Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Archive for March, 2018

Self-Care: Beyond Pets, Sleep, and Creativity?

New research from Western Sydney University has revealed that simple self-care strategies, such as spending time with animals and getting enough sleep, are helpful for people managing bipolar disorder symptoms. (https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-02-pets-people-bipolar-disorder.html)

Sleep, pets, and photography – everything in one bundle

This is not exactly news, but the headline (“Sleep and time with pets help people living with bipolar disorder”) reflected my life so perfectly that I had to read on.

It turns out that the research involved only 80 subjects and was conducted by Edward Wynter, an honors student, who says he hopes “that knowledge of effective strategies can inspire proactive therapeutic engagement and empower people living with bipolar disorder to improve their health and wellbeing.”

And here’s the money quote:

This research reveals support for strategies already well known to professionals and people living with bipolar disorder, including those relating to quality and quantity of sleep, and drug and alcohol abstinence; but this study also highlights the effectiveness of several strategies yet to be explored such as spending time with pets and engaging in creative pursuits. (emphasis added)

Here’s some news, Mr. Wynter: Spending time with pets and engaging in creative pursuits are not “yet to be explored,” except perhaps by researchers. As he himself notes, professionals and people with bipolar disorder already know these concepts. I wonder what sort of grade this research gained him?

I’ve written about pets and creative pursuits myself. Service dogs for the mentally ill, for example (https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-nN):

Emotional Support Animals are dogs or cats (or, less commonly, other animals such as miniature horses or guinea pigs) that live with and provide comfort to a person with a psychiatric disorder, [t]ypically … one that qualifies as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

And even everyday pets can help (https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-jS). As I said of my very first cat: “We needed each other. I needed someone to care about, to focus my attention outward on. She needed someone to draw her out of her shell, to care for and about her.”

And regarding creativity (https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-uT):

Coloring books and pages for adults have been the trend for a while now. (Some of them are really for adults.) Jenny Lawson draws and also puts together tiny little Ferris wheels. I know someone who can make little sculptures out of drink stirrers or paper clips. The point is … [j]ust keeping your brain and your hands occupied is a good idea.

As for sleep, we all know that proper rest is a good thing, even if we’re not always able to achieve it. And I’ve written about that too (https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-vk):

Whether you sleep too much or not enough, bipolar disorder may be the cause. There are treatments, some involving meds, and others not. Meditation, for example, helps many people sleep … It’s a thing to discuss with your psychiatrist and/or your psychotherapist.

If I, a non-professional, already know about these aspects of treatment for bipolar that don’t involve therapy or medication (though I’m not knocking either one), why is research covering this old ground? Surely even lowly grad students can think of better, more productive topics than this.

 

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Mental Health

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Why I Hate TV Drug Commercials

Just as a general rule, I dislike commercials for any drugs. They impede the doctor/patient relationship. (I’ve often considered saying to my doctor, “I’m supposed to ask you if Latuda, Humira, Prolia, Viberzi, Lunesta, Cialis, Trulia, Trintellix, Keytruda, and Boniva are right for me.”) TV – and to a lesser extent print – ads encourage people to act as unpaid drug reps. And they only advertise expensive drugs until they go generic, which is when they stop being expensive and the drug companies stop making so much money.

(If you want to read more on the issue, go to https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=106198.)

But there are other things about TV drug ads that make me more than a little cranky. Like where are the ads for drugs to treat bipolar disorder?

Oh, there are ads for drugs to treat bipolar depression, as well as ones for treating non-bipolar depression. You’d think that with approximately 2.8 million people who have bipolar in the U.S. and Canada (http://www.pendulum.org/bpfacts.html), there would be a market for bipolar treatments.

Also, the ads for depression treatments don’t always get it right. A few of them say that depression is more than just sadness, or that it lasts for several weeks at least. One even says that depression is a “tangle” of symptoms, which is certainly true. (Although the tangle is shown graphically in primary red, yellow, and blue, which don’t really say “depression” to me.)

Most, however, treat depression simplistically, with hidden depression represented by a smiley face mask hiding a frowny face mask. (The colors in that ad are muted during the “before” scenes and more vibrant during the “after” scenes, which is an old advertising trick.)

The ads also make it look like the most important thing about depression is not spending time with your family or not enjoying it if you do. While that certainly is one symptom of depression, it is by-and-large irrelevant to people like me, who don’t have 2.1 school-age children to take on picnics. And it’s pretty much a guilt trip for people who do.

Then there’s how the people in the ads are represented. Oh, they almost always show one POC and one slightly older person (frolicking with the grandkids). But all of them are attractive. All of them are models. Are we supposed to identify with them? Or just expect to look like them when our depression lifts?

I wouldn’t be so annoyed by this issue if it weren’t that ads for other kinds of drugs – those for psoriasis and diabetes, for example – have actual people with the disorder in them. Testimonials from those who’ve been there, as it were. Even real-life cancer patients are now featured in ads for treatment centers.

What’s up with that, I wonder? Surely they don’t imagine that only pretty people get depression or bipolar. It can’t be that they can’t find any well-spoken, real-life people who can relate their own experiences. I for one would feel more reassured if I heard about a treatment from someone who’s lived with the disorder instead of from someone selected at a casting call. Are we all homely and illiterate? (I meet the qualification for literacy, at any rate.)

Instead of trying to convince us what medications our doctors might prescribe us, the airtime would be better spent on ads that educated the public on depression and bipolar disorder. But those would be PSAs, of course, appear only at 3:00 a.m., and not make anyone any money.

Update: I have finally seen an ad for a drug to treat bipolar 1 mania. Everything else I wrote here remains the same.

 

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Mental Health

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“Lock Up the Crazies Before They Hurt Someone”

Mass shootings and the public reactions to them are pretty predictable among the mental illness community.

One thing you hear after every mass shooting – and after many smaller ones – is that the mentally ill should not have access to guns.

Fine. But I have bipolar disorder, as well as some guns that I inherited from my father. I occasionally go to a gun range and fire them, but not often since I’m not the gun aficionado my father was.

So what am I supposed to do? Sell the guns? Give them away? Turn them in to the police? My therapist? I was taught gun safety from a young age by two certified pistol and rifle instructors (my parents) long before I received my diagnosis.

The further you go into the debate about guns and the mentally ill, or about whether the mentally ill are a danger, the deeper you get into fundamental constitutional, legal, and medical issues, as well as considerations of simple practicality.

Some advocate locking up the mentally ill. This is irrational. What the proponents really mean is “Lock up the dangerous mentally ill before they become mass shooters.” And that is impossible.

First, there’s the matter of due process, which is as much a part of the Bill of Rights as the vaunted Second Amendment is. You can’t just lock people up without a trial or at least a hearing.

Second, there’s no way to determine whether a mentally ill person is likely to become a mass shooter or any other kind of danger. The only generally known predictor of violent behavior is past violent behavior. In fact, there’s no way to tell whether any given individual is going to become a mass shooter. That’s because it’s really hard to predict the future.

Third, there’s the consideration of medical decisions and the right to privacy. HIPPAA has gone a long way toward protecting the privacy of patients – including the mentally ill. At the moment, a mentally ill person can only be held for 72 hrs., and then only if the person goes to the hospital voluntarily or is determined to be a danger to self and others. That’s a high standard, and it should be.

Fourth, the mental health system is already understaffed, underfunded, and overwhelmed. There are long waiting lists for beds in hospitals and treatment facilities. Are we to build new asylums to accommodate all these supposedly dangerous persons? Train more counselors to treat them? Or just lock them up and get them out of sight, out of mind?

Fifth, the idea that mentally ill persons can be forced to accept treatment and take their medication as prescribed violates several basic rights. My mother, who was not mentally ill, hardly ever took her medications as prescribed. She would quit taking one after a few days “because it wasn’t helping” or “it caused sores in her mouth” – without telling her doctor. Should she have had a caregiver to monitor her compliance? Who would monitor all those potentially noncompliant mentally ill persons as they take their psychotropic drugs? I see, we’re back to putting them in asylums.

Besides, refusing treatment is a right that patients have – even mental patients. Physically ill patients, for example, can choose to forgo chemotherapy or dialysis or medications that cause side effects worse than the condition they’re prescribed for. And mental patients have the same right. They can stop taking a medication because they fear side effects like tardive dyskinesia or even weight gain, though we hope they consult their doctors first.

But forced treatment and forced medication, as some have suggested, brings us back to the question of who, how, and where. Asylums? Court-ordered treatment? Medications that must be taken in the presence of a doctor or a therapist (who is not qualified or licensed to dispense medication)?

Take all those arguments against forced treatment of the mentally ill and add the fact that the mentally ill are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it, and where are we? Admittedly, the mental health “system” is broken, or at least badly fractured. But is the answer really to take away the civil rights of people who have broken no laws?

The press and the public are quick to focus on the mentally ill as the culprits in mass shootings. But even if they were correct, taking away fundamental rights would not only be no real solution, but would chip away at the rights of other disenfranchised or minority populations – the homeless, for example.

If there’s a solution to this problem, I don’t know it, but locking up the “crazies” isn’t it.

 

If you want to read more on both sides of the issue, see the L.A. Times article by Paloma Esquivel at http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-adv-lauras-law-20140310-story.html.

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Mental Health

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Mental Illness, Faith, and Sin

This post started for me when I read a headline that said “What Made Mental Illness a ‘Sin’? Paganism.” It was by the staff of Christianity Today.

The article spoke of an evangelical women’s conference where “speaker Rebekah Lyons, in telling about her daughter’s anxiety attacks, suggested that mental illness could be healed through prayer.”

That’s a subject that I took up not long ago in this blog . In that post, I said, “In my opinion, what you can’t do is ‘pray away’ the bipolar disorder. If you’ve got it, you have to find a way to live with it. If prayer helps you do that, more power to you.” I stand by that.

But the CT article did not really explain how paganism was involved. To get a grasp on that, it turns out that you should go to the podcast “Quick to Listen,” episode 94, on Apple Podcasts. There Amy Simpson, author of Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission, explains that by paganism, she means the early Greek and Roman civilizations and their many deities, who saw some physical and psychological conditions as punishments from on high.

This link between mental illness, sin, and spirituality “isn’t really a Christian or religious idea,” says Simpson. “It’s really rooted in superstition and a misunderstanding of what mental illness is.”

The Christian Bible betrays some misunderstanding itself, when at least some of what we would today consider schizophrenia, other psychoses, or even epilepsy are defined as demonic possession. The Catholic Church, it should be noted, still – though rarely – performs exorcisms. And there are definitely still churches that equate mental illness with sin:

The bible makes it very clear that insanity, depression, anxiety, stress, paranoia are the punishments for living a sinful rebellious life contrary to the moral pattern revealed by God in the Bible. Remember, insanity is not a bodily disease, it is a behaviour choice. The only “cure” of insanity, is repentance of the sinful lifestyle and the sinful behaviour choices to solve the problems such a sinful lifestyle creates.

Leah Godfrey wrote an article that appeared on TheMighty.com. It was titled “5 Unhelpful Things Fellow Christians Have Said About My Mental Illness (and My Responses).” In it, she addresses the complicated topic of mental illness and the sometimes insensitive reactions of Christians to it. For example, to those who represent prayer as a power that can heal mental illness, she responds:

Yes, I do believe in God’s healing, that’s why I’m taking medication… because I’m blessed with enough resources to get help to be healthy again. I understand that some people … heard a sermon and *poof* they were healed; I am not that case.

And on the subject of suicidal thoughts, she says:

Yes, you can be a Christian and have suicidal thoughts. We all have thoughts of things we shouldn’t do or won’t do….I don’t believe anyone has the right to take a life, including their own. I’m a Christian who has had years of suicidal thoughts or thoughts of self-harm… Suicidal thoughts are lies we tell ourselves.

Such issues are not limited to the Christian community, however. In researching modern-day paganism (which is what I thought Christianity Today was going to talk about), I found a number of interesting resources. One talked about problems of sexual and emotional abuse within pagan groups and among their leaders, a subject hardly exclusive to the pagan community.

In fact, in my reading, I was interested to learn that pagan communities and Christian communities sometimes address mental illness in similar ways, and how one could benefit from the other’s perspective.

For example, I found this statement:

Many religious communities have support groups and other resources for members who suffer from mental illness. These kinds of services are desperately needed in the Pagan community. We need to learn from other religious communities and adapt to the needs of our own community.

Another pagan author, Luthaneal Adams says:

Can a person find that paganism is beneficial for their mental health? Certainly.  I’d say that spiritual fulfillment is one element of mental wellbeing.  If Paganism is what helps you find that spiritual fulfillment, then great. However, that is not the same as saying that Paganism (or things within Paganism) are themselves tools for achieving better mental health…. When it comes to mental illness, we’re talking about major, chronic illnesses.  No single ritual or ceremony is going to make that just go away.

Other fascinating subjects regarding Christianity, paganism, and sin are the multiplicity of sects and practices and beliefs in both forms of spirituality; the circumstances for excommunication and disfellowship as regards “sin” or disruption of the community; the question of “sinful” behaviors caused by mental illness; and so on.

I don’t have the theological background to address these points. But, to sum up what I found: that mental illness is or is not a sin, depending on whom you ask; that paganism, as well as Christianity, concerns itself with the mental health of its practitioners; and that many spiritual traditions advocate compassion for the mentally ill and an understanding of their suffering.

Certainly there exist both Christian and pagan communities that are more judgmental or less inclined to minister to the sinful or the mentally ill, rather than rejecting them.

These are things that all faith communities need to address.

References

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/february-web-only/mental-illness-sin.html

https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-B6

http://www.bible.ca/psychiatry/psychiatry-mental-illness-bible-sin-guilt-conscience-cognitive-dissonance.htm

https://themighty.com/2017/03/christianity-mental-illness-anxiety-depression/

https://paganactivist.com/2014/04/09/pagans-mental-health-and-abuse/

https://paganleft.wordpress.com/2006/09/10/mental-illness-in-the-pagan-community/

https://www.luthanealadams.com/authors-blog/mental-health-and-paganism

 

 

 

 

 

Category:

Mental Health