Sanity, a gift that
reminds
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious Most Merciful
Alhamdulillah, I praise Allah for all His blessings upon us that
many times we forget and many times we appear, seemingly but not
really remember. The essence of gratitude is so deep and so does the
essence of realising all these bountiful blessings which requires
deep thoughts, meditation and sincere heart. That is perhaps the very
meaning of solah, to thank and to invoke, to submit and to remember,
to love and to learn to love, to discipline and to focus.
Sanity, a word which describes safe and sound mind. A word that
describes normality of mind. A word that differs societal perception
and tiering human social and psychological levels. The opposite,
insanity is also a word which counters sanity, describing a loss in a
great bless that also defines human being and human innate ability.
Depending on how we perceive perception, sanity gives us at least two
important perceptual definitions, being sane in our thought process
and being sane in our thought contents. In our walks of life, we
often encounter people that say “You are just insane” or” This
is insane.” The context when it refers to thought content often
refers to ideas that make out of sense when perceived by others in
their comfort of normality. What is sane according to one can be
perceived as insane by others. What is sane in others may sound
insane by us. Now, there is a spectrum to normality in contents above
which things really make no sense. In saying that, there is one
important issue needing realisation here, ignorance is a jail of mind
and being ignorant jumps one to perceive others as being “insane”
so easily. An example of which can be taken when the last Prime
Minister of Malaysia, Tun Mahathir introduced the idea of producing
local cars in 1980s. To some, it was insane because the idea went out
of calculated possibility by some given limited knowledge and
creativity. The second issue which limits sanity is absence in
component of trust, faith,confidence and socio-cultural influence.
People can easily perceive something insane when the content clashes
with pre-conceived beliefs, ideas and mental knowledge structure. To
an atheist, an existence of a Creator of this universe is just insane
given physically imperceivable Power that can be captured by mental
and special sense organ faculties.
Sanity can also be defined in the light of thought process. Have we
ever come across people who talk next to the road, seemingly so
serious and so real, but it just does not make sense. We thought we
don't understand, but in reality it can't be understood. The thought
process is so bizarre that it went out of spectrum of linearity into
circumstantial and tangential thought processes. We know the basic
logic as introduced by Socrates, if A=B, and B=C, therefore A=C.
Although this is basic and does not hold true in every situation,
this flow of logic is absent in people with disrupted thought
process. Understanding these two perspectives, we came with an idea
that aberrant thought process or content or both throw people into a
group we call “crazy” be it literal or with connotation, be it
content or process.
Alhamdulillah, life is a lesson and everything that happens is a
Sign from Allah Almighty for us to think and ponder over. Hence why
the prophet Muhammad saw cried when Surah Ali-Imran, verse 191 was
revealed – Verily, in the Creation of heaven and earth, and in the
alteration of days and nights, there are Signs for people who would
like to contemplate. Contemplation to read His signs in order to
believe and to have faith in Him. To contemplate to understand that
He SWT is very close and guiding closely with His signs. In the book,
In the Footsteps of the Prophet Muhammad saw, Prof Ramadan outlined
this very nicely how Khadijah was a remarkable sign of God Almighty's
help and support to Muhammad saw, and how Hajar and Ismail were signs
of His help and consolation for Ibrahim as. ( Refer Chapt 4). I was
blessed with the opportunity to meet one patient who gradually lose
normality of his thought content. Here is his story.
He is a gentleman who at his teenage age, developed this bizarre
thought that the world is rubbish. He claimed people don't understand
him and gradually developed this thought that people are talking and
planning something against him. He looked at a drawing and thought
that it is alive. His behaviour also changed to be inappropriate and
disorganised. Some things he does are purposeful, other things can be
inappropriate. His thought process is linear at times but can be
tangential at other times. He loses insight that he seems to
be out of what he normally is.
It reflects about psychological disorder we call psychosis or
craziness. It is bizarre and has been a mysterious subject until the
last 50 years when research enlighten us a bit about this still
mysterious subject. This patient out of sudden developed aberrant
belief secondary to his frontal lobe determination and perception
that people are against him. This is further strengthened by auditory
hallucination from activation of temporal lobe that people are
talking about him. Without going in depth about different types, we
learn to understand automaticity of brain function without external
stimuli from the surrounding can induce a “perceived world” in
which these kind of people interact and form their judgment,
reaction, logic and etc. It is made worse when these people lose
their insight losing perceptual attachment from what perceives by
others making them not understanding us and us not uderstanding them.
In short, the physical present is there but these people are in fact
in a “different world” from us. This is in-line with what
mentioned in Harun Yahya quoting verses from Quran about the fact and
the reality of this world. The world is but a perception that we
perceived from our sense organs and brain interpretation. From time,
the essence of physical being and many things around are what we
perceived from senses we are given with. At the end of our life time,
these senses will definitely shut down and we will move from this
“perceived world” into another dimension of eternal life, as
perceived by us, Muslims as Hereafter.
In medicine, there are several conditions that mimic formation of
“perceived world.” In children , we have a condition we call
Autistic Spectrum Disorder, in psychiatry we have psychotic disorders
and in different cultures and beliefs, we have meta-physical
influence. All these will be discussed in my next writing – Sanity,
a gift that reminds part 2. Stay reading and may knowledge leads us
to be grateful and thankful, God Willing.
Abu Asr
11/1/12
Medical Questions :
1) Why can anti-psychotic cause development of galactorrhoea and parkinsonism?
2) What is the cardiovascular condition that can be trigerred by anti-psychotic s and how do we manage patient that develops this?
3) What are the two groups of anti-psychotics and which trigger more anti-cholinergic effect but less extra-pyramidal side effects?
