Posted by ramsea on October 5, 2005, at 8:07:46
In reply to Re: A lot of wisdom in this post, posted by grammy on October 4, 2005, at 23:31:10
I've become used to the way that all of us, myself included, have a tendency to generalize too widely from our own experience. Because I was misdiagnosed and almost fatally overmedicated as a teenager some 30 years ago in a breakdown crisis, I refused medical help for years. I self-medicated. My bipolar ruined a lot of things for me and nearly killed me and through negligence possibly others.
I ended up in self-help groups and 12-step groups and found a deluge of people advocating all sorts of all-cures, from their brand of counseling, or religion, or diet, or ideas about all-sorts.
So much black and white thinking, and overgeneralizing and presumptuousness. I used to be very anti-psychiatric medication, and could only see "addicts" everywhere I looked.
That's until I ended up being a mental health worker and saw first hand how some chronic severely mentally ill people could live independent, rewarding lives but only with a lot of human encouragement, social support--and their meds.
Take away those meds, and the other aspects just didn't do enough, they lapsed into overexcitement and confusion--and got sectioned and even arrested.
There are many causes of mental distress, the trick is working out if one has got past needing a med or will need medical support for life--most likely. But even there, I've seen some chronic "schizophrenics" recover and not need meds.
Each person's experience is unique, and I try not to think too strongly and linearly from my own viewpoint. I despise what Prozac did to me, for example, but would never dream (anymore) of trashing it or other anti-deps out of hand. Or benzos, or anything. The sky's the limit and I might be wrong about what will/will not be "just the thing" for some one. And that includes out of hand advocating that people on psych meds stop taking them.
I'm not a doctor or a mindreader, and even if I were, I think it would be inappropriate and possibly very dangerous to tell people I am not treating as a patient that they're current doctor is hurting them.
A good friend of mine had a clinical psychologist tell him this (after over 30 years on his lithium and anti-psychotic) and he followed this advice. The result was quite catastrophic, and this psychologist (who had only seen him a few times and was not working in collaboration with the psychiatrist and medical team) lost their job.
One question to ask, perhaps, is--when someone gives us advice like this, are they legally responsible for our possible bad reaction to the withdrawl? Or any in-hospital treatment we may require if our symptoms bring us to crisis again? Will they be helping us to pay for and get other forms of therapy and support? Do they know our medical history in-depth? Could they be just platforming their own theories at the expense of our own stability? Yeah, I have asked questions like this and found most would-be advisors/ other people controllers don't qualify to interfere in my fragile health. sorry to write so much, ramsea
poster:ramsea
thread:562069
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20051003/msgs/563116.html