Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Posts tagged ‘mental health’

Music Charms the Troubled Mind

Once I knew a man whose wife was going to leave him. I knew he was in a lot of pain and despair about it, though he also turned into a huge asshole before everything was said and done. He was also suicidal for a time.

One day when I was trying to talk him through a bad patch, I asked whether he might turn to music to help him. “What?” he said. “Do you think I should listen to country music and cry in a beer?”

I wasn’t suggesting that at all. I just knew that he was a singer and songwriter of talented amateur status and was known for this in various circles. I honestly thought that music might help.

On the other hand, I always forget, when I am on the downswing, how much music can do for me. It soothes and heals, but it also lets me tap into the emotions that I have been suppressing.

Do I have the inexplicable blues that are part and parcel of my condition? There’s a song for that. Am I feeling unrequited love? Unrequited lust? There’s a song for those too. Is the world spinning too fast for me? Do I need to know that everything will be all right? Or do I just need to know that someone, somewhere and somewhen, has also felt this way? I can turn to music.

“Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.”
– Oliver Saks, Musicophilia

Saks also says, “The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic, must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or a grace.” There he and I part company.

Music can certainly steal on us unawares, whack us upside the head with a memory, a feeling, a piercing stab of emotional intensity, all the stronger for being unexpected.

But we can also choose to bring music into our lives when nothing else seems to touch us. We can tap into those memories and feelings – good or bad – and let the music wash over us as we listen and feel.

According to scientific experiments with fMRI, music uses more parts of the brain than almost any other activity. The neural connections fire all over the place – more so if one is playing an instrument, but even when just listening. The memory centers, artistic areas, language centers, emotional areas – even the motor complexes – are stimulated.

My problem is remembering all that music can do for me. When my emotions are dulled, flattened by the steamroller of depression, I sometimes forget that I can be any other way. The music I love is always there for me. I can bathe in it, wallow in it, be uplifted by it, float on it, join in with it, feel it emotionally and viscerally and intellectually all at once or one at a time. It can express the things that I just can’t.

When you’re depressed is a time for writing bad poetry. Or you can let good poets and songwriters take you with them as they explore the human condition in ways you’re not capable of. I think that’s why they do it – create their art. The really good ones anyway.

There’s also something to be said for music as distraction. A song from years ago – even a frivolous one – can take you away from your troubles, even if only for a moment. This is not the time for exploring new musical avenues. Remembering that things once were good can feed your sadness, your depression, but it can also give you perspective. If you took joy in this music once, there will come a time when you will again. And maybe that time is now.

Perhaps the most amazing power of music is to provoke catharsis. Certain songs leave me sobbing like a baby. They don’t even have to be sad songs, though many of them are. “The Mary Ellen Carter” by Stan Rogers is about as life-affirming as you can get, but it can still turns me into a weeping puddle. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fhop5VuLDIQ) His song “Lies” has nothing to do with my situation personally, but its evocative power touches me nonetheless. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D79XOc1vKzQ) And almost no one I know can make it through Kathy Mar’s “Velveteen.” (http://www.last.fm/music/Kathy+Mar/_/Velveteen)

Afterwards, I feel drained and, if not exactly better, less emotionally constipated, I guess you’d say. Clearing away a bit of blockage can be cleansing. If music can do that – and it can – then I don’t care if its country with a beer, jazz with a glass of wine, or hip hop with an energy drink. Even easy listening with a glass of milk, if that’s your thing.

So thank God and Apple for iTunes. And here’s hoping that my Swiss cheese of a memory will give me a nudge in the right direction when I need it next time.

Category:

Mental Health, Uncategorized

Tagged with:

A Response to the Dalai Lama

This Friday, my Facebook newsfeed included a quotation from the Dalai Lama.

Depression seems to be related to fear, anger and frustration. When you’re in a bad mood, even if you meet with your friends, you don’t take pleasure in their company. But when you’re in a good mood, even if things go wrong, you can cope with them without difficulty. This is why putting yourself in a good mood, making a point of developing a sense of loving kindness gives you greater inner strength.

While I respect and admire the Dalai Lama, on this subject he is wrong.

I wrote a blog post to tell him and his followers so. I posted it on Blogher.com. (Blogher is a site for women bloggers that sometimes syndicates content. It is more general than what I usually post here, so I wrote something special for them.)

As I researched, trying to find when and where the Dalai Lama said this (I couldn’t), I discovered several articles about research into depression and Buddhist principles and techniques.

One was an article by Kathy Gilsinan at The Atlantic
(http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/dalai-lama-neuroscience-compassion/397706/). It talked about “high-amplitude gamma-oscillations in the brain, which are indicative of plasticity.” What that is or has to do with depression, I don’t know. It sounds like “handwavium” to me.

One that made more sense was this, from Jeanie Lerche Davis at
WebMD: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/dalai-lama-neuroscience-compassion. (The feature was reviewed by Louise Chang, MD.)

While meditation can help many who are depressed, it’s not a sure-fire cure, [Charles W.] Raison [psychiatry professor and co-director of Emory’s Collaborative for Contemplative Studies] tells WebMD. “In fact, many people with mood disorders find they can’t do meditation when they’re depressed.” Their thoughts are too overwhelming. They are anxious, nervous, and can’t sit – and likely they need antidepressants, he says.

That’s more like it.

In my response to the Dalai Lama, I said,

Real, clinical depression is not about being in a “bad mood.” It’s true that a truly depressed person does not find pleasure even in ordinarily pleasurable things, such as meeting with friends. But we cannot simply put ourselves in a good mood.

That’s the hell of depression. We want to enjoy the good times. We want to put ourselves into a place of inner strength. But we can’t. Not without help.

In fact, your advice is hurtful to depressed people. Too many times we have been told, “Cheer up.” “Smile! You’ll feel better.” “Think about someone else for a change.” “What do you have to feel bad about?”

Don’t you think we would if we could?

Remarks like these remind us that we have an illness and we cannot cure ourselves by willpower alone – no more than a person with hepatitis or tuberculosis or even schizophrenia can. We need help, and most of us need medication.

You do a disservice to people with depression when you tell them to put themselves in a good mood. You, an enlightened spiritual leader, may be able to do it, but we can’t.

Certainly we can benefit from practicing loving kindness and developing inner strength.

But without treatment for depression, how many of us can do that?

It angers me when people say that depression – or any mental disorder – is something people can or should be able to cure with an attitude adjustment. I’ve heard it too many times from people in my life, and I’m sure you have too.

What’s really disappointing is that someone like the Dalai Lama, with his legion of followers and enormous credibility, is perpetuating this old way of thinking.

This lie.

Category:

Mental Health

Tagged with:

New Hope for Mental Illness

Did you hear the news?

Bullying, inflammation, anger, low self-esteem, abuse, biochemicals, unsettled gender identity, cat parasites, and anything bad causes depression/bipolar disorder/PTSD. (Double-jointedness, too, except I don’t know if that’s bad or not.)

But don’t worry. Reading, happy memories, cat videos, a new vaccine, or Tylenol can help!

Science reporting these days is confusing, deceptive, and sometimes just plain wrong. Perhaps science reporters don’t mean to mislead, but that’s exactly what they do. Among the problems are publishing demands, lack of knowledge, logical fallacies, and the difference between correlation and causation.

Let me explain.

Publishers demand big, catchy headlines, and they prefer “New Hope for Bipolar on Your Grocer’s Shelf” to “Experiments on Genes and Diseases Continue.” Add to that the fact that editorial budgets have been slashed and personnel shuffled around so much that todays’s “science reporter” may have been last month’s “political correspondent” – and trained only in basic journalism, if that.

Science is complicated and difficult to understand, unless you’ve got special training. Even then, your expertise is likely to be only in one area – the microbiology of prostate cancer in mice, for example. And most people’s understanding of how scientific research works is, well, not understanding so much as knowing that DNA is somehow like a fingerprint.

Here’s a website with videos that tackle the subject quite nicely. My personal favorite is the one about animal trials in research, which explains (among other things) why my father, who had bone cancer, always said he was tired of being compared to a white rat.

http://www.vocativ.com/culture/junk-science/

Another problem is argument by analogy, which appears more in opinion pieces than in stories labeled as science. But here’s a sample, damning research on psychotropic drugs, written by Kelly Brogan, MD, ABIHM (American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine).

The most applicable analogy is that of the woman with social phobia who finds that drinking two cocktails eases her symptoms. One could imagine how, in a 6 week randomized trial, this “treatment” could be found efficacious and recommended for daily use and even prevention of symptoms. How her withdrawal symptoms after 10 years of daily compliance could lead those around her to believe that she “needed” the alcohol to correct an imbalance. This analogy is all too close to the truth.

Well, no it’s not, for a number of reasons. Analogies always break down after a while, some sooner than others. For example, that hypothetical six-week trial would be longer than six weeks, come only after years of animal studies (including ones that focused on unwanted side effects like, I don’t know, hangovers or liver damage). The trial would have included control groups, placebos, and other research protocols. The ten-year “withdrawal” effect wouldn’t show up in six weeks; people who drink only two drinks per day are not generally considered alcoholics or go into withdrawal (indeed they may be drinking wine for heart health).

(See http://www.madinamerica.com/2014/12/depression-serotonin/)

And so forth. Having two drinks per day is not analogous to taking a medication for social anxiety disorder. It’s associating the disliked thing (psychotropic meds) with a thing known to be bad (alcoholism) and damning by association.

Here’s another flaw: the principle that “correlation does not equal causation.” The classic example comes from the 1950s, when it was claimed that rock and roll music would lead to teenage pregnancies. It’s true that some teenagers who listened to rock and roll became pregnant (correlation). But some didn’t. And some teenagers who listened to country or jazz became pregnant. And I think by now we know what really causes pregnancy (causation).

This problem is illustrated by an article, “Scientists: The ‘Tortured Artist’ Is a Real Thing.”
The first thing to notice is that the headline is misleading, or possibly completely untrue. The article explains a study that supposedly shows that “creative genius and mental disorders are connected at a genetic level,” then goes on to debunk it:

“Any particular set of genes is only going to explain a very small part of variation in any psychological trait,” says Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Indeed, the variants in the new study have a tiny, miniscule impact on creativity – less than 1 percent.

The rest of the article waffles back and forth and concludes inconclusively. Are creativity and “madness” linked somehow? Possibly. Does one cause the other? We don’t know, but there are a lot of theories. There are lots of other possible factors. Without the headline, would anyone read that? How do you define “creativity,” anyway?

(See http://mentalfloss.com/article/64852/scientists-tortured-artist-real-thing).

Here’s a selection of recent articles that purport to have some relevance to mental illness or mental health.

Can Reading Make You Happier?
Answer: Bibliotherapy helps some people, possibly because of changes in the brain.
(http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/can-reading-make-you-happier?)

Artificial Recreation Of Happy Memories May Become The Next Big Weapon Against Depression
Thesis: “Urging a depressed person to stay positive by remembering the good things in life is unlikely to be helpful advice. That is because depression blocks access to happy memories. But what if we could somehow artificially recreate such memories to allow for some more positive thinking? A study suggests that this is indeed possible – at least in rats….However, more research will be necessary to obtain a clearer picture of how this might work in humans.”
(Again with the rats.)
(http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/artificial-recreation-happy-memories-may-become-next-big-weapon-against)

Science Shows that Watching Cat Videos is Good for You
The article, which says “research suggests that the pleasure you derive from watching cat videos can often outweigh the guilt of procrastination,” is largely tongue-in-cheek, but that headline is a grabber. Headlines that use “waffle words” like may, can, might, possibly, someday, appears to usually indicate a story that says nothing significant. They build up hope, but if a study comes along that disproves the theory, it will never be reported.
(http://www.iflscience.com/environment/science-shows-watching-cat-videos-good-you)

Researchers Are Developing A Vaccine For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
It begins: “New studies are suggesting a link between the immune system and the way the body reacts to stress. Research with rodents are raising hopes that one day, tweaking a person’s immune system could be a way to treat or even prevent conditions like PTSD, Nature reports.” How many warning signs can you spot there?
(http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/vaccine-help-ptsd)

Double-Jointedness Is Linked to Anxiety
One of my favorites. Correlation/causation much?
(http://mentalfloss.com/article/65333/double-jointedness-linked-anxiety)

Your pain reliever may also be diminishing your joy
Actually it says that acetaminophen blunts both positive and negative emotions. And, it adds, “this study offers support to a relatively new theory that says that common factors may influence how sensitive we are to both the bad as well as the good things in life.” Gee, who would have guessed?
(https://news.osu.edu/news/2015/04/13/emotion-reliever/)

Is Depression a Mental or Physical Illness? Unravelling the Inflammation Hypothesis
This is actually a good article. The headline question is a valid and interesting one, and the author states, “But while there may be a connection between inflammation and depression, one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other. So it’s too simplistic to say depression is a physical, rather than a psychiatric, illness.” Hooray for correlation/causation!
(http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/depression-mental-or-physical-illness-unravelling-inflammation-hypothesis)

What does all this reporting prove? Almost nothing. Except “let the reader beware.”

Category:

Mental Health

Tagged with:

We’ve Got Demons in Our Heads

I posted this just after the Charleston shootings, but it needs saying again.

The media don’t say it in so many words, but that’s what they mean when they talk about “mental illness” after a tragedy, especially one that involves gun violence and mass murder.

Demons are responsible. And those demons are the mentally ill (and/or) their medications (or lack of medications). Any way you look at it, we are the demons.

Here’s one of my favorite examples lately:

“It seems to me, again without having all the details about this, that these individuals have been medicated and there may be a real issue in this country from the standpoint of these drugs and how they’re used.”

This was from Rick Perry, Daily Kos reminds us, “the fellow who destroyed his last presidential bid after a bizarre debate performance that he later blamed on prescription painkillers he had taken beforehand.”

(Don’t you love that part about speaking without having the details?)

And this, from Mike Adams, who calls himself “The Health Ranger” and Editor of NaturalNews.com:

The headline is “Every mass shooting over last 20 years has one thing in common… and it’s not guns.” The article is actually a reprint of “an important article written by Dan Roberts from AmmoLand.com.”

(NaturalNews sounds maybe okay, but when the source is AmmoLand, you’ve got to wonder about bias.)

Here goes:

“The overwhelming evidence points to the signal [sic] largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes.”

Then follows a list of people, crimes, and drug names. The list was compiled and published to Facebook by “John Noveske, founder and owner of Noveske Rifleworks just days before he was mysteriously killed in a single car accident.”

(Again note the source and possible bias, plus the hint of conspiracy theory. Gotta love it.)

Want something more mainstream? How about Newsweek?

“Charleston Massacre: Mental Illness Common Thread for Mass Shootings,” by Matthew Lysiak:

“…. If history is any indication, the shooter most likely has a history of severe mental health issues that have either gone untreated or undiagnosed.”

He then provides a list of crimes and psychiatric diagnoses with a number of the same instances as the AmmoLand account, though not a listing of medications.

The author goes on to say that the “rise [in mass shootings] correlates directly with the closure of the mental health institutions in 1969, according to mental health experts.”

(Correlates with – not caused – please note. That’s important. I’ll have more to say about that, probably next week.)

Lysiak goes on to say that the requirements for civil commitment (read: involuntary) are too loose. He quotes Liza Gold, a forensic psychiatrist in Arlington, Virginia: “The commitment requirement needs to be less strict. Today it currently requires both mental illness and dangerousness to have someone committed. I think we need to focus more on the dangerousness and keep these people from getting guns.”

If that’s so, we should be worried more about “sane” people such as abusive partners with histories of violence and restraining orders than about the mentally disordered, shouldn’t we? Comments revealing that “most people who commit acts of violence don’t exhibit signs of mental illness, and most people who are mentally ill are not violent” are buried near the end of the article.

Fortunately, not all the media are demonizing the mentally ill, though the dissent doesn’t seem to be coming from the major media. Slate and Salon have published articles that question the automatic connection.

The article on Slate, by Anne Skomorowsky, is long, and refers to the Germanwings airplane deaths, but it’s thoughtful reading and well worth the time.

“Because Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz killed himself when he purposefully drove a plane carrying 149 other people into a mountain in the Alps, there has been an assumption that he suffered from “depression” — an assumption strengthened by the discovery of antidepressants in his home and reports that he had been treated in psychiatry and neurology clinics.” She adds, “Lubitz did not die quietly at home. He maliciously engineered a spectacular plane crash and killed 150 people. Suicidal thoughts can be a hallmark of depression, but mass murder is another beast entirely.”

And the take-away: “Many patients and other interested parties are rightly concerned that Lubitz’s murderous behavior will further stigmatize the mentally ill.”

Salon’s Arthur Chu talked about the more recent Charleston, SC, shootings and other incidents in “It’s not about mental illness: The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males.”

“I get really really tired of hearing the phrase ‘mental illness’ thrown around as a way to avoid saying other terms like ‘toxic masculinity,’ ‘white supremacy,’ ‘misogyny’ or ‘racism.’

“’The real issue is mental illness’ is a goddamn cop-out. I almost never hear it from actual mental health professionals, or advocates working in the mental health sphere….Seeking medical help for depression or anxiety is apparently stronger evidence of violent tendencies than going out and purchasing a weapon….Doing the former is something we’re OK with stigmatizing but not the latter.”

I’ll let that be the last word, fellow demons. Until the next time, that is. Until the next time.

Correction: The Skomorowsky article appeared on Slate, not Business Insider, as originally stated. I have fixed the text and regret the error.

Here are the references for the articles cited, in order:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/19/1394713/-Rick-Perry-says-guns-aren-t-to-blame-for-Charleston-accident-it-was-prescription-drugs

http://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html

http://www.newsweek.com/charleston-massacre-mental-illness-common-thread-mass-shootings-344789

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/03/germanwings_co_pilot_mental_illness_suicide_is_linked_to_depression_but.html

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/its_not_about_mental_illness_the_big_lie_that_always_follows_mass_shootings_by_white_males/

Category:

Mental Health

Tagged with:

Abilify: The Next Chapter

I’ve been taking Abilify as an add-on to my other psychotropics for about six months now, and I have some pieces of good news to share.

Good news #1: The generic (aripiprazole) is now available! There was a slight delay between the time the FDA gave approval for the generic (April) and the time it went on sale. But now it has arrived in drugstores. (I understand that the same company makes both the brand name and the generic, which strikes me as goofy, but then what do I know about drug marketing?)

Good news #2: Between my insurance and my pharmacy, I now have to pay only $15/month for the generic. The brand-name Abilify was $800 without insurance and $125 with. My insurance is not cheap, though it is still less than the cost of brand-name Abilify. When you add in all my other prescriptions and doctor visits and tests and such – plus all my husband’s drugs and other medical expenses, the insurance suddenly doesn’t seem so pricey. (I got this insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and I hope the Supreme Court doesn’t screw it up for me.)

Good news #3: Despite my tiny dosage (2 mg.) I have noticed significant effects. After six months on the drug, I have more energy, better focus and concentration, and fewer down/useless days (unless I overdo and run out of spoons). (See http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/ if you don’t know what I mean by that.)

I’ve been doing major housecleaning/sorting, going out – actually outside the house – to run errands other than my shrink appointments, and I even went to a party – a reunion of people I used to work with. I wore my new skirt, navigated the social milieu successfully, and stayed an hour and a half. (The next day was one of my no-spoons days, though.)

This is only the third time in my life that I’ve noticed a significant effect from taking a new prescription. The first was Prozac (fluoxetine), which felt like looking at a color television after years of black-and-white. With static. Showing only commercials. The second was Lamictal (lamotrigine), which felt like a switch flipping and turning on my ability to think rationally. And now there’s Abilify.

Whatever side effects I may have, I’m willing to live with. (Unless I get the tardive dyskinesia. That would be a deal-breaker.) This feels like real living and I’m happy about it. I don’t think this is hypomania, either. I think I’m supposed to feel this way. I’m going to run with it.

Of course this isn’t the end of bipolar disorder for me, or the end of this blog. I still have plenty to say about my experiences with bipolar depression, mental health in general, and particularly mental health in the media and society.

Sorry if I sound sappy, but it’s good to be alive and functioning!

Category:

Mental Health

Tagged with:

The Answer to Bullying

“Being bullied is not a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up; it has serious long-term consequences,” says Stephen Luntz in an article, “Study Finds Bullying Affects Mental Health More Than Child Abuse” [http://www.iflscience.com/brain/price-bullying-measured].

Well, duh.

But wait. Look at that title again. “Bullying Affects Mental Health More Than Child Abuse“?

Yes. That’s an accurate headline, not just clickbait.

“Our results showed those who were bullied were more likely to suffer from mental health problems than those who were maltreated,” says Professor Dieter Wolke of the University of Warwick in the article. “Being both bullied and maltreated also increased the risk of overall mental health problems, anxiety and depression.”

He adds, “It is important for schools, health services and other agencies to work together to reduce bullying and the adverse effects related to it.”

Again, duh. Easier said than done.

And how big is the problem? A CBS News poll reports that most Americans reported being bullied at some point while growing up http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-majority-of-americans-were-bullied-as-kids/. Only 41 percent report never being bullied.

“Just” 10 percent said they were bullied “a lot.” That’s still a lot of children who are bullied a lot.

I know I was. And I’m willing to bet that many of you were too.

So what’s to be done?

Well, we know what doesn’t work.

Telling those who are bullied:
“They’re just joking.”
“Learn to take a little teasing.”
“You’re too sensitive.” (my personal favorite)
“Learn to fight back.”
“Get used to it.”
“Just ignore it.”
“What they say doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t let them see that they hurt you.”
“Laugh it off.”
“Handle it yourself.”
“Try to make friends with them.”
“Give them what they want and they’ll leave you alone.”
“Don’t give them what they want and they’ll stop.”
“Stay away from them.”
“Stand up to them.”
“Get your friends together when they’re around.”
“Tell your parents/teacher/principal.”
“Take karate lessons.”
“Avoid the second floor bathroom (or wherever).”
“Grow up.”

(If you have any other favorites, let us all know in the comments!)

Look again at that list. They are pieces of advice to the VICTIMS of bullying on HOW NOT TO BE BULLIED. What’s wrong with this picture?

Feminists and their allies have begun questioning the advice given to women on HOW NOT TO BE RAPED. Instead, they say, the focus should be on teaching men HOW NOT TO BE RAPISTS.

http://www.ifyouonlynews.com/feminist-issues/10-rape-prevention-tips-that-are-guaranteed-to-work-image/

And apparently, this approach is having some success.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2013/01/08/rape-prevention-aimed-at-rapists-does-work/

Of course, bullying is not rape; the analogy breaks down quickly. But both are about power and “the other” – asserting dominance over someone who is different.

In bullying, that difference can be real or merely perceived, and can be literally anything – weight, height, intelligence, socioeconomic level, race, ethnicity, popularity, clothing, sex, gender, hair color, disability, athletic prowess, speech, preference of superhero. The criteria for who is a victim seem completely arbitrary, because they are. The victim is the other, someone who is by definition different.

Is it fair, or even reasonable, to tell victims to alter whatever it is about themselves that makes them different? It can be soul-killing to have to pretend you are not smart, not poor, not gay, not Muslim. It can be impossible to pretend you’re not short, don’t have a disability, are good at sports. And why should victims have to, any more than women should never go out alone at night or never flirt?

We need to start teaching kids HOW NOT TO BE BULLIES, not how not to be bullied.

Some specifics, like this:
“If you think another kid is gay, ignore it.”
“If someone is not as popular as you, so what?”
“if a kid in your class dresses funny, don’t say anything.”
“If it’s not fun for everyone, stop.”

Or this:
“Don’t hit people because you don’t like the way they look.”
“Don’t joke about people who don’t enjoy it.”
“Don’t call people anything but what they want to be called.”
“If someone is unhappy, don’t make it worse.”

Or this:
“If someone is smarter or less smart than you, form a study group.”
“If someone has less money than you, do things that don’t cost money.”
“If someone is always dropping her books, help pick them up.”

I’m not an educator or a child psychologist – just a former smart, scrawny girl with weird hair and poor eyesight. In other words, bully-bait.

Maybe my ideas won’t work. But what we’re doing now sure doesn’t. That poll I mentioned earlier suggests that bullying is actually increasing, despite all the attention the topic is getting. Generalities like “All people deserve your respect” and “Celebrate differences” and “Be-kind-keep-your-hands-to-yourself-no-hazing-no-fighting-no-name-calling” aren’t getting the job done.

Bully culture is well and truly entrenched in our society. To change that, we need to change the culture – if for no other reason, to head off all those mental health problems waiting up ahead for bullied children.

Who’s with me?

Category:

Mental Health

Tagged with:

Me and My Brain: A Story of Love and Dysfunction

As they say, of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most. Or anyway, a properly functioning brain.

I love my brain, despite all the trouble it’s given me. For many years I thought it was the only measure of my worth, the only thing about me that made me special, the only thing that I could truly rely on.

I reveled in learning, in thinking, in reading, in questioning, in contemplating, in discovering. My body was not dependable; my brain was.

Little did I know the biochemical pitfalls that were waiting for me. Little did I know that my brain was ill. Disordered. Unbalanced. At the very least, uncooperative.

For instance, my brain decided other people were always pointing and laughing at me. Sometimes they were, of course, but that paranoia became my baseline assumption. (Shrinks call that “ideas of reference.” I just called it life.)

My brain played back for me every socially awkward or embarrassing thing I ever did, either randomly or at the worst possible moments.

My brain made me cry at the stupidest times – at an upbeat sitcom theme song, when someone mentioned foreign travel, when opening boxes from the garage, when thinking about my college years or birthday parties. Whenever I was confronted with how damaged I am.

My brain had irrational thoughts. Bad thoughts. Cutting. Worse. You know what I mean.

Eventually my brain refused to let me live any kind of a normal life – go out, talk to people, care for my house or my pets or myself, or even read, once the greatest joy of my life, the thing my brain and I best liked to do together.

But my brain also worked just well enough to send me looking for the help I needed. I’ve gotten back parts of who I was and what my mind was. And for that, I’m grateful. Even with it disorderly and uncooperative, it’s still the best part of me.

Category:

Mental Health

Tagged with:

Crazy Pills

Once upon a time in the land of Jublia lived a kind and powerful queen named Lunesta. One day the dragon Cialis and the evil sorceress Humira attacked the castle, but Jublia was saved by Lunesta and her faithful dog Boniva.

And the peasants rejoiced.

Honestly! The names that pharmaceutical companies give their drugs these days! It’s bad enough that the drugs have a list of side effects longer than the symptoms they’re supposed to cure. Not to mention the drugs where the side effects are the same symptoms they are supposed to cure, or the ones where the side effects are considerably worse than the condition they’re being prescribed for.

My favorite has always been, may cause death (excuse me, “increases risk of death”). That has to be the ultimate side effect. You’ll be dead, but your toenails will look great for the funeral. Leave instructions that include sandals.

I made a list of all the drugs that I’ve been prescribed in my pursuit of something resembling sanity. It’s quite long. I’ve tried almost every class of drugs there is – tricyclics, atypical, SSRIs, anti-anxiety drugs, and hypnotics – in various combinations and assorted doses, and even for off-label uses. (TIL that Abilify can be classed as an “atypical atypical,” which makes me feel a certain kinship with it.)

The only ones I know I haven’t taken are lithium and the MAOI inhibitors. which is a good thing, because I do so like red wine and cheese.

Here’s the list, as nearly as I can remember:
Abilify
buproprion
Desyrel
Effexor
Inderal
Lamictal
Lexapro
desipramine
Prozac
Sinequan
Tofranil
Topamax
Wellbutrin
Zoloft
Ativan
BuSpar
Ambien
Valium

I may have missed a few, what with the brand names and generics, the decades over which all this occurred, the memory deficits, and the ones I took for only a month or two before the side effects became too heinous.

The side effects I’ve encountered along the way include:
dry mouth
memory loss
nightmares
agitation
lethargy
weight gain

Not all at the same time, of course, thank heavens. Right now I seem to have dry mouth, residual memory loss, and weight gain. Given the alternatives, I can live with these. More or less. (That is to say, I have to.) The memories, I understand, are not coming back. I just hope I don’t lose any more, especially ones of the hot-n-juicy variety.

The side effects I haven’t suffered include:
death (obviously)
fatal skin rash (Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, which I wrote bout a while back: https://bipolarjan.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/saving-face-or…-die-from-that/)
tardive dyskinesia

I hope the drug regimen has settled down for a while. I must admit that I don’t follow the instructions to the letter. They’re simply too overwhelming: Take this one on a full stomach, this on an empty stomach, another with milk or never with grapefruit juice; something else at bedtime or half an hour before bedtime, or with the noon meal. And don’t forget the non-psychotropics (cholesterol, blood pressure, etc.), or the vitamin, fiber, and calcium pills my GP prescribes or recommends. Well, and the OTC Benadryl, Tylenol, and Immodium, as needed.

(Yes, I did once look up all my meds in a drug interaction database. Every one interacts with every other one. Maybe that’s one reason mixing an effective cocktail has been such a crapshoot.)

I knew a woman who took so many different drugs for her variety of illnesses and conditions that she had a kitchen timer that she continually set and reset every time she had to take a dose of something. Her meds were more precise than mine, though. If she screwed it up, the consequences would be dire. Her side effects did include death.

The regimen I’ve settled on is this: one set of pills when I wake up (whenever that is) and one set at 11:00 p.m. I eat whenever I’m hungry, and I don’t like grapefruit juice anyway. Anything more complicated than that I can’t be sure of remembering. It’s still complex, what with the only-in-the-morning pills, the only-at-night pills, and the take-twice-a-day things.

I have little tricks to help me remember the routine – daytime-only pills in a plastic bag, nighttime-only on the lamp base, twice a day on the tea cart. Turn the vitamin bottle upside down after taking morning pills. I suppose I should get one of those daily pill caddy things, but they never seem to have enough, or big enough, compartments.

Is this routine crazy? You should see me without the pills.

Well, no, you shouldn’t.

Category:

Mental Health

Tagged with:

Haiku Cycle

Break time here at the
synaptic schoolyard. You can
ride the swings all day.

Day lights sights you see,
saw before and that may be
In sight tomorrow.

Tomorrow times out
Wheels round and ticks away the
Body clock of mind.

Mind and brain play tag
I’m it as ducks and geese still
Wait while we circle.

Circle back and start
again, or stop before my
feelings crack and break.

Note: Poetry is something I used to do, years ago. After my Great Meltdown, my therapist suggested that I view it as an opportunity to rebuild myself, discarding things that were no longer useful and reclaiming things I want in my life.

So I decided to try poetry again. I used to write mostly free verse, but I decided to start with more structured forms because of needing some structure in my life now.

I have started with a cycle of haikus. They do not have to be read in order. Picture them as a ring. Pick any one as the starting point.

If you like this, and as inspiration strikes, I may attempt some more poetry for this blog. Is there a sonnet in our future? Dare I say it – a villanelle? Someday a sestina? We’ll see.

Category:

Mental Health

Tagged with:

Where’s the Anger?

Depression used to be defined as anger turned inward. Now we consider depression to be a biochemical imbalance in the brain. At least that’s the current thought as the pendulum swings back and forth between brain and mind.

There is a case to be made, though, that anger is at least one component of depression. And that anger may indeed be turned inward.

Take, for example, the anger you may feel when a loved one doesn’t understand what depression makes you go through, or when a coworker says something clueless and cruel. These are incidents that can make you justifiably angry.

It’s all too easy to turn that anger inward. You say to yourself, “I’m crazy or I’m broken or I’m damaged and it’s no wonder they don’t understand. Maybe they’re right. Maybe most people can just cheer up and I’m defective because I can’t.” These thoughts, in addition to prompting anger, are likely to depress a depressed person even more.

When anger masquerades as depression, it becomes difficult to recognize the anger for what it is. After a difficult relationship ended – badly – I was unable to see that I was indeed angry. I could have sworn that I wasn’t. In fact, I told people that I wasn’t angry. It took a long time for me to recognize and acknowledge that anger. By then it was too late to do much about it, except work through it with my therapist. But that’s all right, because that’s what I needed to do with the anger anyway. I’m at that awkward age when I can be tried as an adult.

So while I don’t think that depression is caused by anger turned inward, I do believe that depression can cause you to internalize anger and beat yourself up for things that you can’t control, like your brain.

Depression makes a hash out of feelings. Is it anger? Is it pain? Is it loneliness? Is it despair? The answer, usually, is one from column A and two from column B.

Category:

Mental Health

Tagged with: