Furious Seasons

June 05, 2006

Notes For Newbies

There’s been another trickle of new readers in the last few days. Howdy. Just so you know, I am always right. Kidding. In all seriousness, blogging about the mental health world is, at best, an evolving art form. At least it is in my shaky hands. All the same, we’ve got rules around here: the mental health game is all about patients. Theirs are the only outcomes that matter. Living half-lives all doped up and muddling through existence is not a good outcome. It’s as big a tragedy as 24/7 psychosis. I know that’s not what NAMI told you, but I’ve been in this game as a patient longer than some of the NAMI people have been taking pharma money. Which is to say, I’ve been bipolar for 17 years (diagnosed) and I have seen every flavor of medication and heard every promise about how mental health treatment in this country is on the verge of offering spectacular seamless treatment for patients, total mainstreaming into the economy and no more social and employment discrimination for patients. I have also seen all of these promises go unmet, be they driven by more permissive thinking around mental illnesses or by the paternalistic wing of the “movement.” That pisses me off ‘cuz promises are for keeping.

But I am one of those bipolars who has made it pretty much back all the way, both playing by the rules and thumbing my nose at the rulemakers. I’ve taken my meds even when they’ve taken more from me than I from them. I’ve paid my dues. And that’s where my bias comes from. Have a nice day.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at June 5, 2006 12:09 AM

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Comments

"Living half-lives all doped up and muddling through existence is not a good outcome. It’s as big a tragedy as 24/7 psychosis."
Exactly. This is what people need to understand.
There need to be better days, more good days than bad checked off on a calendar. There needs to be a life lived, not merely existed. There needs to be one less day missed from work, due to side effects of medications. Being on medications to be able to function, and then not being able to function in a daily life, is unacceptable, and a low standard of outcome desired. We need the standard raised. We need the ability to wake up and do with the day what we wanted to do, and not have it interrupted by illness, let alone medication side effects, like migraine headaches.
To have to encourage one of my daughters her migraine was a trade-off, that this was basically what the drug was going to offer her that day, a reprieve from her suicidal thinking, yet being dealt a migraine, and having to go to work with it was a low standard of outcome. She is miserable enough, and on a day that she wanted to just get up and go to her job free from her thoughts, look how she had to drag herself to work. On meds that still don't give her back her true self, her whole life, the person she wants to be free to be.

Posted by: Stephany at June 5, 2006 06:28 AM

I spent the weekend in the free-market psychosphere, Dr. (IN)sanity's crowd and it's not good for my health or my mind or my spirit, but like Roethke said, I learn by going where I have to go. Since finding this blog last week I have a place to come home to and wash off the toxic slime, your work is a godsend man, and the commenters are so smart and open and such a cut above the dogmatic and content-free jargon I see on other psych blogs, it's a privelege to be here.

Posted by: flawedplan at June 5, 2006 12:56 PM

I agree, this is a safe harbor.
A place to be ourselves. If we cannot be ourself, then who are we?

Posted by: Stephany at June 6, 2006 10:16 PM