The epidemic of mental illness

[mariness]

Much to write about, but still too exhausted to write most of it, so instead, linking you, and especially trouble and caligatia, to this article in the New York Review of Books about the epidemic of mental illness and pharmaceutical drugs.

(Not adding any personal comments/insights, just noting the article.)

Comments

[trouble]

I... have a lot of thoughts on that. (I have a copy of Mad in America sitting in my TBR pile.)

[mariness]

I thought you would.

My first, completely anecdotal comment is that SSRIs, to my genuine disappointment, didn't help me OR cheer me up (I was at least hoping for the second) and yet doctors continued to want to throw them my way. But I apparently do not react normally to any type of medication period (including SSRIs) so I don't think my experience says much one way or the other.

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for the link!

One of my #1 fave disability rights thinkers, Cal Montgomery,
comments on atypical psychotics in the Ragged Edge. I have witnessed their profile skyrocketing; my prescribing doctors are eager for me to take them. I took one for four weeks with horrible side effects (even after reading Cal's post!)

[mariness]

I tried Cymbalta for four weeks. To be fair, the side-effects weren't as bad as with the other medications I tried, but, and these are big buts: 1) I did have have side effects; 2) it had absolutely no effect on my symptoms; 3) contrary to the commercials, it failed to cheer me up. Mind you, I wasn't depressed at the time.

A later doctor tried to put me on a couple of different SSRIs, not listening to my point that they weren't working (this is the doctor that doesn't listen period, although to be fair he is greatly renowned in the field and of course knows lots more than I do) and then later ran into problems when Walgreens refused to dispense his second attempt, because I also had a prescription for Tramadol and combining the two medications can lead to death. So. Overall this did not leave me with a positive impression.

From a biological point of view, it's not my field, and I don't study humans enough, but I am wary of playing around too much with anything that can interfere with certain biochemical communications largely because we literally haven't identified much of what's just in the air with that. We're improving by leaps and bounds, mind you, but we're not quite there yet.

[trouble]

A few of my thoughts, at least:

I do think that there's a tendency to view mental health conditions, whether short or long term, or permanent, as "medicate them and get them away from me." I've been prescribed psychiatric medications with no follow-up by medical doctors who I literally walked in off the street to see. There's never been any suggestion that I do any other type of therapy to handle my concerns. I think it's part of the problem that mental health care concerns are just not seen as a priority.

Based on that article (which I know is part 1 of 2), I can't tell if the authors of these books imply as much about the history of mental health conditions as the author of the article does. There's this weird theory that mental health conditions in general seemed to suddenly spring into existence in the 60s, and are now useless frippery indulgences in the US since the 90s. Which nicely ignores the huge amount of research into mental health conditions that goes back at least till the eleventh century in Europe, including quite famous examples of people with long-term and repeated lapses into the sorts of symptoms they're describing as schizophrenia.

[mariness]

:: nods :: Thanks. I admittedly don't know much about the history of mental health, but I do know that the 14th and 19th centuries certainly had numerous people with long term symptoms - in some cases, probable schizophrenia, in other cases (the 14th century in particular) what would now be called post traumatic stress (for survivors of the Black Death and the often turbulent social conditions that followed.) I do know that in 14th century terms "diseases of the mind" were often used for very specific political and social purposes, which makes any type of determination of the rate of mental illness suspect.

But this is all stuff gathered accidentally through other studies, and it's definitely not my field, which is why I wanted your considerably better researched outlook :)