I haven’t been doing too well recently, in fact I have been at rock bottom and have almost killed myself. I am writing this post to distract myself from the ghastliness of it all because I am getting beyond distress and to a certain calmness that I don’t understand but that somehow fills me with foreboding – and yes I know that makes little sense. The voices are almost constantly telling me I would be better off dead and I believe them. I am filled with paranoia and there are people out there who are making me think things I don’t want to think. So I write………or more correctly I blog becuase I still am……LOL.
I have been thinking about MH services and the type of service I would like but I get ahead of myself let me first talk of the service I get. I have a Psychiatrist who is kind, intelligent, respectful and diligent, I see him fortnightly. I have a Care Coordinator who is also a Social Worker, she also is kind, compassionate and insightful, she always does what she says she will and if I ring her she always gets back to me, she sees me every week and would see me more, I think, if I let her. I have a GP who rings me up and asks me to go see her when she hears I am not doing too great and when I am better than I am now she sees me every two to three weeks, lately she has seen me twice a week. My GP is kind, respectful and caring but just a touch scary and she will not let me disengage no matter how hard I try. She has listened to me and respects my desire not to be admitted agaist my will. These three people have been the mainstay of my MH service and have managed to keep me alive.
I have been sectioned in the past and the care in the acute unit was abysmal – I would burn down the unit and start again. I would staff it with nurses who actually talk to patients and engage in at least some therapeutic exchange, rather than nurses who are only interested in order and giving out drugs and drinking tea. I would employ Psychiatrists who listen to patients and not just prescribe for them, telling them to be good girls and take their medication. I would make the rooms in the wards welcoming and different rather than like cells. I would make the food edible.
I have met the Crisis Team, who would not know a crisis if it hit them. I would first of all have them learn how to introduce themselves properly. Crisis Teams seem primarily interested in medication – is that all there is? I think not……
I have also had talking therapy which to me seems banal and unhelpful and somewhat contrived – I chose not to talk.
So what service do I want? – I don’t honestly know, there must be better ways to deliver acute care and I haven’t read or heard one good word about Crisis Teams. The good service I have had has been given by individuals who often themselves grimace at the system. I wish I had answers but I don’t – all I can say is that it is the individuals make up the service who count.
So this post like my mental state makes no sense, offers little insight and rambles. To make amends here is a good song…………..
The voices which trouble me are a little worse. They have been worse since my last therapy session and they get worse when I see the Shrink too. This is partly why I have discharged myself from the CMHT, The voices suggested it to me and said if I did discharge myself they would leave me alone more, but I wanted to do it myself too, what good is a CMHT that makes you worse?
As for stopping the medication, this was my idea, it dulls and numbs me and it doesn’t stop me feeling bad or stop me hearing voices so there is little point in taking it. Anyway the depression seems to be going now and I tend to think it is the passage of time rather than any medication that has done this.
Well I have discharged myself from the CMHT. It went very well. I told them I had stopped the meds and I didn’t want to see the CC or Shrink anymore. The response was in a nutshell “Well OK – you can ring us if you need us” – No thanks I don’t think I will be doing that anytime soon. Like I said before I feel relieved – no more appointments, no more traumatic therapy sessions and no more stupefying, numbing drugs. I don’t feel depressed anymore. I don’t feel manic, the voices do trouble me but I am learning to cope with them so I should be OK without the drugs.
I can go back to being me now instead of a mental health patient.
I made a list of pros and cons in relation to my mental health and it’s treatment. I took into account:-
how I am feeling
the benefits of the medication
the side effects of the medicationt
the benefits of the therapy
the drawbacks of the therapy
the invasiveness of the CMHT
the effect on my work
the time spent on appointments
I came to the conclusion that the cons outweigh the pros and to be honest I think I an feeling worse right now because of the CMHT so I am discharging myself. No more meds, appointments or therapy. As from now I am reducing my meds and I will cancel all appointments on Monday morning.
I had a nice Christmas – I enjoyed it. I was with my family and it was good to see them all. Christmas is over commercilised and I really aren’t religious but if it suddenly disappeared I would be sad.
I have had my Lithium increased as well as my anti-psychotic and you know what? I feel a bit better, it has been a pain sticking with the medication and several times I have nearly stopped them but now I can put my hand on my heart and say the medication helps. Now I aren’t wanting to become the poster girl for medication because it has taken me a lot of false starts to get here and some of those false starts have been very painful but right now the drugs do work!
The medication seems to have taken the edge of the voices that plague me and also the therapy is helping me to handle them a lot better, once again I have to say that the therapy hurts a lot of the time; it drags up stuff which sometimes I think would be better off left buried, but looking back I am in a better place than I was three months ago.
All this sounds positive and to be frank it is. Don’t get me wrong I am not about to burst into song and I think I have a long way to go, no doubt I will falter in the times ahead but right now I am still here!
I went for my bloods doing today, I was also weighed as the Shrink needs to work out the correct dose of Lithium for me I have been thinking about medication a lot and why I take it. I take it because it is better than the alternative which is a psyche ward. Of course I do get suicidal, and I am teetering on the edge of feeling that way again, so I guess death is an alternative too. But it is far more likely I would go off on some acutely psychotic episode raving about voices and trying to cut myself to ribbons.
I have been on a psyche ward against my will before and I won’t let that happen again. I was sectioned because I was suicidal and was displaying a distinct lack of insight. Poor Shrink didn’t really have a choice he knew I would kill myself if he didn’t send me in. Being held against your will is not fun , it’s is frightening and totally disempowering. I was coerced into taking mind numbing medication when I didn’t behave, told when to go to bed, told when to eat and told when I could shower. I don’t want to have to go through that again so I take the medication.
The medication helps, it numbs the pain down slightly and it makes me less liable to hallucinate or become manically depressed. The medication doesn’t stop the voices, it doesn’t really stop me being depressed and it doesn’t take away a lot of my other symptoms such as flashing lights and stuff. It all has side effects too; a tremor from the anti-psychotics and a fuzziness that lasts till the afternoon, when I come off them I will have to do it slowly. The Lithium can damage my kidneys and make me hypothyroid. I have no doubt I am addicted to the sleeping tablets.
So for me it is a bit of a balancing act – demons or medication.
Work is going OK but I have only been there for a total of five hours. I am more clear about what it is they want me to do and to be honest I do have the skills to do it. It is around redesigning systems and processes to improve service; at the moment everything is a little piecemeal and held together with sellotape.
My mental state however is not that good, I am lost in a fug of depression which just gets denser and deeper. I continue to take my pills like the good little psyche patient I am, in fact I have to get my Lithium levels checked tomorrow. Today I heard voices almost constantly and concentration was a bit of a worry but I got through it
I see my Shrink on Tuesday so I will check with him if it is OK to take the odd extra anti-psychotic.
I have had a quiet day today, not many voices and I feel pretty much in limbo. neither bad or good – I am just here. I haven’t spent my time gazing at the walls either but I can’t really identify anything concrete I have done except for a spot of washing and ironing.
I did spend sometime thinking about what I covered this week with my CC, it was pretty heavy going and left me shattered after it, so shattered that the Shrinky commented how tired I looked the day after. Talking therapies are OK but sometimes I wonder if they stir up too much, the old adage about sleeping dogs is true. But then again my dogs are barking so loudly I can’t sleep for them without the aid of the chemical cosh, so maybe I should listen when they bark and see what disturbs them so. So it is blah blah blah with the CC and to be honest with the specialist type of help I am having it seems to a point to be working.
Another day has been and nearly gone, I took my Lithium and nothing happened as predicted. I haven’t grown wings or horns, I don’t feel bad or good just indifferent. So I will carry on regardless.
(I resisted the temptation to put up “Who Let the Dogs Out?”)
Saw my nice Shrinky today and have to start the Lithium tonight. He was very informative and told me the risks and presumed benefits of the drug, the most common side effects, that it might take a long time to work and that it might do nothing at all. I don’t think he could have told me any more than he has. It has to be titrated so it means blood tests for a while till it is at the right level in my blood. Whatever will be will be.
Also went for my eyes testing, I get light flashes and stuff which are almost certainly due to me being bonkers but as my glasses seem to be no good to read with now I thought an eye test would be in order. Apparently my eyes are getting worse due to my getting older so I have two shiny new pairs of glasses on order (buy one get one free!). Another reason I must go back to work!
I was troubled with the voices quite a lot today. they always kick up an unpleasant fuss when I see Shrinky (I think he scares them) and plus with the eye test I was in strange surroundings which also makes them kick off. Tonight has been a lot better and they have been quiet. I have been finding stuff that help me cope with them and things like deep breathing and stuff help but in the middle of the Opticians it’s a bit hard to ask them to hang on while you do three mantras and a bit of heavy breathing.
I think I have been psychotic, I certainly have had psychotic symptoms but both of those statements depend if you agree with the term psychosis.
People with psychosis may have one or more of the following: hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder, or lack of insight .
I have had and still have hallucinations, I have been delusional and I have certainly had a lack of insight at times, not too sure if I have had thought disorder but I suspect I may have; therefore I have been and probably still am psychotic. This is not to be confused with psychopathic which means something totally different
So I am psychotic if psychiatry is to be believed. But I am not sure if I believe it, I am not sure if I believe in psychosis at all. I hear voices every day, occasionally I have visual hallucinations too, but rather than medicalsing it as some sort of disorder I prefer to think it is my own mind trying to tell me something. I strongly suspect that this is the root cause of my hallucinations and other happenings. I do think external factors play a part too, for example, if I am stressed or upset things get markedly worse. The medications do help in that they numb you to some of the effects of the hallucinations such as fear or confusion but what they do not do is take them away.
I feel that psychosis as a term to label or diagnose people should not be used at all as that label is damaging to the individual labeled so. It is damaging to the individual as it will follow them round in life forever branding them as disordered and therefore lacking somehow.
Posted by p3bbles 
Posted by p3bbles 
Posted by p3bbles 