As a professional in mental health, I am confident in my ability to reasonably assess a
person and situation. Believing UFOs are aliens does not make you crazy. No one is
crazy. That’s a euphemism that is dangerously employed when someone wants to
dismiss a person or shut down a conversation. All humans can experience mental
health problems, whether you believe in aliens or not. Believing UFOs are aliens doesn’t
mean a person is delusional. A human can be delusional, and obsess about any data
set sufficiently to exaggerate components in an unhealthy way. Believing UFOs are
aliens could be evidence for a person doing bad science, but even that is open to
debate. There are some books on UFOs that were written by credentialed people in
such a scholarly fashion, one might argue UFOs have more validity than global
warming. Not saying no to global warming, but given the state pressure and the money
behind it, and no money in writing about UFOs, which will have less bias?
photo by Rex Heflin on Aug. 3, 1965, near Santa Ana
There is no correlation between UFOs and Mental Health
And how could there be? Show me the studies. The only academic I am aware of who was credentialed in mental health that did an extensive study of abductees was John E
Mack. He knew, before publishing his book, no one was going to give him a shot at a
professional journal and or reasonable peer reviews. He wrote a book, bypassing the
gatekeepers.
The gatekeepers are real. They control the conversation. You need look no further than
‘Covid might have come from Wuhan’ theory being squashed because the gatekeepers
didn’t like the messenger. We are in an interesting time in society where social media
platforms like Facebook and Twitter will shut down narratives they don’t like. They will
shut down people they don’t like. This is the equivalent of book burning. It’s mild to
moderate hysteria. I might argue that is evidence of mental health problems, but not
from the masses.
I think Michael Maccoby addressed that fairly well in his book, The Narcissistic Leader: Who Succeeds and Who Fails. There is quite a bit of circumstantial evidence for
narcissism ruling our culture. When narcissists don’t get their way, people get hurt. Just knowing that impedes true discourse.
Auditory and visual hallucinations
No one should be afraid of mental health clinics, or people suffering from mental health.
It’s a shame that a country like the US that set the standard for understanding mental
health that people suffering from schizophrenia have terrible social outcomes. They are
misunderstood. When people hear someone that is hallucinating, they frequently jump
to ‘schizophrenia’ as an explanation. All human beings are subject to hallucinations, and
that can happen even without a mental health label. Major Depression can come with
hallucinations. Bipolar can come with hallucinations. Trauma can come with
hallucinations. Grief can come with hallucinations. Hell, cannabis and alcohol can come
with hallucinations, which is exactly why Cheech and Chong are funny. Sometimes,
humans just inexplicably have human experiences.
Just going into and out of sleep can come with hallucinations.
More people have had auditory hallucinations than ever come to the clinic asking for
help. Most of the time, these experiences are pleasant. Like hearing the voice of a
deceased family member saying, “you’re okay,” or “I love you.” Who in their right mind
would want that to go away? Think of all the disparaging tapes we play in our heads
daily. A little niceness is welcomed. A human is more likely to experience an auditory
event as they approach sleep or come out of sleep, but it can happen anywhere,
anytime, and sometimes it’s useful information. Sometimes, it’s just strange and quirky.
We laugh it off and proceed forwards.
Does it matter if it’s a real voice, or something from the subconscious, if it’s useful?
What happens when you come to the mental health clinic
No one should be diagnosing people outside of a clinic, much less from just one event
or PERCEIVED symptom set. People come to mental health clinics for a variety of
reasons. Some arrive because they’re going through a divorce and the lawyer or court
mandated a mental health screening. It’s stupid. You can’t rule out mental health.
Especially if a person is sane enough to lie. You’d be surprised, though, most people
don’t lie in the clinic. Some do. Most don’t, but not necessarily because they’re honest
per say, but because they lack discernment. There are appropriate times to lie. Others
come because CPS asked them to be screened for mental health. Some come because
they’re trying to self diagnose themselves and want confirmation. Young adults and
google. What can I say? Some come because they have a history and need a new
provider. And some, most, come because they’re suffering.
No one comes to a mental health clinic because “I believe UFOs are aliens.” No one
has ever come into my office and lead with, “UFOs are real and the government is
cahoots and it bothers me.” That would certainly be interesting, and I will do my due
diligence to try and understand why a person came to my office just to let me know that.
Just coming to a mental health clinic has some meaning implied.
Also, there is a difference between someone experiencing mania, flight of ideas,
pressured speech, excessive movement, and irritability. It doesn’t mean you won’t get
any useful information, it just means it’s harder to get useful information. The
presentation can seem scary to the untrained. Sometimes even to the trained! With
patience and persistence, a person can be helped. The words they use in their
ramblings is not a measure of what they know or don’t know during an episode. A
physicist answering questions in formula may actually be giving me good math, but in
context there is limited communication which points in the direction of an answer, but
even then, we’re not even close to resolving it down to one particular diagnosis.
One thing counseling in general has taught me is that people who don’t feel heard or
appreciated suffer. More often than not, just having someone listen to you without
judgment can lift a person’s spirits faster than any medication or treatment modality.
Maybe we need more of that in society. It doesn’t matter what I think about UFOs and
Aliens. It doesn’t matter what I think about politics, or religion, or any other subject. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. People have experiences. They want to discuss
them and be reassured they’re not crazy. Believe me, by the time a person comes to the clinic, they themselves are worried they’re crazy.
If you’re thinking that, you’re most likely not crazy.
Take ghost for examples
Hypothetically, a client comes in, they’re not giving you symptoms, they seem to be
minimizing, at some point a clinician might say, “there’s nothing wrong with you. Why
the hell are you in my office?” Okay. I would say that. Yes, I will use profanity.
Sometimes appropriately. Sometimes just to see a reaction. Anyway, inevitably, things
get quiet after that question, eye contact decreases, and they will say, “I don’t want you to think I am crazy, but my mom died a couple of months ago, and I saw her in the
kitchen this morning and she smiled and vanished.”
That’s not crazy! I say that, too. I get eye contact. I tell them, "you loved your mother.”
Of course! “She just died recently.” Yeah. “Was she ill? Did she suffer?” I was caring for her the last couple years. She had cancer. “What were you feeling when you saw her?”
Tears start. I was happy…
Fuck! You’re normal. And I am jealous! I want to see my loved ones, too!
Now, if the person in the vision was telling them to kill themselves and join them in the
afterlife, there’s going to be another conversation. But most of the time, clinically it’s innocuous, but personally it’s a tear jerker. People who take that ghost information and
jump straight for a psychosis diagnosis are not doing their patient justice.
You don’t get hospitalized for hallucinations alone. You can see and hear things and talk
to no one all day long; that is not criteria for emergency hospitalization. The only thing that might get you a 72 hour hold, sometimes in an uncomfortable chair in a community
room that’s locked, sometimes in a bed, is you tell a professional you’re going to kill
yourself or someone else. And even that’s not a guarantee. You’re more likely to get
hospitalized if you have insurance. If you’re poor, or homeless, and it’s winter, the
hospital will call it bed seeking and send you back out into the cold, more often than not.
Not because they’re malicious, but because there is a limit to capacity and there are
more mentally ill seeking a hot meal and bed than there are mentally ill folks seeking
treatment.
Part of our paradigm is that hospitals are for profit, even the so-called non-profit. Yes, we do have problems with mental health that need addressing. For example, it’s
unethical to take advantage of kids and people with IDD (Intellectual and Developmental
Disabilities,) like not being able to try them as adults or enter legal contracts with them,
so maybe we shouldn’t try to profit off the mentally ill? Sure, maybe it’s true if I trick enough kids out of their lunch money they’ll learn, but it’s just not right.
Believing in UFOs is not criteria for hospitalization or for a recommendation of a
psychiatrist for medication. If we do that, you might as well medicate people for their
political or religious beliefs.
Lots of things to sort
There are lots of things to sort when a person comes to a clinic. All humans have
competencies in multiple domains. Some of us are very concrete and specific in our
answer sets. Some of us need to tell the story. Some people want to start the story at
the beginning of their life.
Some folks can’t answer a question without giving the story.
In telling our stories, we also try to share how we processed, labeled, and tried to
resolve our experience into a context that makes sense. Sometimes, we take things and
put them in the wrong box to make them fit. That’s true for everyone. Scientists who
dismiss UFOs without even hearing the full context available, they’re doing that. Those
of us who have simply heard of an experience and placed it directly into the ‘UFOs are
aliens’ box may be doing so unreasonably. Cognitive bias is a real thing. Everyone is
subject to this, even experts.
The thing that needs to be accepted is people are having experiences. They’re
consistent. Mass delusion is an unacceptable answer. There are many enthusiasts that
are eager to have experiences and they’re not getting them. It is probably reasonable to
say there are more enthusiasts and believers who are not having experiences than
there are people having experiences. If mass hallucination is the best explanation, why
aren’t more people having experiences? People need to be honest about not
experiencing. You’re the future control group.
People want to see things! I want to see them. And, at the same time, I don’t. Some of
my childhood experiences were frightening. Most of the people who report being
abducted, they’re not wanting these experiences. That, too, in context, seems like
significant data. UFOs are not wishful thinking.
People don’t want to be abducted, experimented on, and molested.
I doubt David Fravor woke up one morning and said, “I hope we see a UFO today.” He
will tell you, “I am not a UFO guy.” He saw one. Just one. In 2004. I dare say, it changed his life. He is very clear, “This is not of Earth.” This is not a mental health assessment,
as I have not met him in a clinical context, but humans do math during interactions all the time, in person or in recordings; I would bet my life, my career, and my money on
David not being crazy, based on the interviews he has provided, with my favorite being
a four hour interview with Lex Fridman. True, Lex wasn’t looking for mental health
symptoms, but there is enough data there to know a mental health exam isn’t
warranted.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a safe place for people to go to discuss their
experiences, regardless of what that experience was?
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