Interview: Catatonic Schizophrenic

Great skin.

One of my former coworkers reminds me somewhat of this man.

Most of the people at work would lose patient if they tried to talk to him because it would take him 30-60 seconds to process what they said to him and for him to formulate a response.

Simple questions like “did you have a good weekend“ would take up to a minute for him to process and reply with a one word answer of “yes”

Patience

It is not acting - his family even spoke about their disappointment in having the video aired. This man died years ago.

He makes me feel sad.

R4 How did he die?

R6 He apparently committed suicide in the late 80s.

"This man was my uncle. I'm not going to give any names, but for those of you who are concerned with how things turned out for him - not well. There's so much to address here. First let me say that he was being treated in this video with meds. Without the medication his mood ranged from complete delusion to catatonic. As for being gay, I don't think he had much of a sex drive at all. With or without meds. As for the idea that he was put here because he was gay by some unloving family, that's ridiculous. I don't have time to say all the things my family tried just to make his existence somewhat peaceful just for his own sake. My family had a couple of openly homosexual and lesbians in it even back in the sixties and with the exception of my mother's father no one gave a shit. My uncle suffered with meds and even more without. After forty some odd years, most of which he spent in institutions, he took his own life by way of drug overdose. By the way, the comment about the plot twist, he never had a piano was funny because he didn't. His seeming obsession with piano came and went as did obsessions with religion, especially the Catholic Church and government. As far as I know he couldn't play a lick. He was very ill at his best and a living shell at his worst. I hope that answers some questions because that's all I have to say on the matter. He's been gone since the late eighties and I really hope that other members of my family don't see this video, mostly because of the comments from people that somehow think they understand him better than the people who suffered with him. One last thing, I think people thought that he was talking about sitting or standing effeminately or something. No, he was talking about sitting or standing motionless for hours. Usually not even his facial expression would change but when it did it was usually related to something in his mind only. I really can't begin to tell you all how heartbreaking the whole thing was. "

Schizophrenia is so poorly understood and even worse in terms of how it's treated. We have a long way to go

Just to clarify R7's comment (thank you for posting it), this is the man's nephew, Tom, in the comment section for the video.

He reminds me of Jared Kushner.

What causes schizophrenia?

They're not entirely sure, r11. However, having certain infections early in pregnancy (first trimester), such as the flu, seems to increase the likelihood the child will develop schizophrenia later in life.

It's a fascinating topic.

I figured he was probably on medication. The weirdly flat affect and slowness of reaction can be side effects of anti-psychotic drugs, especially the ones they had back then.

It's sad because he might have done better today, when we have a broader array of medications available.

Thanks R12. That's really interesting.

He seems like a heavily autistic and heavily, heavily medicated gay man. The YouTube comment from a "family member" never struck me as being the full story. This was common treatment of homosexual men in mental homes back in 1961. Hell, even heterosexual men with minor level problems were treated like this, watch Titicut Follies. I don't doubt there's something wrong with him but I doubt that the family's version of events is right.

The "family members" remind me of Lou Reed's sister claiming his parents didn't send him to shock therapy to cure him of homosexuality to save face after it came out how badly it gave him brain damage.

[quote] watch Titicut Follies

Follies!

The poor guy. How sad.

He seems kind of annoying.

r16 well he cant have been all that homosexual - he was very sexually into women and at most he was only 'gay' in that he liked trannies.....

He doesn't seem catatonic, more like over-medication or simply flat affect which is a symptom of schizophrenia or someone raised in the Midwest or Scandinavia.

Today, if catatonic is suspected, an Ativan challenge is done. The person is given a high dose of Ativan, if the catatonic symptoms lessen or resolve, sometimes as quickly as within 20 minutes, it is catatonic schizophrenia and is treated with high doses of Ativan and other meds. I saw one older, petite woman on 40 mg of Ativan daily which would put a cow to sleep. It allowed her to function normally.

R21 You’re not awake enough to form cohesive sentences.

Family says they had openly gay men and women in their family in the 60’s! lol 😂

I think he’s trying to tell the interviewer that his family and others reject his femininity and homosexuality. Poor guy 😢

He reminds me of "shell shocked" soldiers from WW2.

Very perceptive, R22. I hadn't even had a sip of coffee yet. It all made perfect sense at the time.

- R21

Gays had it so bad decades ago . We should be grateful today

While I feel sad for him (the interviewer seems to be goading or antagonizing him), I also feel a visceral fear. He reminds me of something a former teacher of mine used to use: “the calm of the truly insane”.

R20 That was after his parents subjected him to ECT and he was severely into drugs. His version of events is that his parents caught him with a guy and sent him off to the loony bin. As per Please Kill Me, he had a lot of casual sex with (non transvestite) men in the Silver Factory crowd.

I feel without the electroshock therapy, he might have had the chance to be a relatively normal gay man. A lot of his abhorrent behavior could be explained through ECT giving him brain damage. He was so consistently awful to everyone in his life, there had to be something chemical going on.

Lou Reed was a gay leaning bisexual. DL still pretends bisexuals don't exist. Regardless bisexual men were seen as homos and fags and needed "correcting." If he was straight then he wouldn't still be with men (regardless of how effeminate) and pre-op trans women.

Maybe some "institution" fried his brain a bit in "treatment".

[quote] or simply flat affect which is a symptom of schizophrenia or someone raised in the Midwest or Scandinavia.

I laughed out loud at this, R21. The first time I visited the PNW, which has a lot of descendants of both, I thought I had wondered into a loony bin because of the the people who would just stare at me, expressionless, as I talked. Occasionally I'd find someone who engaged in normal conversation, and it would usually turn out they were transplants from Los Angeles.

Later, I read that it's a characteristic of some places that people just look at you while you talk, rather than nodding, saying "yeah" or "right" or "OK" or at least changing expressions.

My next-door neighbor took forever to answer any question. He was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen—very tall blond great chiseled face. I could not deal with him. It took him forever to answer the simplest question. once I asked him if he wanted a glass of water and it took I kid you not one-half hour to finally say yeah I want some water. His mom and my mom were friends. To be fair though his dad died of huntingtons and he probably had the gene. The guy was an exceptionally talented potter and artist. He moved to Hawaii and opened up a pottery shop and became well known. I just looked him up and I thought he would have died a long time ago but he died in 2020 at 73.