It's official: English drives people crazy.

[theweaselking]

Multilingual psychotic patients can present with either different or less psychotic symptoms depending on the language they use.

Comments

[publius1.livejournal.com]

That sentence is hard to parse.. can present what?

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

People can be differently psychotic in different languages. Like, they'll seem psychotic one way in English, and less psychotic, or differently psychotic, in another language.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Present with different or less psychotic symptoms.

Their psychosis changes or disappears when they think in a different language.

(It's medical jargon. You "present with" your symptom set. For example: "Patient presented to ER with CC of scalp lac. Says he was SOCMOB when "some guy" hit him with a weed whacker." For more examples, try the hilarious "things I learned from my patients" (http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=257985))

[jerril]

... wow. Only part of that I didn't follow was CC.

For extra cryptic, it would be "Pt presented to ER with CC of scalp lac demanding a vicodin rx. Says he was SOCMOB when "some guy" hit him with a weed whacker."

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Chief Complaint.

And you're right, your jargon is more compressed.

[elffin.livejournal.com]

As well, I did not follow "CC".

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

I would say that English's freakish flexibility allows them to express their crazy better; I wouldn't trust them to be any less crazy just because they don't know how to show it in another language.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

The way I read the article is: speak in native tongue: crazy; speak in second language: less crazy. Which I further interpret to mean that your brain is busy with the second language and has less time to think bad thoughts.

(Yes, I'm simplifying like mad. MAD, I tell you!)

[publius1.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks for the info man...