madbook ~

2005-04-20T12:35:00.000-04:00

PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS
"Paradoxical effects" | The language of obsfucation is always fascinating | BigPharma and Mental Illness Inc. sometimes use this term when referring to known negative effects | The researchers in the industry know this stuff, they just seem so averse to sharing it | I wonder why?:
Some recent observations

1- The latest issue of Mother Jones describes what happens when the Drug Lords manage the mental health system | Aliah Gleason was a direct victim of the Texas juvenile mental illness promoters | They took her from her family, pumped her full of a polypharma regimen, then kept her from her family |
     Seems that she was lucky | She survived | Some sources indicate that as many as 17,000 kids in Texas are subjected to forced psychiatric drugging |
     Rhetorical question time: Why is it that when the Soviets subjected their citizens to forced drugging it was recognized as torture but here in the USA it's just treatment as usual?

2- FDA Warns Antipsychotic Drugs Dangerous to Elderly The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a public health advisory to alert health care providers, patients, and patient caregivers to new safety information concerning an unapproved (i.e., “off-label”) use of certain drugs called “atypical antipsychotic drugs.” These drugs are approved for the treatment of schizophrenia and mania, but clinical studies of these drugs to treat behavioral disorders in elderly patients with dementia have shown a higher death rate associated with their use compared to patients receiving a placebo (sugar pill).

3- How Bug Spray Works | This is here because of a search I did on "paradoxical effects" of psychiatric medications | The read is interesting and relevant since the article first talks about the brain's neurons communicate with one another, and how drugs affect that communication process |
     Read down and you'll find that a chemical known as Acetylcholine is used by the neurons that control your muscles, heart, and lungs | It is also used by many neurons in the brain that are involved in memory | Acetylcholine crosses the brain synapses and tells the muscles to extend by stimulating the receptor sites on the muscles |
     When nerve signals are terminated this is called “reuptake” | Acetylcholine is rapidly broken down by a chemical called acetylcholinesterase | Have you ever looked at the fine print on a bottle of Prozac, Paxil, or Zoloft? It says in there that the drug is a “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor” (SSRI) |
     Now, read the fine print on a can of insecticide | For some of them, it says that the active ingredient is an “acetylcholinesterase inhibitor” | So, the same effect that we see with bug spray, can be facilitated by SSRIs | You do the math |
     As an FYI, nicotine directly stimulates acetylcholine receptors | Alzheimer’s disease results when these acetylcholine-using neurons in the brain die | [As an aside, does this new info about bug spray provide us any fresh insights on the actions of former insect exterminatior Tom DeLay?]

4- Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports magazine) is working with Senators Grassley (R-IA) and Dodd (D-CT) in organizing a news conference to introduce their legislation that would create an Independent Office of Drug Safety. This media event may take place as early as tomorrow (Thursday, April 21st).
     They are looking for someone to speak at this news conference from their home states of Connecticut or Iowa that has suffered from, or has loved ones that have suffered from the side effects of prescription drugs, particularly those that have been given media attention lately (Vioxx, Bextra, Neurontin, and SSRIs, like Paxil).
     Information on the importance of this legislation is available here. Please contact Elizabeth Foley soon if you know of anyone that may be interested in working with this.

What got me started on this thread was my frustration with a community-based treatment team who accused one of their clients of "doing cocaine" when what changes they have seen with the guy are the result of the "paradoical effects" of jacking up his anti-depressant prescription | This has occured with him many times over the years, and they never seem to recognize it | Of course, if they didn't keep changing docs every couple of months...

Some other sites revealing adverse or "paradoxial" effects of psychiatric drugs: Benzodiazapines | More on Benzos | Basic Info on Psychiatric Meds | Peter Breggin on Benzos | Neurology Reviews on Anti-epileptics | Alternatives to Antidepressants | Klonapin ||
THANKS AND CREDITS FOR SOME LINKS TO: Dr. Stefan Kruszewski [Mother Jones], Atty. Tom Beherendt [Consumer's Union] ||
Other sites that support the rights of psychatric patients or are critical of legalized presecrption drug abuse include: International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, the organization's focus is the critical study of the mental health movement and
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights |

2005-03-14T22:36:00.000-05:00

SOCIAL JUSTICE | COMBATTING PREJUDICE
The discussion on activism and humam rights continues:
     Elizabeth (and the others who are reading the dialogue):
     Your response is, equally, heard, but it seems the points I try to make are missed. This time, then, I'll try to be more succinct.
     I get a sense that part of this discussion [from comments made both by E A Ricter and David B] that one of the ways to trash psyche survivor movement elder statesmen for the failure of society to listen to what we have been saying for decades | This may be an inaccurate supposition, perhaps, but it one that comes across when reading their comments nevertheless |
      You are quite accurate in identifying that the breadth and spread of influence of the medical model has expanded in those 30 or so year, rather than contracted |
     Yes, there are probably more kids on "Big Pharma cocktails" and the citizenry in general is more apt to run for the quick fix "cures" offered amd promoted by drug companies, social policy planners and the psychiatric industry | But none of these phenomena are the fault of long battling activists who are also psyche survivors [and their supporters] Indeed, some history lessons are in order here |
     Take time to read things like Leonard Roy Frank's books on the history of electroshock, Peter Breggin's books or Ken Kesey's "Cookoo's Nest" | Sit through films like the "Snake Pit" or "Titticut Follies" or meander through the small but growing number of websites that chronicle what life was like in abandoned asylums | If you can find copies, read the mimeographed and photocopied protest newsletters that abounded in the late 1970s and into the 1980s [Alice Earl's Peer Advocate for one] which documented CIA funded projects like MK Ultra and the McGill University sensory deprivation experiments of Ewan Cameron long before the mainstream publishing houses wanted to touch the stories | And take the time to look for more obscure tones like Edward Pinnell's The Witnesses [England 1940s] or Barbara O'Brien's "Operators and Things" | The latter two books witnessing abuse or ethical breaches written by people who were not connected with movements yet who spoke in hauntingly true tones of situations before drugs, and equally barbaric and morally corrupt |
     What I'm getting at here is that the social injustices that Elizabeth's "70%" have been exposed to has been going on for ~ not just decades, but centuries | I can assure you, once you read our history, you will walk away with the knowledge that there has NEVER been much of any
     >"... real attempt to identify the social and familial issues
     > underlying an emotional crisis, merely a superficial
     > focus on behavior..."
Perhaps the only difference between then and now is that adverse effects of
massive dosings of modern day psyche drugs are less visible than, say, insulin shock wards, camisoles, ice baths and body bags | Not much of a difference, really, I'm afraid to say |
     And I would be careful about being
     >"...far more concerned about these people whose lives are being destroyed
     > and mangled than I am about the minority who actually might be said to
     > have some differences that make it extremely difficult for them to
     > fit in socially..."
The other 30 % ~ that minority ~ also have feelings, experience pain and suffering and are just as ~ hell, even MORE susceptible to mistreatment, abuse and, yes, at times, torture, than the remaining majority | Perhaps, perversely, exposing that other 70% to the horrors of the coercive and destructive power of the psychiatric / mind control industry, is actually a good thing; if nothing else, those who survive it have gone away and been damned angry about what happened to them, and speak out |
     I'll caution the newbie psyche survivor activist, however, that for every one or two you meet who has been fighting this fight for decades, there are LEGION who start out as activists and once settled in and away from the immediacy of their ordeals, fade into the woodwork of the larger culture, and stop speaking out directly | I can't say I blame them | Life is much less complicated that way | Being an activist in this kind of movement takes a toll on you physically, spiritually and psychially | Friends and family who don't have like experiences seldom put up with our "obsessions" and are every bit as likely to dismiss or disparage our anger and ire as those who KNOW the message about psychiatric oppression is a true one, a valid one | And, I ask you, how many people honestly would remain dedicated to fighting a battle that is, at times, as elusive as the sources of unseen voices that some here but no one else recognizes |
     It is disappointing ~ disappointing and hurtful ~ to read someone who actually writes a statement that they are less concerned
     >"...about the minority who actually might be said to have some
     > differences that make it extremely difficult for them to fit in socially."
My point was not about having difficulty "fitting in" | My point was that we measure the quality of the entire society by how the society treats its most ignored, it's most reviled, it's most pitied |
     A little personal point here | I work as a human rights activist in a locale where ~ daily ~ I enter into a maximum security psychiatric facility | There are many folks there who, given the present political and social climate in the USA ~ even in a "blue state" are unlikely to ever be released from the place unless being transferred to one of a similar nature | Some are there simply for the "crime" of attempting suicide or who had too many brushes with the law concerning street drug activities | Some suffer from the social maladies of illiteracy or
life long institutionalization [and yet, still under the age of 35] The facility
where I spend a greater part of my time arguing for basic rights to be recognized
is but one of many | They are only the more restrictive end of the spectrum of
"services" provided to society by the mental illness industry | Do-gooders and
angry activists outside of these kinds of places, rarely, if ever, step into
them, much less ask about the goings on of such places |
     In context, when listening to others, relatively new in the movement for fighting for human rights in the psychiatric / mind control microcosm, I want to be clear that my earlier rant today was not just a "...concern about fragmentation of the movement..." | It's much broader than that, much broader | See, I've watched the folks come and go, earnest and angry, critical and disparaging and uncomfortable being seen with the "low functioning droolers" who hang outside psycho-social club houses or in hospital day rooms | And later on, they go away, perhaps having secured some position in a cushy non-profit who hires them on as their token crazy person staffer ~ serving as a gadfly and keeping the rest of the staff at
least minimally honest ...but they never got it | They never, ever saw that ~
once they were away from their "unnecessary suffering" ~ that their walking away
didn't eliminate the suffering machine | And without simultaneously creating real
alternatives for the folks who truly do suffer [yet who DO NOT LACK UNDERSTANDING
OF THIS FACT] while railing against the larger social injustices that allow that
suffering machine to remain in toto, then it will always be there, dark,
brooding, lurking in the background, ever ready to take you again, only the next
time, maybe to never spit you out like it did the last time |
     Dismissing the suffering of those who were suffering before they ever went into such a system, is as bad as thinking the plantation system was alright, because the fair skinned negroes got to read and write and stay in the big house | As long as the system exists, we are all low functioning individuals |
     Welcome to the real world of social justice activism in the 21st Century | Get used to it | We have a LOT of work to do, and it's possible we might not see it all done within our own lifetimes | I hope that we will, but we have to be prepared to pass the torch along to other valiant souls 30 years from now |

2005-03-13T14:33:00.000-05:00

MAINTAINING IDEOLOGICAL PURITY
Some people, when involved in social movements, get unduly preoccupied with how "pure" their point of view has to be |
The following blocked quote is my response to a writer in one of many groups I sit in on but don't generally make comment | It's a "mental health/psychiatric surviors" discussion group | He questioned which was more important, combatting the myth of mental illness -or- seeking an end to the stigma against mental illness by pursuing equality through "empowerment" tools | The questioner was quick to criticize one social / human rights activist in particular | A statement was made that "...the notion of “stigma” and the efforts to combat it operates from the assumption that mental illness is a real entity which sits in a biomedical view of the world." | Personally, I find this premise as absurd as saying that prejudice against racial minorities is an artificial construct [something I do not believe] So, for once, I was prodded to respond | Here's my rant:

Elizabeth has asked our thoughts of a member's point of view that contrasted empowerment/stigma busting with [to oversimplify] the premise that there is "no such thing as mental illness" |
     Without making contrast, I felt compelled to respond with commenter's line of discussion by asking my own questions:
          1- Are there proper degrees of ideological "purity" and
          2- is there no such thing as Prejudice?
     However well meant, David comments lead down the road that has marginalized those esposuing causes for social justice for the past 30 years.
     One can try to be "purer" than everybody else, only to find that no one hears what one has to say.
     I've been familiar with Mind Freedom [as Dendron] since the 1980s. I find that it's a bit of a stretch to classify D. Oaks and other human rights activists of his calibre (and integrity) as siding with those who placidly go with the "broken brain" psychobabble perspective.
     Going the route of find the "purest group" ideologically seems, [no disrespect meant] an exercise in idle navel-gazing and an unproductive one at that.
     Each and every person who is now fighting for Human Rights comes from a different starting point. The psyche survivor movement is but a part of that fight for human rights, albeit the seat from where those on this group come to the table from | But when fighting for justice, a narrow perspective doesn't run the show | Those varied perspectives must be taken into account |
     The ability to interact with people of varying viewpoints, and to find some common point at which to work, seems more important than sitting back and waiting for everyone to convert to any one particular point of view.
     Human history will, ultimately, decide who and what was right and accurate. Those of us living with a segment of that history in our face, if we are honest, lack the ability to determine those things. Working with one another to acheive commn goals against oppression, whatever one chooses to call it, is more important than holding out until one's personal philosophical slant is dominant.
     So others have some idea where I'm coming from ~ it's absurd to deny that individual human beings never personally live with cognitive, perceptual intellectual, spiritual or psychic realities that are so much at variance with others than they would not be deemed irregular from the mass of humanity | If one wants to call these kinds of variants "menal illnesses" well, they will call then so anyway, regardless of one's dislike of the concept | If a person is living with such variants and he or she can manage in life without society coming to lock-em away, so much the better |
     But there are some who find such variant ways of seeing the world so disturbing as to cause them, individually, to freeze and become unable to function even to care for basic food/clothing/shelter needs. And when this occurs, the rest of us must step up to assist and provide solace and support.
     Society around the world has differing responses to this when it occurs | Most categorize and, yes, sitgmatize, those who experience those troubling realities |
     It is just as troubling to me to have someone deny these experiences as it is for me to see people being forced medicated, electroshocked, denied housing, food, dignity and, yes, stimatized for living an interior life so apart from those around them that what most of us recognize as a common socialy reality is -essentially- something alien and strange and disturbing.
     A "no-mental illness"-style purist, [any, ideological purist for that matter] in my own experience, can be just as heartless and uncaring as the folk who rush too quickly, for the blister packs of Risperidone, Abilify, Haldol, the ECT switch or forced institutionalization |
     We need to work together, not splinter into so many groups that our efforts are rendered ineffective | When that happens, then the Fuller Torreys, Sally Satels and Dr. Finks of the world have won | At least for the short term, in taking this rarefied stance, humanity continues to lose |
     As to minimizing combatting "Stigma" lets call it for what it is | Prejudice | Bigotry | Pure and simple | I challenge anyone who says that combatting stigma is just caving into the whims of the powerful | Replace the word Stigma with Prejudice or Bigotry and the comment becomes absurd | If one person focuses combatting prejudice rather than on promoting some other equally important point to address doesn't lessen the importance of the other point, it shows us what part of the larger battlefront that person is fighting on |
     And I must take issue with the statement that "...the human rights violations perpetrated by the psychiatric assault of labels and toxins is weakened - if not lost - when combined with consumer rights, ADA and pro-choice messages..."
     Take heed in the fact that the Amercians with Disabilities Act [for example] is NOT about accomodating to oppressors, but is a complex tool to force oppressive people to OBEY THE LAW about equal rights for all | And it was a set of laws gained by fighting for them, a fight that continues today | But...that a different discussion altogether |
     Hark back to my comments about personal cognitive or perceptual realities that some find disturbing. We all know people who haev been unjustly forced into "treatment" when nothing was wrong with them expect (perhaps) they lived in controlling oppressive families or groups, or that they were inarticulate in their discontent, but the experience of someone wrongefully incarcerated and forceby drugged, does NOT mean that the experiences of a man with a seizure disorder, or the troublesome and persistent psychic companionship of voices who drone on about a person's valuelessness or calling to disbelief everything around them, is something that the experiencer should just leave alone and try as best they can to ignore.
     Even if the premise for putting people on those drugs is not real [as the original author supposes] living with the long term and ongoing effect of being legally addicted to potent drugs that directly affect both the chemical and electrical operational components of the human brain is also real | Having one's cognitive, intellectual and physical abilities impaired by those drugs is real | The system, and psychiatry and society [by not questioning the practices] did this to people. Wishing this long history of oppression away because one doesn't like the fact that people are doing this does NOT help those now trapped in it |
     Each person's life experience is valid ~ and this includes troubling non-visible stimuli [something I suppose that the questioner has never experienced ...I hope he never has to] For any of us ~ using the premise of some vauge ideological purity based on one's own very personal and hence, limited [from a global sence] perspective as the sole rallying point of a movement is naive at best, and as arrogant as the war profiteers running the world these day at worst.
     To the poster, give it a rest | We all have to work together | Psychiatric labeling is real because it is with us | This doesn't make it valid; we continue to agree on this point, that writer and I | Prejudice, however, is also with us as are the lost opportunities, the discrimination in housing, employment and recognition as equal human beings | Even the fact that for some, the ability to travel to some places from the United States, IS A REALITY to some of those who have been labeled for years and who are still stuck in the system |
     When you walk away from the philosophical table or choose to ignore the DAY TO DAY DIRECT IMPACT of the actions of those in power on those long oppressed before become a latter day ideologiocal purist, you then commit yourself to the same blind path that Big Pharma and the powerful has committed itself to |
     Sorry. It's a messy package. But it's the whole thing that must be combatted and addressed. Not just the part that means sitting around tables full of books and meeting halls so you can look down from on high at the "deluded" who are merely fighting for their rights, which includes, the right to not be discriminated against because of deep seated prejudices and fears; fears that go far beyond the sphere of psychiatry and which permeate society in places that don't even realize or know about the profound influence of the social control freaks currently running the stage that is the world |

Sorry for the length of the rant | Hope my point has been made |

2005-01-08T11:35:00.000-05:00

SOCIAL MENTAL ILLNESS
Although the State of Connecticut, under chief thief John Rowland, was capable of shoving through a $229 million dollar gift to ENRON weeks before it went bankrupt, it appears that same state is unable or unwilling to pay state pharmacies on time to ensure that clients on Title 19 get their medications as prescribed |
     I try not to burden my state legislators with case-by-case problems of clients but one that came to light this morning is particularly disturbing. Moreover, it sounds as if it might have much larger ramifications |
     This morning -at home- I got a phone call from a man on the other side of the state, distraught after being told by his Assertive Community Treatment [ACT]^* team nurse that he didn't have any medications for the weekend | After a couple of phone calls I learned that the pharmacy owner was refusing to provide any meds to clients whose pharmachy bills the state has gotten behind in paying the pharmacy bills | In this man's situation the bill amounts to some $2,000 (approximately). I've no idea how many other clients are so adversely impacted |
     While on the pharmacist's part, I can understand his frustration at not being paid, it seems inconscionable to deprive people of prescribed medications, I also know this problem [i.e.pharmacies not getting paid] is not a new one. I'm not certain which is the culprit, but just because Connecticut's Department of Administrative Services [or the Office of Policy + Management] can't get it's act together to pay vendors in a timely manner doesn't mean the state's most fragile should be punished |
     In this specific situation, I'm trying to work out with the pharmacist, by phone, so the man to get his weekend's work of medications and hope that this could get resolved on Monday | And just for the record I also took the time to raise the question to one of the legislators on the Public Health Committee |

* ABOUT ACT TEAMS: "Assertive Community Treatment is a team treatment approach designed to provide comprehensive, community-based psychiatric treatment, rehabilitation, and support to persons with serious and persistent mental illness such as schizophrenia | Services are provided within community settings, such as a person's own home | FOR MORE ABOUT THE "ACT" Model see the Assertive Community Treamment Association website

2004-12-08T02:31:00.000-05:00

HOSPITAL LIFE
My first visit to see someone in the mental hospital, in 1982, was difficult | I'd gone to visit a friend who'd only recently been admitted | I didn't have any idea what to expect |
     To make matters worse, I'd worked third shift, had been up most of the day running errands and chores, and was tired | I still had to go home to at least take a nap before starting the work cycle all over again |
     Visiting hours were very unstructured | All visits took place in a large common room where people were aimlessly shuffling about, others reading, someone else was on the pay phone | A group of four men sat at a table rolling cigarettes from loose tobacco with a large rolling device that sat on the table | A visitor could, if he wished, stay all day | Just make sure you don't lose that visitor's badge, a flimsy piece of stick-on paper upon which you'd written your name | When you tired of visiting, you'd just get up and ask one of the staff to let you back downstairs |
     It was not a good visit | I'd brought him what he'd asked for but he was off, upset, angry and not focused | I stayed until my friend got up and walked off, and just didn't return to where we were sitting | So I got up and asked to leave |
     Ward staff let me out the door by the elevators | While the door to the elevator was wide open, staff neglected to tell me I'd need to be "keyed" to get down and out the building | I waited about 10 minutes before anyone came by | Finally, a gruff, gnarled sour-faced man came down the hall, got into the elevator car, turned the key in the slot, and we headed down | The car started on it's very slow trajectory down four floors to the lobby |
     I must have sighed audibly, or made some other sound, for the man turned to me and said "Rough day, huh?" | I acknowledged that it was | Then, without so much as a scintilla of further discussion he said [or thought] aloud, "Yeah, that's the problem with this place" |
Curious, I asked, "What's that?" |
     This time he sighed. "They don't let us put them in restraints as much any more" |
     "Ahh!" I responded, almost grunting | There were three more flights to descend | I didn't know this man from Adam, but it was clear he wanted me to know with what degree of seriousness he took his job | I didn't know it at the time, because I was wondering what he'd do if I paniced while alone in the slow moving car with him, but that chance encounter started me on the career path I continue to follow today |
     Fighting for patients' rights |

PHOTOS FROM a collection of over 800 taken while on a series of "urban expeditions" with my photographer friend Chad Kleitsch

2004-11-25T08:10:00.000-05:00

BE PREPARED
Ideas for checking in the hospital: | Last week Ian found himself in a horrible state | He's doing somewhat better now | During the process he wrote this collection of sage suggestions |

DISTRIBUTE FREELY DO NOT ALTER

     1) If ya gotta go now, then go!  But, if ya don't, then here are some things to think about:
     2) Try to wrap things up. Things like, bills, pets, mail, etc. What you can't do before you leave, you may be able to do by phone. A cell phone is helpful here. So is a friend. Wards also usually have payphones (see #3 and #4 and remember to bring change). You may want to ask a friend to be your point of contact, a sort of filter between you and the outside world.  Try to select a person you can trust with the more personal aspects of your life for you never know what you may need from them. If you need to and you are able, designate different people to handle the aspects of your life for which they are best suited.
     3) Pack smart. Number 1 item: shower shoes. (You’ll thank me later). Bring at least 24 hours worth of meds along with a complete list of all of the meds you take (dosage, # times/day & time of day). Pack things like toiletries, comfortable clothes, undies & socks (shower shoes can be used as slippers) and your cell phone w/charger (the phone is usually left with the staff, so turn it off and use it when you want to get your messages or call out). Include a list of important phone numbers as well as money (no more than $20 and keep it in small bills w/some change as well), writing material, stamps & envelopes, books, etc. Don't take anything you're not willing to lose. A "ready bag" can be packed in advance (this list is coming soon).
     4) Make sure you have access to a phone. This is your contact with the outside world, your voice. It is important to stay in touch with your therapist (if you have one, otherwise, read the last half of idea #5, "it's never too late") and friends (idea #2). Most wards have a phone but you may needs lots of change or a prepaid calling card, there are usually limits on time and important messages are often not received. A cell phone w/charger is your best bet (idea #3).
     5) Use your Therapist. Clue them in to your status, THEY WORK FOR YOU. Discuss what hospitals or programs are available, and have them use their connections and familiarity with the system to find the best place for you. If you don't have a therapist, it's never too late. Here's what I do: get out the Yellow Pages, dial the therapists that appeal to me, listen to their message and decide from there (You can tell a lot from a message). Most will negotiate fees and nearly all will help when you really need it.
     6) The day of the week is important. Staff is not usually on duty on weekends and holidays. These are "sit and wait" days. Even on days when staff is present there's still lots of free time, and then there are the nights. Plan to occupy yourself (see #3).
     7) CALL AHEAD. Have a therapist or doctor (even a medical doctor, social worker or, in a pinch, a friend you trust to speak for you) call psych staff to lay the ground work for your arrival (see #5). This is like instant credibility with the staff - you are "represented". This is also a good opportunity for your doctor to explain your situation to the staff, saving you time and precious effort and laying the foundation for a more productive stay.
     8) Never go in high or drunk if at all possible. Your words will be discounted and thus you will lose your ability to negotiate (see #9). Find a part of the day when you are usually straight (first thing after waking) and go then. Coordinate with a professional. (See # 7 and #5).     9) Negotiate. Think about the things that would make your stay more comfortable and productive and ask for them. Discuss this with your therapist beforehand (Important: see #7 and #5). A calm voice and some eye contact are helpful. Remember, breathe and take your time.
     10) If you have a hard time expressing yourself, write down the things you want to negotiate for and take the paper with you. This is a good place to record your needs and goals, triggers and fears, and what are the best ways (and worst) to communicate and work with you. This can guide staff in your treatment and prevent them from inadvertently hurting you. Most of this can often be written in advance and kept in your "ready bag" (see #3).
     11) Rules of engagement. Don't swear if you can help it. Staff need to know if you are potentially violent and swearing is one of the first signs of escalation (Remember, they need to feel safe too and protect the rest of the people on the ward.). Pay attention to your posture and speech. Even though you may be afraid, resist the temptation to look and act tough. This can be perceived as potentially violent. If you fear you are feeling violent, tell the staff and negotiate for your safety (#’s 9, 7 and 8).
     12) You have rights. For instance, you have the right to refuse visitors and phone calls (If this is a potential issue, notify staff as early as possible). You also have the right to refuse medication (Try to use good judgment, meds can help you). IF YOU BRING YOUR OWN MEDS DON'T be surprised if they try to take away your meds and re-prescribe you their own. It may be reasonably argued that they are bound to do this by law or regulation. Look for posters and bulletin boards, they will inform you of your rights and give you the names and phone numbers of people to contact if you have questions or problems (Again, judgment is crucial here. These folks are often overwhelmed with petty complaints. Pick your battles wisely.). See # 4.
     Gods bless all of you brave, intrepid souls who take that terrifying leap. They know not of your courage or inner strength.
     JRG © 2004 comments/suggestions twoshadows@verizon.net

2004-11-17T08:34:00.000-05:00

DRUG WARS || MENTAL HEALTH
The cozy bed of politics and medicine | I hand over this entry to Stefan Kruszewski:

     Medicine and politics are obligatory companions, as inseparable as tea and biscuits. Although academic reactionaries and purists may argue that medicine should not be tainted by political agendas, rarely has this been, or is it, reality. (1)
     Medicine--as practiced in times and regions as diverse as pre- Christian Hippocrates, Freud’s Vienna or Massachusetts’s Back Bay--invokes relationships, all of them illustrating a political connectedness to governing authorities.
     When I hear fellow Pennsylvania physicians speak of politics in medicine, the substance often reflects those controversies that attract media scrutiny and hefty emotional responses: Fee-for-service vs. managed care reimbursements, Darwinian evolution vs. creationism, stem cell research vs. right-to-life arguments, clean needles for IV drug users vs. moral objections, and/or financial support for AIDS prevention and treatment vs. financial resources allocated elsewhere. However riveting are those arguments, it is the day-to-day interrelationship of politics and medicine---those that border on the mundane—that cement the relationship. The existence of that bond makes the case, at least for me, that our relationships to, and with, governing bodies are fundamental to medicine and therefore critical to medical reporting. (2)
     In psychiatric medicine, the evolution of this interrelationship, particularly as it pertains to 19th and 20th century U.S. federal and state policies, is highlighted by involuntary commitment, deinstitutionalization, Federal, State and private sector funding sources, psychiatric epidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology(3).
     As is true of both psychiatric and non-psychiatric medicine, our profession in Pennsylvania is licensed by authorization of the Department of State. The Secretary of State is an official appointment of the elected Governor. The regulatory oversight and management of conduct for practitioners of the healing arts (including medicine, dentistry, veterinary, podiatry, nursing, etc) is defined by Pennsylvania Code (applicable laws of Pennsylvania) as well as federal and local/community standards. Similar laws and standards define the compensation for our services from federal programs (Medicare), federally-subsidized state programs (Medicaid) and from private insurers who are under State and Federal licensing and regulation.
     Medical practitioners prescribe within the directives and guidelines of the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and, where applicable, individual state agencies that monitor controlled substances. (Not all US states have separate registries for controlled substances; Pennsylvania is one that does not.)
Like its counterparts in the UK(MHRA, NPSA; others), our pharmaceutical and therapeutic prescribing habits have Federal watchdogs, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, multiple collateral advisory committees and Federally-funded programs that assist the process of research and information dissemination (National Institute of Health/National Institute of Mental Health/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: NIH/NIMH/SAMHSA; others.)
     The American Psychiatric Association (APA) and its collaborative organizations devote a prodigious effort to legislative and political agenda. The current APA website’s Homepage highlights three “front and center” advocacy items: Endorsement of recent Congressional passage of an $83 million dollar ‘Suicide Prevention Bill’, and two subsequent links to the APA Advocacy Action Center and APAPAC, both sites that promote lobbying efforts on behalf of APA’s constituency. (4)
     Oversight regulation, advocacy and legislative agendas, investigatory and legal mandates underscore medicine’s inseparable coexistence with politics. With issues of medical record confidentiality, academic research freedoms, parity, tort reform, the involuntary commitment of individuals, the duty to warn, the continued evolution of Lyndon Johnson’s Community Mental Health Act of 1965 or George W. Bush’s New Freedom Commission’s recommendation to screen American’s youth for psychiatric disease, psychiatry is as much about legal and political agendas as it is about mental illness and mental health.
     Whether the issues pertain to psychiatry or non-psychiatric medicine, it is crucial for journals to discuss political trends and counter-trends in medicine---just as it is expected that they deliberate the epidemiology and pathophysiology of heart disease, cancer or schizophrenia. Medical journals and physicians would be well served, I believe, by confronting-- not denying--the issues and the political forces that shape them.

[published : 10 nov 2004 as "The Inseparability of Medicine and Politics"; British Medical Journal | My readers might also want to look at the article that calls for greater scrutiny of the use of psychiatric medications to determine their adverse "side effects"]

REFERENCES: 1. Krakauer, E. Yale J Biol Med. 1992 May-June; 65(3):243-9. || 2. Abbasi, K. Should journals mix medicine and politics?BMJ 2004; 329: 0-g || 3. Center for Mental Health Services, Mental Health, United States 2000. Manderscheid, R.W. and Henderson, M.J., eds. DHHS Pub No. (SMA) 01-3537. Washington, DC: Supt. of Docs., US Govt. print. Off., 2001) || 4. American Psychiatric Association Homepage, (Accessed 11.05.04) || Competing interests: None declared

2004-11-07T10:53:00.000-05:00

NEWS BLIPS
UK | Mental health reform plans 'breach human rights' | Controversial government reforms of mental health law would violate patients' human rights by infringing on their dignity and autonomy, legal experts warned recently | The draft mental health bill, currently undergoing parliamentary scrutiny, would breach the European convention on human rights (ECHR), according to the Law Society and the Bar Council | In evidence to a committee of peers and MPs, the Law Society raised concerns that the proposed legislation would significantly extend compulsory treatment, while lowering the threshold for its use |
According to the new proposals, people with mental health problems could be forcibly treated in hospital or the community, even if they have full control of their faculties or comply with their care | THE FULL STORY |
Pfizer's Celebrex Linked to Deaths | Documents from Canadian health authorities show that Pfizer Inc.'s painkiller Celebrex is suspected of contributing to at least 14 deaths and other heart and brain side effects, according to the National Post newspaper in Toronto. The documents include more than 100 adverse-reaction reports on Celebrex over the past five years, including five strokes and 19 cases of heart attack, cardiac arrest or heart failure. | THE FULL STORY [P.S. Check out the Celebrex adverts on the sidebar]
Britain's largest drug company unveils plan to push 'happy' pills | Health campaigners accuse the firm, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), of putting profit before the therapeutic needs of patients by attempting to broaden the market for the drug which has been linked to a spate of suicides | THE FULL STORY |
E. Fuller Torrey's own research site indicates that Antipsychotic drugs change brain structure | Antipsychotic drugs, used to treat schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorder (bipolar disorder), change some aspects of brain structure, as do drugs used to treat Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and other brain diseases. Some of the brain changes appear to be related to the efficacy of the antipsychotic drugs, while other changes are probably related to the side effects of the drugs. Studying the brain changes may eventually lead to a better understanding of how they work and the prediction of which individuals are most likely to respond to which drugs and which patients are most likely to develop side effects, include tardive dyskinesia | THE FULL STORY |
Watching TV linked to Attendtion Deficit Disorder | certainkly not new nes [first note din April 2004] this still warrants notice | A new study published in the April issue of Pediatrics says the more boob tube youngsters watch between the ages of one and three, the greater the risk of having attention problems later in life | Researchers insist that each hour of television taken in by preschoolers---increases the risk of attention deficit disorder, or ADD, by almost ten percent later on in life.
ADD is a serious problem in this country.. In the United States---between three and five percent of children are diagnosed with the syndrome----which is marked by reduced ability to concentrate and difficulty in organizing and impulsive behavior. Symptoms usually do not typically show up age seven | THE FULL STORY |

2004-11-04T19:23:00.000-05:00

FORCED PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT
NEWS RELEASE | From MindFreedom / Support Coalition International
Re-Election of President Bush May Mean More Psychiatric Coercion, Advocates Warn
     With the election of President Bush, advocates for the human rights of people affected by the mental health system are preparing for the worst.
     Today, MindFreedom International, an independent non-profit coalition of 100 grassroots groups, is launching the MindFreedom Shield Program to defend members from an expected increase in coerced and forced psychiatric procedures.
     President Bush has endorsed a drug company plan to screen every American for mental health problems. A Bush appointee to a key federal committee, psychiatrist Sally Satel, has openly called for more "coercive," "intrusive, highly paternalistic" and "involuntary care" in mental health.
     MindFreedom International has an established track record of taking constructive, nonviolent action when a person is being subjected to coerced or forced psychiatric procedures. In order to better utilize its very limited resources, MindFreedom International announces the official beginning of the MindFreedom Shield Program.

MindFreedom Announces New MindFreedom Shield Program
     MindFreedom Shield is a coordinated registration system and solidarity network composed by and for people who want to have as much protection as possible from being subjected to coerced or forced psychiatric "treatment."
     "I hope this program lets people know that they not only have choice A, B, or C but that they are free to choose, 'NONE OF THE ABOVE!'" explains advocate Pat Risser, one of a group of psychiatric survivors who envisioned
and initiated the concept that has become the MindFreedom Shield.
     "This is a way to 'just say no' to oppression."
     MindFreedom Shield is designed to support a person's choice to be free from coerced or forced psychiatric "treatment" by backing this personal choice up with the MindFreedom Solidarity Network -- a network of people ready to take constructive, nonviolent action if someone's choice to be free from coerced or forced psychiatric "treatment" is not being respected or upheld.
     As the current mental health system continues to globalize and rely more and more on coercion and outright force, many people's rights to have their previously expressed and even properly documented wishes carried out are being ignored. The recent recommendations of the President's New Freedom Commission to begin universal mental health screening, currently being implemented in several states, is only one example of the increasing use of such pressure.
     In order to best implement this program, MindFreedom is collaborating closely with sponsor group The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights.org). "Through this mechanism people saddled with psychiatric labels can unite and offer effective resistance to psychiatric abuses," said attorney Jim Gottstein, director of PsychRights. "The MindFreedom Shield Program fits PsychRights' mission of defending people facing the horrors of forced psychiatric drugging and other forced psychiatric procedures administered against their will perfectly."

All for One and One for All
     MindFreedom board member and psychologist Al Galves, PhD said, "The MindFreedom Shield is a quick, cost-effective defense against people being railroaded into using such methods as medication and electroshock to alleviate normal responses to life issues that can more effectively, economically and safely be addressed through interpersonal emotional support and creative action."
     "We can't guarantee the results," cautions MindFreedom director David Oaks, "But it has been our experience, including testing the MindFreedom Shield Program to help free a member from a Canadian psychiatric facility, that public awareness and people engaging in specific, nonviolent action can often reduce or even end coerced or forced psychiatric 'treatment.'"
     MindFreedom Shield is not meant to take the place of legal documents expressing a person's medical and psychiatric care preferences, such as an "Advance Directive."
     MindFreedom Shield is intended to provide the people power clout it sometimes takes to enforce a member's wishes, including members with Advance Directives. "Our recommendation is that a member have both a MindFreedom Shield and an Advance Directive in place." said Krista Erickson, chair of the MindFreedom Shield committee.
     Any current member of MindFreedom may register a MindFreedom Shield for free. Detailed information about the program, as well as a registration form, can be found online at: http://www.mindfreedom.intenex.net/shield

Any MindFreedom member who does not have access to the Internet may write to the MindFreedom office to obtain information about the program.

MindFreedom Support Coalition International is a grassroots human rights non-profit uniting over 100 sponsor groups in 15 countries working for human rights and alternatives in mental health. The organization is the only group of its kind with
Non Governmental Organization accreditation by the United Nations (ECOSOC Consultative Roster Status).
     Sometimes called the "Amnesty International of mental health," MindFreedom is independent from any government, mental health provider, drug company or religion.

To join or renew membership in MindFreedom go to:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/join.shtml

Or write to:
     MindFreedom
     PO Box 11284
     Eugene, OR 9744-3484 USA

For more information on the nationwide screening program approved by President Bush, along with his appointee psychiatrist Sally Satel, see:
http://mindfreedom.org/mindfreedom/bush_psychiatry.shtml
     For information about MindFreedom see: MindFreedom.org

2004-10-19T22:05:00.000-04:00

NEWS BLIPS
MindFreedom's list of news articles on the Bush Administration efforts to "screen" all Americans for "mental illness" | While the whole scenario makes me think of the Sondheim play Anyone Can Whistle, for some reason, the fact that it is being played out has much darker implications than when Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury performed this comic operetta on Broadway in 1964 |

Credit: [1] Thanks to Jason King for making note of the Adbuster's website |
[2] About Anyone Can Whistle "A surrealistic satire, Anyone Can Whistle proclaims the sanity of madness as well as the virtue of nonconformity. The mayoress, played by Angela Lansbury in the original production, is constantly escorted by four dancing chorus boys who provide plenty of glitter to cover up the lack of sincerity in her patronizing addresses to the townspeople | The link provided here gives you more detail |

2004-10-19T20:33:00.000-04:00

VIRTUAL REALITY PSYCHOSIS
I believe there's such a thing as "mental illness" | This appears to place me at odds with the likes of R D Laing and Thomas Szasz and other rights advocates in the so-called 'anti-psychiatry" movement | But, I would maintain, I am not at odds with them at all | Longer story |
     What I'm getting at is that far too many people have reported experiences, scenarios and descriptions of reality that vary significantly from what is generally accepted as "real", that none of us can afford to set these reports aside without serious reflection |
     It isn't just Americans who fail to reflect on these alternate perceptual worlds that most dismiss as madness | Historically, people around the planet have not wanted to hear about visions of life they may find disturbing |
     Yet humanity grows from learning about how others outside the dominant cultures see the world | We have come, begrudingly, to accept the idea of multiculturalism with tangible objects like modes of dress, furniture styles and manners of writing and art | Accepting the cultures that cannot so easily be seen ~ and which are sometimes idosycratically single ~ is a much harder sell |
     And the first step in learning is to recognize and understand personal language and experience | Since much in the mental health system is focused on pathology and "fixing" it, the task of understanding pretty much gets forgotten | Yet this kind of advance is vital if we are to ever get beyond the stunted concept of "treatment" and on to learning how to communicate with souls whose worlds look very much like that of dominant culture, but are veiled in ways imperceptable by the naked eye |
With this in mind, here are some folks who are trying to bridge these psychic communications gaps |
• Second Life Blog writes about an alternate 3-D virtual world, with occasionaly forays into the reals of physical planet earth | This is one entry about beginning communication |
• Virtual Reality Psychosis is a VR program developed by an Australian researcher, together with consultation and assistance from a woman who has experienced life through a set of "schizophrenic" filters |
• A BBC article that posits the opinion that VR "hallucinations" can be helpful | Paul Corry of the UK's National Schizophrenia Fellowship told BBC News Online: "One area where it could be introduced immediately is in tackling the public's prejudice, ignorance and fear of severe mental illness.
•
A film about visual hallucinations, Spider, with Ralph Fiennes | One reviewer of the film commented on its pace:

I'm also tired and irritated of idiots who say its too slow moving for them. These are the type of shallow viewers that expect things to keep happening and hopping every minute! I like the pace of this film. A pace like this enhances the performances and the dark mood. If you think its too slow then their is something wrong with you. You lack the type of patience that is required for thought provoking films.

• A Mind's Eye | A new site, not much on it, but the site authro's references to transcultural mapping seem worth keeping a watch on |

2004-10-19T20:02:00.000-04:00

DRUG WARS
Prozac Spotlight | "No one lives outside the mental environment, and everyone has a story," says the head to one of the FORUM sections on this AdBusters hosted site |
The site has some noble and principled objectives:

"All human beings are created different and every human being has the right to be mentally free and independent"

Our aim is to foster these rights and freedoms, as stated in the universal declaration of mental rights and freedoms. We want a healthy mental environment, not a toxic culture; we want access to the relevant information that drugtakers need to know; and we want to foster madpride, not the maltreatment of those considered mad.
This is a dialogue not a diatribe, so check out the forums and join us in conversation.

The site, quite evidently based on an edition of AdBusters magazine, is succinct, readable, easy to navigate, has a short but impressive links list and is ably edited by Richard DeGrandpre |
Look for the lengthy bio about former cokehead and dry alcoholic George Duyba Bush |

2004-10-01T10:36:00.000-04:00

HERE'S LOOKIN AT YOU
Playing with mirrors again | Reflective surfaces only provide a tease to what's there | Even then, the content is illusory ~ deceptive |
My work puts me in constant contact with metaphorical landscapes, inhabited by others, delusional in content by the standards of others but nonetheless real ~ and oft times frightening |

One man is caught up battles long ago considered over by his adversaries / a woman gets justifiably terrified by a kid [22 years in age] who wraps chains around his hands in a menacing way / another soul, caught up in a swirl of words and language appearing to him as one of Christo's constructions on a hill |

How do we converse? What brings us closer to resolution? When we who purport to be healers don't even realize that world behind the mirror's surface | Alice in Wonderland had it easier | She knew she was in another realm |

A response to John Strain's recent postings [29 + 30 sept 04]

2004-09-30T10:34:00.000-04:00

DRUG WARS
Merck dumps VIOXX | Merck makes a STUNNING announcement this morning: The voluntary withdrawal of VIOXX from its WORLDWIDE market. In opening trading on the NYSE, Merck, a DOW component, is trading down about $12.00 | The drugmaker says a study evaluating the efficacy of Vioxx in preventing recurrence of colorectal polyps showed an increased risk for confirmed cardiovascular events |
Some history, appearing to be contradictory:
• 08 sep 04 FDA Approves VIOXX for child arthritis [The Street.com]
• 26 aug 04 Merck faces challenges from lawsuits [Forbes]
• 26 aug 04 VIOXX suffers a setback [Business Week]

2004-09-25T03:59:00.000-04:00

DRUG WARS
Big Surprise! Drug Industry caught in web of deceit |
Johnson & Johnson and risks associated with Topomax |

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. regulators said certain promotional materials for Johnson & Johnson's epilepsy drug Topamax fail to disclose serious risks linked to the medicine and asked the company to immediately cease using them.
     In a warning letter to J&J unit Ortho-McNeil dated Sept. 15 and posted on the Food and Drug Administration Web site on Wednesday, the agency said the promotional material was missing information about serious side effects associated with Topamax, including hyperthermia and insufficient sweat production.
     The materials encourage unsafe use of the drug, especially for children, the FDA said.
The agency asked for a written response to its charges by Sept. 29.
     "Because the violations described are serious, we request further that your submission include a plan of action to disseminate truthful, non-misleading and complete information to the audiences that received the violative promotional materials," Thomas Abrams, the FDA's director for the division of drug marketing, advertising and communications, wrote in the warning letter.
     Topamax is an important drug for New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson with annual global sales in excess of $1 billion.
     "We take this matter very seriously and we are working closely with the FDA to address their concerns as quickly as possible," said Leslie Fishman, a spokeswoman for Ortho-McNeil.
     Fishman said the company would not speculate on possible actions.

Thanks to Stefan Kruszewski

2004-09-09T04:51:00.000-04:00

DRUG WARS || BREAKING NEWS

click on the letter [below] for a pdf file with full text

Congressman queries FDA on Neurontin | Earlier this year, New York state congressional representative Maurice Hinchey [22nd Dist.] learned of an independent study conducted regarding any links between suicides and the use of the psychpharm drug Neurontin | The study looked at people who commited suicide yet who had no previos history of mental illness | A conference call was then held between staff from the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] and the law firm that authorized the study | FDA personnel expressed concern and suggested that the informaion gathered on Neurontin was "the world's most important data set" regarding adverse psychiatric events and use of Nuerontin | That was last spring |
     Although the FDA also said the evidence suggested a potential "imminent health hazard" they did nothing about this except as the law firm who reported this to conduct more studies on the drug |
     I thought independent studies was the FDA's job | Instead, Congressman Hinchey makes reference to the FDA's active participation in assisting drug companies in lawsuits against them |
     Incidentally, this is not the first time Neurontin has come under closer scrutiny | In March 2004, an article in the New York Times reported that the original manufacturer, Parke-Davis, [now owned by Pfizer] has "...illegally promoted the drug to prescribing physicians for at least 11 "off-label" (unapproved) medical conditions, using their own employees, euphemistically called "medical liaisons." | Even where I work [a psychiatric facility], doctors are wary about prescribing this drug for psychiatric patients, who may have clinical conditions for which the drug was originally authorized | They won't say so on the record, but they opine about Nuerontin in front of non-clinical staff; the most common comment is that the drug is clinically "worthless" |
     The FDA officials haev known about the rsiks of Neurontin since [at least] March 2004 | Congressman Hinchey's letter [and subsequent press release - click for the pdf version] makes this notice more public | Now let's see how long these "permanant" government employees continue to sit on this problem |

2004-09-08T04:53:00.000-04:00

HUMAN RIGHTS || SOCIAL CONTROL
photos E Fuller Torrey | © 2001 Psyche Laws/TAC || Sally Satel | © 2003 C-Span's Booknotes
Psychiatry has long been infamous for its shrouded segment that promotes social control, social engineering and mental abuse | Now, Dubya, Inc, aided by extremists such as E. Fuller Torrey and Sally Satel, is getting into the act officially with its push to decide who among us is mentally ill |
     As part of the so-called New Freedom Initatives Bush Rove et al want to screen all Americans [starting with children; I've made note of this before] to see "...that the screening be linked with “treatment and supports,” using “specific medications for specific conditions.”
     The whole idea of top government involvement in determining who is or isn't sane is disturbing |
     Both Torrey and Satel are prodigiously published | Moreover, some of the criticisms they have presented against current health care system shortcomings have validity | But other points to their beliefs go unquestioned | Torrey once postulated [and had published, in 1973, by Psychiatric News] that schizophrenia was caused by allergies to cats | Ms. Satel, said to be a personal friend of Laura Bush and a fellow with the Neocon think tank American Enterprise Institute, has been critized for getting fuzzy between factual commentary and doctrinaire opinion | Rarely is their authority seriously analyzed |
     It quickly heads us down some slippery slopes | First, Dr. Fred Goodwin is still preoccupied with using drugs on children | Then, from a broader perspective, after the "assessment," Torrey and Satel both openly and actively promote involuntary treatment modalities [e.g. forced drugging, electroshock] Torrey doing so directly at the Treatment Advocacy Center | With this in mind how far away are we from Psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron, who conducted depatterning experiments on unsuspecting citizens, or a newer version of MKUltra or even The Manchurian Candidate | I don't have answers here, mind you, just asking people to thinkl of the ramifications of such radical lines of thinking |
     On a lighter note, these concepts have their detractors |

Related Links | E Fuller Torrey's self-promotional bio | Sally Satel's homepage | Predecessors to these controversial thinkers include Dr. Fred Goodwin, who promoted the Violence Initative | An article on the risks of reducing some "ality" or "ism" as a root cause of social problems | Another mention of Ewen Cameron | And how far away from all of this are "places" such as those described in Military curiosity and the tragic sense of life | Another interesting link is DARPA the agency that wanted to develop the Total Information Awareness Network and the Terrorism Futures Market | finally, if this stuff doesn't make you lose sleep, check out Chemtrail Central |

2004-09-06T08:54:00.000-04:00

TIME WARPS
Oliver Sacks has an essay in a recent New Yorker, speaking about human perceptions of time |
     Some of his findings are not new to me; athletes with a hyper-attuned sense so fine they often "hear" a starting bell "before" it goes off | The examples of self-experimenters using drugs ~ ranging from nitrous oxide to marijuana, mescaline and LSD ~ are well documented and abundant | But my concern at the moment is closer to my line of work; namely what happens with people's time perceptions when confronted with disease |
     Sack's extensive work, chronicled in Awakenings, with people who had survived enchepalitis is another point to explore the pehnomena of time warping | Although I oughtn't be, I was less familiar with the impact of Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's and Attention Defecit Disorder | And if I'm unfamiliar with this, I expect that so are many others |
     This ignorance of the time reality of others can be critical when working with people identified as mentally ill |
     It's bad enough when no thought is given to the impact of a fistful of meds, but such insensitivity is even worse taking this into consideration |
I can't count the number of occasions I've heard staff abruptly tell individuals "...snap out of it!" "Pay attention!" and [worst of all] "...get a move on or we're going to restrict you!"
     Often, such edicts and restrictions are imposed with a rapidity that the imposer could not have complied with the edict swift enough themselves | The effect, if not the intent, of such action against one experiencing a dramitically dissonant perception of time, is punishment, pure and simple |
     I plan on writing more about this | A link to the appropriate page or pages, shall be put there when it's done |

2004-09-06T03:27:00.000-04:00

DRUG WARS
Things are never simple | Vitamin Supplement providers, manufactures of "performance enhancing" drugs and Marijuana growers are excoriated and prosecuted with vigor by the Feds | Not that there aren't risks with unknown elements | But the Big Pharma Industry has generally been treated with kid gloves and tender loving care by the same politicians | Be it the no-hands approach to scadalous prescription drug costs, or a see-no-evil attitude about adverse reactions and dangers to drugs being legally pushed | Is it any wonder that mental patients complain of being guinea pigs? [rhetorical question on my part] Some of the latest stuff in the headlines |
Doping Bad [from The Mercury News †] There is Balco, the alleged Bay Area doping ring for elite athletes. And there is Balco, the cradle of conspiracies -- a source of carefully planted media leaks and an alleged political agenda at the highest level of government | A court hearing Friday morning in San Francisco federal court mainly dealt with the latter allegations. Judge Susan Illston took under consideration complaints and counter-complaints swirling around the case.
     ``Balco is now a household word, and, thanks to misinformation contained in the many leaks, it is a word as loaded as a hand grenade,'' the lawyers for Victor Conte Jr. and James Valente, Balco's president and vice president, respectively, wrote in an informational motion submitted Friday.
     ``It is now very doubtful that these defendants can ever receive a fair trial -- anywhere.''
     The political allegations are being leveled by J. Tony Serra, Anderson's attorney, who in April filed a motion suggesting that the case was powered by political motivations and was ultimately intended to help get President Bush re-elected.
     Serra had asked the judge to allow him to get an internal memorandum from the government that could show the case being orchestrated from the White House | Serra said the goal of eliminating performance-enhancing drugs from athletics was ``laudable,'' but that unless the judge orders the prosecution to produce the memorandums, ``We will forever believe that we are being sacrificed for the greater good of the establishment, and that's not right.''
     Prosecutor Jeff Nedrow argued that Serra had no evidence to support his charge.
     There's more... †
Merek to Tell the Public of Adverse Clinical Testing [from The New York Times †] Merck & Company says it will post the results of its clinical trials on drugs on a Web site run by the National Institutes of Health. The move comes ahead of a House subcommittee hearing this week where, it is expected, drug companies will be excoriated for refusing to publish unfavorable clinical trial results | Merck said Friday that it had already posted on the Web site, ClinicalTrials.gov, the outlines of 46 studies, or every trial for which the company is currently recruiting patients as well as some others. By the end of the month, the company will post 50 more trials that are already under way but where patients are no longer being recruited. And as the studies are published, Merck will post links to their results, the company said |
     "Merck has long been committed to publishing the results of all of our trials in a timely manner," said Dr. Peter Honig, a senior vice president, "and now we're strengthening that commitment." One reason for the new postings, Dr. Honig said, is the industry's growing image problem |
     "Let's face it, the perceptions of the pharmaceutical industry as a whole are not healthy at the moment," he said |
     There's more... †
Pfizer 'Fesses Up: Antipsychotics can cause Diabetes [from Associated Press] The Food and Drug Administration and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. warned doctors that the company's antipsychotic drug Geodon has been linked to extremely high blood sugar and diabetes | Pfizer's letter to doctors, announced on Tuesday, follows a September 2003 FDA request that manufacturers of the six most widely used antipsychotic drugs revise labels to reflect additional risks | The remaining drugs affected by the FDA request include Eli Lilly's Zyprexa, Bristol-Myers Squibb's Abilify, Novartis' Clozaril, Janssen's Risperdal and AstraZeneca's Seroquel.
     Pfizer's warning letter to doctors said "few reports" of hyperglycemia or diabetes were noted in patients prescribed Geodon. But it also noted fewer patients were treated with that particular antipsychotic | As a whole, so-called atypical antipsychotic drugs were linked to such adverse events as diabetes and high blood sugar - in some cases, extreme enough to induce coma or death | Geodon, approved to treat schizophrenia, on Aug. 23 gained FDA approval for the treatment of acute bipolar mania |

FOOTNOTES † Means you'll have to subscribe to the publication's online story service | Right now, both sources noted above are free | for the NY Times, try entering "gorevidal" into the member and password line | THANKS TO: Stefan Kruszewski

2004-08-29T17:38:00.000-04:00

WEBSITES
Pharmeceuticals and Politics
crowd the mental airwaves today | here's a couple of finds

• Corsello Center's News briefs | News about the Pharmaceutical and Conventional Medicine industries that you won't find on the cover of the New York Times [or the Post, for that matter] | Full disclosure: Corsello Center is an "Alternative medicine Center which uses natural modalities of treatment such as herbs, vitamins, acupuncture and life-style changes all of which are eventually going to be incorporated in what orthodox medicine calls Integrative medicine." Nothing wrong with this | I'm telling you now so the readers who are afraid of other perspectives won't have to click on the site | Their loss |
• Psuedoscience in Psyche | A personal website by Alex Chernavsky | Hard hitting | Uncompromising | The material he researches falls into two main categories : Avaricous Drug Companies and Charlatans posing as mental health professionals | Well researched and easy to maneuver through the site | I like it | Includes the standard "I am not a Scientologist" disclaimer requist for sites critical of conventional psychiatry |
• Soteria Associates | Loren Mosher was a respected fellow with the American Psychiatric Association who, in 1998, resigned from that group amidst much consternation and fanfare | He went on to champion working with troubled souls without reliance of the psychopharm industry | His efforts included developing Soteria Associates |
• Mercenaries and Margaret Thatcher's son | Kathryn Cramer is up to her usual through watch-dogging of the misadevntures of children of the power elite | Leaders, they are not | Machivellian schemers, manipulators, bad seed, demon spawn?; that's another story | Here's the complete thread on Mark Thatcher's dirty dealings | Thanks, Kathryn, for a reporting job well done |

2004-08-29T03:50:00.000-04:00

PSEUDO SCIENCES
“Evidence-based practice” | The "Children’s Mental Health Partnership," (which we find referenced throughout the Partnership’s preliminary plan for our children) is best illustrated by Howard G. Hendrick’s story of the Scientist and the Flea.

A scientist using this method while observing the characteristics of the common flea began by commanding the flea to jump. So it did. He then pulled one leg off the flea and shouted the command again; still the flea complied. Again, the scientist pulled another leg off, although it was obviously more difficult to jump, the flea still managed to obey.
     One by one the scientist removed the legs of the flea, and time and time again, the flea jumped as feebly as one might expect, but nonetheless, it jumped. Until that is, the last leg was removed.
     The scientist ordered the flea to jump, but nothing happened. The scientist shouted the command, but to no avail; the flea did not budge. The scientist concluded his study, by writing in his journal his findings. “When the legs of a flea are removed, he loses his sense of hearing.”
     Moral of the story; What one finds, is most often, exactly what he is looking for.

THANKS TO: Rhonda Robinson via Dr. Stefan Kruszewski | there is a longer recount available | Right now, as seems to be the practice on weekends at Cleartel I can't upload any files, but I'll post the entire article here once I can FTP my new files | I the meantime, just roam about the rest of the blog for your entertainment and pique |

2004-08-18T08:33:00.000-04:00

MENTAL HOSPITALS
Hospitals + Asylums | Ran across this site Hospitals + Asylums complied and supported by an architecture links collection site | While the general physical conditions in some mental institutions has improved, others have become colder and more dehumanizing | The physical space says much about the conditions we create for troubled souls amongst us | More, perhaps, about our own ambivalence to their worth as fellow travelers through life | Also found a link to information about workhouses and British mental institutions |
I find the quote on this latter site particularly appealing:

"For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want to you can always do them good ....."
Mark Ch 14, v7

The images on this entry are from some 800 photos I took while on an adventure/assignment with photographer Chad Kleitsch who is doing different work now, but the body of work for some time was abandoned institutions |

2004-08-11T23:46:00.000-04:00

DRUG WARS
Medical marijuana is bad but forced pharmeceutical drugging of kids is good? | Oh I get so confused | Perhaps because Dubya and Tom Ridge get mega-dollars from Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis AG, AstraZeneca PLC, GlaxoSmithKline, and Eli Lilly, there's some connection here | In contrast, I doubt that the erstwhile growers of Mendocino County's [and probably Hawa'ii's] largest cash crop are forking over their dollars to fund these guys |
     I've been meaning to do something on the move from the Bush Administration to first "assess" kids in public schools for "mental illness" [is a similar move going on with applicants to Phillips Exeter Academy? to name but one] and so this entry is way overdue |
     Really, it isn't all that much different than the stunts that Dr. Fred Goodwin [formerly with the NIMH] tried to do with the much ballyhooed Violence Initative | This race-centered project was later criticized as a thinly disguised attempt at diagnosing African American youth as prone to mental illness and violence |
     Only, this time, it's not just kids in trouble, nor is the mere diagnosis of someone with a psychiatric disorder the complete problem |
     No, this go-round, the drug companies seem so intent on pushing their product, that they are less concerned about public safety and welfare | Targeting the poor, [who would have difficulty protesting when doped up to the max] these new initiatives effectively endorse the "...widespread misuse of psychotropic drugs in ...state mental health system[s], ...correctional system[s], and Juvenile welfare system[s]..." around the nation [USA].
     In a lawsuit filed recently in Pennsylvania, Dr. Stefan Kruszewski pointed out the indiscriminate misuse of psychotropic drugs in ...institutionalized people is "unsupported by clinical studies or any viable evidence to support their recommended use." The drugs whose use he disputes include Neurontin, Paxil, Geodon, Risperdal, Seroquel, Topamax, Trileptal and Zyprexa.
     Already Risperdal and Zyprexa are known to assist in someone "converting" to diabetes and, [where I work at least] some licensed clinicans freely speak [in front of the rest of us who work with them, but certainly off the record] about Neurontin as "virtually worthless." | So, the circumstantial evidence mounts that with Dubya, Inc's tacit support, the push to drug his opposition and future generations is one more deceitful ~and deplorable~ practice |
     Oh for a breath of fresh air!

for more info on rights of psychiatric patients: Law Project for Psych Rights | Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law | MindFreedom | National Empowerment Center

2004-08-04T03:41:00.000-04:00

UPDATE || INSTITUTIONAL CARE
The National Governor's Association had, among its illustrious Task Force Panelists reviewing the problems with long term care, the following: [from the ten worsts states list below] Gov. Kenny Guinn # 2 Nevada; Gov. Phil Bredesen # 4 Tennessee; Gov. Sonny Perdue # 6 Georgia [home state to Olmstead vs. LC]; Gov. James McGreevey # 8 New Jersey | Four out of ten, I suppose that's not insurmountable |

2004-08-03T03:57:00.000-04:00

HUMAN RIGHTS || INSTITUTIONAL LIVING

People with disabilities can have active lives when integrated with others

ADAPT the Disability Rights Activist Group released the findings of a [USA] nationwide survey on the 10 worst states for community services | # 1 [or # 50, you decide] was Mississippi, indicating that "..87% of its long term care funding being spent on nursing homes and other institutions, while only 13% goes for community services."
Citing a huge bias in favor of institutional settings rather than community placment ADAPT members went to Seattle in July in an effort to get some time with the National Governor's Association | Not surprising, the activists were rebuffed | Not only did the NGA refuse to meet with anyone from the group but that "...even before we arrived in Seattle, the NGA sent out a statement about us that not only bears little resemblance to the truth, but actually seeks to undermine our right to freedom of speech" [quote from Barbara Toomer, ADAPT Utah State Organizer]
The Disability Rights group was seeking support for a resolution that would

"...ask the NGA to sponsor and vote in support of the resolution. Along with Medicaid reform, the resolution calls for the NGA to work with the states to implement the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Olmstead vs. L.C. and E.W. which calls for states to move people out of, and divert people from admission to, nursing homes and other institutions so they can live in their own homes and communities with the support they need. It also calls on the NGA to support Medicaid reform that is not based on block grants and capitation of funding."

Olmstead vs. L.C was the June 1999 US Supreme Court decison that ruled "...that the unnecessary segregation of individuals with disabilities in institutions may constitute discrimination based on disability..."
Five years later, in spite of overwhelming number of people's opinions to the contrary, the states and our society still disregard this important human rights decision |

MEDICARE provides information on the quality of Nursing Home Care as well as that of Home Health Care agencies across the USA | If those links don't work, try the Medicare main page | The remaining Ten Worst states in ADAPT's included: # 2 Nevada; # 3 Louisiana; # 4 Tennessee; # 5 Illinois; # 6 Georgia [home state to Olmstead vs. LC]; # 7 Alabama; # 8 New Jersey; # 9 Florida; # 10 District of Columbia |
For a related, albeit somewhat tangetial read, check out George W. Bush's pdf.file report of the New Freedom Initative for People with Disabilities; It was penned in 2001, few [if any] of it's lofty goals enacted | We still got another half a year [or 4 and a half, G*D help us!] so maybe it'll happen |

2004-08-01T04:18:00.000-04:00

MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES
"Recovery" is not a "treatment modality" | For at least three decades [longer, if you go back to Clifford Beers] advocates, ex-patients and dispassionate observers have repeatedly argued that people can and often do, "recover" from long lasting disabling, debilitating conditions and experiences |
     At the same time, the idea was scoffed and dismissed by high ranking clinicians and administrators, citing [still] the ghosts of Kraepelin and Beuler as the rationale for why such an idea was untenable | "People don't recover from 'mental illness' | Their lives are lost and so is any hope for them doing much better" the clinical careerists would steadfastly maintain |
     Little or no thought was given to asking patients in mental hospitals what might be their wishs, hopes, dreams, or aspirations to acheive |      Administrators spoke of "bed spaces," "treatment modalities" and "managed care." They asked drug companies when "the next miracle drug cure" would get people out of institutions and back on the streets |
     The standard response to those who had different ideas, was to first ignore them, keep them from the decision making process and to demean and invalidate the critical voice that offered options |
     Now, times have changed | Budget constraints sources called for innovation and "outcomes" | Major funding sources satrted telling them that "recovery is good"! | Gradually, those same clinicians and bureaucrats who walk past patients without seeing them took up the call |
     However, while the language has been embraced, other obstacles remain | "Clients" get wheedled and cajoled to large group meetings and say the process is "patient driven" | Abusive staff and practices continue unabated | Known wrongs that take place fail to get "substantiated" when only patients witness those wrongs |
     How can this be? That bureaucrat driving his new custom SUV to the workplace while the patient gets penalized by Title 19 with "spend-downs" on maybe less than $500 a month | Patient driven huh! |
     Folks, you don't have a clue |
     Admittedly, the samples mentioned oversimplify the problems inherent in social injustice and lack regard for people with mental illnesses | Administrators, Nurse Educators and other who shape professinal opinion are still no different than the society at large | But my point would be the same no matter what quick capsule glimpse got noted |
     Recovery is not a treatment modality | The reasons people can and do recover are many and multifarious | But they come as much [or more] from within | "Recovery" may or may not include taking meds | For John Nash [the subject of the film A Beautiful Mind] they by and large did NOT, no matter what the film said |
     "Recovery" may or may not include assistance from mental health programs | In the case of survivors in the Vermont Longitudinal Study in 1987, for a goodly number it was in spite of what services the "system" provided |
     Recovery is a process | It involves learning to live with complex and inexplicable phenomena [that many may call delusional], of freedom from unrealistic pressures to "get over" that phenomena within discrete time frame, and of being considered, cared for and loved as a fellow human being by others | Simple as that |
     How much more difficult this is to achieve in a society and culture that does not value those souls who are not immediately responsive to time-motion-study lifestyles | So challenging to those who drive efficient bureaucrats to distraction with abstruse, and often unexplainable questions | In the long run, it may call for dramatic and complete changes in cultural attitudes and norms, not something so easy to implement when it isn't even discussed |
     So...if you, the fashionably dressed mental health careerist can grasp this, then next time you wish to speak to someone -anyone, even one of your professional colleagues- about "Recovery" for people with living dramatic, even severe, cognitive / perceptual dissonance, then do so only after you actually drop your important paperwork and pre-occupation with meetings and give someone the time, energy and effort to sit with and actually get to know some of those persons who walk past you daily, but of whom you only know by diagnosis | Incidentially, it's a whole lot cheaper than funding the psycho-pharmeceutical companies, just takes longer to see results |
     Now that would be a step toward recovery |
Some resources: Clifford Beers' A Mind That Found Itself, National Empowerment Center, MindFreedom, Mary Ellen Copeland's Self-help Strategies
Pix Credits: 1- Jan Horn, Sulaco; 2- pines and palms; 3- www.ne.jp/asahi/ stellar/scenes/finepix/

2004-07-29T08:34:00.000-04:00

MENTAL ILLNESS || SOCIETY'S ILLS
Fred goes for another walk | John Strain tells the story | My response:

     Many of us in the field know "Fred" or have someone very much like him with whom we work | Sad and troubling | More than once I've heard of some poor soul whose gone off and the police have found a body under a bush or (quite recently) drowned and floating in the river |
     Each time, after hearing the sad news, I think, maybe next time I'll be more inured, better steeled and less likely to react than the last time | It never happens | For better or worse, I know there will be some "next time" that I'll be wondering about anew |
     While I might not completely agree with the closing premise about Fred's condition being "...the result of a brain disease... [that]...the DSM-IV calls schizophrenia" your comments and observations are on the mark.
     Perhaps, just perhaps, my skepticism to this characterization comes as much from society's approach to folks who live perceptual parallel lives | Their thoughts and reality as much in some different realm while simultaneously present with ours | I imagine the experience could well be terrifying, though at other times alive and vivid in a manner the rest of us can hardly conceive of |
     But as to socieity's approach | On the one hand, there's the gross over-reliance on drug companies who claim new "miracle cures" only to later be caught pulling the "cure" from the market becuase of severe, adverse side effects (see, for example, the problems now surfacing with Risperidol) | The next facet is that society ~and many individuals within society~ reject and revile those who have difficulty "adjusting" to a fast-pasted, materialistic, discernable-outcome, goal-oriented ethos |
     The "solution"? Send troubled folks off to inpatient institutions, lock 'em up in prisons (for what are often "crimes" of social embarassment), and get 'em signed up with group homes or community psychosocial programs where they can spend their days drinking lots of coffee and supporting the tobacco industry [Stereotypes, I'll admit, but still valid ones] |
     Making the picture even more complicated, society ~and I'm talking most of the planet here, not just the US of A~ devalues people with mental illnesses, forgets about their plight, and seriously underfunds those who are enjoined with the task of being the care givers | There is only so much one can do without the real interest of society at large as a component of solving difficult -and at times, intangible- problems |
     Solutions are not being sought | While the media broad brushes souls with mental disorders as foam-at-the-mouth psychokillers; the funding avenues (public and private) seem apparently more concerned with the quality of furnishings in executive offices than in paying for clients' basic living needs expenses or emathetic support systems | The cards, so to speak, seem stacked against people with long term psychiatric disabilities |
     But as daunting (and, perhaps, depressing) as this may seem, we cannot lose hope on those souls, like Fred, who walk away from what support systems are in place when they first get the chance |
     "Recovery" -IS- an option, though not if it's narrowly defined | We can endeavor to strive toward having supports for people, and in funding them more equitably |
     There are some real BIG battles to fight, not the least of which is addressing social prejudices against people who are perceived as being "worthless" due to the fact that they may not appear to "contribute" to the bottom line dollar sign of the GNP |
     We can constantly combat the negative stereotyping and social opprobation heaped upon both those who experience mental illness and those who elect to work with them |
     Now, aside from apparent psychotic symptoms, the second most devastating condition experienced with mental illness is LONELINESS! Solving that is not something that throwing money at can correct | So let me propose something else |
     We must enjoin others to "adopt a difficult soul" as a brother/sister/family member or friend to be with and to follow them through their travails and triumphs | A tall order, to be sure, but ultimately one which, I believe, is essential if the "Freds" of our society, are ever to have safe haven in the community |
     Finally, we need, as a society to stop "dealing with" symptomologies and recognize that part of many people's problems lies in a profound and complex spiritual angst | That's right, it ain't just about money or drugs or even ~ the lack of decent housing for the poor (among which many folks with mental disorders find themselves) ~ it is as much about a deep malaise of the soul | And with a social order that values "he who dies with the mosy toys, wins" over the value human lives, it could very well be that many of the folks we typically dismisss as mentally ill, are ill in the same way the canary in the coal mine succumbs to noxious poisons in the air | Frankly, we also need to recognize the larger social ills that keep us from truly assisting those most troubled, and paradoxically, least visible on the psychic social radar screen |
     Regrets this took so long | Then again, no I'm not | Helping people who suffer constantly to acheive a measure of control over their situation, AND to acheive some satisfaction with the overall quality of their lives, individually, that's what I mean when I speak of "Recovery" | That's what we need to have in place for Fred and his fellow travelers to come in from the metaphorical rain |

Thanks, John, for keeping attention on Fred's situation.