Mental illness is scary first hand!

hearingimpared

Richard Jeni takes his own life.

http://www.comcast.net/entertainment/index.jsp?fn=2007/03/13/231726.html&cvqh=itn_comedian

Mental illnesses are stigmatized like alcoholism and drug addiction are. People don't realize how awful things can seem in someone's mind when all that is going on around them is all good.

Chemical imbalances in ones body/brain are one of the lest understood problems that doctors have to diagnose and treating it is so hit and miss that it can take years of medication trials before the proper medication regimen is found to be effective.

janmike

It's sad especially when it's a good friend or relative. I know.

disneyjoe7

hearingimpared wrote:

Chemical imbalances in ones body/brain are one of the lest understood problems that doctors have to diagnose and treating it is so hit and miss that it can take years of medication trials before the proper medication regimen is found to be effective.

Some never ever come into life so to speak, no matter how many drugs they need to re-balance them self. And in the end I wonder what good they have done in society. This subject hits home.

candyliquor35m

I realized how serious depression is when I met someone who suffers from it and became good friends with her. She explained it like this. Think about the worst thing that has ever happened to you in your life and that is how she feels everyday of her life. I keep telling her help is available but so far nothing has helped.

I've seen a couple of things on tv where they are testing the process of implanting electrodes in the brain and once they hit the area that controls happiness and then fine tune the amount of current needed to stimulate the area without over-stimulating it, the patients they showed were having favorable results.

disneyjoe7

candyliquor35m wrote:

I realized how serious depression is when I met someone who suffers from it and became good friends with her. She explained it like this. Think about the worst thing that has ever happened to you in your life and that is how she feels everyday of her life. I keep telling her help is available but so far nothing has helped.

My advice to you don't walk.... RUN away, loss this girl. Mental illness is no laughing matter, anyone with it will drag you down also. It's not curable it's can't be pilled fixed there's nothing anyone can do. To me there's no better cure today then there was 60 years ago when they scrambled brains in a feeble attempt to fix it. Later in life this person causes all to run away, no one has regret. NO ONE sad but true.

nadams

disneyjoe7 wrote:

My advice to you don't walk.... RUN away, loss this girl. Mental illness is no laughing matter, anyone with it will drag you down also. It's not curable it's can't be pilled fixed there's nothing anyone can do. To me there's no better cure today then there was 60 years ago when they scrambled brains in a feeble attempt to fix it. Later in life this person causes all to run away, no one has regret. NO ONE sad but true.

Oh yeah.... what EXCELLENT advice :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

You just wrote off the entire life of a girl that you've never met or interacted with before. Nobody should ever be considered a lost cause. You're saying we should go back to electro-shock therapy and horrible mental experiments in the psych wards?

disneyjoe7

Live with it your whole life, not me... But my whole life. Then report back to me.

For the recorded my mother and everyone on her side above that in the family. I got people who set them self's on fire to die, others who shoot them self's, others are a little less horrific so they don't come to mind. Because of this history my mothers history and what not I'm at age 42 have relatives on her side who don't know what I look like, may not ever know I exist. She has become the black sheep of the family all her kids where put in boat because of her.

I give that advise to my own family.

BIZILL

maybe if they're a stranger, you should run. but if it's already someone special in your life, you don't run. remind me NOT to pick you to play on my 'team' at our first polkfest softball game.

disneyjoe7

nadams wrote:

You just wrote off the entire life of a girl that you've never met or interacted with before. Nobody should ever be considered a lost cause. You're saying we should go back to electro-shock therapy and horrible mental experiments in the psych wards?

You're right I did.



Sorry more later need to run.

Jstas

Leaving a person like that who depends on your for the positive influence you bring to thier life is just about the worst thing you can do.

However, if you end up bearing the brunt of thier outbursts, you have to eventually think about your own well-being and sometimes, the best thing to do is cut all ties and move on. If they make progress with you around then that's good. But if they regress and you end up being thier whipping post then that is not a healthy relationship in the least.

But writing someone off because they are mentally ill is flat out wrong. If you have experiences with a mentally ill person setting themselves on fire or shooting themselves then that person seriously needs to be institutionalized until they are no longer a threat to themselves or others. That's the purpose of institutionalization.

PolkWannabie

disneyjoe7 wrote:

Live with it your whole life, not me... But my whole life. Then report back to me.

For the recorded my mother and everyone on her side above that in the family. I got people who set them self's on fire to die, others who shoot them self's, others are a little less horrific so they don't come to mind. Because of this history my mothers history and what not I'm at age 42 have relatives on her side who don't know what I look like, may not ever know I exist. She has become the black sheep of the family all her kids where put in boat because of her.

I give that advise to my own family.

Given your advice you hopefully chose not to have any children of your own ...

cfrizz

Steve I agree with everyone else here, you could not have given worse advice! In this area you are about as extreme & wrong as CandyL with his mercury rant!

Mental illness CAN be treated, and great numbers of people manage to live fairly normal lives WITH TREATMENT!

My mother was one such person. She suffered from depression for most of her life. In her early years she snapped herself out of it & it went undiagnosed. As she got older & developed other health problems she needed help. HER FAMILY GOT HER THAT HELP since she didn't realize that she was depressed.

In the beginning it took medications & threrapy. With the last big depression the medications weren't as effective, so the had to use ECT treatments(Electroconvulsive Therapy) to help get her stabalized. IT SAVED HER LIFE!!!

Do NOT go by what you see on TV. This is a perfectly safe treatment when medications aren't working. I checked with all of her doctors to make sure Mom wouldn't be put in danger in any way.

The most common side effect is temporary short term memory loss, which my mother had. She could tell anything from way back, but couldn't remember if she ate lunch.

So do a little research before you go putting down something that helps a person get back to a normal life!

Here is another fact, Women suffer from depression more often than men. Most women are diagnosed & treated & go on to live normal lives. Men go undiagnosed & untreated. (guess why?) They have a higher incidence of committing suicide!

There is much more known today about mental illness then ever before. There are much more effective treatments for the disiese.

It is only through the uneducated ignorance of people & media that help to keep this disiese stigmatized.

Shizelbs

I worked in a state mental institution for about 2 months when I was in school. Not just the psych ward at the local hospital, this was the real deal. The looney bin. Padded walls, restraints, everything. It was a pretty cool place actually. They had every facility you could need. Big grand government buildings from the 50s.

Anyways, it was really something being immersed in their world. They are truly sick. You get a true sense on how their condition is an illness. They aren't weird, they aren't outcasts. They're brain is ill. Its sick, it doesn't work properly, and they need help and lots of it.

One of the things I walked away with is how many of them were pedophiles. It made me realize that a lot of pedophiles aren't just perverts. They are mentally ill. And while their actions or thoughts are truly disgusting, some of them, those that are very mentally ill, don't deserve all the hate we are capable of. BTW, I know I'll get some flak for this.

I sat in on a patient admission while I was there. He read all of our minds. He could see an aura around all of us. It was really weird. He was really homophobic too (and had thoughts of pedophilia, but never acted on them), and one of the male patients on the same ward claimed he could mentally rape people. Yeah, those two didn't get along well at all.

PolkThug

Dr. Tom Cruise could have helped him with vitamins, what a shame.

Shizelbs

disneyjoe7 wrote:

My advice to you don't walk.... RUN away, loss this girl. Mental illness is no laughing matter, anyone with it will drag you down also. It's not curable it's can't be pilled fixed there's nothing anyone can do. To me there's no better cure today then there was 60 years ago when they scrambled brains in a feeble attempt to fix it. Later in life this person causes all to run away, no one has regret. NO ONE sad but true.

No offense, but treatment of depression has made some progress in the last 60 years. Not a lot, but certainly some.

Shizelbs

PolkThug wrote:

Dr. Tom Cruise could have helped him with vitamins, what a shame.

I wonder how much harm he has done by convincing lay people to not pursue effective and proven treatment and given them false hope in his vitamin regimen. What a ****.

Shizelbs

cfrizz wrote:

Mental illness CAN be treated, and great numbers of people manage to live fairly normal lives WITH TREATMENT!


In the beginning it took medications & threrapy. With the last big depression the medications weren't as effective, so the had to use ECT treatments(Electroconvulsive Therapy) to help get her stabalized. IT SAVED HER LIFE!!!

I've seen someone receive ECT. Its very, very effective for severe, treatment-resistant depression. And its not what movies and TV make it look like. The person tremors, but you have to put a piece of paper on their legs to get any visual evidence of them tremors. Every patient I have talked to that receives this therapy is extremely pleased with the results.

zombie boy 2000

Shizelbs wrote:

I wonder how much harm he has done by convincing lay people to not pursue effective and proven treatment and given them false hope in his vitamin regimen. What a ****.

I'm sure it's a very affordable vitamin regimen, as well:rolleyes:

ohskigod

Shizelbs wrote:

I wonder how much harm he has done by convincing lay people to not pursue effective and proven treatment and given them false hope in his vitamin regimen. What a ****.

I agree wholeheartedly. I know its documented that a serious vitamin B deficiency can really reak havoc with your head and give you feelings of depression, to say vitamins should be the only treatment for it is rediculous.

I'm qute sure there is a difference between dperession from a vitamin deficiency and genuine, balls out clinical depression.

Psych Meds actually have made alot of headway in treating depression, what I have found the problem to be from my time on the ambulance is people not taking the meds, then problems ensue. Apparently some of these meds have side effects which cause problems in and of themselves.

Shizelbs

The meds most commonly used for depression nowadays are very well tolerated and their side effects are pretty minimal, relatively speaking. More side effects start to occur when you have to use combinations and start adding other psych meds to treat other, concurrent psychiatric disorders.

Then there are the antipsychotics. Those things have side effects galore.

ohskigod

Shizelbs wrote:

Then there are the antipsychotics. Those things have side effects galore.

maybe those are the ones I'm thinking of. I used run into quite a few psych calls involving someone who went off meds. On meds = ok, Off meds = effing horror show

Mother Mooch

I can relate with this topic! I have been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety and i will say one thing... It's no fun...

My Mother, Grandmother, Aunts and a Sister who has had trouble. My Sister was the worst, but is doing better these days!
I have had people tell me just to shake it off, Make yourself better... It don't work that way. It is an imbalance...

I was on meds for years and now have become imune (if that's the word) to most common Depression drugs and have been trying to combat it with exercise and eating better (how about more beer) I think this is one reason why alcohol is SOOO abused by us men! We drink our troubles away...
Anyhow enough rambling... Got to get to work...

Cheers
Steve

Shizelbs

ohskigod wrote:

maybe those are the ones I'm thinking of. I used run into quite a few psych calls involving someone who went off meds. On meds = ok, Off meds = effing horror show

You're probably thinking about abrupt discontinuation of antipsychotics. Thats much more likely what an ambulance would be called to. The difference would be much more apparent and immediate than stopping depression meds.

cfrizz

They always say that you cannot just stop taking the medicine. If they decide to change something they wean you off slowly. Just stopping can cause real havoc.

hearingimpared

Wow I didn't realize that there would be this much going on in this thread. I just got back to my PC and have read every post.

The reason I started this thread is because everytime I see another victim of mental illness take their own life it stabs me in the heart.:( My and my wife both have diagnosis of one form of mental illness or another. I myself have a panic disorder that is complicated with Adult Hyperactive Attention Deficit disorder and to make things even more interesting, I have a secondary diagnosis of bi-polar symptoms, not bi-polar disorder, just the symptoms. I guess you can figure from some of my posts when I'm not right !!! LOL !!!. But that is the way it is.

My wife was diagnosed with major depression in 1993. We both have dealt with this all our lives. We just recently have been finally getting some relief from medications. It keeps us on an even keel most of the time.

The problem is that if we didn't have the medications, we would probably be locked up in looney bins (been there, done that, both of us at one time or another in the past) most of the time. The medications keeps me relatively functional to a great degree but every so often I go through cycles which are awful. . . but they are nothing compared to what my poor Phyllisann goes through when she starts to sink. She literally sleeps day and night, and then becomes like the walking dead and nothing can stop it. It has to run its course sometimes weeks on end and then out of nowhere she snaps out of it . . . bang, just like that.

Thanks God that the meds do work to the degree they do. The worse thing about mental illness meds is, yes they have side effects, but what happens is that one starts to feel really good for maybe weeks on end and then one day one says to themselves, I don't need the meds anymore I'm okay and then they just stop taking them. . . that's when the real hell begins. Believe it or not most of the meds have withdrawl symptoms which are worse in many cases than heroin withdrawl. One for instance is Paxil. I was weaned from Paxil 5 years ago and for two months had horrible withdrawl symptons. Some people get them some don't.

Mental illness definitely makes life interesting and difficult at time but I consider myself lucky. I could have a physical disability that has me in it grips 24 X 7. . . At least Phyllisann and I get a break every now and then.

People with MS or MD or Freidrich's Ataxia, they never get a break. . . their body just keeps failing more and more day after day. . . come to think of it I'm blessed with this illness compared to people with those conditions.

I wish the illness wasn't so stigmatized but that is the way it is and nothing is going to change that at least not in my life time.

I had a member here who probably didn't know of my condition ask me if I was taking my meds because of a let's say disagreement. I laughed really hard because I always take my meds but can still act like a looney tune too so. . . as the saying goes. . .

IT'S ALL GOOD, IT'S ALL GOOD!!!

Hey we should have Mental Illness History month instituted in the public school systems!!!! ROTFLMAO!!!!

Steve I understand your way of thinking but that sounds more like it is motivated more from fear and bad experiences.

jflail2

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hearingimpared

jflail2 wrote:

edit- And as for coming off of anti-depressants, it apparently takes a week or 2 before you really start to notice that things aren't quite right anymore. I had a 5 day spurt where I was on business, had forgotten all my pills, and couldn't justify having the woman overnight them to my hotel. I honestly didn't feel even the slightest bit odd until I got home and took my first pill that night. Felt a bit queasy, but by the morning it was back to normal.

Good stuff! However it depends on the meds and your body chemistry as to how quickly a change in blood level of a med can have an affect on you.

I don't think that medication is the only answer to mental illness issues. Therapy in crucial because as you stated above ACCEPTANCE IS THE KEY and a good start, medication can settle the racing thoughts but therapy teaches one how to deal with the bad swings that occur. In many instances when I am in a full blown panic cycle and the meds aren't helping during that cycle, practicing the therapy can keep the crazies in thoughts at bay or at least to a tolerable level.

One of our friends here was with me one day when I had one of the attacks and had no clue that it was happening to me. . . that's putting therapy to work. Now had he know he might have jumped out of the car I was driving!!!! LOL

rskarvan

There is nothing worse than being in an intimate relationship with a girl that hasn't been taking her lithium. Absolute hell. Insanity sucks. Run from it before it takes you down. Nobody deserves to live with insanity. Its more than just not healthy. Its absolutely dangerous and there is not a thing that you can do except separate yourself from it.

jflail2

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hearingimpared

rskarvan wrote:

There is nothing worse than being in an intimate relationship with a girl that hasn't been taking her lithium. Absolute hell. Insanity sucks. Run from it before it takes you down. Nobody deserves to live with insanity. Its more than just not healthy. Its absolutely dangerous and there is not a thing that you can do except separate yourself from it.

That's not possible!!! If I cut my head off, I will die.:D I love my wife more than anything in this world and would never leave here because of her condition.:) I've learned how to live with her condition and she's learned how to live with mine. Would you run from a spouse if she had a physical disability? How about diabetes, that can cause the crazies if you don't take your insulin. I don't think so.

I agree that a mentally ill person who doesn't take their medication is not a pretty site and is irresponsible and I would definitely not want to be with someone who doesn't take their meds as prescribed. That's because the person is being irresponsible not because of the illness. If the person is taking the meds diligently as me and my wife do then I feel that is a different story.

rskarvan

hearingimpared: Would you leave your wife if she was cheating on you? Would you leave your wife if her Narcissistic Personality Disorder (unchecked by being off the lithium) causes her to actively seek your (not hers) own personal destruction? Would you leave your wife if she was lying, cheating, stealing, abusing alchohol and via projection was simultaneously blaming you (with genuine belief) for the exact same short-comings that she is acting out? Would you leave your wife if she was telling horrible, awful lies about you?

I don't need to live like that. Life is too short.