In my line of work I come across the most obscure information, which is why I love sharing it with you. This week’s three new things about mental illness include:
- A weekly mental health link-party
- How scientists want to drug children who might get a mental illness
- How hat makers used to experience social phobia
How could you not want to know the details about that?
1. What I Like – Madness Mental Health Linky
I’ve been participating for a few weeks in the Monday Madness Mental Health Linky over at the WordsinSynch blog by Shah Wharton. As the name implies, there are fresh links every Monday.
[push]Anyone can contribute a useful mental health link. Shah features her own work or the work of others and then lists useful links.[/push]
(No offence to Shah, but the layout is awful and kind of hard to understand. Here’s how it works: Simply read the Monday Linky article and at the bottom there are featured links. Below that is the “blog hop” where the reader-submitted useful mental health links are posted and below that you can enter your own link.)
Click. Read. Enjoy.
2. What I Don’t Like – Drugging Children (or anyone unnecessarily)
I could just leave it there but what I especially don’t like is the drugging of children who might get a mental illness. This is one of the troubles with that fad diagnosis I mentioned last week – psychosis risk syndrome. While we do, honestly, know what puts a person at risk for psychosis, that’s a far cry from actually being able to accurately predict who is going to get a psychotic disorder.
For example, I know smoking puts you at risk for lung cancer, but you still might not get it. (Although smoking’s a lot more clear cut than psychosis. Don’t smoke. Seriously.)
In this study, people age 15-40 were to be given an antipsychotic (quetiapine) to see if it would delay or prevent the onset of a psychotic disorder like schizophrenia. And – here’s the kicker – up to 80% may never get the disorder anyway.
So I ask you, is it worth exposing a 15-year-old to a powerful antipsychotic associated with an increased mortality rate on a guess? I think not. (More next week.)
3. What is Just Bizarre – Hat Makers, Mercury and Anxiety
Think you have social phobia? Do you make hats?
Excessive shyness, embarrassment, self-consciousness, timidity, social-phobia and lack of self-confidence are components of erethism, which is a symptom complex that appears in cases of mercury poisoning. Mercury poisoning was common among hat makers in England in the 18th and 19th centuries, as they used mercury to stabilize wool into felt fabric.
(From Wikipedia, where else?)
See you all next week for an attempt at a smarter and better me.
PS: Have you entered to win yet?
It’s scary to think that anyone would go on seroquel just to prevent psychosis, especially considering that it carries with it a risk of hallucinations as well as severe side effects like diabetes. I wonder if there is a certain amount of stigma about having mental illnesses and uninformed fear about mental illness that is driving people to try to prevent it. It’s a good thing that the trial was scrapped in my opinion.
Though mental illness is destructive in many ways, if one knows that they are at risk for serious mental illness, they can react to it quicker and have protocols in place to catch it if it does develop without having to resort to drugs. Using drugs as a first line of defense just seems overzealous and unnecessary when there are less disruptive methods available.
Hi James,
Yeah, that’s my problem too. It seems the the “preventative” medicine is worse that the _possibility_ of an illness. (I’m terribly anti-antipsychotic. It’s a bias of mine. Yes, I still take them.)
And you make an excellent point, if you know that you’re at risk for a psychotic illness, you can do your own prevention. We know that social interventions can help people manage their lives before becoming ill, and who knows, maybe that would prevent an illness or two. And, it’s side-effect free.
Unfortunately, most people wouldn’t know whether they were at risk or not, but, of course, a medication doesn’t help that either way.
I agree. Talk about a zealous use of drugs.
– Natasha Tracy
Hence the Mad Hatter character from Alice in Wonderland. (Johny Depp was marvelous in the movie – 3D or not – if you haven’t seen it.)
Hi Mike,
Ever since I saw the Barber of Seville I find Depp way too creepy to watch. Ew.
– Natasha Tracy