Mental Health Update

Why is it that doctors can’t understand that just because normal blood work means most people are normal, it doesn’t mean that everyone with that value is normal? Just because my thyroid tests fall in the normal range doesn’t mean that I don’t fucking have a thyroid problem. Look at my goddamn fucking symptoms, would you? And goddammit, stop telling me I need antidepressants. I’ve taken the fucking things and they didn’t help!

One of my cousin is having major depression. The family is afraid that he might be developing Schizophrenia… It’s in our blood already.. very high possibility. Aaa!! I’m so scared.

I know a little something about the power of mood to disrupt a life. I suffered with bipolar disorder through my 20’s and early 30’s. Whether high or low, emotions dominated everything else. Rational thinking, relationships, commitments, all were vulnerable at any moment to being overturned or sabotaged by the overwhelming power of my moods.

Was Messerschmidt insane? This question has aroused controversy between the psychologists and the historians. The psychoanalyst Ernst Kris, who wrote two studies of Messerschmidt, the earlier of which, published in 1932, is still the most detailed account of the sculptor’s work, diagnosed his case as a “psychosis with predominant paranoid trends, which fits the general picture of schizophrenia.”

Here are snapshots of Katharine McPhee’s bulimia battle all over Yahoo News. She’s front page news on the New Yahoo Page, she’s headline news in the Top News section, the Entertainment section, the headline news in the subsections of Music, Television and Gossip/Celebrity News under the Entertainment section… she’s everywhere.

Sad but true. In Holland there has been an infection with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. This is the second time somebody has been infected here. Doctors think it happened after eating meat from cows infected with mad cow disease. A definite diagnosis is possible after analysis of the persons brain tissue when he is death.

Wordnet defines echolalia as follows: (psychiatry) mechanical and meaningless repetition of the words of another person (as in schizophrenia).

I am an ADHD expert…to ONLY myself, to only my particular disorder, also known as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder. So as I write, I would like to share with you the ADHD alternative treatment methods I have learned about along the forty-year journey of living with this disorder.

Issues with his religious family who were against the arts he studied, mostly because his parents felt he wasn’t contributing to society and more importantly to the church, led to him moving to Texas. There his music really took off. Combined with his artwork he opened for local shows and eventually performed on MTV. Unfortunately he suffered tragically from manic depression and became dellusional.

Dad was very creative and a bit artisitic. His handwriting - even after he had Alzheimer's - was beautiful, and he enjoyed creating his own greeting cards for mother. I was told that before the war, he had been an accomplished musician, a violinist, but I never heard him play.

In my darkest hours with manic depression I have thought of ending what I perceived to be a pointless life. But always in the light of recovery I see the folly of my thoughts (of which I am grateful). Every life serves a purpose. Even those that choose to perpetuate destruction with theirs. It is out of the rubble of chaos that champions arise to combat the dark side of our natures.

The controversy continues, and goes on… Although I have not been faced with the prospect of medicating Sticks with any sort of antipsychotic medication, the dilemma for parents of ADHDers and whether to take stimulant medications is the same, and as usual, there is much more heat than light being cast on the debate.

LOL I have become very sentimental…hehe Nah, it's just been recently. The feeling's rather…unique in a sense. You find urself caught in the middle of two identities, finding that you no longer belong in one; but you're not part of the other yet. Even how awkward it is, I can't seem to shrug it off. Is this anxiety? Excitement? I'm not entirely sure myself.

Encouraging news for those suffering from Alzheimer's today, and you'll notice it has nothing to do with stem cells.

Oh! Speaking of which, go to this page and click on “Watch a Brief Educational Video on Bipolar Disorder.” I laughed until I was in danger of dilocating something. Not because mental illness is funny–so please, NO HATE MAIL–but because this video is so far removed from my experience growing up with a manic depressive. Said video is, however, an excellent portrayal of my time as a speed freak.

One of my friends who shares my attention deficit disorder is Kiki. So when Kiki showed up in roller skates and was unable to have her av stand still for more than two seconds, it didn’t phase me. When she kept the damn things on for a solid week, I saw a blogging opportunity.

Now that you, the reader (assuming you’ve made it this far in this lengthy post), are an expert in the insanity defense, here are the facts presented in Brom’s case. Bear in mind that the jurors in Brom’s case very likely knew less about the history and controversy of the Rule of M’Naghten’s than they did about the rules of Monopoly.

A very telling (to me) example was this 15 year old child who was placed on a series of antidepressants. The father was largely absent, the mother is rigid and uncompromising, and the kid has a chronic health problem with which she has never been taught to emotionally cope.

Look, I’m sure that some people are more prone to “rage” than others–we all have unique personalities, that’s what makes life interesting–I happen to be a laid-back person by nature. Perhaps the study will help us learn new ways to prevent outbursts of rage, but I think it’s more likely that further knowledge of this “disorder” will not lead to a “cure” but will become just one more reason that no bad thing is ever anyone’s fault (except maybe George W. Bush and the evil republicans) in this society.

I don’t want to hang around with people who have active eating disorders or addictions either. I understand it, I empathize completely, but it messes with my head and I can’t be close to that. It’s too easy for me to take care of others at my own expense.

The ‘You need meat to stay healthy’ argument is increasingly hard to defend. When the effects on humans who ate cows infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), or ‘Mad Cow Disease’ as most people know it, began to be made public, most people suddenly began to feel they’d be a lot more healthy if they didn’t eat red meat. And, according to most doctors nowadays, they’re right.

Back to the subject of Schizophrenia, of which I also have personal experience through a family member. My older brother Darryl suffered from Schizophrenia in 1992 and committed suicide just one short month after his diagnosis and treatment.

What I really worry about is that there is little to be done after this step. She told me when I went in to see her in April that there were only three options for me: Depakote, Lithium and some other drug that causes rapid weight gain. I’m already on the Depakote, we’re unsuccessfully trying the Lithium and that last guy isn’t even on the table because of my anorexia/bulemia history. The other meds out there like Lamictal aren’t an option because they contain antidepressants and that tends to make me bat-shit crazy. So where does that leave me, exactly?

The researchers decided to look at how the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants — the widely used class of drugs that includes Celexa, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft — might spur brain cell growth. To do so, they tracked the way in which stem cells — undifferentiated cells that can grow into specialized cells — became neurons in a special mouse model given the antidepressant Prozac (fluoxetine).