I'm genually sorry for what your parents and yourself went through; the following is me being blunt and exasperated; don't mistake it for hate: I'm a Schizo Aspie.
That is the problem with medication. I can't say any of it actually works and most of it has severe minuses. In a lot of cases minuses like heart problems that kill you thirty …
I'm genually sorry for what your parents and yourself went through; the following is me being blunt and exasperated; don't mistake it for hate: I'm a Schizo Aspie.
That is the problem with medication. I can't say any of it actually works and most of it has severe minuses. In a lot of cases minuses like heart problems that kill you thirty years early... Wait where have I heard that before? (malevolent grin emojii).
Didn't like the lockdown years did you? Welcome to our world. Doesn't look so "mad" now y'alls' had the same treatment and been told to take your meds to get your rights back does it?
"Normal" is a setting on a washing machine. It takes time early doors to realise you are in the presence of something. The psych bod with their fifty minute hour isn't going to necessarily see you wander off into La Lah Land when they are with you. Hell; a good friend who I KNEW was as mad as a box of frogs didn't give himself away most of the time. I only caught on my narrative doesn't always match reality in very late retrospect. "Sanity" and "madness" are a seemless continuum most of the time and a psychotic break isn't as such. The outsider THINKS it is a break; but you have actually gotten angry because the outsiders reality differs from yours and they won't believe you.
Now the USA is split down the middle with one half being seen as completely bonkers with regards to the other. (In the main it is the Dem voting half that is lunatic; but get on to abortion and such and Reps start going all "Heeers Johnnieee!"). I can fantasise you might get a fucking clue now; but if I'm honest you all seem to be like Schizos in denial. The same can be said for elsewhere in the world of course; but this is a US Substack and the commentariat is largely US or your perhaps even more bonkers northern Little Brother.
I don't know what you do about the mental health "crisis"; and especially now your entire country no longer has a shared reality and is in the middle of a national psychotic break that appears to be consuming about a third of the nation with the other two thirds exhibiting the whole gamut of carers behaviours with a lean to the less than helpful.
(Carers get the shitty end of the stick; at least the medical "proffession" pays us the patient [And boy do we have to have patience!] some attention and tries to do something; even if they are largely clueless!)
I do think this is largely a W.E.I.R.D problem though; Paul was clearly schizotypal and John of Patmos disposed to seeing angels with flaming swords. They didn't kill their girlfriends; they invented Xtianity. Today in India you see these same phenomena as you used to see in the West. Perhaps we should be taking a leaf from the Indian state of Kerela who consistently got very high marks from those most critical of Psychiatry. Kerela has also had the most successful Communist governments in the world [Probably because they couldn't implement "One Man; One Vote; Once"! :-)] and is one of the most prosperous states in India.
I had one psychiatrist who diagnosed himself as having a hear attack in the Alps and STILL climbed the mountain. Another had at least four people suicide on the way out of the door and STILL in the hospital on discharge. One sat on the otherside of a door from me for forty minutes, the receptionist not having told him I was waitng, yet STILL hadn't read my notes. Another consultant psychiatrist had told their patient they were going away but would arrange their discharge before they did. Didn't happen and said patient absconded and had all the windows and doors of their psychatrist's home bricked up.
I think we are entirely sane in not wanting anything to do with such dangerous idiots.
What is Bari trying to accomplish with this interview? What is the point of Free Press in general?
This was excruciating to listen to. Peter Early’s book Crazy about his medical student son’s psychotic break and the horrors of the US justice/mental health system is 1000x better than this boring dumpster fire of a book and interview.
So I am guessing teletherapy is one step further down the rabbit hole. I have had clients with mental illness and I genuinely try to do right by my clients and part of that is listening so I am aware of your issue with medication. In my efforts to educate myself on the issues facing my clients I have come to realize that ascertaining the proper medication is largely a trial and error process. And I feel sure that like all doctors, psychiatrists peddle what their favorite pharmacy peddler peddles to them. I further understand that it takes at least 90 days to know whether or not a psych med is a good fit. And if it is not, then on to round two. It can take years to find the best med. So here is the important part just in case you are not aware - there are tests now which assess YOUR body's reaction to a particular med (all meds, not just psych meds). They are described as genetic tests and maybe they are but what they actually do is assess your metabolism and thus predict which meds will work well and, perhaps most importantly, which will not. The test I am familiar with is called Gene X but there are several now. I think most insurance will cover them now too. This has benefit I think for anyone required to take meds long-term, but particularly for psych meds. Also when you interview a new treatment provider ask about their pharmacological knowledge. Medical doctors are woefully untrained about the drugs they rely on. So unless your doc has taken the steps voluntarily to educate themselves regarding available psych meds they are just rubber stamping what big pharmacy says.
Lynne, I am told that the mentally ill stop taking the drugs. The reason I am told is the have the delude belief of "I don't need this drug."
It is hard for the sane to wrap their minds around not taking a drug that may help you. I am older than dirt but am fortunate to only take a baby aspirin, BP meds and a statin. I have taken them religiously for years but then I don't have voices telling to stop.
I too am dubious of drugs and do not take anything not required in the short term. I am.one of those people Covid made much more suspicious. As for the mentally ill it is true, in my experience that they will stop taking their meds, take them sporadically, and/or replace or supplement with street drugs. But that is my point. Not taking your meds is not taking care of yourself!!! If you do not take your meds that is going to lead to other aberrant behavior. If that behavior arises to neglect of self to an extre.e then loved one needs to seek a guardianship. If no one does they I'll person will end up under an overpass or in jail or a combination of both. You know that Austin is a haven of ho.elessness. Have you ever noticed how many bodies are recovered with little notice? Those are homeless people literally perishing on the street.
Absolutely. IIRC, 90% of disorders psychiatrists deal with are either bipolar or schizophrenic conditions. And the main tools at their disposal are dopamine or serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
So in this binary world, the bulk of the job appears to be dosage tweaking.
Absent a long term study of RIs, particularly in adolescents, we should be much more reluctant to prescribe these drugs- especially as bipolar in juveniles is transitory in many cases.
My experience is with clients accused of crimes and most of those have a primary diagnosis, usually either something on the schizoid spectrum or bi-polar, but complicated by insomnia, anxiety, depression, etc.. Also some of them self-medicated for years with street drugs and drug-induced psychosis is a very real thing.
I'm genually sorry for what your parents and yourself went through; the following is me being blunt and exasperated; don't mistake it for hate: I'm a Schizo Aspie.
That is the problem with medication. I can't say any of it actually works and most of it has severe minuses. In a lot of cases minuses like heart problems that kill you thirty years early... Wait where have I heard that before? (malevolent grin emojii).
Didn't like the lockdown years did you? Welcome to our world. Doesn't look so "mad" now y'alls' had the same treatment and been told to take your meds to get your rights back does it?
"Normal" is a setting on a washing machine. It takes time early doors to realise you are in the presence of something. The psych bod with their fifty minute hour isn't going to necessarily see you wander off into La Lah Land when they are with you. Hell; a good friend who I KNEW was as mad as a box of frogs didn't give himself away most of the time. I only caught on my narrative doesn't always match reality in very late retrospect. "Sanity" and "madness" are a seemless continuum most of the time and a psychotic break isn't as such. The outsider THINKS it is a break; but you have actually gotten angry because the outsiders reality differs from yours and they won't believe you.
Now the USA is split down the middle with one half being seen as completely bonkers with regards to the other. (In the main it is the Dem voting half that is lunatic; but get on to abortion and such and Reps start going all "Heeers Johnnieee!"). I can fantasise you might get a fucking clue now; but if I'm honest you all seem to be like Schizos in denial. The same can be said for elsewhere in the world of course; but this is a US Substack and the commentariat is largely US or your perhaps even more bonkers northern Little Brother.
I don't know what you do about the mental health "crisis"; and especially now your entire country no longer has a shared reality and is in the middle of a national psychotic break that appears to be consuming about a third of the nation with the other two thirds exhibiting the whole gamut of carers behaviours with a lean to the less than helpful.
(Carers get the shitty end of the stick; at least the medical "proffession" pays us the patient [And boy do we have to have patience!] some attention and tries to do something; even if they are largely clueless!)
I do think this is largely a W.E.I.R.D problem though; Paul was clearly schizotypal and John of Patmos disposed to seeing angels with flaming swords. They didn't kill their girlfriends; they invented Xtianity. Today in India you see these same phenomena as you used to see in the West. Perhaps we should be taking a leaf from the Indian state of Kerela who consistently got very high marks from those most critical of Psychiatry. Kerela has also had the most successful Communist governments in the world [Probably because they couldn't implement "One Man; One Vote; Once"! :-)] and is one of the most prosperous states in India.
I had one psychiatrist who diagnosed himself as having a hear attack in the Alps and STILL climbed the mountain. Another had at least four people suicide on the way out of the door and STILL in the hospital on discharge. One sat on the otherside of a door from me for forty minutes, the receptionist not having told him I was waitng, yet STILL hadn't read my notes. Another consultant psychiatrist had told their patient they were going away but would arrange their discharge before they did. Didn't happen and said patient absconded and had all the windows and doors of their psychatrist's home bricked up.
I think we are entirely sane in not wanting anything to do with such dangerous idiots.
What is Bari trying to accomplish with this interview? What is the point of Free Press in general?
This was excruciating to listen to. Peter Early’s book Crazy about his medical student son’s psychotic break and the horrors of the US justice/mental health system is 1000x better than this boring dumpster fire of a book and interview.
Bari, you are losing your raison d'être.
Ms. Cheng, Just because it doesn't adhere to what you think should be discussed, doesn't mean it's not of value to many others.
So I am guessing teletherapy is one step further down the rabbit hole. I have had clients with mental illness and I genuinely try to do right by my clients and part of that is listening so I am aware of your issue with medication. In my efforts to educate myself on the issues facing my clients I have come to realize that ascertaining the proper medication is largely a trial and error process. And I feel sure that like all doctors, psychiatrists peddle what their favorite pharmacy peddler peddles to them. I further understand that it takes at least 90 days to know whether or not a psych med is a good fit. And if it is not, then on to round two. It can take years to find the best med. So here is the important part just in case you are not aware - there are tests now which assess YOUR body's reaction to a particular med (all meds, not just psych meds). They are described as genetic tests and maybe they are but what they actually do is assess your metabolism and thus predict which meds will work well and, perhaps most importantly, which will not. The test I am familiar with is called Gene X but there are several now. I think most insurance will cover them now too. This has benefit I think for anyone required to take meds long-term, but particularly for psych meds. Also when you interview a new treatment provider ask about their pharmacological knowledge. Medical doctors are woefully untrained about the drugs they rely on. So unless your doc has taken the steps voluntarily to educate themselves regarding available psych meds they are just rubber stamping what big pharmacy says.
Lynne, I am told that the mentally ill stop taking the drugs. The reason I am told is the have the delude belief of "I don't need this drug."
It is hard for the sane to wrap their minds around not taking a drug that may help you. I am older than dirt but am fortunate to only take a baby aspirin, BP meds and a statin. I have taken them religiously for years but then I don't have voices telling to stop.
I too am dubious of drugs and do not take anything not required in the short term. I am.one of those people Covid made much more suspicious. As for the mentally ill it is true, in my experience that they will stop taking their meds, take them sporadically, and/or replace or supplement with street drugs. But that is my point. Not taking your meds is not taking care of yourself!!! If you do not take your meds that is going to lead to other aberrant behavior. If that behavior arises to neglect of self to an extre.e then loved one needs to seek a guardianship. If no one does they I'll person will end up under an overpass or in jail or a combination of both. You know that Austin is a haven of ho.elessness. Have you ever noticed how many bodies are recovered with little notice? Those are homeless people literally perishing on the street.
Austin is the San Francisco of Texas.
Absolutely. IIRC, 90% of disorders psychiatrists deal with are either bipolar or schizophrenic conditions. And the main tools at their disposal are dopamine or serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
So in this binary world, the bulk of the job appears to be dosage tweaking.
Absent a long term study of RIs, particularly in adolescents, we should be much more reluctant to prescribe these drugs- especially as bipolar in juveniles is transitory in many cases.
My experience is with clients accused of crimes and most of those have a primary diagnosis, usually either something on the schizoid spectrum or bi-polar, but complicated by insomnia, anxiety, depression, etc.. Also some of them self-medicated for years with street drugs and drug-induced psychosis is a very real thing.