"For the most part, patients just want help, and doctors just want to solve problems. The problem is that our short-sighted pharmaceutical solutions have created a long-term problem all its own, a devastating epidemic of iatrogenic mental disability."--Dr.Mark Foster
Dr. Mark Foster writes letters to author, Robert Whitaker in an on-going series titled "Letters from the front lines" on Whitaker's site, Mad In America. Dr. Foster writes about how Whitaker's most recent book, Anatomy of an Epidemic has directly influenced his thinking regarding treating patients.
In the letter linked above, Foster talks about 2 patients he thought about while reading the book, and what is happening in their current care.
One patient discusses how he was placed on psychiatric medications a decade ago, how it snowballed from one drug for one symptom and spread to the addition of other drugs...now the patient sees the life situation that stemmed the beginning of the psych med use, and wants to get off of the meds that include antidepressants and benzos.
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This is the core of what many people who end up on psych meds come to realize, as they grow older and take time to reflect, many realize life situations were being medicated away, and once off of the drugs, life comes into true clarity.
Many, find themselves looking back at lost years, where they lived in an often isolated drugged fog or stupor.
It's an awakening of sort, to find out life has passed by while not feeling emotions or truly living. This is not the case of all people diagnosed with mental illness or treating human condition with psychiatric medications, but it is quite common.
There are some things that are not understood until one truly stops and seeks clarity and embraces what they may have not wanted to face or accept, or avoid.
Life can be a painful experience for human beings.
Things happen that are not easy, deaths, illness, divorce, loss of friends, the list goes on and on.
Weathering out the storms off of mind altering medications can leave many feeling raw and vulnerable, aware of their darkest and most painful feelings and emotions. That's hard. But, that is life.
Feeling emotions, not medicalizing them.
That is my personal goal. Kleenex helps.
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4 comments:
When people are completely free to take or not take psych meds, it's a personal project to get off of them.
Often however, there are others involved who hold apparently formal authority, or who expect their expert advice on this to be accepted with some deference. So the project can become social or even legal.
I've been advocating for people who want to stop taking meds but are afraid they won't be allowed to, for about nine years. That has been my whole law practice, up to now.
For virtually everyone, it's VERY right to get off psych meds. It can be easy or difficult, every situation is unique.
S. Randolph Kretchmar
randykretchmar@refusingpsychiatry.com
It is really encouraging to see more and more health care professionals questioning all of this overmedicating. Gives me hope.
I have to write that there is a time for psychiatric drugs/meds.
A proper Doctor would recognize this time.
The problem is the CONTINUAL use of the drugs/meds.
That is the problem, not the drugs in themselves. They are only a tool, and a bad craftsman uses the wrong tool/ for too long for the job.
To Mark p.s.2 - There are many drugs on the market that are not safe, no matter who prescribes them. Antidepressants are thrown around like candy but they cause mania and escalating problems which are, with the current mental healthcare model, treated with MORE drugs. That is just ONE example of so many.
There needs to be stricter regulations on the pharmaceutical industry. The research has to be read by honest and impartial scientists, the marketing of psych drugs has to stop in mass media, the whole industry has to come clean. They have created chronic users of the system and now they have to undo this problem.
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