Letters to the Editor

• To scavok:

  [Read the article: Psych meds drove my son crazy]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Thank you for sharing your views. I am in accord with almost everything that you said. Right now there is an ongoing struggle to gain parity for people with mental illness when they seek medical insurance. Part of that stuggle is about money, but larger part of it is about fear, prejudice, and outright discrimination.

  As someone who as taken a rather strange and inadvertant walk in the world of "mental" illness, I mixed feelings about "craziness." I recall my stay at a TLC -- which required that I take SSRIs but sure beat the local homeless shelter -- as being scary. The first night I was there, a woman ran through the living room with a knife chasing a man who had angered her. The first friend I made there had the same diagnosis as I (Major Depression), and we turned to each other and said simultaneously: "My God! There are truly crazy people here!"

  I have come along way since then. The place was run by a former prison warden who was frustrated about not being able to use more coercive methods and who berated us all for eating too much and costing the TLC additional money. I soon had no trouble seeing who the "them" and "us" were.

  When my first friend of that initial night and I later went to the grievance committe so complain about how we ALL were treated, we created quite a stir. "They" tried to punish us for this act but we hollered about the illegality of reprisals.

  My friend later died at that TLC. The circumstances were that she complained about pain and nausea and the staff took her to the local hospital, where the doctor in the emergency room took one glance at her chart and sent her back with these words: "Don't you think some of this is in your head?" She died that night at the TLC in the bathroom of a heart attack. The young staff person in attendance who had decision-making powers was 19 years old.

  I will never forget her. No matter how old or how well I get, I will always remember the circumstances of her death. She died because she was medically labeled.

  Am I angry? You betcha!

  Permalink Saturday, May 19, 2007 02:18 PM