#madness radio

[madness-narrative]

I think that that’s one of the saddest things that happens in psych systems for voice hearers. One of the first things we often learn is…how not to tell the truth, how to deny our own experience and that actually hurts and damages us as people, that survival technique.

Ron Coleman

[madness-narrative]

No, the medications were not at all helping with the symptoms and I really believe they were perpetuating the symptoms. For example, I was on very high dosage of Prozac 80 mg and an anti-narcoleptic medication called Provigil 400 mg massive amount because I couldn't stay awake in the day. So basically I was taking intense dosages of speed ... so I was quote unquote "manic" all the time during the day, racing thoughts, inability to sit still, I was feeling quote unquote "grandiose", I was having all these quote unquote "symptoms" and then at night I had such bad insomnia that I'd be on 10 mg of a sleeping pill that'd bring me down so much that I'd feel very depressed, too. So they called me a "rapid cycler" quote unquote, because I was always manic and depressed going intensely through intense highs and intense lows. I mean I was on an anti-narcoleptic med and a sleeping medication at the same time and it doesn't make any sense to me, but it made sense to me at the time. Of course it did because I trusted my doctors. I believed that they were doing what was medically sound.

Laura Delano

[madness-narrative]

There’s this myth in society. Myth promoted by psychotherapists and psychiatrists that not sure why psych drugs work but it’s pretty clearly established these are psychoactive substances like any psychoactive substances like caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, and whether you are taking anti-depressant or lithium or so-called anti-psychotics or so-called mood stabilizers, they are causing psychoactive changes in your brain that result in intoxication, that’s an intoxication experience, you are tranquilised, you are elevated because of the stimulant quality of that the drug or the medication has and then that has some effect on your consciousness, on your mind, your behavior and that may be felt and experienced as positive. But it’s not correcting a chemical imbalance, it's not a medically targeted intervention on psychosis, it's not something that’s fixing serotonin imbalance because you're depressed. It’s actually a lot more like street drugs and well, if you want to take street drugs to help you cope…then a lot of people do that, we are a society that promotes alcohol use and other substances to change your consciousness. But we have this myth that those are different, this myth that psych drugs are somehow radically different from street drugs and actually they are not. So the ethics issue is really about being honest, my concern is that they have accurate information so they make an effective choice for themselves. Honest about how they work and how they don’t work. It’s not about being anti or pro meds. It's about being pro honesty.

Will Hall on Ethical Therapy

[madness-narrative]

You don’t need permission to not medicate. You can very much have an opinion about drugs. I think that’s one of the biggest shortcomings of psychologists and therapists is that they don’t take a more active stance on the medication issue. They feel that well I’m not an M.D. and I shouldn't say anything about it. That’s absolutely not true. If your client came in to you and said, 'hey I'm thinking about snorting some lines of cocaine because I've been feeling sad and depressed and I feel suicidal', I can guarantee you that therapist will say, 'wait a minute, I don’t think that’s going to be helpful and this is why I don’t think its going to be helpful'. I think that therapists have an obligation, now at least a minimim say, hey you may want to take an antidepressant but here’s what you may not know and really just support their decision making. I take a very neutral approach, not pro med not against, recognize that taking med can lower a thought, feeling, or behavior that you don’t want but it also comes with a huge price and I know it comes with a huge price because the research is overwhelming. The moment that you start being a policing agent or the moment that you start covering your butt, you’ve stopped doing good therapy and you’ve increased the risk of that person committing suicide. The way to reduce suicide is to provide good therapy. The moment you start referring for meds you immediately are starting down a path where you are trying to control your patient and you are saying there is something wrong with you. There’s basically just a couple ways of getting forced into hospital, you either scare your therapist or you frustrate your therapist. If you frustrate your therapist, they will say there’s something wrong with you. You hear them say you are the problem. You never hear a therapist say, what am I missing.If the clients not getting better, you don’t look at them, you look at yourself.Maybe you are trying to control them and that is the problem. The only thing that’s going to restore an injury to somebody’s humanity is being humane to them.

T. Watson on Ethical Therapy

[fuckyeahmadpride]

This is a cool interview that teases out a lot of elements of mad pride.  jump to the 40 minute mark for Bradley Lewis’s speaking directly to the term “mad pride”.

early on tho, Freud comes up in the interview, and so I want to use this as a moment to mention Sander Gilman’s work on Freud.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5308.html

is a really important part of seeing Freud contextually in history.  Our contemporary understanding (criticisms) of Freud continually emphasize his intense ideas about sexuality, omitting this important analysis of Freud’s racial construction as a Jew in his time.

Be on the lookout for a mad rambling review of A Dangerous Method (the Freud/Jung movie out right now)!