insanity: the journey or the destination?
 

There are different types of mental illness. Some are treatable chemically, and therefore indicate some defect in the patient's chemical balance. Other types are not 'cureable' in this manner, suggesting that the process of thought itself is defective.

I've wondered about this in the past. Could it be that there is nothing 'wrong' with those folks, but with the perceptions of their friends or families as these people go through some kind of awakening or transition of self? In other words, perhaps these people....lets say scitzos, for example......are manifesting personalities that express long repressed facets of who they truly are.

We are raised in an environment that shows us what kind of person our peers EXPECT US TO BE. Obviously, we are not going to turn out that way if we don't embrace those standards and modify our inate behavior to suit. Perhaps the insane have reached a point where they can no longer reconcile the disparity of their true self and their 'accepted' self. So, a subconcious struggle ensues, and the person starts to exhibit conflicting behaviors, which scare them and those around them. So, they realize that they need to get help, and mistakenly interpret the change in them as defective behavior. They go to a shrink, who perpetuates that feeling ( a shrink is there to fix things, right?) they counsel, or medicate based on the belief that they can 'fix' what's wrong.

maybe they should embrace the change, surrender to it, and see who they become when they come out the other side of it?
.

from this page

which led me here

i have not read them both all the way through, but i saw enough to trigger some of the thoughts i'd had in the past about this.

If we encouraged the kooks to embrace their defects, would they be any worse off than they are struggling against themselves?

Trust me, there is something wrong with these people.

It's not a "sane reaction to a sick society" a la Thomas Szasz or R.D. Laing.

If by embracing their defects you mean "accept that they are mentally ill," it helps ... because if a person is no longer denying their illness, they just MIGHT be a bit more compliant with medications and therapy. But only a bit. Even people who know they are crazy go off their meds. Or sometimes the meds just stop working right.

There are two ways to look at everything. I have an extreme dislike of pharmaceuticals being sued to treat what I feel are mental issues, not diseases, so called 'social anxiety' bullshit, some forms of depression etcetcetc. The way I see it, the increased use of medication to treat those conditions is downright scary, sign up for your soma and get back to work, baaa.

That said, some things like schizophrenia, at least as far as I understood, at least in many cases are the result of certain chemical imbalances in the brain that can be corrected but are to varying degrees something that can't be fixed by working though issues and the like.

I have a fair number of friends that tapdance on the edge of insanity, some are intensely creative, others work 48 hours straight, smoke 4 joints and turn out the next major innovation in computing. Most of the great thinkers in history were a little bit nuts, you have to be fairly out of line to be the first to see things in a way no-one has before. There are entire communities that exist on the fringes, rejecting what most people would term normality, doing their own thing. Most are far happier than the 'straight' people I know. For all Pfizer's talk of surgical accuracy in terms of what their drugs do they sure seem to be better at simply stopping someone feeling anything that getting rid of the daemons in their head. Certainly is cheaper I'm sure.

Hell, from personal experience, I'm a borderline dyslexic (you've all seen my typing, little shock there), I've been reccomended various drugs as well as antidepressants at times. I keep wierd hours, I get obsessive about things yet somehow I know I would mach rather be like this than drugged to the hilt walking round like a goddamn zombie. Hell I'd rather be like this than doing a damn 9-5 for the next 40 odd years.

Can you Say Ativian?

Yes, I can. Can you spell it?

While I agree with you in the general sense, LJ, that the mildly depressive, manic, or otherwise slightly-nuts-but-fully-functioning folks should accept who they are and embrace the creative, productive, meditative, or whatever spurts as they come... the fact remains that severe cases of these diseases are often accompanied with violence. Think outside the box, color-code your M&M's to relax, whatever floats your boat--but if you are harmful to yourself or others, you need to be on meds.

Do I come across like that?

Paxil 15mg daily 5 years and counting

I'm a chronic panic sufferer with a side dish of social anxiety. The former behaviorally conditioned me for the latter; what would YOU do if you started out as a shy person, and then half the time you had dinner in public or went to a movie, you broke out in a cold sweat and palpitations and had to leave?

This has been something that has affected me my whole life. Better at times, worse at times, but nothing I'd wish on my worst enemy. Paxil at 20mg zombified me a little, but once I reached the right dosage for me I experience the full range of emotion, few troubling side-effects and most importantly, I get to feel normal and live a normal life.

15-20 years ago panic was completely misunderstood and widely misdiagnosed. Psych medications are nothing short of a revolution in treating it. I hope everyone who needs this medication gets it.

Well, maybe in some cases the violence is a manifestation of the internal struggle for control?

I realize that there are those that are beyond help at this point, but I wonder whether they are at the end of a losing battle with themselves. now, if voices in their head start telling them to kill ronald reagan, (shut up, radar) then , yeah...ok. I was just thinking that maybe the whole psychoanalysis thing might be just slightly off track from the beginning which can snowball, leaving them well wide of the mark by the time they reach the end of our ability to help......which in fact was not help, but harm in the end.

I know i'm a total layman, and there is no way to prove my hypothesis, but i was hoping that some of you nut wranglers might have seen evidence of this kind of pheno. at work.

this would be the kind of thing i referred to as treatable chemical imbalance, then? I guess I'd take 15 mg of paxil everyday for 5 years and counting.

have you experimented with foregoing the meds? or does it take time to wear off/take effect again if it doesnt go well?

what was the basis for the anxiety? were you afraid of embarrassing yourself by saying something innapropriate, or was it a more general thing?

Serious depression and panic attacks for two years, worked though the causes and they went away.

Why do you think you respond the way you do? What started it? Think about where you have them.

I know a number of people that think about them a very different way. A kind of natural warning system, crowded places, fluro lights jammed with ads, why shouldn't you panic? It's an aggressive atmosphere. To turn to a drug is hardly as effective as sitting down, meditating on what you need and acting to get it.

When you have a pain attack in a natural environment, with friendly people, let me know. We've created environments that aren't good for us, we live in ways that stifle our minds and then we wonder why some crack like a fucking egg. You've been on drugs for long enough it would be hard to say whether you're really in a position to judge what normal emotions are anymore.

Paxil works by detaching you from your own emotions, by dampening natural responses to stimuli, you think a cold sweat is the only thing being suppressed? How would you know. It works the same way as Prozac, blunts most of your frontal lobe, it's not some kind of magical surgical precision, it hits everything.

Do you come across like that? I couldn't tell, I don't know how you've changed.

Look at the kind of questions that they want you to think are a disorder:
I am afraid of people in authority. (ever gone the principal's office?)
I am bothered by blushing in front of people.
Fear of embarassment stops me doing things.
I avoid giving speaches.

I must've missed the point where being human became a disorder.

Paxil can make you physically ill for weeks when you go on/off of it. Not to mention the whole suicide factor.

Just a little anecdote, but I have a friend who has been on serious amounts of several antidepressants among other 'meds' for many, many years. She started seeing an acupuncturist and went off everything. I noticed no change in her at all. I knew about the acupuncturist but did not know about the meds until she told me a few months later.

Certainly not in person. :)
LJ, give it up. You know you're nuts, we know you're nuts, now listen to Jinx and take your meds. :haha:

Omega3 has a very positive impact for a lot of people.
Paxil is particularly nasty on the side effects, most people experience 'zaps', like someing applying electroshock directly tho their brain, often for up to a week.

Getting to the right level was the key. It takes 30-60 days for it to take overall effect, so changes in dosage have to be slow and steady. I got up to 20mg and especially by the third month, noticed all sorts of differences and improvements. After a year or so at that level, I really got weary of its side-effects, and I'd also gained a lot of weight. I backed off to 15 and did great and had none of the side-effects. After a while I went down to 10 and within 4 months had two pretty severe panic reactions. Back to 15 and I've been in pretty good condition and been able to lose much of the weight.

I say my condition is chronic because it has affected me during every part of my life including my childhood. Is there a chance I've got some weird psychological problem lodged in my head somewhere, that a few years of talk therapy might dislodge? Almost certainly!!! But firstly, who doesn't?? And secondly, I watched my ex run through three expensive therapists for ten years and still not be able to sit through an hour with her family. I'm not impressed.

no, i've embraced my internal whackadoo, and just hand him the reins whenever he feels like driving. speaking of which.........he knows where you live...be afraid. be very afraid......!

You guys are funny with your thinking you know what it's all about! Believe me when I say you need to take ALLLLLL your preconceptions and notions about this, and throw them all away.

This would have been a tremendous luxury when I was crying my eyeballs out for hours on end, week after week, after my divorce. And what a terrible thing, to miss the beauty and joy of the world that has come to me from the women I've seen since then (yes J, most especially the latest!). The excitement of the transformation in me. The emotion of the music I'm rehearsing to audition next week. I feel it all.

But it might not have, when I was at the higher dosage. At the higher dosage I felt "compressed", like instead of going from 1 to 10, I was going from 3 to 8. I was very aware of this compression. But the problem is, which is a better choice: the anxious illness or the compression/side effects? I would not take this choice away from any individual. It is their life; it is their choice; and they are fully conscious of their choice at all times.

This is the side effect one would get if one were taking it incorrectly. It's what happens if you go from a high dosage to a low dosage or no dosage at all. You are not supposed to do that. Either you switch to another, similar drug in the family of drugs, or you wean off of it, no faster than losing 5mg per week.

Unfortunately many docs don't understand this in depth, or the patients don't care enough to take the precautions of understanding what they're doing...

whaddya mean, guy(s)?

i was just asking questions. I have no preconceptions, because i have no experience with it.
being ambiguous on purpose? jim or jag?!

shuddup you

i'll take that as "jag"

fucking psycho :)

What if you're doing 2-8? How would you know?
Who doesn't? That's a hard question, I've got plenty of bats in the belfry but I've learnt to manage them so they don't effect how I operate, at least not in a negative way, it's part of being human. In a sense you seem to be to be making a trade off - lose some of the bredth of human experience at both ends of the scale, that's your choice and as long as you're aware of that I guess there's nothing wrong with it.

I do know what it's about, been there and watched plenty of friends do the same to varying degrees, some far worse than me, I've seen what the drugs do and how they work and as far as I'm concerned it's soma.

It is literally impossible for you not to know. You are, in fact, the only one who CAN truly know.

well i'll give you that

I think there comes a point when most intelligent people look at the society around them and decide that insanity may in fact be an appropriate response. However, mental illness is not about appropriate responses.

I have a friend who comes from a large family of two girls and ten boys, five of the boys whom became schizophrenic in their late teens to early twenties. This to me seems to be a classic example of a defective gene controlling brain chemistry - most likely sex-linked recessive like the one for hemophilia since his two sisters were untouched by the disease.

Of my friend's brothers, the one who is doing best has done just as Wolf said, accepted that he has the disease and sticks with his meds. The brother who refuses to accept his illness and constantly goes off his meds is the one who spends the most time down at the state hospital. My friend who was untouched by the disease needs no meds and is about as normal as a person can be who has experienced such a great family tragedy. If ever there was a case of gentics in action, I think that family would serve as a textbook example.

In my own case, I have suffered from depression all my life and I believe it to be endogenous (or genetic). My father had difficulty with depression as did his mother - my grandmother. I had been able to compensate for my depression with first the tri-cyclics and then the new serotinin re-uptake inhibiters. When I was subjected to the CO poisoning episode, however, my meds stopped working (big surprise!) and now the doctors tell me that in addition to my other difficulties, I exhibit all the symptoms of someone with PTSD (post traumatic STRESS disorder - not slave!). Apparently some primitive part of the brain which acts as a sort of thermostat for emotions can become damaged by loss of O2 supply as occurs in things like CO poisoning. I'm going thru a lot of testing right now as the docs try to figure things out.

I do my best to keep an upbeat attitude, take my prescribed meds and follow my doctors' advice. I think attitude is an important as anything. One has to acknowledge the problem, but refuse to accept defeat by it.

Good luck with the testing process. ;) :thumpsup:

While I do not have anything close to clinical depression or any kind of disorder, having kidney failure does take a toll on patient mentally and emotionally. I have a section on my board that deals with this specifically:

http://dialyze.org/forums/viewforum....680eb6ffe9d271

I am thankful that I didn't need to take antidepressants to deal with kidney failure (since I'm on enough drugs as it is), but for some patients, it may be necessary. It's hard to just say, "Hey, work it out", or "just deal with it" (as my therapist said in so many words...actually he said, "Sometimes, you just gotta suck it up!" Easy to say when you are not experiencing it. Needless to say, I didn't care for his tone or attitude when he said that). Heh, I wanted to tell him, "Hey asshole, suck this!" :mad:

At any rate, different things work for different people. It could be drugs, alternative medicine, support groups, etc. Gotta find what's right for you and go with that.

Thanks, Lady Syc! Your therapist sounds like an ass. :mad2: I hope you replaced him (or her)!

LOL, well not replaced (not yet at least), but definitely no longer seeing. I couldn't understand why he went that route on the last day. He even had the nerve to sound angry when I called him a week or so before the appt. to tell him that that would be the last one. :confused:

He asked me to keep in touch...thanks but no thanks. :p I've pretty much said all I have to say to him. :rolleyes:

Put any given person in front of a therapist, and they'll come up with a reason why that person needs frequent therapy sessions with them indefinitely. I once asked a friend of mine's therapist to name someone who DIDN'T need therapy, and she waffled her way around the question. When I kept pressing her on it, she suggested that perhaps I was protesting too much and I needed to explore my aversion issues with therapy.

I mean shit, it's like they make MONEY by diagnosing people as needing therapy... oh wait. :rolleyes:

i think all therapists should trade their cars in immediately

If you're nasty enough to deal with :rar: :flipbird: or have poor enough personal hygiene :whofart: :vomitblu: , there's some incentive to pronounce you cured (or incorrigable) and in no need of further therapy.

Don't forget the part where if your insurance runs out you suddenly acquire brand new coping skills over night. If you want to be crazy these days, you better have some bucks or else resign yourself to a life of sanity. :blunt:

I'm not able to turn away the folks with the poor personal hygiene.

In fact, just this evening, I advised the incoming shift to "break out the Air King."

And we do find people not in need of treatment. Yes, It really does happen. In the real world, therapists with weekly clients do even sometimes reach a point where they are able to end treatment, and not just because the insurance company won't pony up the bucks for treatment. I'm not saying that anyone actually gets "cured" but they do get "better able to handle things on their own."

These, however, are not the folks I typically end up dealing with.

There is more than one way, Mari, to get treatment covered.

Many of the folks I see are uninsured, or just have medical assistance. We apply for MA for patients who don't have any coverage, and if that falls through we apply to the county. If an insurance company refuses to admit someone we feel needs admitting, we tell them we'll appeal and admit the client anyway. We also don't discharge at the behest of the insurer. They aren't treating the client. We are.

We eat about $1 Million a year in unpaid services.

We also don't bill line item for things that most hospitals do ... like medications (yes, even the really expensive ones), meals, linens, physician and psychologist sessions, medical care, dressings, popsicle sticks for activities projects, etc. Our posted day rate is around $1,000.

marichiko wrote:
Damn I kinda feel guilty...my Medicare and Medicaid took care of my therapy visits. But yeah, I have to agree with you because if they didn't cover it, I certainly would not have gone.

wolf stated:
Precisely. That's basically what happened to me. I had just reached a point where his services were no longer needed.

Your facility sounds more humane than many, and if you are in the Philly area you also have the good fortune to reside in a state and a county that are somewhat more generous about funding services for the working poor/uninsured, etc. Colorado is not only an extremely conservative state (it really is, Wolf, influx of yuppies to Vail and Aspen have hardly made a dent in the political scene here), but once outside the metro Denver area, the various counties lack the population and/or the desire to fund medical services for lower income people. I, personally, have seen some tragic cases as a result. :(

Nobody eats anything anymore, it has to come from somewhere.

The bottom line is usually the tax payer in some way or another.

No, I really mean EAT. That's totally unfunded care, the leftovers after we do medical assistance apps and apply to the County for funding. Charity cases, if you will, although we don't call them that.

I'm in a private hospital, not a county or state agency, which is what you may be confused about. Some days we're just a little more not-for-profit than others.

Something that makes me wonder about is where they get the money to eat though. You can't just pull medication out of your ass for these people. It has to come from somewhere.

Of course there is credit and state/federal loans...

[quote=jaguar]Serious depression and panic attacks for two years, worked though the causes and they went away.


When you have a pain attack in a natural environment, with friendly people, let me know. We've created environments that aren't good for us, we live in ways that stifle our minds and then we wonder why some crack like a fucking egg. You've been on drugs for long enough it would be hard to say whether you're really in a position to judge what normal emotions are anymore.[QUOTE=jaguar


Jaguar--I suspect you are a relative youngster? I used to feel that way, too-while in my early 20's, mid-thirties. I felt that most people who went the "depression/anxiety" way were mentally lazy or just defective. I had pulled myself up out of the Abyss-why couldn't they? I now have my comeuppance! It seems to just get harder the older one becomes and whether that is due to the brain chemistry changing even MORE or different expectations, I don't know. I have panic attacks when I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING! No fluoro lights, stress, crowds-just me and myself. Why should I freak out upon wakening? Unfortunately, I cannot take benzodiazepam's (Ativan, Xanax) so I suffer. There are some meds that help and I wouldn't want to think of where I'd be without them. They don't blunt my emotions-they keep me from sticking an axe in my head.

Well, you're probably half right but I go the feeling your begin here was to do with the fact you were deeply dissatisfied and unhappy with your situation, that might be the other half. Hypotheticals are the bane of rational argument but do you think you'd be in the same situation if you were in a happier, more fulfilled situation?

Maybe it would be a bit better if I were in a more satisfying job, but I was diagnosed at age 13--so, it's sorta there.

I am doing some things for myself, though. I am going to (gasp!) waitress and go back to school. You'll think this is a hoot but I want to be an (ahem) English Lit. teacher! Nurisng couldn't be further away from where my passion and talent live. I know it's supposed to be wonderful, soul-nourishng work, but after 10 years as a nurse (and 8 as an Xray tech) I am so sick of sick people I could (and sometimes do) cry. I just can't seem to build that necessary firewall anymore, y'know? I was getting supremely affected by my environnment and my patients. No perspective, ya know? I would come home and cry or sit in anxiety-ridden panic; not eating, not sleeping--just freaking. The meds are an enormous help. It has to be chemistry.

Brianna, did go into nursing because you weren’t aware of any professions that would encompass the things you really enjoyed?
Those of us that grew up before internet/400 TV channels, were pretty much at the mercy of guidance counselors , unless we were privy to specialized publications or knew somebody that knew somebody.
Also pressure from family and scholarship providers, to pick a profession they felt was socially acceptable and/or lucrative enough to support ourselves and repay loans. :yelsick:

Yes, pressure from family. My father would pay for school but only if he got to choose the field. Being breathtakingly lazy as a teenager instead of researching my options for grants, loans, etc. I just went with it. He really did not so much pay for my education as invest in his own future--he's got three care-takers in the family and he is counting on us in his old age! Sound cynical, bitchy? It's the truth. Yes, I didn't have to take his handout (see: lazy) but I am paying for it now.