psychotic event that would resolve with no treatment. Adding side-vision-blocking panels created the Cubicle, 1968, and the mental breaks stopped. Those designers and engineers thought they were the first to cause this phenomenon.

But the eyes-open meditation and movement of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga create the same circumstances. Psychotic episodes also happen in both exercises. This creates more than a 3000-year history for the problem. In both exercises an elaborate belief system explains the psychiatric symptoms that eventually happen with prolonged exposure. In Qi Gong it is called "Opening the Third Eye," and in Kundalini Yoga it is called the "Awakening of Kundalini."

Users are taught that the onset of hearing voices, beliefs that you can levitate, dematerialize at will, walk through solid objects, and that you can communicate and control others through mental telepathy are evidence that you have reached a higher plane of existence.

In fact, that disorganized thinking and the strange beliefs are similar to Schizophrenia.

Using the example of those exercises, their estimated rates of exposure and the different outcomes from those exposure rates, the phenomenon can explain:

• the source of paranoia and panic attacks,
• a connection between intelligence-creativity and mental illness,
• the apparent genetic connection for mental illness,
• why children as young as five can have Schizophrenia,
• why the usual onset of Schizophrenia is in adolescence.

The similarity of ICU Psychosis to the mental events discovered in business offices suggests that it too is caused by the same conflict of physiology.

My site, VisionAndPsychosis.Net, is a collection of links and theory of why and where the mental breaks happen. The episodes have appeared in EST, (Werner Erhard’s Seminar Training-1970s), the Everquest addiction episode of 2001/2002, the disappearance of Mary Shotwell Little and Diane Shields from Atlanta in 1965/67, the Day Trader Shooting in Atlanta – 1999, and in at least two mass school shootings.

The Red Lake School shooter left a journal entry describing an activity that would have caused exposure for him. The Heritage School shooter, Conyers Ga., is in prison with psychiatric symptoms, hearing voices and severe paranoia, which argue he had a mental event to cause the shooting.

The failure to provide Cubicle Level Protection, where it is needed, in student work and study areas including computer workstations, can create the special circumstances if there is repeating detectable movement close by. When the mental event happens students suddenly disappear in a delusional episode.

The disappearance, recovery, and return of Ahmad Arain from UCLA last summer suggests that the phenomenon might be the stressor for Dissociative Fugue. He had been found in Mexico wandering in an altered mental state. A Computer Science major, he had recently moved back home and would have changed the design of his computer workstation. Before his return, I correctly predicted what had happened to him in a phone call to the UCLA Police department. They were not interested.

Dykstra Hall, UCLA has experienced three suicides and a disappearance without arousing suspicion that there is something wrong with the design of dorm rooms there. Study desks, sometimes used as computer desks, can be situated so that the student’s peripheral vision is exposed to the movement of their roommate and other visitors to the dorm room. That alone is not enough, but it adds exposure to normal daily exposure. Your brain cannot discriminate between sources of detectable threat movement. That means exposure is cumulative. When exposure in a compact time frame reaches a threshold the mental break happens.

Computers are not necessary to cause these disappearances. There was a similar event at Miami of Ohio in 1953. Several students had disappeared, recovered, and returned but with amnesia of the events during their episode. Then Ron Tammen disappeared. They thought Tammen would return too. The psychology department called the disappearance a "Case of Amnesia" When they began searching for him it was discovered he had approached a home in a confused state, didn’t known his own name, and asked for directions to a non-existent bus stop. He was too lightly dressed for the cold night. There was snow on the ground. The Library at Miami University has a site that shows his unprotected desk in a tiny room for two students.

The inclusion of Culture Bound Syndromes in the DSM points to several cold weather mental events that cause strange psychiatric symptoms. Windigo Psychosis, Icelandic Disease, Arctic Hysteria, Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disease (bunkhouses), and Latah (South Pacific - longhouses) all involve too many people confined in small living space. The opportunity for the ‘special circumstances’ to be created would happen in all those cases. Each person experiences the mental break differently. Cultural beliefs shape the outcome of the experience but it’s the same mental break caused by the same phenomenon and conflict of physiology.

The phenomenon has happen on scientific expeditions. The Belgian polar expedition, 1898/99, aboard the Belgica was trapped in ice for months. Crewmembers began to have psychiatric symptoms including severe paranoia. There were physical symptoms and one death from a heart attack attributed to fear.

No one in the mental health field is aware of this phenomenon and no one is screening patients for exposure.

Researchers of mental illness are missing a key piece of information that a normal feature of human physiology could cause a mental break when special conditions are created. Too-close side-by-side seating in all classrooms is the same design problem.

Unlike Knowledge workers K-12 students do not spend long periods in a deep concentrating mental state. But there is occasional exposure. Then the growth spurt at puberty increases body size and makes movement easier to detect in Subliminal Peripheral Vision. That’s why the onset of Schizophrenia is usually in adolescence.

Highly intelligent people and creative people are more likely to have activities that create exposure.

Why are some effected but not others? I don’t know.

But there may be a genetic connection when physical traits are inherited that increase the ability to detect threat movement in peripheral vision. The shape of the eye and the number of rods packed in peripheral non-macular areas of the retina might do that. Personality traits that determine if we participate or watch others in school as well as the propensity to daydream are two other possibilities. There may be a range of behaviors and physical factors that make someone more likely to be a victim.

The fact that the problem decreases when exposure stops confuses an understanding of the effectiveness of drugs. Any modality that reduces exposure reduces symptoms. Unaware of their exposure victims would believe that the last drug treatment caused their recovery. Although several drug companies have downloaded the full content of my site I have no communication from any of them.

There are simple things that can be done to test this theory. Just advising the college student population to be aware of the phenomenon when they install computer workstations and study areas might eliminate most college suicides. If exposure to the phenomenon is a stressor for mood and anxiety disorders that would decrease their prevalence on college campuses. What would that cost? Very little.

L K Tucker VisionAndPsychosis.Net

The brain’s detection system only evaluates movement. There is little recognition of the nature of the object in peripheral vision. If you have several hours exposure from human traffic at the library, while reading at an open table or seated in a reading room chair, followed by long hours watching TV with a critically misplaced ceiling fan sweeping detectable shadows around the room, the combination of those two behaviors might cause the problem. The suggestion is that either activity alone would not consume enough exposure time even if the critical movement is present.

Copyright 2003

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