People Can Recover From Mental Illness.

So you're just a patient like anyone else here.

Enough said.

I couldn't agree more, manicnminer. I sometimes think folks dwell too much on the negatives & not enough on life's positives. I know I'll probably take crap for writing this, but please know I have BP issues of my own. Complaining about them doesn't do much good...At least for me.

a patient that does pretty damn good. So maybe she knows some secrets of managing?

This is not community of experts... but you knew that when joining. But we can still have some insights and wisdom. What do you want anyways? Showcase your misery? Accuse of "not being truly bipolar" or "not knowing what suffering is"?

When I wanted to get better I looked to people who had gotten better themselves for some information not to people who were still very ill. I already knew how to be ill. When I saw people here who were doing well I would pm them and figure out what was working for them, they figured something out that worked. As much as we are all unique little snowflakes we are all still the same species, as much as people can be different we all share many many same qualities.

No one on here represents as a professional. It is a peer support group. If you only consider things people say because they are holding a paper with a seal on it....

I am not actually a patient anymore. Not that it really matters.

Like I said you don't have to post on topics if you don't like what is being said. But there is no reason to pick fights.

Mental illness is a coping mechanism
By Laurie Ahern, From the editor

Mental illness is a coping mechanism. We know for sure that victims of horrendous childhood sexual abuse, most often by a family member from whom they can't escape, use such coping mechanisms as dissociation (going away in your mind) when they cannot escape physically from the torture. And further down that continuum is multiple personality and amnesia. These are all ingenious and remarkable ways that children learn to survive situations that are intolerable. And many people-without the label of mental illness-use coping mechanisms to survive the stress of everyday life. We use alcohol, drugs, sex, work, exercise, shopping, smoking, eating, gambling-some to excess and some, just enough to take the edge off-but we do use them. In moderation these coping mechanisms are considered socially acceptable; however, going "manic" or becoming "psychotic" is not.

After three years of listening to people call the 800 line at the National Empowerment Center, I must say I have drawn some very strong conclusions. First and foremost, the one thing that is clear to me is that no one calling the National Empowerment Center comes from the "Beaver Cleaver" family. Be it parents, consumers/survivors, siblings, lovers, spouses, or friends, there is always some trauma involved when the story is told: poverty, death of a parent at an early age, abandonment, divorce, incest, alcoholism, drug addiction, neglect, etc. And then the story continues the same. Some time later on in life, always a stressful time in life-off to college, wrestling with sexuality in the teen years, the birth of a child, the death of a parent, a divorce or broken love relationship-it happens. Mania, psychosis, panic attacks, depression, obsessive-compulsive behavior, agoraphobia-these all of a sudden appear in those who have never known such things. Why? Well think about it logically. Trauma may not cause mental illness, but we all have our breaking points. And I think those of us who are not lucky enough or able to find a socially acceptable way of handling our stress, a way that does not too drastically interfere with our day-to-day lives, may end up becoming manic or going psychotic. What better way to leave behind a reality that is too cumulatively painful than to create one of our own...as in psychosis? What better way to feel like we can accomplish and do anything when we are feeling insecure and overwhelmed than becoming manic...where we can do anything and everything? And what better coping mechanism can we find than to wash our hands fifty times a day when we are feeling so unsafe? And if the world has been a cruel and unforgiving place, where but in the safety of your own bedroom, as in agoraphobia, could there be a safer place to be?

Some would say that mental illness runs in families-that it is genetic. When I was growing up, alcohol was the way in which my Irish Catholic family coped. I watched it all my life. So when I ran into trouble in my early twenties, alcohol was the way in which I self-medicated and tried hard to make the pain go away. My girlfriend down the street grew up in an Italian Catholic family. Food was the drug of choice in her home. Whenever anything emotional happened-a death, a birth, a wedding-food was what was used to stuff the feeling. So when my friend's husband left her with two small babies when she was 18, she started eating and did not stop until she had gained 50 pounds. And the same is true with so-called mental illness. If you grow up with depression, suicide, mania and psychosis as role models for coping mechanisms, the more likely you may use these as ways to cope when the need arises.

More: http://www.power2u.org/articles/trauma/ment_cope.html

Interesting thread! I certainly hold out hope that bipolar disorder can ultimated be "cured." We are told that diet is important in staying well in many places I've read. Plus a decent amount of sleep. Exercise. Keeping stress to a minimum, etc.

I have noted in listening to patients here and in other places that many of them came from dysfunctional families. (Of course, no family is perfect.) Some of the disorders are the patients' way of surviving that life. I believe possibly schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and DID are three of these ways of surviving, for example.

I am taking a minimum of meds right now. And I see a therapist every two weeks, more often if needed. I think therapy should not have been basically discarded for serious mental illnesses when drugs came along. When I was in my psychology classes (years ago), I was taught that drugs were to be used to make patients more amenable to therapy. Now folks are just doped up from the get-go. I agree that these drugs are really meant to be short-term, while other treatment is done.

As I say, I hope more research will be carried out. So far other strategies instead of meds have not worked for some people, but I try to remain hopeful.

I've been following this thread for a while, and just wanted to toss my two cents in.

Pajamas - Honestly, I think you're so frustrated that you feel like people are against you. People are just giving their honest opinions and advice, and for the most part are doing their best to be helpful. It's true that at the end of the day, we can only truly know our own suffering, so to some degree nobody will ever get what you experience except for you, but it doesn't mean there's no merit in their solutions.

People don't have to be professionals to have their own solutions and thoughts on the matter. In many cases, I've seen that it's often those who are not professionals and have limited exposure to professionals who come up with their own ways through their experiences. Furthermore, in some of those cases people did just make it work. Sometimes they HAD to make it work, because getting better was the only choice they had.

At the end of the day, sometimes the best thing you can learn to do is to step back a little bit, and learn to live with the problems at hand instead of trying so hard to fight it. Although it does kind of suck to be in that position in the first place, simply learning to accept and then adapt to what is, can empower you more than you know.

Sorry everyone. I really blasted off here. Called the doc about it.

Sorry about my cr*ppy attitude.

PP

We've all been there, Permanent Pajamas. Take care of yourself.

LIVES RESTORED
Expert on Mental Illness Reveals Her Own Fight

The Power of Rescuing Others: Marsha Linehan, a therapist and researcher at the University of Washington who suffered from borderline personality disorder, recalls the religious experience that transformed her as a young woman.
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: June 23, 2011

HARTFORD — Are you one of us?

The patient wanted to know, and her therapist — Marsha M. Linehan of the University of Washington, creator of a treatment used worldwide for severely suicidal people — had a ready answer. It was the one she always used to cut the question short, whether a patient asked it hopefully, accusingly or knowingly, having glimpsed the macramé of faded burns, cuts and welts on Dr. Linehan’s arms:

“You mean, have I suffered?”

“No, Marsha,” the patient replied, in an encounter last spring. “I mean one of us. Like us. Because if you were, it would give all of us so much hope.”

“That did it,” said Dr. Linehan, 68, who told her story in public for the first time last week before an audience of friends, family and doctors at the Institute of Living, the Hartford clinic where she was first treated for extreme social withdrawal at age 17. “So many people have begged me to come forward, and I just thought — well, I have to do this. I owe it to them. I cannot die a coward.”

No one knows how many people with severe mental illness live what appear to be normal, successful lives, because such people are not in the habit of announcing themselves. They are too busy juggling responsibilities, paying the bills, studying, raising families — all while weathering gusts of dark emotions or delusions that would quickly overwhelm almost anyone else.

Now, an increasing number of them are risking exposure of their secret, saying that the time is right. The nation’s mental health system is a shambles, they say, criminalizing many patients and warehousing some of the most severe in nursing and group homes where they receive care from workers with minimal qualifications.

Moreover, the enduring stigma of mental illness teaches people with such a diagnosis to think of themselves as victims, snuffing out the one thing that can motivate them to find treatment: hope.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/he...anted=all&_r=0

Evolutionary Psychiatry
The hunt for evolutionary solutions to contemporary mental health problems.
by Emily Deans, M.D.

Your Brain On Ketones
How a high-fat diet can help the brain work better
Published on April 18, 2011 by Emily Deans, M.D. in Evolutionary Psychiatry

he modern prescription of high carbohydrate, low fat diets and eating snacks between meals has coincided with an increase in obesity, diabetes, and and increase in the incidence of many mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. In addition, many of these disorders are striking the population at younger ages. While most people would agree that diet has a lot to do with the development of obesity and diabetes, many would disagree that what we eat has much to do with our mental health and outlook. I believe that what we eat has a lot to do with the health of our brains, though of course mental illness (like physical illness) has multifactorial causes, and by no means should we diminish the importance of addressing all the causes in each individual. But let's examine the opposite of the modern high carbohydrate, low fat, constant snacking lifestyle and how that might affect the brain.

The opposite of a low fat, snacking lifestyle would be the lifestyle our ancestors lived for tens of thousands of generations, the lifestyle for which our brains are primarily evolved. It seems reasonable that we would have had extended periods without food, either because there was none available, or we were busy doing something else. Then we would follow that period with a filling meal of gathered plant and animal products, preferentially selecting the fat. During the day we might have eaten a piece of fruit, or greens, or a grub we dug up, but anything filling or high in calories (such as a starchy tuber) would have to be killed, butchered, and/or carefully prepared before eating. Fortunately, we have a terrific system of fuel for periods of fasting or low carbohydrate eating - our body (and brain) can readily shift from burning glucose to burning what are called ketone bodies.

It is true that some parts of some brain cells can only burn glucose, but fortunately our bodies can turn protein into glucose through a process known as gluconeogenesis. This fact means that while there are essential requirements for both fat or protein (meaning we would die without eating at least some fat and at least some protein), we can live quite happily while consuming no carbohydrate at all. That's not saying there aren't some disadvantages or side effects to a so-called "zero carb" diet, but it won't cause the massive health problems and death that consuming zero fat or zero protein would.

All of us who are metabolically healthy will shift into some amount of ketosis, typically overnight while we are sleeping. If your breath is a little funky when you wake up, and your urine smells a bit strong, you may well be in ketosis, which, unless you are a poorly controlled diabetic (a different kind of pathologic ketosis occurs in uncontrolled diabetes), being in ketosis in the morning is a good sign of a healthy metabolism. What does ketosis mean to the brain, and why would it be more healthy, perhaps, than our regular old carbohydrate burning metabolism? And does the high carbohydrate, low fat diet of constant snacking have a cost to our brains by robbing us of more regular and deeper bouts of ketosis?

More: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-brain-ketones

Let's Stop Saying "Mental Illness"!
It is helpful to use other phrases for people who have in the past been described as "mentally ill." This is a living essay, and the author updates it periodically. If you have any feedback or suggestions let the author know c/o the MindFreedom office. [Modified 8/28/12.]


Let's Find Language More Inclusive Than the Phrase "Mentally Ill"!

by David Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International


I simply ask in this essay:

How can we be more inclusive with our language in the mental health field?
How can we show those who have been marginalized by psychiatric labels that we are listening and welcoming?
This essay is not about being "politically correct." What is "correct" changes with the winds and tides and individual.

This is a call to stop the use of the term "mentally ill" or "mental illness" and find replacements!


Here are some suggested alternatives:

Psychiatric survivor
Mental health consumer
User of mental health services
Person labeled with a psychiatric disability
Person labeled with psychosocial disability
Person with a psychosocial disability
Person diagnosed with a mental disorder
Person diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder
Person with a mental health history
Person with mental and emotional challenge(s)
Person with a psychiatric history
Psychiatrically-diagnosed
Person with mental health issues
Consumer/Survivor/eX-inmate (CSX)
Mental health client
Mental health peer
Person who has experienced the mental health system
Person with psychiatric vulnerabilities
Person with lived experience of mental health care
Person who identifies as a survivor of psychiatric atrocities
Psychiatrized
Neurodiverse
Upset
Distressed
In crisis
In despair
In ecstasy
Different
Overwhelmed
Extremely overwhelmed
Person in mental health care who is on the sharp end of the needle
Person experiencing severe and overwhelming mental and emotional problems [describe, such as "despair"]
Person our society considers to have very different and unusual behavior [describe, such as "not sleeping"]
I have a name, not a label! Insert Your Name Here [e.g. Jane Smith]
Person.
Citizen.
Human being! Period!
Etc.? Your creativity is welcome, add to this list!

More: http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/mental...t-mentally-ill

Dr. Thomas Szasz, who was not a fan of the medical model of these disorders, suggested the expression people with "problems in living"! Ain't that the truth!

He is one fella who probably understands my situation.

I Got Better and Recovered From Psychiatric Abuse
Melinda James
Psychiatrists' diagnoses are not always correct. Labeling people as schizophrenic is a serious business, especially if they are not mentally ill, much less schizophrenic.

I was labeled as depressed after breaking up with my first boyfriend when I was 17 years old. I had been diagnosed by blood tests with epstein-barr virus (mono) and was sad about the breakup. Back in 1965, they did not have any treatment for mono, and I was very sleepy and tired. My abusive and controlling mother decided that because I was crying over the breakup with my boyfriend and because I was sleeping so much, and because I had talked back to her on a few occasions, that I must be crazy. She took me to a psychiatrist and I was diagnosed with a depression.

No talk therapy was ever suggested; this doctor was of the drugs and shock school. So I was shocked the entire summer before I left for college. My parents were extremely unhappy and on the verge of a divorce, and after 16 shock treatments during the summer of 1965, I was traumatized by the invasiveness of the procedure, and by the huge amounts of thorazine, stellazine, compazine, and a couple of other drugs I had been ordered to take.

I left for college in Michigan, and saw the psychiatrist there that the Alabama psychiatrist had recommended I see. This fellow said I did not need to be taking the drugs, and also that I certainly did not need shock treatments. I was afraid to see him more than a few times because I thought he might change his mind and decide to shock me, however. I had recurring nightmares about the shock treatments and developed extreme fear of going to sleep because I would wake up screaming, seeing the doctor bending over me (in the dream) with the electrodes.

One treatment during that first summer had gone awry and I had not had enough anaesthesia, but I was paralyzed by the muscle paralyzing drug they give you to keep you from breaking bones during the seizure and had no way to tell them I was still conscious -- I could not even blink my eyes. Being shocked that time felt like someone had bashed my head with a hammer.

More: http://igotbetter.org/stories/m-james

Quitting Psychiatric Drugs
Reprinted by permission of the Second Opinion Society
Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada
http://www.walnet.org/llf/drugs/psychdrugs1.html
Note: The information in this article is for information only and is not intended to replace the advice of a healthcare practitioner. Anyone seeking to withdraw from psychiatric drugs should seek such advice.

For more information on psychiatric drugs, see www.drugawareness.org

Introduction
A person may have a variety of reasons for wanting to stop taking psychiatric medication. He or she may want to be free of the dulling effect that most psychiatric drugs cause or of more serious side effects that he or she may be suffering. The person may be worried about the long-term effects of the drugs, including tardive dyskinesia (involuntary muscle movements). Or he may be wanting to make a major change in his life by freeing himself from a dependence on powerful medication.

Whatever the motivation, the person has a right to free himself from using medication. There may well be situations in which others don't agree with a person who wants to stop taking psychiatric medication. They may be scared that doing so will do the person serious harm. But it is the individual's right, and he probably has sound reasons for wanting to stop using the drugs. After all, he is the one who has to live with the consequences of the medication, and he is the only one who knows how the medication really affects him.

You can support him by helping him make informed choices about his options. You can give him information about his medication and its effects. You can also give him information about getting off the drugs, and you can support him in carrying out his choice in a safe way.

That safety may be the most important support that you can provide. Remember, you have little influence over what he does after he leaves the transition house. He may stop his medication cold, without information or support, and put himself in serious danger.

The symptoms of too-rapid withdrawal from psychiatric drugs include extreme nausea, anxiety, insomnia, restlessness, muscular reactions, and strange behaviour. In the case of minor tranquilizers and sedatives, the reactions to sudden withdrawal can be life-threatening. You can support him in struggling with these issues and making an informed choice. But remember that you are dealing with something that is his right. If you pass judgment on his wishes, you won't be helping him find out what is really best for him. And he may simply stop his medication anyway, without the information and support he needs.

Finally, a person who wants to stop taking psychiatric medication should have the support of a sympathetic doctor. By sympathetic we mean a doctor who is willing to accept a person's right to choose his own path and work with him on getting off the medication. This is the best way, to have the active involvement of a doctor who can help plan and monitor a person's withdrawal from psychiatric medication.

Note that many detox centers and drug abuse programs help people to stop taking minor tranquilizers and sedatives, but not neuroleptics and antidepressants.

What follows is an overview of the basics. It will help you or people you work with understand what's involved in the process and how one goes about it.

More: http://www.alternativementalhealth.c...ttingdrugs.htm

I think you may like this site, if you don't know it yet, Christian:

http://www.madinamerica.com/

and

http://theicarusproject.net/

Five Decades of Gene Finding Failures in Psychiatry

Jay Joseph

February 15, 2013

Two generations of molecular genetic researchers have attempted, yet failed, to discover the genes that they believe underlie the major psychiatric disorders. The most recent failure is a molecular genetic study that was unable to find genes for symptoms of depression.1 Like most genetic researchers in psychiatry, the authors failed to consider the possibility that no such genes exist, and instead concluded that much larger samples of at least 50,000 subjects are needed to detect genes. Also like other genetic researchers in psychiatry, they based their search on the belief that previous kinship studies of families, twins, and adoptees have definitively established the genetic basis of the psychiatric disorder in question. This position is promoted by mainstream psychiatry and by supporters of psychiatric genetics, a subfield of psychiatry founded in Germany around 100 years ago and currently centered in the Unites States and Europe. The questionable validity of DSM psychiatric disorders and the “mental illness” concept are important topics, but here I will focus on genetic research using these concepts.

As far back as 1969, genetic researchers in psychiatry performed a molecular genetic study of manic-depression (bipolar disorder) and concluded that they had found proof that the condition was caused by genes: “Affective disorder in which mania occurs is probably linked on the X chromosome… This finding clarifies some aspects of transmission. It also proves a genetic factor in manic-depressive disease.2 Like subsequent gene discovery claims in psychiatry, these results were not replicated by other research teams. As Stephen Faraone and his psychiatric genetic colleagues recognized in 2008, “It is no secret that our field has published thousands of candidate gene association studies but few replicated findings.”3 In a sense, however, these negative results are a “secret” because the media usually tells a much different story to the general public. The public has been misled by sensationalized reporting in the popular press, often in concert with leading researchers, to believe that genes for the major psychiatric disorders have been found.

More: http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/02/...in-psychiatry/

Mailing Lists in English (free of charge): Coming off psychiatric drugs · All other topics

http://www.peter-lehmann-publishing....nglists.htm#co

Dogmatic anti-meds stance can be dangerous
FEBRUARY 24, 2013 BY MONICA CASSANI

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a long time.

People on withdrawal boards sometime “cop” to having taken something to sleep in addition to whatever it is they’re withdrawing from. When they do this they are invariably responded to with a scolding and warnings of gloom and doom. It’s really a rather dangerous and knee-jerk reaction. Insomnia can truly be dangerous and ugly. And controlling others choices on how to take care of themselves is, well, another form of coercion much like we find when we are first told we need drugs. You must take these drugs/You must not take these drugs. Both commands deny choice to the individual.

I believe each and every one of us know what is best for us. Learning to listen to our body is part of healing — the most fundamental part of healing, really. That means listening to yourself over everyone else and it also means learning to trust that others too ultimately know what is best for them. It means NOT forcing your opinion on them when it comes to the care of their own body.

Someone the other day admitted to taking a benzo for sleep on a withdrawal board I visit from time to time. She was not a benzo user but someone coming off other psych meds. She was having a difficult time sleeping. Some people thought this was a very bad idea and let her know that. This is something I’ve seen play out many many times on withdrawal boards. I’m not denying that we need to be careful with any substance we choose to put into our bodies, but I do feel strongly that people have the right to make their own choices. Always. And when people are going through something as difficult, as well as potentially dangerous, as psych drug withdrawal can be they need to be able to speak openly without fear of condemnation with the people they go to for support.

I responded with something like this to the thread — I’ve made a lot of edits for the post and it should be clear the post is now a response to what I’ve witnessed over the years on many boards. It’s not just a response to what happened the other day:

More:http://beyondmeds.com/2013/02/24/dogma-anti-meds/

Undiagnosing myself – (first published Jan 2008)
BY MONICA CASSANI

I was diagnosed twenty-three years ago as Bipolar 1 after becoming psychotically manic after ingesting hallucinogens while premenstrual. I’ve said this many times, but I want to say it now because I’m about to disown my past. Finally and completely. And grab my future.

I became psychotic a number of times and that is because I took hallucinogens a number of times. Each time I took them (only if I was premenstrual) I landed in the psych ward. I got my period the next day in each case. This is drug induced mania. This is PMS on steroids. That’s all. I am not bipolar.

What I was then heavily medicated for were side effects to drugs and personality quirks or more clinically, (god-forbid) mild characterological problems. And if you go by the DSM IV these personality tendencies I had were very mild—I had no full-blown case of a diagnosable disorder, but I was uncomfortable at times and my doctor wanted to help with lots and lots of medication. These are really issues of being human that are pathologized rather than recognized for just how ordinary they are.

Therapy and a good look at my traumatic childhood was not deemed important. I had a serious bio-chemical mood disorder according to them that would never go away and that I would have to take toxic drugs for the rest of my life. Drugs that would possibly shorten my life by 25 years while making me gain 100 lbs and lose many IQ points and make me fatigued and sexless. I lived life without passion for many years. My dysfunctional behavior never addressed. My life with trauma never recognized. I was never once asked if I had ever been abused. I’ve read a number of times that the correlation of childhood abuse and mental illness is extremely high and I can say from personal experience as a social worker with the “severe and persistently mentally ill,” that a good 80% if not more were abused in some fashion. Abuse comes in many shapes and forms and parents need not be blamed in all instances, though there is no doubt that they certainly can be in many cases but this is anathema in advocacy groups since families just don’t want to look at themselves — take NAMI for one example. Sometimes abuse seems benign. That is the hardest to call. Ordinary dysfunction counts and most people just don’t realize that. All families deal with dysfunction. We all inherit by being human. I don’t blame my parents anymore. It doesn’t have to be about hating human frailty. It can involve forgiveness and love and healing.

I also, while manic, experienced Spiritual Emergency. I had always been prone to deeply profound spiritual experiences without drugs. Again, on hallucinogens, those experiences cranked up. But I don’t believe I was crazy. Out of control yes. Out of touch with consensual reality yes. But crazy no. I was in touch with some beauty too. I was in touch with love. From my first post on this blog the story of an experience of love and spirituality:

More: http://beyondmeds.com/undiagnosing-myself/

“Symptoms” and acceptance
MAY 26, 2008 BY MONICA CASSANI

The symptoms I am having as a result of withdrawal are first and foremost physical. I’ve been rendered physically disabled. This is a result of my particular body and history on meds. Not everyone who deals with withdrawal will get physically sick like me.
The psychological symptoms or psychiatric symptoms I deal with are no worse than what I’ve dealt with at various times ON a complete med cocktail and in fact some of my symptoms have improved greatly, like anxiety. And as I refuse to medicate the symptoms away they become easier and easier to deal with because I am forced to accept them. Once I stopped searching for the quick fix in a pill, which ironically led to more pain, I started simply accepting my reality. This makes living with pain much easier and is the first step to healing in my mind. I believe the symptoms I have now are primarily caused by the withdrawal itself.

I suffer at different times with anxiety, irritability, and depression and despair—mania is not in the picture and actually has not been for more than a decade—some bipolar I am. The symptoms I do have are much worse when I’m premenstrual and the despair kicks in from time to time if I’m unable to get out of bed for any length of time. I feel like I’m missing out on life.

I am up now after midnight because I laid down to bed and was struck with anxiety. In the past I would have panicked and popped a Klonopin and been to sleep within an hour. Now I don’t panic! The anxiety is manageable and it still passes within the hour. Panicking as a result of feeling anxious is worse than the anxiety itself. I can’t tell you how I’ve come to this point where I generally don’t panic anymore, except I’ve read a lot about mindfulness and acceptance. And I meditate when I can as well. Really feeling without judgment works wonders and we are usually told instead to ignore our feelings and force ourselves to do things in spite of feeling miserable. I do the opposite. I embrace the feelings, sit with them and truly experience them and they pass much faster. Resisting our strong feelings causes them to worsen. Taking drugs was a way for me to resist my feelings. And then to add insult to injury the meds make me feel worse in a myriad of ways.

More: “Symptoms� and acceptance – Beyond Meds

when things fall apart…
SEPTEMBER 3, 2008 BY MONICA CASSANI

In recent days Gianna’s story took a turn too intense and painful for her to tell. It falls upon me, her husband, to explain what happened.

As regular readers here will already know, for some time now Gianna has been working with an orthomolecular doctor who through a combination of modalities was able to accelerate the process of withdrawal from Risperdal, Lamicatal, and Klonopin.

About three weeks ago Gianna came off Risperdal. That brought to an end 20 years of taking neuroleptics. The horizon of becoming completely psych-med free then seemed to be a matter of months away. But if the process had over the proceeding weeks been accelerated, it soon took on an unprecedented speed.

Under her doctor’s direction, Gianna’s discipline of careful tapering, withdrawing from one drug at a time, suddenly switched to one of giant leaps as in a matter of days — on the understanding that the indications were that her meds had become “toxic” — she cut back and then came off them completely. In the space of two weeks she cut down from 60mg of Lamictal and 3mg of Klonopin, to 20mg Lamictal and 0.5mg Klonopin and then in one step… nothing.

Gianna’s reaction was a mixture of elation and trepidation. How could this happen so fast and upturn virtually everything she thought she had learned over her intense research and the evidence from the reports of others?

It seemed too good to be true but we both watched and waited. In the last days before coming off meds altogether, the doctor’s analysis that a watershed had been crossed and that withdrawal symptoms had been replaced by symptoms of toxicity, seemed to have been borne out by the evidence. Distraught nights and mornings would give way to relief in the afternoon and evening as each round of medication wore off. The most difficult symptoms Gianna was experiencing did indeed correspond with the times when the highest concentrations of meds were in her bloodstream. It logically followed that there would be consistent improvement and healing, the longer she went drug-free.

But then came the sleeplessness. One and then two nights’ sleep lost seemed manageable if two or three hours one night could be followed by four or five the next. But by the forth night, time ran out. Gianna’s need for sleep was urgent. Without sleep, the prospect of mania and even psychosis were looming realities that couldn’t be wished away. The doctor — a loving, kind and extraordinarily responsive woman — didn’t seem to appreciate the risk. She told us the Gianna’s body would learn how to sleep naturally as the healing process progressed. Yet that process was on the point of being violently disrupted! It was like being told that you can expect a full recovery from your disease — just so long as you don’t die from it.

More: when things fall apart… – Beyond Meds

Spiritual aspects of psychosis and recovery
Dr Susan Mitchell

The spiritual dimension cannot be ignored, for it is what makes us human
Victor Frankl (1973)

How do we make sense of spirituality and the psychotic experience? Psychiatrists often struggle to make sense of, and to make progress with, people suffering from psychosis and to support their personal journeys towards recovery. Yet while psychosis is at the heart of psychiatry, psychiatrists have often dismissed or regarded with distrust the spirituality that is valued by many of their patients. In this paper I will explore these issues from three perspectives; the psychiatrist’s understanding of psychosis and spirituality; the role of spirituality in individual’s recovery and the implications for clinical practice - practical spirituality.

What is spirituality?
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
Lao-Tzu (c.604-531 BC)

These opening lines from the Tao Te Ching - the book of the Way - capture the difficulty of defining the ineffable quality of spirituality; yet we do need a definition. Cook (2004), having reviewed a number of ways of defining spirituality, has drawn up the following definition, which expresses its essence.
Spirituality is a distinctive, potentially creative and universal dimension of human experience arising both within the inner subjective awareness of individuals and within communities, social groups and traditions. It may be experienced as relationship with that which is intimately ‘inner’, immanent and personal, within the self and others, and/or as relationship with that which is wholly ‘other’, transcendent and beyond the self. It is experienced as being of fundamental or ultimate importance and is thus concerned with matters of meaning and purpose in life, truth and values.
William James described something similar here in Edinburgh when he gave the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion 1901-02 which were later published as ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’.

More: https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/pdf/Susan%...y%20edited.pdf

The Brain: The Switches That Can Turn Mental Illness On and Off

The difference between one personality and another is not determined by genes alone. Love’s got something to do with it too.

By Carl Zimmer|Wednesday, June 16, 2010

This month’s column is a tale of two rats. One rat got lots of attention from its mother when it was young; she licked its fur many times a day. The other rat had a different experience. Its mother hardly licked its fur at all. The two rats grew up and turned out to be very different. The neglected rat was easily startled by noises. It was reluctant to explore new places. When it experienced stress, it churned out lots of hormones. Meanwhile, the rat that had gotten more attention from its mother was not so easily startled, was more curious, and did not suffer surges of stress hormones.

The same basic tale has repeated itself hundreds of times in a number of labs. The experiences rats had when they were young altered their behavior as adults. We all intuit that this holds true for people, too, if you replace fur-licking with school, television, family troubles, and all the other experiences that children have. But there’s a major puzzle lurking underneath this seemingly obvious fact of life. Our brains develop according to a recipe encoded in our genes. Each of our brain cells contains the same set of genes we were born with and uses those genes to build proteins and other molecules throughout its life. The sequence of DNA in those genes is pretty much fixed. For experiences to produce long-term changes in how we behave, they must be somehow able to reach into our brains and alter how those genes work.

Neuroscientists are now mapping that mechanism. Our experiences don’t actually rewrite the genes in our brains, it seems, but they can do something almost as powerful. Glued to our DNA are thousands of molecules that shut some genes off and allow other genes to be active. Our experiences can physically rearrange the pattern of those switches and, in the process, change the way our brain cells work. This research has a truly exciting implication: It may be possible to rearrange that pattern ourselves and thereby relieve people of psychiatric disorders like severe anxiety and depression. In fact, scientists are already easing those symptoms in mice.

More: The Brain: The Switches That Can Turn Mental Illness On and Off | DiscoverMagazine.com