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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
AKA Smith
Published Letters: 6540 Editor's Choice: 93
I want to assure you that I do understand the importance of proper medication and reasonable med compliance for people who are Bipolar. After Paxil, I had many opportunities to meet people whom I knew to be Bipolar and to see their frustrations and struggles. I suspect people who are Bipolar have even more problems getting medical professionals to listen to them. You and others are the expert there.
See Elle Dee mentions the profit motive as part of the problem. I know there are good doctors and other medical professionals who only have the best interests of the mentally ill at heart, but I cannot help but suspect that even the best of them are sometimes influenced by the marketing and the free samples that they are given to try on their patients.
Another serious problem is coordinating professionals who provide for people's physical health with professionals who provide for people's mental health. There really needs to be a team approach.
When I finally got a psychologist who was working with my psychiatric nurse practioner who was also consulting with my internist, they began to see me as a whole person. When they finally compared notes they decided that I should taper off my meds and that some of my previous diagnoses were bogus. One sure indicator that something may be amiss is when psychiatrists and psychologists keep changing their diagnoses. It often means that they are making symptoms fit the person rather that actually looking at the whole person.
For instance, I kept telling people over and over that my down periods were much worse in the winter. I was on disability and wanted financial assistance to buy a full spectrum light box to treat my Seasonal Affective Disorder. They cost about $300 - $400 for a big one. I knew I needed a big one. Medicaid would not pay. They were willing to pay that much every single month for medications but to reimburse for a light box was too out of the box for them. A light box would have been a one shot deal.
Fortunately, I was later able to afford the light box myself and it has done me a world of good. Another thing that has helped is a supplement called 5-HTP. However, I discovered I cannot take SAM-e. It has a similar effect upon me as SSRIs.
Also, several studies have indicated that consistent exercise is as effective for mild depression as drugs like Paxil. Exercise is free! Nobody makes a profit off of exercise.
I don't want to sound like no drugs is the only way to go. I want to tell what has made a difference for me. Maybe this discussion will be of help to others.
It was Prozac Backlash by Joseph Glenmullen, M.D. that I read that helped me see the dangers of the SSRI I was taking at the time. Among the lesser publicized side effects that he mentioned were muscle and joint pain and short term memory problems. I was suffering from both at the time and was so scared because not only did I think I was crazy but I also thought my memory was going.
Reading his book, suddenly a light went on. I told my doctors, "No more SSRIs!" Would you believe that they still tried to prescribe them in various guises for me? I really had to educate myself.
Someone else mentioned the billing units thing. This is quite the scam. When you have a mental health clinic, a PSR and a TLC all collaborating to get those billing units from every consumer/client/patient, things can get quite ugly.
One thing that some nonprofit mental health clinics really get into is "helping" the seriously mentally ill manage their financial affairs. I knew of one woman who finally got her lum sum initial SSI payment and lost control of it immediately when a case manager deemed her too ill to manage her own affairs. This case manager embezzled this poor woman's money in order to buy cocaine.
I sat in on the fired case manager's sentencing. She had gained probably 40 pounds. She must have been on antidepressants. With a victim statement, she got three years.
The mental health clinic never did take responsibility for the case manager's behavior. One important thing emerged then: The mental health clinic had been reimbursed for the miscreant's embezzlement by their insurer months past but they had not yet repaid the consumer her loss.
What can I say? The [financial] fox is in the hen house and feathers and blood are everywhere.
I have so many sad war stories . . .
By this, I don't mean he is lying. I am sure his wife did indeed tell him she has no interest in sex. This is what he wants to believe and he uses it to justify playing around.
But five years? He hasn't had sex with his beautiful wife in five years and he assumes that she is depriving herself?
I did laugh a bit. Men assume that a woman who has no interest in sex can separate that interest in sex from her interest in love. Not so. Smart women know that for many men sex = love. I would be willing to be that marathonman's wife is not going without love.
Marathonman uses evolutionary psychology to explain why men just find it oh so difficult to be faithful. I wonder if he has read the same stuff I have read about female birds. Female birds -- previously thought to be faithful mates -- sometimes feather their nests with another fella's feathers. DNA studies on the eggs produced say often more than one Daddy was involved.
Here's a truth: Men cheat more frequently than women; women, for evolutionary reasons, are better at it.
There should have been this feet to the fire type of questioning all along.
This gun is smoking. There should be no let up on the President and his Attorney General.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
