Some more thoughts in the wake of Sean Blackwell's video and his latest blog entry.
Make sure to read the "Introduction to my new book..." at Sean's blog, where he takes on Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind. Those of you who've been to read Chauncey's analysis of Jill Bolte Taylor's TED Talk, also will have found him praise Kay Redfield Jamison whom he contrasts to Jill Bolte Taylor - in regard to style.
When it comes to contents, both are pretty much the same: both talk about crises being biological illnesses, brain diseases, that are incurable, chronic illnesses, and that need lifelong "medication" in order to be kept under control.
If you've been around this blog only for a moment, you'll know that I strongly disagree with this point of view as there's no evidence so far for crises to be biological illnesses, and as I see that this mainstream-viewpoint actually has stripped and still does strip "countless people of hope for a truly better life, medication free", as Sean writes. Indeed, I find it morally irresponsible by the mental health system to, continuously, make a claim like that, into the bargain often in a way that suggests it were a proven fact rather than a mere hypothesis, a mere theory, and I wish there were more professionals like Ron Unger who'd dare to speak up and challenge the system concerning this matter.
Sadly, I haven't encountered as much as one single professional, psychiatrist, psychologist, or any other, here in Denmark yet, who has shown to be as courageous as Ron (and a number of other professionals abroad). Not even the "brilliant (though not perfect...) guidance". Let me know if you have. I'll be happy to do a piece on him/her!
Now, I can't blame Chauncey for his praise of Kay Redfield Jamison as he, as far as I know, has no personal experience of "madness", his opinion on the matter (whatever it is) thus of course being a result of the information that is immediately available to the public. Which is the mainstream information, stating that extreme states of mind are due to brain diseases. Thus Kay Redfield Jamison's book An Unquiet Mind is published by Macmillan, Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight by the Viking Penguin Group, and both can easily be found at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, while Sean Blackwell's book A Quiet Mind is published by and can only be purchased through Chipmunkapublishing, a small though significant, British underground publisher, specialized in books about mental health and well being.
Well, and although I do not at all agree in neither Jill Bolte Taylor's nor Kay Redfield Jamison's conception of crises to be biological diseases, I nevertheless widely agree to Chauncey's criticism of Jill Bolte Taylor's TED Talk. At least as far as style is concerned.
In regard to contents, I will certainly read Sean's book. I'm actually looking very much forward to it. While I think, I will spare me the doubtful pleasure of reading Kay Redfield Jamison's book. I've read several books of that kind, and the reading always left me with extremely unpleasant feelings of despair and powerlessness.
As for Sean's call for people to share about their experiences with extreme states of mind, I find it just as important as he does, in order to reduce the public's ignorance and fear of these states, that unfortunately only has been increased by the mainstream conception of these states to be caused by biological illness, thus being nothing but meaningless and unpredictable (and thus dangerous) "madness" (that would have to be fought and suppressed at any price). Although I also find it quite challenging to share such a deeply personal experience publicly, I have considered doing so for a while, and will share at least some of it in time to come.
Showing posts with label quality of life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quality of life. Show all posts
Thursday, 26 June 2008
Saturday, 26 April 2008
Psychiatric drug withdrawal - a warning
I remember my therapist say that, oh no, she hadn't experienced people being really troubled by withdrawal symptoms when tapering off of psychiatric drugs. I'd mentioned how difficult coming off actually can be, especially naming the antidepressant Effexor, that usually causes by far the worst withdrawal symptoms among antidepressant drugs.
Now, unfortunately, it isn't only that coming off can be difficult. It can very well also be dangerous, seriously damaging your physical health, as the example of Gianna Kali shows.
Gianna, who, because of the damage coming off did to her physical health, has decided to take a break from posting on her blog, has posted a WARNING in regard to coming off as the last post on her blog, at least for a while - I, and I guess everybody else who reads this too, hope, that you'll be back in better health some day, Gianna! - and I strongly recommend it to everybody who considers coming off their drugs. Just as I recommend it to mental health professionals, my therapist very much included!
Some thoughts in context with this: It baffles me, time and again, to see the discrepancy between what professionals are fond of calling "quality of life", and what I witness psychiatric drugs, taking them as well as tapering off of them, are doing to people's actual quality of life. I somehow suspect, that which they're really talking about is not the quality of life of the individual in crisis, but that of everyone around the person concerned.
As I imagine it has been and is the case for many of you, me too, I had to put up with persistent yatter about these drugs being able to enhance my quality of life - the guidance was brilliant, yes, not perfect! Luckily, I was bloody-minded, or resilient (or just "poison-paranoid"??), enough to turn the "offer" down, just as persistently. And luckily, my refusal was respected in the end. One of the things I today am most grateful to my therapist for. Indeed, I think, if I back then had known what I know today about psych drugs, I might very well have left her office at the first mentioning of "something", never going back. My decision then was a purely intuitive one: Always trust your intuition! And, as Gianna calls on in her post, the signals your body sends you.
However, what really both saddens and maddens me is to see all too many (not so bloody-minded, resilient) people get their health, and by this their quality of life, destroyed by the drugs. Sometimes permanently. Sometimes, and all too often, with death as a consequence. Did Mikkel die from drinking, or from diabetes? No, sorry. Mikkel died from taking Zyprexa. Does Sidse have to live with increasing obesity and deteriorating general health, AND the obvious deterioration of her quality of life these cause, because her "mental illnesses" (they can't even agree, so she's labelled both this and that, and the third in addition, and, sure, stuffed with the respective drugs!) is more serious than the loss of quality of life (and, maybe in future, which is worse)? Is it all right, as the NHS of Denmark concluded, that Luise died after she'd been forcibly injected with a drug (one out of nine! psych drugs she was on at the same time) she couldn't tolerate, the staff being pretty much aware of this? Again and again, Luise had stated, that she felt the drugs were killing her. No one listened, other than in order to label her "poison paranoid", too. While the "expert" who actually killed her, in the meantime became employed in a leading position at the Patients' Complaint Board, assessing the validity of complaints very much the same as that, Luise's mother filed against him/her. Can which Gianna is going through be justified in any way?? Sorry, but the answer is NO! No conception of "quality of life" can ever justify any of this.
The people who prescribe these drugs claim to be medical doctors and to practise which they themselves are fond of calling "medical art". I'd say, real medical art is being able to see when people's quality of life is deteriorating or being destroyed because of health issues, and to do everything possible to re-establish the quality of life, the health, respectively to prevent the destruction from taking place. In my opinion, everything else is to be called ignorance, quackery - or cynicism.
"Which gives me a hard time isn't that much what has been anymore. It's what is, what I see is going on in this world, here and now", I stated at my last therapy session in December last year. I was speaking in general. But this statement certainly also, and not least!, applies to what I see is going on inside the mental illness system.
Which in addition gives me a hard time is the persistent reluctancy to really openly deal with these issues in society. While I find it especially frustrating to witness this reluctancy in context with certain "insider"-media. Partly, this is responsible for my anger toward this certain media, that some of you maybe have observed finding expression in some of my recent posts.
Oh and, by the way, Gianna did taper off of her drugs under the surveillance and with the guidance of an "expert", practising "medical art", yah. She did not try to do it on her own, as you immediately might think, regarded the outcome.
Now, unfortunately, it isn't only that coming off can be difficult. It can very well also be dangerous, seriously damaging your physical health, as the example of Gianna Kali shows.
Gianna, who, because of the damage coming off did to her physical health, has decided to take a break from posting on her blog, has posted a WARNING in regard to coming off as the last post on her blog, at least for a while - I, and I guess everybody else who reads this too, hope, that you'll be back in better health some day, Gianna! - and I strongly recommend it to everybody who considers coming off their drugs. Just as I recommend it to mental health professionals, my therapist very much included!
Some thoughts in context with this: It baffles me, time and again, to see the discrepancy between what professionals are fond of calling "quality of life", and what I witness psychiatric drugs, taking them as well as tapering off of them, are doing to people's actual quality of life. I somehow suspect, that which they're really talking about is not the quality of life of the individual in crisis, but that of everyone around the person concerned.
As I imagine it has been and is the case for many of you, me too, I had to put up with persistent yatter about these drugs being able to enhance my quality of life - the guidance was brilliant, yes, not perfect! Luckily, I was bloody-minded, or resilient (or just "poison-paranoid"??), enough to turn the "offer" down, just as persistently. And luckily, my refusal was respected in the end. One of the things I today am most grateful to my therapist for. Indeed, I think, if I back then had known what I know today about psych drugs, I might very well have left her office at the first mentioning of "something", never going back. My decision then was a purely intuitive one: Always trust your intuition! And, as Gianna calls on in her post, the signals your body sends you.
However, what really both saddens and maddens me is to see all too many (not so bloody-minded, resilient) people get their health, and by this their quality of life, destroyed by the drugs. Sometimes permanently. Sometimes, and all too often, with death as a consequence. Did Mikkel die from drinking, or from diabetes? No, sorry. Mikkel died from taking Zyprexa. Does Sidse have to live with increasing obesity and deteriorating general health, AND the obvious deterioration of her quality of life these cause, because her "mental illnesses" (they can't even agree, so she's labelled both this and that, and the third in addition, and, sure, stuffed with the respective drugs!) is more serious than the loss of quality of life (and, maybe in future, which is worse)? Is it all right, as the NHS of Denmark concluded, that Luise died after she'd been forcibly injected with a drug (one out of nine! psych drugs she was on at the same time) she couldn't tolerate, the staff being pretty much aware of this? Again and again, Luise had stated, that she felt the drugs were killing her. No one listened, other than in order to label her "poison paranoid", too. While the "expert" who actually killed her, in the meantime became employed in a leading position at the Patients' Complaint Board, assessing the validity of complaints very much the same as that, Luise's mother filed against him/her. Can which Gianna is going through be justified in any way?? Sorry, but the answer is NO! No conception of "quality of life" can ever justify any of this.
The people who prescribe these drugs claim to be medical doctors and to practise which they themselves are fond of calling "medical art". I'd say, real medical art is being able to see when people's quality of life is deteriorating or being destroyed because of health issues, and to do everything possible to re-establish the quality of life, the health, respectively to prevent the destruction from taking place. In my opinion, everything else is to be called ignorance, quackery - or cynicism.
"Which gives me a hard time isn't that much what has been anymore. It's what is, what I see is going on in this world, here and now", I stated at my last therapy session in December last year. I was speaking in general. But this statement certainly also, and not least!, applies to what I see is going on inside the mental illness system.
Which in addition gives me a hard time is the persistent reluctancy to really openly deal with these issues in society. While I find it especially frustrating to witness this reluctancy in context with certain "insider"-media. Partly, this is responsible for my anger toward this certain media, that some of you maybe have observed finding expression in some of my recent posts.
Oh and, by the way, Gianna did taper off of her drugs under the surveillance and with the guidance of an "expert", practising "medical art", yah. She did not try to do it on her own, as you immediately might think, regarded the outcome.
Monday, 10 December 2007
Denmark beats the US!
Yes, indeed, this is right! We're not at all as behind as I'd feared. We actually took the lead among the OECD member countries concerning the growth of antidepressant consumption from 2000 to 2005. And the trend looks promising: The sale of these pills keeps on skyrocketing.
Inga Marie Lunde thinks, this is a paradox: "Never before there have been more people employed, never before we've had more welfare, never before we've had better times, economically..." Yah, economically, Inga Marie, ECONOMICALLY. But this economy has its price, when it comes to the human aspect. Thus, the exploding demand for antidepressants maybe isn't that paradoxical, anyway. In addition, it seems that the box of Zoloft or Cymbalta in the purse is becoming something of a status symbol: "Look, me too, I'm doing that great economically, that I need an antidepressant!" So, you want to impress your neighbours and friends? Out with the pills and the toothpaste smile! You're not "depressed"? No problem, it's much easier than you might believe: Think about something saddening, that all your friends, everybody but you yourself, already a long time ago supplemented their designer-sofa and -kitchen with the pharmaceutical industry's designer-happiness, e.g., and mention some trouble sleeping, that you feel tired and maybe some loss of appetite, next time you see your GP. (S)He'll hurry and write a prescription. But check up on him/her, first. If (s)he's a member of the "Læger uden sponsor" (Doctors without sponsor)-network, initiated by Inga Marie Lunde, you'll may have to switch to another GP in order to get your hands on these hip and trendy pills.
By the way, in another article on the matter farmacologist Claus Møldrup explains the explosive sale of antidepressants contemplating that the Danes maybe just have been "insufficiently treated" when it comes to "depression". Well, if that is so, it was about time that we made up for lost ground, I'd say!
Inga Marie Lunde thinks, this is a paradox: "Never before there have been more people employed, never before we've had more welfare, never before we've had better times, economically..." Yah, economically, Inga Marie, ECONOMICALLY. But this economy has its price, when it comes to the human aspect. Thus, the exploding demand for antidepressants maybe isn't that paradoxical, anyway. In addition, it seems that the box of Zoloft or Cymbalta in the purse is becoming something of a status symbol: "Look, me too, I'm doing that great economically, that I need an antidepressant!" So, you want to impress your neighbours and friends? Out with the pills and the toothpaste smile! You're not "depressed"? No problem, it's much easier than you might believe: Think about something saddening, that all your friends, everybody but you yourself, already a long time ago supplemented their designer-sofa and -kitchen with the pharmaceutical industry's designer-happiness, e.g., and mention some trouble sleeping, that you feel tired and maybe some loss of appetite, next time you see your GP. (S)He'll hurry and write a prescription. But check up on him/her, first. If (s)he's a member of the "Læger uden sponsor" (Doctors without sponsor)-network, initiated by Inga Marie Lunde, you'll may have to switch to another GP in order to get your hands on these hip and trendy pills.
By the way, in another article on the matter farmacologist Claus Møldrup explains the explosive sale of antidepressants contemplating that the Danes maybe just have been "insufficiently treated" when it comes to "depression". Well, if that is so, it was about time that we made up for lost ground, I'd say!
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