Non professional looking for answers???

When I worked for a mental health rehabilitation facilty (FH) in northern new jersey and interacted with thousands of mental health clients in the area on my own time? I came across a very interesting phenomenon with some clients that had me wondering? What if -You- told mental health professionals that you wanted to be so drugged up (Zombie) with antipsychotic and or antidepressants drugs etc., so that you felt no pain or voices or anything for that matter? The reason I am asking is that on occasion when we had a client that was over medicated (Zombie) effect sometimes I could get through to them and more than once they told me that they were blissfully coasting along with no pain or suffering or no thoughts of hurting people or thoughts of suicide etc.? My question is has anybody tried this method of treatment and what is your opinion???

my opinion of over medicating a client.. thats the same as overdosing and has the potential to kill them.. here overdosing a client is not allowed. our staff psychiatrists have strict state rules for how much they can dispense and over dosing is not something thats allowed. they have to start at the minimum dosage and cannot go beyond the highest recommended dosage stated in the Physicians desk reference and on the medication information inserts that come with medications.

I spent time as a Zombie. I regret the years of my life that I lost to it. I think when I was acutely psychotic I needed to be heavily medicated but that the meds should have been lowered after my acute phase was over. Unfortunately, I was kept on the heavy meds maybe because the doctors saw that I responded to the meds and they did not want me to relapse into the psychosis. Anyway you put it, I am no longer a "Zombie." My meds have been adjusted and I am doing very good at the lower doses and some different meds too. So, I'm not in favor of the Zombie effect unless a person is in a crisis and then for a short period only.

Two questions in reply, most states must be close to the same criteria in regulations? How come in new jersey I saw and interacted with about 5 to 10% of the mental health population that were in a zombie state at any given time? My real question of interest, if you can overcome the dangers of over medication are the potential rewards significant enough to make this idea a useful treatment plan that might satisfy most clients with very serious life threatening mental illness?

If you don't mind I would like to ask you three questions? How long were you under heavy medication (Zombie)? Did you know what was going on around you and do you remember the details? Do you remember if the zombie state lessened the severity of the demons in your head? Thank You!

that is the last way i would want to be-zombie. my meds are to help me function better, not "drug" me!

i'm even curious about the reason for your question.

i am not aware of a serious life threatening mental illness. it seems your first post referenced long term "drugging" of patients. today there are effective drugs out there that provide one's mental capacity to be somewhat alleviated, i.e. paranoid schizophrenics.
am i missing your point?

Let me try to explain myself somewhat, because I worked in a top mental health rehabilitation facility in northern new jersey for years and we had maybe two dozen different types of mental disorders and addictions etc. at any given time? My job as support staff (non professional) gave me tremendous insight into the pain and suffering of clients everyday lives? Because I enjoyed doing Kindness and Empathy for the clients on their level they responded by showing me real trust that opened my eyes to their world of everyday pain and suffering and experimentation and false hope etc.? The reality of their world was night and day different then the world of the mental health industry? To test these ideas I went out and volunteered to work among the homeless and the military veterans and addicted etc. and found their reality was a hundred times worse then the mental health bureaucrats etc. gave their never ending false hope of recovery to these human beings who generally committed some form of suicide to end their man made pain and suffering and false hope?
So if you have found a way to control your mental illness, God bless you and good luck? The vast majority of human beings with mental illness are praying for some kind of help that is not comming from the mental health professionals? Maybe I can help them by finding an answer that will not cause all the pain and suffering and experimentation and false hope that the mental health industry causes the vast majority of people with mental illness?

Lots of question marks in there -- are they intentional?

-Yes- I like for people to multitask!!!

yes the USA have uniform laws around how a professional must treat a client. how come you had that experience because each person has their own metabolic rate, medication tolerance and all that.

it would be so much easier for professionals to prescribe one rote dosage if the world was made up of people that all had the same weight, height, chemical make up, system of symptoms and all

but thats not how the world is. it sometimes takes time and many meds, many adjustments to the meds before a client has their appropriate medication and dosage.

professionals also need the input of the clients. if a client goes into their doctors saying yes this meds working great, no no side effects at all theres not much the professional can do because all indications from the client says hes not overdosed his symptoms are alleviated and hes not complaining about zombee effect or other over dosage symptoms.

just this last medication combo that Im on it took my doctors and I about 6 months of trying this one and that one and making minute adjustments to find my correct medications and dosage levels so that I would not be over medicated.

so are you trying to do research on all of us? trying to see how we will react you all these question marks?

LOL me Im used to ignoring punctuation marks. on line most times punctuation marks are a sign of things like swearing, a way to show emotions and hitting the wrong key when using a cell phone instead of a full sized keyboard.

I always weed past the punctuations and look for the actual worded question. lots of people I know use cell phone texting on line where comma's question marks and exclamation marks take the place of periods when they are not asking a question.

I was overmedicated for a good while. And I "only" have Bipolar II. Yet, my pdoc had me on more than one antidepressant, an anti-anxiety drug, a mood stabilizer, and a couple of anti-psychotics. I didn't know enough to protest. My memory went out the window and I had to give up teaching. I would get lost trying to get to a place I had been to a number of times before, and so on. Only when I began to complain about some extrapyramidal symptoms such as facial tremor did my pdoc admit that I was overmedicated. He started yanking me off meds right and left. My memory has never totally come back.....

My point was that we usually think about people with schizophrenia being turned into zombies due to overmedication, but even folks with other disorders can get overmedicated. I was definitely at least a minor zombie. And it was not necessary.

Okay, back to the subject at hand......I gave my personal experience that I certainly have seen no benefit to being overmedicated, at least as someone with Bipolar II. A professional has given her experience as a therapist and someone who knows about the regulations. What do other folks think? (The teacher is coming out in me. I'd hate for this discussion to be cut short.)

Medicating to a zombie state gives me flashbacks to "One flew over the coo coo's nest". While I have my doubts, I pray that the mental health system has progressed beyond that kind of inhumane treatment. Zombies cannot be a participating member of their treatment team and IMO that is unacceptable.
My son was over medicated when I adopted him and was an animal. He spent three years in special ed kindergarten drooling from meds and barely learning the alphabet and his numbers. In two years off meds he is now working at grade level (5th), enjoying typical cohort activities and is on track to be a contributing member of society. Yes, this means he now understands and has to grieve the loss of his birth family as well as the ramifications of living with autism. It also means he laughs when you tickle him, he is proud when he earns an A in school and is able to give and receive love.

What if a person is violent and will harm themselves or others if not medicated? I truly am asking that--not trolling. We learn in school about not using chemical "restraints", which means medicine to control a person's behavior. (Instead of hand-cuffs or ties, etc.) Is it OK to over-medicate people so they won't harm others? If not, what do you do? I am working now with a population of DD clients and some of them also have MH issues and get violent. But sheesh, we just can't drug them into a stupor to get them to "behave." But then they get kicked out of their homes if they get violent. So they get passed around. Becomes hard to find a place for them to live. It's a difficult subject, that's for sure.

BTW I am also a minimalist with my meds. My Pdoc is wonderful about giving me a range of appropriate dosages and letting me take just what I need to supplement my therapy, coping skills and inner strength. She explains how long it takes for blood levels of a med to rise and fall as well so that I can know when to change and when I can expect to feel a difference. Since switching to this Pdoc I am very well informed about my meds and empowered in my treatment.

I too don't get using a question mark as your primary and often inappropriate form of punctuation. It leaves me believing that there is something more you are trying to get at than what your question states.

I'm a bit embarrassed, because I used to teach English, and I didn't even notice your predilection to end statements with question marks, John. But I don't worry myself with those things on this forum. Maybe it's just a habit of yours. I have certainly heard people speak with rising intonation after most every sentence, such as "I went to the park today? And there were some geese there?" I understand that your purpose was to ultimately ask a question, anyway!

I, too, relate to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." The patients were portrayed as zombies, either due to overmedication or to lobotomies. I have personally observed overly wrought patients being medicated with some sort of drug (Ativan?) to calm them down in a mental facility. One woman was being a pain, and the next day she slept all day. I overheard a nurse joking a bit about how the meds had taken care of that problem. I gather that historically facilities for the elderly have sometimes kept their patients "doped up." I personally agree with drugging someone who is out of control and a danger. That said, however, I would hope that this drugged-out state would not become that person's lifestyle.

I was taught that the purpose of drugs was to get a person calmed down enough so that he/she could benefit from psychotherapy. If someone is "zombified," then he/she might report no pain, or hallucinations, and, indeed, have a big grin on his/her face. But is that really living? Maybe other people who have had this experience will respond on here, if they can even remember what they "felt" during the experience.

I am not a psychiatrist, so I can't speak for them. However, I do think we have become too reliant on psychiatric drugs in our "educated" cultures. I personally have read evidence of schizophrenics who were treated with psychotherapy and "healed." (I know that might raise a few eyebrows.)

John, you have certainly posed an interesting question.

I think your missing something in your analysis. The fact that the patients were in a hospital meant that they were probably getting some form of medication modifications. Finding the right combination takes time. In fact, most psych medications can take up to 8 weeks to work. Not to mention washing out from medications at the same time can also have severe side effects.

I wonder if you ever had a conversation with a psychiatrist about your findings? I'm curious what they had to say.

As an adolescent, I was misdiagnosed and severly over-medicated. There are entire sections of my life that I cannot remember. I believe if I had a proper diagnosis at the time and received the proper medication, they wouldn't have felt the need to medicate me into oblivion.

The risk of suicide absolutely can not be overlooked in a spectrum of mental illness, including depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. In my mind that puts these illnesses squarely within the realm of life threatening.

As the original poster indicated, medication (even over medication) can provide effective, albeit temporary relief from certain mental illness.

For instance, my mother has severe bipolar disorder (she was diagnosed back in the day when they called it manic depression). She would go into the hospital and accept meds just to "take a break" and rest.

As far as the use of chemical restraints are concerned, I personally find their use far superior to the four or five point restraints - especially when the patient can not understand what is happening to them.

Of course, the use of any kind of restraint is subject to abuse by staff and needs close, very very close supervision and judicious application.

For instance, my mother has severe bipolar disorder (she was diagnosed back in the day when they called it manic depression). She would go into the hospital and accept meds just to "take a break" and rest.

I will bite. "Rest" in hospital on chemical restrains... reminds me too much of "soma holiday" from Brave New World. And Brave New World is nothing we shoud emulate.

Such "rest" can cause pernament damage to organism and we should think in long term benefits over temporary ones... especially if there is long term damage in question.

I'm not sure there is any bite here. I think there is a difference between an individual patient's choice and a universal policy that says "we shall drug any and all comers".

I'm afraid that given my perspective on this situation, I can not fault my mother or her doctors for her treatment. It provided a respite from her suffering.