Chess and Mental Illness

Mental illness and chess...

I'm struggling with mental illness at a point where I have 5 meds/day to take.

One of them reduce my ability to concentrate, to speak fluently (even if my thoughts can be crystal clear), losing words (not knowing what word to use to describe something even if the idea is clear), memory loss etc.

It is just side effects of one med I can get rid off within 2-3 years if I'm lucky.

Regarding these side effects and non-existent social life. I decided last mid-july to get back at chess and going in a club even if it's just to see some people.

I just want to improve my memory and concentration when decreasing a med, that's all for me. I know my limits when it comes to play for real.

I'll stop there. It pains me and sickens me to think about it. It brings back the image of what I once was and what I could have done (not talking about chess).

I'm just looking a precise function of a chess software for training so I'll surely talk about openings in another post.

Thanks for reading me.

Greetings my Friend:

Please embrace Hope and have faith you will move forward. I found your post very precise and well composed. You are in no doubt an intelligent individual. If I may advise you to review GM Eric Rosen's You tube Commentary on how to create a study in LICHESS and save it in a personal library. I believe this may be ideal for all training needs in addition to creating and developing a solid repertoire. 

I wish you fortitude and perseverance and hope you will overcome this battle. Stay well my friend. 

chess causes me mental illness

It's also possible that people who have a neuromorphological propensity to develop mental disorders start playing chess.

Chess has been shown scientifically to improve cognitive skills. The likelihood that it will increase structural neurological defects is small. It's also been considered as a treatment tool for psychological disorders, because it teaches people to think rationally.

Most of these issues are due to the pressures of socio-cultural conformity.
The chess player is inherently an anomaly in everyday society exactly because he strives to uplift his level of intelligence to one unknown by civilians. Hence he or she needs to resolve the dilemma by making a definite life choice: 1. succumbing to normalcy or 2. going for a higher goal (with the risk that one cannot pay the bills and be a well-greased cog in the network of model citizens).

I think that the clarity of this choice needs to be 100% and there's no way back.

That said, I do think chess players need to work on personality traits like physical confidence/bravado/charisma/conversation skills.

Papers like this may be of help: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32348415/

There is most probably a strong correlation. Most famous exemple is Bobby Fisher, who defeated the Russians during the cold war - which was thought to be impossible- he went mad. 

For sure many people playing chess have mental problems including me, minor or major issues. Chess enables us to concentrate on something we understand, we master, even Beth was suffering illnesses although in the 1950's, not in today's mad world. She was playing on books, not on web sites with error 502 or bugs at all levels. 

Let's wake up and be scientific about this important topic.
It has already been suggested that chess is a positive protective factor against dementia.
Studies are being undertaken at the moment.

Why do you think older citizens puzzle so much? Because it keeps the brain healthy.
It activates a lot more of the neural pathways that we have to use in everyday life, plus the extra synaptic activity can only be good. Especially given that the brain can be understood more or less like a muscle. This is in line with Confabulation theory of neural architecture. So yes, we need to keep flexing our brain, and chess is an excellent way to do so.

However, maybe it can also become too much for the organ. For example, Capablanca's brain basically exploded (ok being non-scientific here) and Morphy also died of a stroke. Something similar happened with Steinitz. I think there's something about chess that makes it addictive and we have to stay clear about when to employ it for developmental rather than ego purposes. 

You're as bat**** crazy in this thread as you are on the Wesley So thread .

Also, it's either Chess 960, or Chess CMLX, mixing arabic numerals with roman numerals is ridiculous.

Chess doesn't cause mental illness.

Though, those with certain disorders may be more prone to engaging in (and obsessing over) repetitive activities, such as chess.

Sure, lets! 

First, your study (Franklin et.al 2019) does show some correlations between chess and cognition as well as brain but mostly it is just the usual, unclear cause and effect if chess->brain or brain->chess. And mastery of chess does rarely shows a greater mastery of unrelated subjects. Same for effect on academic result and studying, where I found that their optimistic view on Sala et. al. studies were a bit funny. Surely they knew that most of those were of a "minimal effect, no real control for placebo, no comparision to alternative methods like other board games or extra teaching, need better study design". Which was their conclusion in 2017(Sala & Gobet, 2017) and similar conclusion about effect of working memory training was made in 2019 by Redick (Redick, 2019).

I do remember we had a study from Karolinska Institute about effect of brain train where they compared some kind of brain app with three different activity: shape rotation, memory-like game and find-next-pattern. Sounded like a gamified IQ-test. And then tested on kids who later had some math test where they needed to arrange numbers or (results of )equations in a lowest to highest maner (sorry, going from memory here). Every game gave some effect but as usual the closer the brain training is to the actual task, the greater the result. So shape rotation was worse and finding pattern was best. They also noted lack of alternatives, like extra teaching instead of games. Which is what we usually get from this type of improvements: chess might get your brain going but a good jog with studying what you actually want to learn is much, much better. ( For people less interesting in pure research papers, this article from business insider is ok too)

Second, just because old people use puzzles doesn't mean that those are good for them or make them better. Better than doing nothing, sure. But I am pretty sure, without any source, that for most type of dementia and negative cognitive aging are better cured by a mix of social and physical while cognitive activities are better to focus specificaly on learning new things (which does lead to some neurogenesis, I think) and all memory training should be as close as possible to the actual task and activities they need to perform. So, learning chess is great while continue playing it and only it instead of new games is "less great". So, in conclusion, learning chess960 might save you from dementia!

PS: oh yeah, I didn't touch on this whole chess and mental health issues because it is just preposterous. If anybody really think that a more complex monopoly or pokemon makes thems brains go cray-cray instead of a mix of obsessive people and high stress, well that's their problem.

You need to ask?  *facepalm*

The one you posted a bunch of crazy stuff in.  That should narrow it down, right?

"So, even if chess can’t cause mental illness in itself, I think it makes more likely to appear."

Correlation doesn't prove causation. There isn't even a proof of correlation between chess and mental illness and even if it existed that doesn't mean playing chess causes mental illness. It doesn't mean that if you teach chess to people they will be more likely to get a mental illness. If correlation was to be proven, that still wouldn't mean you would be better of not playing chess. Why? Because proof of correlation is not a proof of causation.