From Medical News Today:
A heart-to-heart chat with a peer has proven an effective way to prevent postnatal depression in high risk women, cutting the risk of depression by 50%, according to a University of Toronto nursing study published in BMJ Online. (continue here)
What a novel idea. Talking to and supporting people in distress instead of handing them drugs. Shucks why didn’t I think of that?
This is downright repulsive. That something like this should be news. This is common sense if one is in touch with their humanity at all. Loren Mosher knew this with Soteria House about “schizophrenics” 30 years ago. Why do we insist on reinventing the wheel at the cost of hundreds of thousands of delicate psyches??? Mental distress is alleviated with proper NATURAL supports and the belief that one can recover!! Not by doling out neurotoxins for the rest of people’s lives.
God Ari, I wish I’d had you in my psychiatrist appointment today. The appointment has totally thrown me for a loop and damaged my confidence.
And I relate to this: You then coninue in the relationship, hiding your deepest fundamental human needs, for fear of being dumped. To this day, I’m afraid to contact my psychiatrist, even if I’m having a bad spell, as I don’t want to appear needy and get dumped.
Except that I’m not addicted to the drugs yet, but more psychologically afraid that I need them, and won’t be able to get them, and most psychiatrists are crazier than mine is.
Wow, what a bunch of eloquent people! I could not have said it better myself.
I know from experience that if your psychologist or psychiatrist thinks that you are “needy” that you are going to not have access to care, or you will be patient dumped (whether that is legal or not).
When I’ve moved from one city to another, if I say “you know, I’m having a crisis” forget about getting in! But when you *pretend* that you are psychologically well, you can call the exact same doctors and suddenly, they have an opening.
You then coninue in the relationship, hiding your deepest fundamental human needs, for fear of being dumped. To this day, I’m afraid to contact my psychiatrist, even if I’m having a bad spell, as I don’t want to appear needy and get dumped. I am afraid of being dumped, not because I care about our relationship, but she is my pusher, and I am her junkie. She’s got me on tons of meds, and I’m afraid of getting cut off from the drugs I’m now addicted to.
I had a period of feeling suicidal after my mother died about ten years ago, I didn’t handle it well. Not only could I not get any medical care, but the crisis line hung up on me, because I didn’t get out of my crisis soon enough or something like that.
So, now they’ve decided that doctors should show human kindness? I say, how about just being human at all. The way I’ve been treated by the medical profession is criminal.
I was a scientist for 20 + years. I even worked a lot of that time for the pharmaceutical industry but many years ago. You should not need science to know that if people have others who care, if they have a social network, that this is going to work much better than any drug.
Perhaps one day they will study the phenomena by fMRI studies. They’ll take the fMRI of someone who’s been treated with kindness and see that it is more like a “normal” brain than a depressed or anxious brain. DUH. fMRI is growing fast, and I think soon, it will be obvious from studies using fMRI, that this notion that you have a brain “biochemical imbalance” for your entire life is absurd. This has never been proven scientifically.
Then to believe these cocktails of toxic drugs (esp atypical antipsychotics), will balance the lifelong imbalance is even more absurd.
Best,
Ari
thank you Ari for sharing your difficulties…I think a lot of us here can relate only too well.
I’m so so sorry kimbriel that that had to happen to you…
all of it happened to me but the life of my child was not involved…and so the trauma you incurred is beyond what I can understand…
peace to you.
Ah, I had just about one of the worst postpartum episodes ever; it would have been so much better if someone had taken the time to understand me. Instead I was stripped away from my baby, put to sleep, locked away, and given Haldol (horrific drug). After two days on Haldol I had symptoms of Tardive Dyskenisia, so they put me on Risperdal, and I lost the freedom to breastfeed because apparently it goes through breast milk. I spent the next three years mourning that loss, and will probably be mourning it to some extent for the rest of my life. I know I was psychotic and I had problems but everyone was just acting so chaotic and uptight that it just made everything so much worse. When someone showed me kindness or took the time to understand me, I calmed down considerably. I am still sad that my son had to live without me at the age of 2 weeks for 3 whole days. I still mourn that, due to the trauma inflicted upon me of this horrific experience, I will probably never have another child. Why don’t professionals get any training in the areas of human outreach? Oh yeah, because Pharma funds their textbooks, pens their journal articles, and underwrites their medical continuing education.
I am just rambling now, but I am so, so sad over this. I am crying. And no, I’m not crying because I have a disorder, damn it!
I agree that it is a complete joke when these “conclusions” are presented as some kind of scientific discovery. Give me a break. Psychiatric journals are permeated with articles where good old common sense has just flown out the window and where mental states are assumed to be immutable until treated with medication. It’s not only tragic — it’s criminal.