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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 5 of 5. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by garnet71 on January 29, 2009, at 20:15:03
Bleauberry,
I did not want to hijack another's post, so I moved your message here. What you wrote really touched my heart. I am hoping we can start a new discussion.
What you wrote is shocking. Could you imagine people going to a doctor with symptoms of diabetes, and automatically put on insulin treatment; or another patient with the symptoms edema and shortness of breath - and being assumed to have congestive heart failure and treated likewise? Or how about suspected kidney problems and being ordered dialysis every week of their life, despite having not one test done to confirm?
I feel the same way about psych 'care'. No one knows if you have a seratonin problem and prescribes you SSRIs with not even ONE SINGLE test.
Being that SSRIs are the #2 medication prescribed in the US (okay don't know if that is/is still exact - I do remember reading this w/in the past year), I am outraged, but saddened.
In my opinion, it is because people with 'mental illness' are still devalued by our society. Throughout history, the so-called mentally ill, were always mistreated (anyone read Foucalt here?)-manifested in different ways for different times. While not abusive to the same degree, this age is no different.
- Garnet71
--------------------------
ECT is not effective for anything, except in skewed literature and in the minds of psychiatrists. Sometimes I wonder if some of them aren't more insane than we are. Relapse rates are extraordinarily high when it is effective.Some people have done very well with ECT but require periodic returns to the zapper, sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, sometimes quarterly. Those success stories are very hard to find though. Failures and disappointments outnumber them in the real world. Also deserving of comment is the under-rated damage to memory and cognitive function. It can be very serious, long lasting, or permanent, and often is.
Did the person have a DMSA provocation test for heavy metals? Did the person have a Western Blot from one of the two labs that test all the markers of Lyme and not just the limited markers of Lyme from the FDA tests? Were they tested for Lyme's co-infectors? Has the person's serum B vitamin status been checked? Has their methylation status been checked? Has their serum copper been tested? Has their daily cortisol curve been plotted? Has their TSH, free T3, free T4, and Hashimotos antibodies been checked, and are they all tightly within optimal range versus grossly within normal range?
If someone hasn't had a doctor thorough enough to do all these things, they have no place laying on a table to be knocked out by a barbituate and electrified straight to the brain serious enough to send the entire body into convulsions all the way down to a twitching big toe. Insane.
Sorry, my opinion of today's medical profession is obviously jaded and there is some frustration. Almost always they go for totally mysterious risky treatments where they have no idea if it will work or how it works, basically going for big guns and tanks while blindfolded when they pull the trigger, and yet never looking at the simple obvious easy logical stuff that is not mysterious and is right in front of them.
Insane.
Can you tell I am an ECT survivor? Can you tell I've seem dozens of people with serious psychiatric conditions reach symptom resolvement with proper treatment that did not involve psychiatric meds? The whole field of psychiatry is scary because they jump right straight to symptomatic treatment, which is not the same as curative treatment, without even considering what the disease is causing the symptoms. If one cannot find a disease from the list above, and dozens of combinations and permutations of meds haven't worked, then fine, try ECT if one must. Just don't put any more hope into it than any other previous treatment.
Don't get me wrong. I am a longtime psych med veteran and will probably be on one or another for life. People should continue to try to find the combinations that improve their lives. All I'm saying is ECT is not one of them. In addition to symptomatic treatment, people should test the obvious things but hardly ever do. Those can and do lead to pure remission that leaves them as they were pre-disease and without any meds.
Posted by Phillipa on January 29, 2009, at 20:29:30
In reply to To Bleauberry, posted by garnet71 on January 29, 2009, at 20:15:03
Garnet what are you suggesting interested . Sorry not bleauberry. Phillipa
Posted by garnet71 on January 29, 2009, at 20:33:09
In reply to To Bleauberry, posted by garnet71 on January 29, 2009, at 20:15:03
Speaking of Foucault, this is a must read for anyone interested in the history of mental illness:
Posted by Ceres on January 30, 2009, at 1:48:27
In reply to To Bleauberry, posted by garnet71 on January 29, 2009, at 20:15:03
Hi, Garnet~
I think I can understand some of your frustration. (And what I'm writing might be frustrating to read, as I'm having a heck of a time completing my thoughts here)
Mental illness is part social construct, especially when it comes to personality disorders & neurosis . I think there's a lot of room for skepticism & evolution here.
Foucault, & the many books on how to read Foucault, are important tools for social analysis. I have damp moving boxes full of such reading. I'd love to revisit them, but in order to be able to focus on high theory, I have to figure out a way to enable my mind/brain to do so.
Unfortunately, we don't have the best context nor tools for this healing. We have psychiatrists who range from sincere healers to dry or passionate academics to those who regard us as specimens & mostly, many in between. We have therapists, some effective, some quite obviously unhealthy themselves (not that healthy equals a/effective). We have an astounding amount of pseudoscience psychology(& yes, I know Foucault has interesting things to say about the great god science).
And, sometimes it seems like we're volunteering to be Other.
I do see psychiatry as hodgepodge & random tinkering much of the time. It just seems that for some pain, it's the best shot in the dark we've got.
For symptoms such as unrelenting mental anguish, intense anxiety, psychosis, compulsions, etc, most will want and need relief & bear stigma & side effects to get it.
Initially, taking medication was an act of desperation for me. It has prolonged my life so far. Granted, quality of life is often in question.I do understand how scary & revolting those constructs are.
P.S. -how nice, the juxtaposition of "Bleauberry" & "Garnet"
Posted by garnet71 on January 31, 2009, at 10:33:56
In reply to Re: To Bleauberry - to Garnet : Theory + Living, posted by Ceres on January 30, 2009, at 1:48:27
Hi Ceres,
Thanks for the comment. Yes, 'Bleauberry and Garnet' has a nice ring to it, huh?
I think what is going on here, only from my perspective, that as a survivor of lots of past abuse, I am sort of triggered by devaluation and objectification of people as individuals or groups. I find myself always sticking up for the underdog, or people being attacked by work bullies, etc. I am very sensitive when innocent people are treated badly, or wrongly, etc. So I am a little hypervigiliant still, but I do see very clearly that people with mental health issues are deemed "less of a person" than others-by society-by institutions.
I do have lots of antecdotal facts to support this, and anyone can look at history to derive that conclusion. Anyway, that's why this issue sparks such a response in me.
This is the end of the thread.
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