An unusual psychiatric case. Mentally ill or something more profound?

Benj96

Suppose the following hypothetical situation;

A boy is travelling to university for his second semester. He sits on the train peacefully, staring out the window as the landscape flits by. When suddenly he becomes overwhelmed with a sense of dread. A sense of imminent threat. It sends him into a frenzied panic of deep discomfort to such an extent that rather than continue his journey to university he rebooks his flight to his home country.

Upon arriving home he explains several worrying warnings and insights to his family that do not line up with the current state of things. He appears to be experiencing a reality of his own making. Naturally concerned for his wellbeing the family brings him to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist asks him the usual questions regarding ideation of self harm, substance abuse, etc. He denies ever having such thoughts. His analysis appears almost normal, all except for one strong, resounding belief that something large scale and dangerous is occuring.

The psychiatrist recommends he be admitted for 2 days of observation as well as treatment with an antipsychotic. He refuses treatment despite his families encouragement and goes home. They keep a close eye on the boy but in the coming weeks something bizarre occurs. A global threat develops. Something never seen before and with such far reaching consequences that now everyone around him is undergoing the same panic that he had just a month ago. His warnings line up with what has happened. Details match with frightening accuracy. The few people he had explained them to instantly message him asking how he had known and apologise for their scepticism. His family immediately scratch the thought of a psychiatrist from the table and feel intense guilt for what had happened.

When the boy goes to a counsellor and recounts his feelings of dread, now they appear to be a reasonable and understandable reaction to what his nation and the world is going through yet he fails to tell her that they are in fact not his current feelings but predate the calamity.

Does the boy really have a psychiatric disorder but was lead by cognitive bias to believe it was associated with an event that was merely coincidental, or do you think the reason may be beyond typical mental episodes and something of a deeper, rarer or more mysterious nature?

All interpretations and insights are welcome. Also a discussion into how "time" played a role in dividing realities and what are the implications of changing paradigms in the belief of someones convictions.

Outlander

Well first a feeling of dread based on physical signs is hardly "living in a different reality". Perhaps superstitious and a bit old fashioned, humorous even. Anyone thinking anything beyond that is an early warning sign of facism come to think of it. Highly suspect.

That is to say, if he's in good health, especially if intelligent and coherent. And friendly above all. :D

Beyond that could be something, could be nothing. Especially if it's all behind him so to speak. You could say even a broken clock is right twice a day. Or point to the facts prophets (or prophecies) have been part of human society since the beginning of human history.

That said, could've been psychosomatic. Ate something bad. Naturally the brain feels awry. Something happened. As they always do. Not a big deal. Who could say.

Graeme M

I'd say some kind of psychiatric episode. Consider that it is very likely there are many people at any given time experiencing such feelings. At least some of the time, subsequent events provide a potential causal relationship. Of course, there is no such relationship.

Tzeentch

Maybe it was coincidental. Maybe it was not. The only way to tell with any certainty is to repeat the 'experiment' and remain as objective as possible.

This hypothetical person should not care about what others think. After all, it is his experience and not theirs. He alone knows what his experience was like and can gauge its genuineness.

Most (if not all) of us spend our entire lives being wrong about everything. There is no reason to let a hundred, or even a thousand of such opinions have any bearing on our personal experiences.

DrOlsnesLea

↪Benj96

Are you young?

Try to understand the opposite, that everything is running as normal and that you have a feeling that this is going to be a normal day. So the OP depicts an example where something may become wrong. I see nothing unusual about this. This may be a perfectly healthy person or indeed a patient, one instance of psychosis counted, depending on the history of the person.

Psychologically, it's a mature view to be alert with your feelings in line with what you do. If you get uneasy, there may be something about to happen that's wrong, either present or in near future.
Check out "work flow" if you like. Smart people include their feelings in doing their work, to sense with the entire body of the nervous system, of which brain is part.

The stories where people have avoided awful situations by taking into account their feelings are not too common. So I advise that you keep track of experienced people and their sense of the World and how they work it all.

Please check out Foresight, also, by Daryl J. Bem, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Bem.

deletedusercb

An unusual psychiatric case. Mentally ill or something more profound?

We don't know. No one does. Perhaps later, if this person has more such experiences and they tend to correctly foreshadow things, then someone would know. Or if he has more and nothing disastrous comes, then we could start drawing conclusions. But so far, we don't have enough.

The only thing one can do is either be cautious or express one's biases.

An unusual psychiatric case. Mentally ill or something more profound?

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