In Wetumpka, AL

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Preventing Subliminal Distraction episodes, mistaken for mental illness, is simple and free.

Copyright 2003 Edit Friday February  10, 2017

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In  the late 1950's and early 60's a group of designers, engineers, and human factor scientists were hired to research then modernize the business office by creating new workstations their employers could sell.

The first prototypes of modern close-spaced workstations were introduced in 1964. Herman Miller Inc., produced the Action Office 1. Steelcase created the Steelcase 9000.  Some of the workers using the new workstations began to have mental breaks.

I was a 22 year old engineering student at the University of Alabama in 1966. I learned that someone noticed that the mental breaks were not happening scattered around the offices. But happened only at one or two desks in each location.    It was always the same desks.     Everyone who used those desks for more than a few days had a mental event. That gave engineers the information to show it was not mental illness, but something they had done in designing the new workstations.

Experts in human physiology were called in to evaluate the problem.    It was .. the long term consciousness forced suppression of the vision startle reflex.    The cubicle was designed to block peripheral vision to prevent the subliminal detection of threat-movement to cause repeating subliminal, undetectable,  failed attempts to execute the vision startle reflex. The problem was eventually named for the normal feature in our physiology of sight that allows it to happen, Subliminal Distraction. (Herman Miller Inc. claims the invention of the cubicle on their website.)

Subliminal Distraction mental events are the only mental break, psychiatric mental event, that has successfully been evaluated and PREVENTED. Designers and engineers created the office cubicle to stop it by 1968.  To this day they do not recognize that it is a problem of the physiology of sight, not just a harmless nuisance in the correct design of  offices.

Although those engineers quickly solved the problem they did not understand what they had found.

Mental health professionals are unaware the problem exists.

The tiny, tiny number of people aware of the problem, designers and engineers who work in 'Systems Furniture,'  see only light episodes from an eight hour work day thus believe the phenomenon is harmless.

When bizarre or inappropriate behavior starts in a business office there is staff to send the worker to a hospital for evaluation.      

 At home, for a home computer user, or video game player, there is no one to notice the subtle beginning of paranoia, panic, or depression.   When students, and home computer users create the "special circumstances" for this problem their exposure can last much longer so the effect builds until there is a severe outcome. 

When you think of the problem, imagine that you can pick up the incorrectly designed office workstation in those 1960's offices, then using computers engage the same level of mental investment those early work stations created almost anywhere.  

By locating the computer workstation beside a large mirror, or in a location where family, or pets walk by the  "special circumstances" of the  "mental break causing design mistake" design engineers discovered to cause visual subliminal distraction can be created.

The defective work location can exist and be used for months with no movement in peripheral vision until a project or a change in circumstances at home or school increases exposure.

When it happened to my wife, Connie heard voices and had depressive crying episodes about impossible situations she hallucinated. This was far from the simple episode of confusion I would have expected. Every doctor who evaluated her believed she was seriously psychotically mentally ill. (Office picture, hospital records.)

Why does a mental break happen?