Category: treatment issues

Mental Health Information – 3 New Things

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Aug 4, 2011

Sometimes writing for a living drives me bonkers. Basically, I have to be brilliant on-command. And seriously. That’s hard.

You. Write. Be brilliant. Now!

It’s a lot of work for me. My brilliance gets tired and bogged down in the bits of my job I don’t like doing.

However, then I’m reminded there are many wonderful things about my job. Specifically, I get to learn new things, every day, all the time. While others work at real jobs I spend all day looking up facts and studies and learning things I didn’t know when I woke up.

I love that stuff.

3 Things I’ve Learned About Mental Health

Three New Mental Health Articles

So, I’m creating a weekly feature by sincerely flattering Jane Friedman and stealing her idea. (Jane writes Three Happy Things about writing once a week. Go check her out.) I’m not sure they will be three happy things, exactly, but I will be sharing three new things about mental health I’ve learned each week.

This will give me a chance to share smaller details that don’t make it into a full blog post, pimp the resources I like and otherwise share my knowledge.

On board? Great!

Custom Bipolar Mood Scales for the T2 Mood Tracker

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Jul 28, 2011

As requested, I’m going to provide the details on the custom mood / variables I use in the T2 Mood Tracker. These are just my variables, they certainly don’t have to be yours, but they might be good to glance over.

Custom Moods / Variables I Use to Improve Mood Tracking

As I mentioned, the difficult a case you are, and boy am I difficult, the more challenging the patterns can be to find. This is why I’ve included these extra variables. Custom moods / variables include:

Sleep
Exercise
Hypomania
Physical

Mood Tracking for Bipolar Disorder – How Do I Track My Mood? (2/2)

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Jul 27, 2011

OK, you’ve sold me as to why I should track my mood (part 1); so just how do I track my mood?

Obviously, the simplest form of mood tracking is just recording depression and mania on a scale, say, of one-to-ten. You could use a “paper” and “pencil” (look it up on Wikipedia).

You might still notice mood trends but that type of mood tracking is not nearly as helpful as it could be. And the more complicated your case, the more you already know, the more subtle your shifts may be and the less you’ll see using simple methods.

There are far more useful, not to mention easier, options.

Mood Tracking for Bipolar Disorder – Why Track Your Mood? (1/2)

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Jul 25, 2011

Ask a Bipolar: What about mood charting?

Most doctors (mostly psychiatrists) will ask you to track your mood if you have a mood disorder like bipolar disorder or depression. And while most people (psychiatrists and patients) would agree mood tracking is good, most people would also admit to not doing it.

I understand why mood tracking doesn’t get done. It’s like a homework assignment when you’re already working full-time. You just happen to be working full-time at being crazy. Homework tends to get left in the book bag.

However, there are easy, painless, simple ways to track your mood that can offer real benefits. Sixty seconds a day. Promise.

Why Aren’t Doctors More Honest With Patients in the Hospital?

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Jul 1, 2011

Inpatient Prescriptions of Antipsychotics

Yesterday I received this comment from Leah,

. . . At the mental health clinic [where] I stayed, they were really into prescribing low doses of Seroquel [quetiapine] for unipolar depression . . . after reading up on this stuff I became somewhat angry for the widely prescribed off-label use of these antipsychotics since side effects can be strong. Especially since I was not told. Do you maybe have any thoughts on this practice?

Thoughts? Yes. Far too many. Ask anyone.

I have, over and over, lamented about the lack of honesty and transparency in the doctor-patient relationship. Specifically, why is it doctors prescribe antipsychotics, often off label, without disclosing their risks? It’s happened to me many times. In the hospital may be a special case, however.

Antidepressants and Addiction, Dependence – Talkback

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Jun 12, 2011

I recently received a couple of comments on the antidepressants and dependence / addiction post from Tabby. My response to her second comment ended up being so long I decided to put it in it’s own post.

Here is an excerpt from Tabby’s comments (edited for length). If you would like to read them in their entirety, please see here and here. (Symbol […] indicates removed text. Other ellipses are from the original text.)

Comment on Are Antidepressants Addictive?

I know of people who cannot go not 1 day without their medication and the medication not be a life saving med like a blood thinner but be a Anti-depressant. They become all anxiety ridden and panic filled because they just know that if they miss that 1 dose or those 2 doses for that 1 day […]

They can’t sleep and they get agitated and they get quite vile until they get that dose or doses. They resort to sobbing, they resort to melodrama of threatening suicide…

[…] I’m talking a cymbalta, or a lexapro. I work in a MH agency and we have patients call cause they’ve gone 1 day without their prescription. […]

I am also one with Bipolar and when your entire day, or entire life, is solely dependent on whether you took your pill or pills that 1 day… I dare to say, you have a dependence.

Now… you have blood clots and you miss 1 day of your blood thinner.. then we may have a major issue. You miss 1 day of your Seroquel, or your Cymbalta, or your Depakote… seriously, it will be okay… if not, use your psychotherapy techniques. Oh, that’s right… not too many actually do psychotherapy… it’s all the meds baby.

[…] I am well aware of the benefits of medication compared to no medication for those with Mental Illness. My point was – too many people seek out the comfort of the medication to handle their daily life’s issues […] than to try and work on figuring why they are having the problem in the first place.

Folks do not wake up, naturally, anxious. Something has to have occurred to trigger that emotion and anxiety is an emotion that triggers a physical response. Yet, too many run to the cabinet and down pills to “calm” the anxiety rather than try to do something else non-medicated that […] The first reaction is to kill the emotion/feeling… not to try and figure why it’s happening.

No therapy doesn’t work in all settings or all situations but if you never try, then it will certainly never work. In that your blogs are predominately med supporting… I could say that you mock those who try to use more psychotherapy than meds.

Seroquel and Depakote are not equivalent to Warfarin or some of the other medications needed for literal body functioning. Yet, if you have been on a med for a long period of time, for example Seroquel to put you to sleep every night.. and then suddenly you miss a dose or 2… YOU WILL HAVE SYMPTOMS. That’s med dependence and you’ll have a psychological dependence because you’ll become frantic wanting your med.

[…] Many folks suffer with their Bipolar symptoms, or any MI symptom, long before they ever take the 1st pill. So, the life-saving aspect is only a “feeling”.

I know the meds help but have they literally saved me? No. They take away the uncomfortable and the frightening… but they don’t keep me from dying. If they were the sole and only reason, then I’m a walking med cabinet.

Even folks that take a plethora of meds, every single day and swear on a stack of their most revered book… still kill themselves […]

Thanks Tabby for your response. I think your thoughts on the issue represent a perspective of many.

Are Psych Meds Addictive? – Antidepressants (Part 1)

Posted by Natasha Tracy | Jun 6, 2011

Before I started taking psych meds, one of the major concerns I had was addiction.

I didn’t want to be an addict of any sort as I’m quite familiar with the horrors of addiction, having addicts in the family.[push]Will I get addicted to antidepressants?[/push]

And I knew people often took antidepressants for long periods of time, sometimes forever.

So weren’t these people addicted to antidepressants?

Psych Meds Prevent Artistic and Creative Thought

Posted by Natasha Tracy | May 27, 2011

Not infrequently, at the Bipolar Burble I get comments about how if famous artists with mental illnesses had of been medicated, we would have no art today. For some odd reason their go-to example is always Vincent Van Gogh. Without his untreated mental illness, they argue, Van Gogh wouldn’t have been the great artist we know him to be today.

Right then. Let’s all go off our meds and paint. And chop off our ears.

Money Through Lies – Direct-to-Consumer Drug Advertising

Posted by Natasha Tracy | May 23, 2011

Making You Want Something You Didn’t Know You Needed

I despise drug ads. No one should be interrupted from watching the season-finale of House only to have a picture of a highly unkempt woman on a couch quickly to be turned into vital young dream girl thanks to the latest wonder-pill. That is absolute poppycock.

But drug companies spent $4.2 billion in 2005 on direct-to-consumer advertising in the US.