Control Over Bipolar Treatment – Learned Helplessness

Posted by Natasha Tracy | May 6, 2011

One of the crazy things that will happen to you when you seek treatment for being crazy, is doctors will ask you what treatment you want. Usually your psychiatrist/doctor will give you two options: Would you like to try psych med A or psych med B? This provides the mirage of control over your mental illness and your mental illness treatment.

Frustration, thy name is bipolar.

Patients Choosing Psych Meds has an Air of Hilarity to It

This choice, of course, is ridiculous.* How should you know which medication to pick? They’re the doctor, the fancy psychiatrist, aren’t they supposed to know?

What criterion could you possibly use to pick a psychotropic medication that would conceivably compare to an actual doctor?

Are All Doctors, Psychiatrists and Scientists Lying All the Time?

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Apr 28, 2011

One of the problems with the antipsychiatry movement is they assert all of psychiatry, all doctors, all science is lying, pretty much all of the time. Any biological evidence for mental illness must be wrong, because if it isn’t, then psychiatry might make sense. Any evidence that antidepressants help a brain must be wrong, because otherwise antipsychiatry views might come into question.

But seriously, does any rational, thinking person really believe all of science, all over the world, is lying?

Is There a Blood Test for Schizophrenia? – VeriPsych Tests for Schizophrenia

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Apr 18, 2011

Hot on the heels of my post about the neurobiological evidence for major depressive disorder comes this: the first blood-based diagnostic aid for schizophrenia.

Um, what’s that again?

The Neurobiology of Depression – Depression and the Brain

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Apr 15, 2011

Major Depressive Disorder: it isn’t just “all in your head.”

I have spent quite a bit of time in the last week looking at a paper: Pathophysiology of Depression: Do We Have Any Solid Evidence of Interest to Clinicians? By Gregor Hasler.

This paper discusses seven research areas relating to the neurobiology of major depressive disorder (MDD). In other words, it talks about the biological evidence of depression, mental illness. It discusses the strengths and weaknesses of biological theories of depression via evidence and aims to point out some of the reasons our current treatment isn’t as successful as it should be. The paper cites 88 other studies and was published in the Journal of World Psychiatry in 2010. It’s pretty educational.

Bipolar Disorder Type I: Mania and Delusions of Grandeur

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Apr 8, 2011

Not long ago the Bipolar Burble had a commenter ask me about delusions of grandeur in mania as a part of bipolar disorder. She was feeling alone in her experiences and so was hesitant to talk about her own delusions of grandeur during mania.

I’m not familiar with delusions of grandeur in mania and bipolar disorder so I looked it up and I asked if anyone had stories of their mania and delusions of grandeur. Naturally, my lovely readers provided.

Psychiatric Myths Dispelled by Doctor — Fighting Antipsychiatry

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Apr 5, 2011

Or How Antipsychiatry Groups are Wrong

If you’re been reading my writings here at the Bipolar Burble for a while, you’ve probably gathered that I don’t like antipsychiatry groups. These groups are often under the “mad pride” flag or “psychiatric survivors” or people for “human rights” or people fighting psychiatric abuses. Often the language they use is solely designed to convince you that psychiatry is evil, psychiatry should be stopped, no one should take psychiatric medication and in many cases, psychology is also evil. Many antipsychiatry groups are sneaky. Antipsychiatry groups sounds reasonable on first glance but it’s only once you dig into them that you see how insidious they are.

Antipsychiatry groups are ridiculous.

I’ve tried to look into antipsychiatry groups to see if there’s something worth understanding but they have no evidence. Just ardent supporters that make wild claims without proof. And their tactics of cruel, personal, abusive attacks are not worth my time. It assures that their groups have no credibility whatsoever.

I Fight Antipsychiatry Groups

And sometimes I spend entire days fighting antipsychiatry people. Antipsychiatry shows up on the Bipolar Burble, antipsychiatry finds me on Twitter, antipsychiatry follows me to Facebook, antipsychiatry shows up on Breaking Bipolar. And these charming antipsychiatry folks, for whatever reason, read all about me and then use those person details to ensure their personal attacked will be as nasty as possible.

What You Should Eat When Taking Geodon – Food and Geodon

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Apr 3, 2011

Long (long) time readers will recall that once-upon-a-time I took the atypical antipsychotic Geodon. I found this to be an unbearably painful and side effect laden psych med. I hated Geodon. I wouldn’t wish Geodon on my worst enemy. I lost touch with reality with Geodon. I passed out at work on Geodon. I got sick constantly on Geodon.

You know, that being said, Geodon works for a lot of people.

I gather my reaction to this antipsychotic was fairly atypical. And if I had known what to eat when taking Geodon that might have helped.

Breaking Bipolar Articles You Should Read – Updated Resources

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Mar 29, 2011

As most of you know, in addition to the Bipolar Burble I also author Breaking Bipolar on HealthyPlace.com. I write a column there twice a week as well as produce one bipolar-themed video and two audio files per month. It’s a fairly well-received bipolar blog often with much discussion, feedback and sharing.

Recent Breaking Bipolar Blog Highlights

If you haven’t had a chance to check out Breaking Bipolar lately, here are a few of the highlights:

How to Help Someone with a Mental Illness – A new piece yesterday in response to someone’s query about helping their newly-diagnosed loved one with bipolar disorder. Helping someone with a mental illness is a huge challenge but these tips seem to be striking a chord with people.
Mental Illness Treatment and Risk Tolerance – I like this writing a lot. The article talks about how some people are willing to accept greater risk in their chosen treatment of mental illness. It’s about respect and choice.
Bipolar Disorder and Treatment Stigma – Yes, I was talking about electroconvulsive therapy here but don’t reference ECT directly. I don’t like to bring the hugely contentious issues or opinions onto Breaking Bipolar due to the wide audience and huge amount of (likely negative) reaction it will receive. I do, however, think it’s important to discuss the issues around bipolar/depression/mental illness treatment whether specific or not.
Mental Illness is Only a Problem when Mental Illness is a Problem – This is essentially in response to people saying every behavior is being labelled a “disorder.” My point is that people only get help when their issues rise to the level of a problem.
Why Don’t we Shower When we’re Sick – A popular article on the question of forgoing showers when extremely ill. I present four reasons.
Zealotry and Rules for Debating Mental Illness – I wrote this article in response to the people who insist on making mental illness discussion into nasty, name-calling, unscientific, overly-emotional fighting. Really drives me bonkers.
Shame and Electroconvulsive Therapy – When I got electroconvulsive therapy I experienced a lot of shame. This really is unnecessary and illogical but has to do with the massive stigma on receiving ECT treatments. (Excellent comment about stigma and ECT treatment here.)
Minimizing Mental Illness – The Worst Things to Say – Most popular overall article with over 20,000 reads. I added a bonus worst thing to say so someone with a mental illness here on the Bipolar Burble as well.

Upcoming Bipolar Burble Articles

I’m sure that’s more than enough for now. Upcoming pieces on the Bipolar Burble will likely be about hypomania and delusions and possibly regarding the black box warning on antidepressants actually increasing suicides (you can yell at me about that after I write it). There will probably be a piece about my own ECT experience as well as that’s not really covered here (I wrote quite a bit about it on another blog.)

If you’d like to see a topic covered on the Bipolar Burble or Breaking Bipolar or have a question you can always contact Natasha Tracy. I can’t promise I’ll respond but I’ll do my best.

New Mental Health Resources Added

The bipolar and mental health resources page has also been updated. These are good resources you should know about.

What Happens When You Talk About ECT?

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Mar 25, 2011

Thanks for everyone who took the time to read my electroconvulsive therapy primer and the Badger’s personal experience of ECT. Most people were really respectful in their opinions and asked great questions. As per the usual, however, electroconvulsive therapy is a controversial, contentious and polarizing topic that brings out people’s abusive side pretty quickly.

The Goal of Sharing a Personal ECT Experience

My goal in having a personal ECT experience shared here is to provide the perspective that many people silently have – ECT works, it works quickly, and it works with few side effects. (That’s few, not none.) This is not to say this is everyone’s experience, because it certainly isn’t, but statistically speaking, most (more than half of) people have a positive response to ECT.