The article stated that there are many doctors up in arms over the UK’s decision, claiming this law basically says ‘quacks’ are okay.  A conflicting viewpoint was put across that really it ought to be the patient’s choice which sort of treatment they take, either herbal or pharmaceutical.  The article also noted that one such herbal remedy under contention is St John’s Wort, as used in the treatment of depression.

I think the key here is ‘choice’.  Last I checked, the US and UK supposedly invaded the Middle East under the pretense of bringing ‘democracy’, yes?  And I appreciate that a little government intervention is necessary from time to time, but when it comes to our health, shouldn’t it be up to us what we put in our bodies?

Example 1:

Many of my good friends have neurological conditions.  One such friend was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder a couple years ago.  He tried prescribed medications for a while, but they only seemed to make him worse, so he stopped, and started exploring his options.  He struck upon a vitamin regime that did not cure his symptoms, but it did improve things greatly for him.  Unfortunately, by that point so much damage had already been done at his job, due to his condition going undiagnosed for so long and due to his colleagues being small-minded and not accepting / understanding him once the diagnosis was made.  My friend has been severely bullied at work for a long time now, and the abuse built up to a point where he just couldn’t handle it anymore.  He felt so low, he went back to the doctor, and in his vulnerable state, he agreed to try a new prescription.

He went on a course of Sertroline (Zoloft in the States) – something I took myself, many years ago, and which had greatly detrimental affects on my mental health.  In my experience, I was a guinea pig for this ‘miracle drug’, and when things went wrong, the doctors were suddenly uncontactable.  In my friend’s case,  he sank lower and lower over a period of six weeks, until one morning his partner found him slicing open his own wrists.  Thank God my friend does not live alone, else he would have died.  Instead, though, he was rushed to hospital and saved.

One could argue he was depressed anyway, so how can you say this was caused by the drug?  Except my friend has never been suicidal before – and if you look around the internet, you will see there are several class action suits being filed in connection with this and other such drugs due to unprecedented violent acts on the part of patients taking these prescriptions – and when I was taking the drug myself, after sinking into a suicidal state unlike anything I’d ever experienced before (not to mention developing schizophrenic symptoms), I read in the list of side effects contained in the medication box that this ‘anti-depressant’ and ‘anti-anxiety’ tablet could, in fact, cause ‘anxiety’ and ‘suicidal ideation’.

The day before my friend started self-harming, he had gone to see his doctor again and told him how depressed he was feeling since taking the drug.  The doctor’s reply was to increase the dosage!  And might I add that never was there any suggestion to see a psychologist who could help him work through his pain, even alongside the medication.  This, too, has been my own experience: unless I begged for a psychologist and absolutely insisted upon it, it was not given to me.

I’m not saying the drugs don’t work for everyone.  But I have spoken to many fellow diagnosees (if there is such a word!), read many books on these subjects, and have tried a variety of medications myself.  The general consensus seems to be that for some people these medications work – for others, it is helpful to take the drugs on a short-term basis alongside some other form of psychological therapy, so that they feel a boost in spirits and clarity to enable them to focus on the therapy and learn the long-term techniques to help themselves.  For others still (myself included), the drugs do not have any affect on the actual condition, but they do induce a lot of nasty side effects.

Another point to mention is that I believe we focus so much on the diagnosis, we forget about the ‘little’ things, like sleep and diet.  For instance, I have started on a vitamin regime (similar to my friend’s) that has meant at long last, I sleep at night and I wake up refreshed.  This has in no way cured my symptoms – but just getting that sleep has de-stressed my body and mind so much, my symptoms have become much more bearable.  I also tried a year of talking therapy and discovered that much of the pain and volatility within me was due to experience, not the diagnosed conditions themselves.  Through this therapy, much of my frustration and unhappiness was healed.

The point is: it should be our choice.  I don’t know about you, but I do not want to live in a nation governed by people who decide what we’re allowed to put into our bodies in the name of health.  There is a reason these chemical compounds are called ‘drugs’ – they have the potential to be dangerous, depending on who takes them and for how long.

I think people often view doctors as all-knowing, but it’s so important that we step back and remember the human body is not a machine.  You can’t call up Tech Support when something goes wrong, have them run a few diagnostic checks and come out with a foolproof solution.

Example:

Just last year I developed some kind of infection that required antibiotics.  I was given a basic prescription, and within 15 minutes of taking the drug as prescribed, my temperature shot up to 105F, I lost feeling in the right side of my body and my chest started seizing up.  I was in absolute terror.  My husband threw warm wet flannels over me to bring down the temperature, and slowly I came back to health.  We spoke to a nurse who said it was a result of the drug, because apparently you shouldn’t take that particular pill if you have neurological conditions – which no one bothered to check when giving the prescription.  I spoke to a doctor who prescribed a new drug and his response was, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the antibiotic – that should not have happened to you.’  Yes, but it did happen.  But he just kept saying, ‘It shouldn’t have.’

Doctors do not have all the answers, despite how advanced they are.  They particularly do not have all the answers when it comes to the brain.  I would also argue there is a huge issue of spirit involved, when delving into matters of the psyche, i.e. some scientists believe everything is down to chemical reactions, and others believe there’s something more to it, something beyond the body.  There’s no way to prove it either way.

So do I think the UK government has just said it’s okay for ‘quacks’ to practise in our nation?  No.  I believe they just reaffirmed our right to choose – which is just how things should be in a so-called democracy.

I just pray we keep it that way.

Vrinda Pendred

Editor & Founder

]]> http://conditionalpublications.com/2011/02/23/herbal-or-pharmaceutical-your-choice/feed/ 1 http://conditionalpublications.com/2011/02/13/depression-the-need-for-govt-support-a-testimonial/ http://conditionalpublications.com/2011/02/13/depression-the-need-for-govt-support-a-testimonial/#respond Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:43:53 +0000 http://conditionalpublications.com/?p=676

I am 35 yrs old. I have been diaganosed with Major Depression since I was 21. I spent my 21st birthday in the hospital. Most days I can handle it well. But when something changes too much in my life, it’s hard for me to deal with that.

Example: my SSDI check and my hubby’s check have been cut because of the goverment.  There is no funding to pay the insurance for our meds.  So they have taken a total of $261 from our collective check.  Now they say they are on the way to getting it back to us but we haven’t heard anything yet.

So how I deal with it is I watch a lot of TV.  TV has always been an outlet for me.  Even when I was a kid and there would be a lot of yelling going on and verbal abuse in the house, I would turn to TV.  It soothed me and made me feel like my problems were going away. To this day it does the same for me. The only difference now is that when I’m done watching TV I am so down that I want to do nothing.

I used to clean my home all the time and that gave me some sense of accomplishment, but now it’s even hard for me to get the laundry done.  Then there are times just like tonight where I was helping my hubby cook dinner – we made beef stew and I was chopping the veggies for it and I was getting anoyed because all I wanted to do was watch TV.  I was upset because I had just gone small grocery shopping and was telling my hubby that it took a lot for me to buy some cheap pillows – a two-pack at the Family Dollar on sale for $4.  It upset me to buy it because I was worried about how much money it was and if it was really important to get.  My thought was: did I need this and could this $4 go to something else like food or gas?  I started crying about it and felt bad about it.

I try to pull my self out of this a lot.  I usually can with prayer but something is different now.  I don’t know if I need a med change or just a change in my routine. I struggle with the thought that if people found out I had a mental illness, they would not want to be around me anymore.  This excludes my hubby and my closest friends.

At the launch, Vrinda Pendred (Editor & Founder of Conditional Publications), Sharon Meyer (Promotions & Communications Assistant) and Beth Barker, all writers for ‘Check Mates’, gave readings from the book, talked about its purpose, and shared a little bit about what OCD really means.

Watch Part One

Watch Part Two

Click below to order Check Mates, the first ever collection of fiction poetry and artwork about OCD

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As a young child (around 4-5 years old), I suffered from my “illness”. I would hear voices, and I never slept. Often I would ask my mother why it was that I heard things nobody else heard, and her explanation was that God was trying to talk to me. So when the voices called out my name, I was at my wit’s end, calling to God, telling him I really was listening, and that He could just tell me already!

Growing up was extremely hard for me. School was the worst, because I never had any friends. I wanted friends, but when I had them, I never truly felt happy. I was also verbally abused by my step-father. He was bipolar, and the medication he was on never worked for him.

My mother worked at a convalescent hospital and was always at work, so my step-father would watch my brother and me. He laid in bed all day, sleeping, only waking up for an hour or so to eat. My brother and I were expected to take care of ourselves, and if we  made even a bit of noise, he would come out and beat us. Eventually, as I approached my teen years, my mother left him, and he would never hear from us again. But another problem arose, and it was one that shaped my life forever.

On my mother’s side, I have two cousins, brother and sister. Let’s call them Amy and James. Amy and I had always been close. And James, while he was almost four years older than me, had always been more of an older brother figure. Well, they were…molesting me. Both at the same time, but neither of the two knew about the other’s actions. This abuse plunged me deeper into my insomnia and depression. Some nights, I would stay up the entire night, just sobbing uncontrollably. I felt so helpless and alone. It was then that I started to hurt myself.

My freshman year in high school, I met the most amazing person. Let’s call him Ryan. He was gorgeous, tall, with somewhat Aryan features. He was a nerd, and we would spend hours just talking about video games, cartoons, etc. We started dating, and all was well. But when he graduated, another side of him arose. I was transferred to a school that had just been built, and made new friends. All of them were guys. Ryan was suspicious of them, and forced me to break off the friendship. But I didn’t. Countless times he accused me of cheating on him. And yes, while I thought some guys were cute, I never thought of leaving him. I was so much in love with him, and I knew he was the one for me. But these accusations caused an on-and-off relationship for us. One day, we would be fine, and the next, he would find something wrong with me and break it off.

During this time, the voices came back, louder than ever. I couldn’t go a day without hearing them. And it made me feel even crazier. I would hear voices, and then I would cut myself, which made Ryan angry, and it was just a vicious cycle. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I beat myself up, because all I wanted to do was please Ryan. He was my entire world, and I loved him. He enlisted in the Air Force, and he said he would make a life for us. We began to plan our future together, and the reality was setting in that, even though we had our fights and troubles, he was still in love with me, and that we were going to be together for the rest of our lives.

Before he left, he proposed to me. There was no ring, but it didn’t matter to me. All that mattered was that we promised ourselves to each other, and that we were going to stick it out and make the relationship work. Time went by, and I was so helplessly in love with him. But somehow he didn’t feel the same. So I fell deeper into my depression, and began to have suicidal thoughts. I started taking huge amounts of pills and going to sleep, hoping I would never wake up.

I talked to people on the internet, hoping to find someone who would love me. I wanted to leave Ryan, but every time I tried, he would suck me back in. I hate to admit it, but I began to make relationships with random guys on the internet, even going so far as having phone sex with them, trying to feel something close to love. Those relationships never lasted, and it left me with the feeling of being so dirty. I hated myself so much for what I was doing, but I was so addicted. I would take a shower after every time I was on the phone with a guy, and I would bleach myself, and then cut myself all over my thighs. I wanted to die so bad.

So one day, I took a bunch of pills, I got a scarf, and I tried to hang myself. Right as I was blacking out, the hat rack I was using broke and fell, hitting me on the head. I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep. A couple weeks later, I had my mom check me into the mental hospital, because I was so scared of myself. I didn’t feel safe. I wanted to die so very badly, but at the same time, I didn’t want to give up on life. So I spent a week in the hospital, and it’s really a week that I vaguely remember, because I was so drugged up. My speech was slurred, and I couldn’t even walk straight. I really feel that if I wasn’t so drugged, and if my roommate hadn’t molested me, I could have made some progress. However, it plunged me deeper, and the doctors suddenly called me “manic depressive.”

And so here I am today, 17, on the edge of becoming a legal adult, and wondering where I’m going to go from here. The thing that gives me hope is song writing. I hope one day someone will hear my music and be encouraged.

‘Ellie’

In a nutshell: the authorities have discovered a new drug to ‘cure’ the mutants of their ‘abnormalities’.  Mutants queue up in the thousands to receive this ‘cure’, but Magneto does everything in his power to sabotage it.  Magneto believes the mutants are special for their ‘unnatural’ abilities.  He thinks they should revel in their differences.  He takes this view to the extremes, sadly…but each time I’ve watched the film, I couldn’t help thinking how much it was like the struggle of living with a neurological condition.

There are ‘cures’ out there, and they are unarguably a godsend for people who can’t function in life without them…but for those of us who – if properly motivated – could find alternative means of dealing with these conditions…do we need a ‘cure’?  Are we that damaged, or do we just have different types of brains that lead to different thinking styles, different ways of feeling and responding, different abilities (just like everyone in the world, really)?

They called it ‘The Last Stand’ – I know where I stand on these issues, but where do you?

I suppose I’m a bit more like Professor Xavier: I believe in allowing the ‘mutants’ to make up their own minds on this subject, rather than tricking and bludgeoning them into agreeing with my perspective, as Magneto did.  But for what it’s worth, I like to think that there are darker sides to these conditions that we should fight.  It’s wrong to sink into them until they consume us and we lose ourselves.  That is illness.  Some people can’t help falling prey to this illness, because their brains won’t allow it, and I appreciate they need the drugs.

But for the rest of us, perhaps we’re overmedicating – and not just with prescriptions.  Perhaps we spend too much time feeling shameful about our brains being a little bit different, and we forget that all brains are different, that there is no such thing as a normal brain.  Perhaps we forget that our brains have made us who we are, through chemicals, neurons and the life experience they have given to us.  Do we really hate ourselves so much that we’d risk losing our personalities (those drugs are definitely mind-altering – I speak from experience) just to remove symptoms that are often only so bad because others around us don’t accept them?

I have said for years that if the world accepted our differences, we could find a way to live comfortably enough with a vast proportion of our symptoms.  This was the inspiration behind my story The Royal Bank of Scotland.  To add to that story, perhaps in such an acceptant world, we would also feel less afraid to seek help for the symptoms that aren’t so easy to manage, because there would be less stigma involved.

What do you think? Vrinda Pendred Editor & Founder

The Royal Bank of Scotland can be found in Check Mates: A Collection of Fiction, Poetry & Artwork about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, by People with OCD, available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Click below to order Check Mates now

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Beyond this, I thought it important to inject the perspective of the ‘mental health’ patient.  How many people can relate to this?:

Most of my neurological difficulties were diagnosed far too late in life, despite seeing ‘professionals’ numerous times before; I was given a cocktail of drugs that seemed to cause more harm than good; when I complained about the side effects, there was a serious lack of support or understanding; when I finally saw a proper therapist whom I felt I could speak to freely, I was informed after a year that the NHS could no longer fund my talking therapy and I would have to go it on my own…even though at long last it seemed I had stumbled on what I was really looking for all those years: a safe place to let out all my frustrations about problems I cannot cure.

To take another example: when I was pregnant a few years ago, I experienced extreme ante-natal depression.  I regularly felt suicidal and would definitely consider myself to have been ‘at risk’, as they say.  Yet my NHS referral to be seen by a therapist took so long that I didn’t get the call until I’d already had the baby and my symptoms had eased up!

What’s even more frustrating is that I’m originally American, so my medical stories cross oceans and nationalities – it seems that no matter which country, there was little care being offered.

I don’t want to trash every doctor out there, because, as I stated, I did manage to see a very good therapist in the end, who showed me the support and understanding I so desperately needed.  She was a great relief to me, and I will always be grateful to her.  But I was limited in my sessions with her.  In America, the insurance companies do the same – it’s a miracle I got to see this doctor for as long as I did, so I suppose that’s one thing the NHS almost did right…but it’s still not good enough.

I realise the governments don’t have enough money to facilitate every aspect of our nations, but the priorities seem to be so wrong.  We lose money on education and health care, yet we spend it on wars the country vehemently protests – and we’re meant to believe we live in a democracy.  Furthermore, as the Standard rightly notes, soldiers are coming back from these wars with post-traumatic stress disorder, and we don’t have the facilities to give them the care they deserve.

I urge you to write to your MP (or congressman) and speak your mind about this gross atrocity. Perhaps it’s time to remind them that, ironically, they could do with getting their heads checked.

Vrinda Pendred, Editor & Founder of Conditional Publications

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It has robbed so much of my life and affected many friendships.  I’ve been on over a dozen medications since then (about 16 years now) and have been in therapy as well.  Not only do I struggle with OCD, but I have also been diagnosed with Major Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and possibly a couple others that have caused me to be in several in-patient and out-patient programs and hopsitals within the last 6 years.

I wish I could be more positive and uplifting, and tell you the struggle will eventually end and  it only gets better as time goes on, but I can’t and I won’t.  Realistically, I believe it’s something I’m always going to struggle with greatly.  I believe the symptoms will wax and wane throughout life, but always remain a constant in my life.  A lot of days, I wonder how I made it so far or how I’m going to make it through the rest of my life like this, and the only semi-uplifting thing I can tell you is…somehow, I always seem to make it through the day, and all I can do is pray and hope for a brighter tomorrow.

The best day of my life was the morning I woke up, having taken medication for my symptoms for the first time the night before.  For the past year, I had awakened and instantly burst into tears upon recognizing I hadn’t died in my sleep.  That morning, I woke up, shut off my alarm clock, and made it all the way downstairs before I realized I didn’t mind being alive.  For the first time, I wondered if things just might get a little better.

I have been on 7 medications in various combinations and doses.  I have contamination fears and cleansing rituals, compulsive checking, intrusive images that appear in front of me, and voices in my head.  Medication doesn’t cure a mental health patient, but it helps clear my head, so I can focus on working to make myself better.  It’s exhausting and terrifying work, but I know someday I’ll leave my house and show myself as me, and not through the lens of a diagnosis.

When I work through therapy, I have a mantra that helps me through it.  I repeat to myself, “I will not die under a diagnosis.”  When I’m finally done living, hopefully to a ripe old age, I want to die having lived at least one day in perfect freedom.  I can’t wait for that day when OCD will be a distant memory, and I know if I keep working, I’ll get there.  But for now, there are exactly 300 words in this text.

‘Kristen’

Click below to order Check Mates, the first ever collection of fiction poetry and artwork about OCD

amazon.com amazon.co.uk amazon.ca

It’s obvious why this is fascinating, but it also demonstrates the likelihood that the old ‘nature vs nurture’ debate is irrelevant – instead, the body interacts with the environment and we are shaped by the combination.

It’s also encouraging news to those of us who suffer from mood disorders.  Perhaps it really is within our power to get some element of control over ourselves by first getting control of our physical aspect – next time we feel ourselves sinking into depression, for instance, maybe the physical act of smiling would slowly affect us on the inside.  Could be nonsense, but it also could be a real possibility – anyone ready to try the ‘fake it until you make it’ experiment with me?

Vrinda Pendred
Editor & Founder of Conditional Publications