to wonder if we have all become mentally ill?

[Alameda]

(and for slightly stalking this blogger)

but can 1 in 2 Americans really have a mental illness? have slightly vested interest in this because would quite like my own mental disorder to be somehow integral to society rather than there actually be something wrong with me

psychopathology of american life

SDT - sorry to hear about your situation. Was not having a go at you, just clarifying. x

Um,

Yes, I see what you mean Alameda. In that case, maybe put in chat?

but talking of hospital, there is a new thing on that blog about how many hundreds of times more likely people (especially women) are to commit suicide after a short admission although that is not so relevant here where you keep you in for such a long time

but just at the numbers, why are women 1700 times more likely - women are unlikely to kill generally, others or themselves, so that's utterly horrific and need to think about something else before I go to sleep

I agree, the numbers are shocking. Perhaps best to pick this up in the morning and think about something else tonight. Have you got a "happy place" or "scenario" you can go to? (Get me with all my psycho-babble)

yes, horses - reliving today and planning tomorrow :)

Good

Night!

wherever it goes, I do hope things don't get too lofty. Good to keep things accessible to all I think. As the discussion centres around how many are being deemed 'mentally ill', I should imagine many would like to feel they have something to say.

I hope you slept well OP.

alameda did I read you correctly, you are being refused counselling because you're "too ill"? Does that strike anyone else besides me as utterly absurd?

canard thanks for coming on and commenting here. I'm surprised what you say re 'chemical imbalance' because this term was in common parlance when I was studying this a few years ago (2006-7) but admittedly as a sort of short hand for, e.g. increased release/inhibited uptake of dopamine/serotonin in certain brain areas, in laypeople's neuroscience texts.

I agree from a theoretical POV that the real issue is not so much what is happening in the brain as why but as you say you prescribe drugs to your patients based upon what is happening and presumably these have efficacy for at least some? (Certainly for my own father who was highly fortunate to fully recover from mental breakdown shortly before receiving ECT)

I'm also not entirely sure about your later comment that "by reducing complex thoughts and feelings to a neurochemical soup we end up dodging the real issues and complexities of mental health problems" - what else ARE thoughts and feelings besides neurochemical and biological impulses? Yes, we must look at brain activity within the framework of external circumstances, but fundamentally we humans are chemicals and proteins and, to my mind at least, that's a wonderful thing - how else could we expect medicine to succeed?

Please don't read this as an attack - I'm very interested in your professional opinion as don't often get the chance to discuss these topics any more!

I am not mentally ill.

I have a lot of experience with the psychiatric system though, as I was medicalised as a young adult.

I had a shit life. Not iredeemably shit, but it was shit. I left home at 16 after a very nasty parental divorce. I was working in a stressful, physically demanding environment. I had been abused by a boyfriend - clear cut shit life syndrome.

My GP's answer was Prozac.

And then I became suicidal and started self-harming. Never happened before the drug, I didn't need drugs. I needed someone to listen and agree that yes, all these things were shit.

So I got a different SSRI. It had horrible side effects, and the world was grey. I naturally have highs and lows that are more marked than most (although I hasten to add, I am not bi-polar) the drugs took that away and it was awful.

I was told I had to "accept" that I was ill, and to comply with the drug treatment. I had to agree to be hospitalised, or they would section me. My symptoms at that time were of anxiety and depression - I had been told by a psychiatrist at 21 years old that I would "never" work. I had nothing in my life, the drugs took away my creativity (I'm a musician.) Of COURSE I was fucking miserable.

It took me 10 YEARS to get out of that system - I still have any number of false DXs sitting in my notes. It took a further 6 YEARS to rid myself of the excess weight and negative behaviours that I had learned through the years.

As it happens, while apparently having bi-polar, borderline personality disorder and depression and anxiety, I managed to do A-levels, a degree, hold down various jobs, get married and have kids, get divorced... But Every. Fucking. Time I went near a GP, whether for a sore foot or a headache, out would come the offer of anti-depressants, valium, whatever.

I vividly recall one GP, when DD was about 8 weeks old, I visited because I had mastitis. I was tearful, as people with mastitis often are. He said "now, you need to pull yourself together. I don't want to have to send you to the mother and baby unit." Uhuh, stupid man, failing to notice that I'm as completely fine as anyone with an 8 week old baby, doing a full time job, with mastitis, could be!

For a long time I actually believed that I was ill - but I am no different now, I still have the same thoughts and feelings, but choose to act on them differently. I'm happy. My mother thinks I'm manic, which is nice. I'm not. This is what happiness looks like. There are bits where I'm unhappy. That's OK. Being sad is not the same as being ill.

Oh, I'm ranting, but the thing is, way back when I was 16, all of this shit could have been avoided if someone- anyone - had listened to me. I just wonder how many other young women are being labelled and shunted about between agencies because it is better to be seen to be doing something and the medical establishment want to be seen to be "curing" unhappiness.

summer I was told the same thing WRT talking therapy. The psychiatrist felt it would be "dangerous."

To which I now say, Whatever.

I'm coming to this late, but I agree with alameda's very first point upthread that some of what makes us mentally ill is structural and cultural. For example, it's hard to get secure work and the meaning and self-worth this imparts, it's hard to feel part of a community, families are fragmenting under the strain, support networks (i'm thinking of eg work colleagues, church, union) are not there in the way they may have been in the past. Gender roles and societal expectations thereof are confusing ('having it all' etc)l People are feeling insecure and unhappy because (economic and political) circumstancs make us feel insecure and unhappy.

The solution we are offered and the narrartive we are told is that the solution lies solely in our own hands. CBT is glorified 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps', effectively victim blaming and 'not trying hard' enough to see things in a 'positive' light. I believe the solution goes way the individual, and the problem needs to be seen for what it is- a structual problem of the whole of society.

shocking.

I have recently had a very upsetting life event and my (yes, toxic!) family have piled in trying to pin a dx on me to fit what is, essentially, deep unhappiness as a result of what has happened. However, due to their clamouring insistence, on the quiet I arranged for a MH assessment. Dx: 'stress depression', not surprising. Suggestion: counsellor through womens org for support during this difficult time. Meds: none. Prognosis: it will pass.

so they're not all as crap as your lot crunchy.

(on a completely different note: ds was born with a heart problem. meds for the first 5 years of his life produced another heart problem, didn't touch the original problem. so now he's got two problems pumping away...)

Practical support with the causes of 'shit life syndrome' (love that phrase) has got to be better than any amount of talking surely? it puts me in mind of the old joke:Q- How many microsoft engineers does it take tochange a lightbulb? A-None, darkness is the new standard.

well initially they said that summer, which might have been a bit true at the time - my consultant wasn't a fan of any sort of talking treatment and I hated the idea of taking lithium and chlorpromazine for ages, but this was over a decade ago. I did have some CBT eventually once my mood had stabilised but it was a bit adversarial because it was quite obsessed with accepting the diagnosis and relapse prevention. Some of it was quite helpful.

Recently had an assessment for another CBT type thing and it was all quite unsettling, it was dragged out with a couple of weeks between appointments, there was opposition from my psychiatrist again (different one this time) and the practitioner is supposed to have some special interest and expertise in this particular area so my expectations were quite high but she told me I was beyond the reach of therapeutic help! It wasn't good. But it is true that am definitely not very good at these things, too gifted in the art of denial and repression, or do I mean suppression? She felt I got too upset when she wanted to talk about certain things, but I think it is for me to judge how much distress I can manage in any given session, and that I wasn't 'willing to do the work' if I didn't feel up to describing those things in great detail.

I agree with a lot of what has been said on this thread. I think that there is massive mental stress generated by uncertainty, and not always major uncertainty - more low level uncertainty generated by people holding very different views from in the past, and constantly being exposed to new views that require ones old ones to be reexamined and updated (with all the life upheaval that that entails).

The hard thing to deal with, springy, is that everyone of those professionals thought they were helping, that they were doing the right thing. And the scary part is that refusing to accept you are mentally ill if they say you are is deemed to be a symptom of mental illness.

That is doublethink at its finest.

Springy - I can't help but feel that what you have been offered is just the right thing. Thank goodness we have free counselling available in this country and what an awful shame that others have been refused it (though it would also be interesting to hear Canard's view on this - how someone can be too ill for talking therapy?)

well if you are manic for example summer, or in the throes of some other florid psychosis?

I agree summer! absolutely the right thing ie shit happened, I'm very sad and unhappy because of it. I had been wondering if eg ADs might be an idea but I am eg sleeping well, life still has joy in it for me, concentration is within the normal range. etc. so it was good to hear I didn't need medication, that I am just wounded and therefore sad.

The psychiatrist I saw was also respectful - that in itself was a 'therapy', if you like - to be treated with dignity and respect. Also, as per procedure, very detailed notes from the assessment were passed to my GP; I protested that the details were too personal and not necessary for GP notes (a general outline would suffice). She took my observations seriously and consulted higher up, who upheld my concerns and the GP notes were revised. It was all a positive experience for me.

my family are doing that 'it's a symptom of her madness that she's refusing to accept she's mad' (AKA: the last to know they are mad are the mad)

yes that was a throw away comment I made there crunchy re 'they're not all as crap as your lot'. I'm sure they did mean well at the time - proves the point of the OP (and blog) I think. My recent experience though would suggest that maybe things are changing, even maturing?, a bit - though I can't help thinking I was very lucky tbh, that it was down to that particular psychiatrist's good sense.

and NHS MH funding

i wouldnt say Freud is discredited there are a lot of models and therapists that use his ideas as a basis, remember alot of what he discussed is not consciously felt.

People are sad becuase life is shit, theres too much pressure, too much choice, we work to much for to long for shit pay and live in a capitalist society.

Money dousnt make you happy unless you have it.

Alameda - fair point. If you're in a psychotic episode it is unlikely to help. But I still believe it should be available in the background - alongside drug treatment.

We've had the opposite experience from Crunchy: had to wait for years for dd to be prescribed Prozac and during that period all our lives have basically been put on hold, she has more or less dropped out of school, my career has taken a complete nosedive, dh and I have had no time or energy for each other. This is the first time in ages I have been able to leave for work in the morning and not worry about what I'm going to find when I get back home

Which kind of suggests that these anecdotal stories don't actually prove anything one way or another: one thing worked for us that was disastrous for somebody else, something that would have been enough for somebody else wasn't enough for us.

I don't think anyone should see MH treatment as replacing practical support, just as a recognition that there are times when practical support simply doesn't take away the fear- or the required level of support would be so high that it would make the patient completely dependent on other people.

I often think if dd had lived in the Victorian age she would have been one of those permanent invalids who spent their lives on the sofa and the family just accepted it ("of course poor cousin Sophie is quite an invalid"). Which really isn't the life I want for my bright intelligent daughter.

Nobody can take away the cause of her fear as it is caused by an incurable condition: her fears are quite logical and, in a sense, valid. But this still leaves her with the choice of either learning to handle the fear or staying paralysed by it.

What the therapists are working on to find a way in which she can stop being totally dependent on me for 24 hour support and find a way of living in the modern world as an independent woman. I am in favour of that. If dd was left to her own devices, she would simply cling to me. And since I can't take away the cause of her fear any more than anybody else can, we would stay in that position for the rest of my natural life. And then what?

have had both extremes really - on one hand an awful few years of really not understanding how it could be lawful to deprive me of my liberty, not agreeing with my diagnosis or that I was actually unwell at all (although suspect I was), having all this 'help' forced upon me, not taking meds = not compliant and so not allowed to drive but if I did take them I ballooned in size and felt tired and couldn't concentrate. In and out of hospital sometimes for months, as a lone parent to three children without family nearby. Just massively life changing and hard to bounce back from, grinding me down over time and costing career, confidence and so on. The worst I think is the repercussions still felt in my children's lives.

Which is the other hand of being absolutely desperate for help with one of my daughters but never getting any meaningful support or treatment until it was always very nearly too late. So much for early intervention. Even when 'in the system', after missing five months of a GCSE school year in an ED unit and supposedly having access to 24 hr crisis support it was unspeakably shit. I came home to find she had set fire to her bedroom and was trying to hang herself. I called the crisis team who said 'it sounds like anxiety, have you tried running her a hot bath and offering a warm milky drink?'. So I just took her to A and E where there was no liaison psych so of course we were home later that night ready for her to make a more serious attempt on her life. She spent her 18th birthday in a coma in intensive care. She spent a further year under section in adolescent unit, general adult unit, medium secure unit. We have had the helicopter hovering over our house and the dr agonising over whether to risk flying to hospital or taking longer by road when we couldn't find a pulse. Horrible horrible times.

The existing system is really not good, if I wasn't as lucky as I am to have found such amazing friends (and I do owe my life and probably my daughter's to so many of them) and we were at the mercy entirely of a set up that, even here where there is quite good funding and have never been placed on waiting lists for example, can be totally fucked up - I don't know, I don't like to imagine.