Issues at the interface of Mavis, community-based psychiatric services and the mentally normal

[Mitchy1nge]

I think that covers us all?

Well, I suppose, anything which has acknowledged recovery potential. Something people sometimes get better from, either spontaneously or with the right treatment. I can't go on ruining my life and the lives of people unlucky enough to have something to do with me, for the next fifty years.

isn't that everything?

apart from progressive degenerative brain diseases

I was hoping that I was recovering. I've been stable for several years, then a few months ago everything about my health started improving, mentally and physically, and I felt so bloody good and so bloody optimistic and now it seems it was all an illusion, and I can't escape from what I am by myself.

wish you didn't feel so awful and worried about it although is completely understandable

is v unlikely that you are actually dementing

is much more likely to be something that can be helped through lifestyle, meds, therapy or some combination thereof

Hmm. Some mental health problems have very poor prognoses.

I'm sorry, I'm being horribly negative and I must be coming across as very dismissive of what you're saying. I think you're right, of course, and I'm hoping to be diagnosed with something which is fixable with meds/lifestyle/therapy - I'm just worried that I'll be diagnosed with one of the worse things I've been diagnosed with in the past, which are mostly fairly unfixable and cause you to fuck up your own life and those of all the people around you. Which is I guess why I wasn't told any of them.

but you don't have to passively resign yourself to the worst case scenario whatever it is

there will be things you can do, hopefully with appropriate support from friends and family and maybe the psych services at first

Possibly. Hope so. I doubt it, though. I think I might be one of those hopeless case types you hear about sometimes.

Sorry for whingeing on at you. I'll shut up about it now

Have you had the tacos yet?

sorry am probably being v irritating

don't get the fixable/not fixable distinction at all

think it is a strange way to distinguish one form of mental distress and problem behaviours from another and don't find it meaningful so is hard to enter into but am a bit too tired to work it out

you will always be free to make your own sense of your own experiences and to seek out the treatment and support you feel has worked best for you

am keeping fingers crossed that your new psychiatrist will work transparently and collaboratively with you to full therapeutic effect x

had 3 tacos

did a stupid thing which is a horrible way to repay my body for its hard work earlier

but was first time for ages and tomorrow is another day etc

Sorry to hear about stupid thing. Line drawn underneath it etc.

You're not being in the slightest bit irritating.

The fixable/not fixable thing: I need to know if people like me (whatever "like me" turns out to mean in a diagnostic sense) tend to ever stop being "like me", and if so, how. And if not, I can't do it any more and it's not fair to anyone else for me to do it any more either.

I think having some kind of system to classify forms of mental distress is a really good idea at some level, am all for drawing lines around mental illness/mental health and using these to further our understanding of what treatments help which groups of symptoms. Am not anti-psychiatry.

That said, as an explanation of our experiences and fears and feelings it is a very very very small part of the story. Diagnoses are made for spurious reasons. GPs and psychotherapists with little to no grasp of diagnostic criteria have diagnosed patients with highly suspect conditions. Normal human responses become 'symptoms'. Is not as if it even informs treatment in the way it should, people often cannot access the evidence based interventions and are offered dodgy alternatives. Obviously it can be really helpful to have a diagnosis and a plan for dealing with it but as with all things is good to keep an open mind and not take it too seriously.

You are you, there are reasons for why you think and feel and act the way you do - a psychiatric narrative might help you make sense of that but hopefully not become you. If that makes sense.

want to be reassuring but have feeling am chatting misplaced rubbish

so anyway and cuddle xxx

Sorry. I had to go away for a bit. Not good at coping with talking about this stuff. I do see what you're saying but there must be some predictive value to diagnosis otherwise it's worthless.

And thanks. Thank you.

Is not misplaced rubbish at all.

it is a bit

it comes from my own ambivalence about diagnoses have garnered over time, is no reason it should be helpful to anyone else

one thing is definitely true, whether I have various of my diagnosed problems or not, generally the treatments and advice for managing them have improved my quality of life so is almost a win:win situation from that angle

I don't think many things have a pre-determined course though

even if the general trend is (dunno if it is am just saying hypothetically) for bipolar to improve over time, if I made a serious habit of using class As, shacked up with an abusive dickhead, didn't take lithium, made no effort to regulate my sleep/activity levels I'd get much worse pretty quickly

there are choices I can make that influence the course, might be deluding self but helps me to imagine I have a measure of control over my moods

The treatments and psychotherapy I've had have on the whole only made things worse; that's why I need to know with accuracy what is wrong with me and if anything does work for people like me. Before I was given my first psychiatric drug (Prozac) I was a stressed 15 year old, not sleeping well, with undiagnosed migraines which I over-medicated. Not much more. Generally coping, if behind on homework. I took Prozac and went, frankly, completely mental. Paranoid, agitated, etc. So they switched me to Seroxat, whereupon I started feeling suicidal and self-harming, at which point I was stuck in a mental hospital and have never recovered. Other highlights are the diabetes, the movement disorders, and the loss of ability to think for several years. The horrible, distressing group analysis psychotherapy. I can't cope any longer with treatments that make things worse and illnesses I can't stop.

it must be so difficult to tease apart the strands of all that awful stuff and the impact it has had on you :(

hope psychiatrist is careful and sensitive and, much as an answer to it all would be good, is better for him not to make hasty judgments

wish things had been easier for you, hope they will become so x

Thanks

I'm being an annoying self-pitying wanker.

Nothing that bad has really happened to me. Not compared to what happens to lots of people who don't then turn into utter cunts.

Most of it was people trying to help me.

So are you going to bed soon, anyway, Mitch? You must be pretty tired after the night's sleep you had, or didn't have.

you don't seem like a self pitying or any kind of wanker to me

your earlier treatment sounds unjust and damaging and difficult to heal from

yeah have just arrived in bed, forgot hadn't slept last night (you know those nights that are already too short and then you wake up every twenty minutes) tomorrow I must keep my appointment, then running with groom/new friend and it wouldn't kill me to at least think about tidying up

my back KILLS

what excitements does your Monday hold?