Category: mental illness issues

Low Dose Antipsychotics – Do They Help?

I am very medication-reactive. Not so much with the positive effects, but I can almost guarantee you I’ll get all the side effects.I get every side effect for antidepressants, every side effect for antipsychotics and every side effect for pretty much anything else.

And sometimes, just for good measure, I’ll get side effects that doctors say “aren’t possible”. They are my favorite. And those overractions are often on the lowest known effective dose of the medication.

But if you add a low dose, lower than thought effective, of an antipsychotic, can this be helpful?

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Convincing Someone to Get Help for a Mental Illness

I get emails and messages now and then from people asking what to do about their mentally ill loved one. They want to convince their loved one to get help for a mental illness.

These people are in the unenviable position of watching someone they love be sick. And the unfortunate thing about mental illness is that when you confront it, it doesn’t like it very much.

You are trying to tell someone their brain is sick and expecting their sick brain to comprehend and agree with that.

It’s kind of a tall order.

And the thoughts I have on the matter don’t really make the issue sparkle either. Because let’s face it, the person either listens to you or they don’t, and really, they have the right to do either one. Here’s a bit of reality on convincing a loved one to get help for a mental illness.

And for the record, even if you don’t immediately succeed, many of us first hear about our mental illness from a friend, but sometimes that takes a while to sink in.

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Stop Telling Me How to Make My Bipolar Better

Here at BurbleCo I try to relate matters in a very even-handed, logical and frank way. I attempt to deliver my opinions and facts as just that, opinions and facts. I try not to inflame groups with whom I vehamently disagree. I try to respect everyone’s point of view as I wish to have mine respected. I short, I try to act like grown-up. A kind, caring, reasonable grown-up.

Well. Fuck. That. Shit.

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I Hate Psych Meds but Medication Non-Compliance Kills

I have written thousands and thousands of words in this blog and elsewhere about how much I hate medication.

I hate it in the car, I hate it on a train, I hate on a boat, I hate it in the rain.
I hate it in the snow, I hate it in the sun, I hate it standing still, I hate it on the run.
I hate it before breakfast, I hate it after lunch, I hate it in the morning, I hate it during brunch.

And while I could fill an entire blog with all the ways I hate psych meds, I still, take them, everyday.

Weird you say?

(Well, yes. But no more so than the disease it treats.)

Because no matter how much I might hate psych meds, medication non-compliance kills.

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I Hate Online Bipolar Misinformation and Misrepresentation

Sometimes people ask me where they should go for an online support group. Sometimes people ask me what other blogs I read. These are reasonable questions, unfortunately, my answer is: I would know, I don’t go there. I find many online haunts full of misinformation and misrepresentation. And I hate misinformation and misrepresentation.

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Dissociative Identity Disorder Goes Crazy

As I mentioned last week, Holly Gray of Don’t Call Me Cybil is writing a guest post for me here this week. Well, that got kicked off because she asked me to write the inaugural guest post on her blog. My guest article was posted today and is about the label “crazy” and why us crazies shouldn’t be so afraid of it.

A little about Holly:

My name is Holly Gray. I’m 36 years old. I’m a writer and DID awareness advocate. I live in a stunningly beautiful area of the Pacific Northwest United States.

I am a real person with dissociative identity disorder.

Check out her dissociative identity disorder blog and check out my entry on my favorite word, “crazy” and how Words Don’t Hurt People, People Hurt People.

I’m thrilled to meet a real person with such a misunderstood disorder and it doesn’t hurt that she’s bright and articulate. Thanks to Holly for the opportunity to lend a few words.

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Why Live with the Sadness and Pain of Bipolar Disorder?

I was very sad. Very upset. About something that happened in my real life. I was anxious, scared, angry and upset. But as with so many things, there was no resolution. Things just left in the air. Left to stab. Left to scathe. That’s what life is, I guess.

Because I was ignored. As per the usual. It is quite possible, and in fact likely, that the person is angry and thus ignoring me. Again, such are humans.

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My Bipolar Symptoms Aren’t Your Symptoms: I’m More Bipolar Than You

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you’re probably familiar with the symptoms I typically experience as a bipolar:

  • Fatigue
  • Sadness / depression / tearing
  • Hypersomnia
  • Anhedonia
  • Lack of motivation / concentration
  • Slowness in thinking
  • Thoughts of death
  • Decreased need for sleep
  • Excessive speed talking / thinking
  • Increased productivity

Each symptom depending on the mood of the moment (blue being depression, yellow being hypomania).

However, did you know that someone’s list might look like this:

  • Irritability
  • Weight loss
  • Insomnia
  • Restlessness. agitation
  • Feelings of guilt
  • Indecisiveness
  • More goal-directed activity
  • Spending sprees
  • Inflated self-esteem

That is totally different from my list, and yet we’re still both bipolar. The diagnosis “bipolar” is more of a big-tent thing. It’s the clumping of people with group of symptoms into a group called bipolar, but each person in the group is still unique.

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Is Multiple Personality Disorder Real? – Dissociative Identity Disorder

Since Sybil was published in 1974 I think people have been fascinated by multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder or DID. We see dissociative identity disorder on TV and in movies fairly frequently. I didn’t kill her, my alternate personality did.

And yet many people, doctors included, feel that the mental illness doesn’t really exist. I’m fascinated by someone having a disorder that the medical community can’t even agree exists (although keep in mind, dissociative identity disorder is in the DSM-IV).

I admit to having no idea either way and being terribly uneducated on the subject. Luckily for me, there is a new Blogger Holly Gray at HealthPlace that writes on just such issues in her blog Dissociative Living.

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Additional Writings

Check out my Amazon Author Page.

I write a three-time Web Health Award winning column for HealthyPlace called Breaking Bipolar.

Also, find my writings on The Huffington Post and my work for BPHope (BP Magazine).

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