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I had a close relative experience a psychotic episode and require hospitalization, it was an incredibly intense experience all around. And as you say drugs are

I had a close relative experience a psychotic episode and require hospitalization, it was an incredibly intense experience all around. And as you say drugs are very crude tools with unpleasant side-effects, from my personal observation I have to wonder whether those drugs actually help more than they hurt, on average. It's somewhat shocking how backward and regressive our society and medical establishment still is in their approaches to psychiatric issues. At best we're only a few steps out of the dark ages and still fumbling around.

jMyles 10y ago
> those drugs actually help more than they hurt It seems pretty obvious that they hurt more than they help, but for many people, the alternative to a lifetime of constant, horrible spiritual anaesthesia is occasional bouts of explosive delusions which lead to behavior that's dangerous to the patient and to others. Which would you chose?
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  You start with a false premise, several of them actually. You posit that drugs are the one and only defense against delusional behavior. And you assume that the drugs mentioned do in fact work as advertised. I've seen with my own eyes, and other people have reported many instances as well, when they've absolutely caused more harm, by enhancing rather than suppressing delusions and hallucinations. The reality is a lot more complicated. For some people these drugs help. For others it makes things worse. For yet others it's somewhere in between. And measuring the results accurately is incredibly difficult due to the difficulty of objectively determining someone else's cognitive state. Which is difficult enough even when it's something comparatively straightforward, when there are layers of mental illness, trauma, and complex drug interactions at play it becomes a herculean effort. And one that the medical establishment generally lacks the resources and commitment to follow through on. Some people are lucky enough to have loved ones or family members around who can accurately judge what's "normal" and what isn't in someone else's behavior and also put in the effort to find what treatments help or not and maybe shepherd someone to improved health. Many other people only have a few minutes spent on their care and most of their treatment comes out of a generic manual which might as well be a flow chart of "if X prescribe Y". This isn't helped by the widespread stigma, misunderstanding, and misinformation about mental illness that permeates society. Right now our approach to these issues is like trying to tune a malfunctioning jet engine without any knowledge of how it works and experimenting via trial and error by dumping liquid oxygen or coal dust into the intake. The fact that some people are helped leads us to the incorrect conclusion that we actually know what we're doing instead of just occasionally getting incredibly lucky.
  - tcj_phx 10y ago
    > Right now our approach to these issues is like trying to tune a malfunctioning jet engine without any knowledge of how it works and experimenting via trial and error by dumping liquid oxygen or coal dust into the intake. That's a good analogy. I was talking to someone recently, and realized that the "antipsychotics" are essentially speed-governors for people. It's better to fix the actual problem with a car than arbitrarily limiting its top speed. Another analogy is that these drugs are like under-clocking your CPU so it doesn't overheat, instead of replacing the broken fan. My girlfriend screwed up her brain's metabolism by self-treating her depression with alcohol and stimulants. When the alcohol went away, she became rather psychotic. Her mother (whom she was living with) called the crisis team, and the hospital didn't help things by treating her with antipsychotics, when they should have used coconut oil, nutritional supplements and some of the more useful prescriptions. My observation is that the practitioners who treated my girlfriend weren't concerned about the behaviors that created the condition (self-medicating depression with alcohol & the street pharmacy), they just prescribed medication in the hope that it would help with the presenting symptom ("psychosis"). She'd stabilize after a few weeks in the mental hospital. When released, she would resume her efforts to treat her own depression, and would shortly end up back in the mental hospital. My girlfriend got much better when I obtained the supplements and safe drugs that help with the actual causes of her mental exhaustion. But I don't have her on lockdown, and I can't force her to consistently take what clearly benefits her, nor keep her away from the professionals' bad prescriptions (SSRI's and benzodiazepines) that create more problems for her.
    - InclinedPlane 10y ago
      As a side note, are you sure she's not bipolar (specifically bipolar II)? It's easy to misunderstand what bipolar is if you haven't researched it, it's nothing like the pop culture portrayal. Periods of hypomania (in bipolar II) are not "manic", they aren't filled with exuberant happiness, they aren't filled with lots of unusual "crazy" activities in most cases. What it actually looks like is usually getting a bit less sleep, getting stuff done more often (which could be as innocuous as reading a book or playing minecraft), maybe increased talkativeness, likely an increase in "risk-taking" behavior (which could be as mild as ordering a few extra things on amazon than normal), and an increase in distractability. All of these things might not be very noticeable, even to the person they're happening to, and might seem normal (as, indeed, they are within the bounds of perfectly "normal" behaviors and not intrinsically destructive) or even positive (which they may in fact be). However, having bipolar can cause a susceptibility to psychotic incidents and requires different treatments than depression. Anyway, it seems like much of the medical establishment is still in a very archaic mindset when it comes to treating mental illnesses that involve the potential for violence. Actual quality of life is irrelevant as long as you reduce the likelihood of someone getting physically hurt in the future. Meanwhile, we still use incredibly antiquated drugs like thorazine which are questionably effective and have a mind-numbing list of side effects. Yet the drug companies don't do a whole lot of research on efficacy, safety, or on new drugs because there just isn't much money in it.
tcj_phx 10y ago
> from my personal observation I have to wonder whether those drugs actually help more than they hurt, on average. From my own personal observations, I am certain these drugs do a lot of damage. I've managed to get my girlfriend stabilized with supplements and some safe drugs, and got her into a smaller system to manage her court-ordered treatment. Her new court-ordered psychiatric nurse initially wanted to keep her on the antipsychotic injection, but there was a bureaucratic snafu (pre-authorization) and the injection wore off. After the drugs had lapsed for a month, the psychiatric nurse decided that it wasn't actually necessary. Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic, [1] has looked into the practices of the mental health industry, and makes the case that the standard treatments make people's mental health worse. [1] http://www.madinamerica.com/product/62043/ http://www.madinamerica.com/product/62043/

jMyles 10y ago

> those drugs actually help more than they hurt It seems pretty obvious that they hurt more than they help, but for many people, the alternative to a lifetime of constant, horrible spiritual anaesthesia is occasional bouts of explosive delusions which lead to behavior that's dangerous to the patient and to others. Which would you chose?

InclinedPlane 10y ago
You start with a false premise, several of them actually. You posit that drugs are the one and only defense against delusional behavior. And you assume that the drugs mentioned do in fact work as advertised. I've seen with my own eyes, and other people have reported many instances as well, when they've absolutely caused more harm, by enhancing rather than suppressing delusions and hallucinations. The reality is a lot more complicated. For some people these drugs help. For others it makes things worse. For yet others it's somewhere in between. And measuring the results accurately is incredibly difficult due to the difficulty of objectively determining someone else's cognitive state. Which is difficult enough even when it's something comparatively straightforward, when there are layers of mental illness, trauma, and complex drug interactions at play it becomes a herculean effort. And one that the medical establishment generally lacks the resources and commitment to follow through on. Some people are lucky enough to have loved ones or family members around who can accurately judge what's "normal" and what isn't in someone else's behavior and also put in the effort to find what treatments help or not and maybe shepherd someone to improved health. Many other people only have a few minutes spent on their care and most of their treatment comes out of a generic manual which might as well be a flow chart of "if X prescribe Y". This isn't helped by the widespread stigma, misunderstanding, and misinformation about mental illness that permeates society. Right now our approach to these issues is like trying to tune a malfunctioning jet engine without any knowledge of how it works and experimenting via trial and error by dumping liquid oxygen or coal dust into the intake. The fact that some people are helped leads us to the incorrect conclusion that we actually know what we're doing instead of just occasionally getting incredibly lucky.
- tcj_phx 10y ago
  > Right now our approach to these issues is like trying to tune a malfunctioning jet engine without any knowledge of how it works and experimenting via trial and error by dumping liquid oxygen or coal dust into the intake. That's a good analogy. I was talking to someone recently, and realized that the "antipsychotics" are essentially speed-governors for people. It's better to fix the actual problem with a car than arbitrarily limiting its top speed. Another analogy is that these drugs are like under-clocking your CPU so it doesn't overheat, instead of replacing the broken fan. My girlfriend screwed up her brain's metabolism by self-treating her depression with alcohol and stimulants. When the alcohol went away, she became rather psychotic. Her mother (whom she was living with) called the crisis team, and the hospital didn't help things by treating her with antipsychotics, when they should have used coconut oil, nutritional supplements and some of the more useful prescriptions. My observation is that the practitioners who treated my girlfriend weren't concerned about the behaviors that created the condition (self-medicating depression with alcohol & the street pharmacy), they just prescribed medication in the hope that it would help with the presenting symptom ("psychosis"). She'd stabilize after a few weeks in the mental hospital. When released, she would resume her efforts to treat her own depression, and would shortly end up back in the mental hospital. My girlfriend got much better when I obtained the supplements and safe drugs that help with the actual causes of her mental exhaustion. But I don't have her on lockdown, and I can't force her to consistently take what clearly benefits her, nor keep her away from the professionals' bad prescriptions (SSRI's and benzodiazepines) that create more problems for her.
  - InclinedPlane 10y ago
    As a side note, are you sure she's not bipolar (specifically bipolar II)? It's easy to misunderstand what bipolar is if you haven't researched it, it's nothing like the pop culture portrayal. Periods of hypomania (in bipolar II) are not "manic", they aren't filled with exuberant happiness, they aren't filled with lots of unusual "crazy" activities in most cases. What it actually looks like is usually getting a bit less sleep, getting stuff done more often (which could be as innocuous as reading a book or playing minecraft), maybe increased talkativeness, likely an increase in "risk-taking" behavior (which could be as mild as ordering a few extra things on amazon than normal), and an increase in distractability. All of these things might not be very noticeable, even to the person they're happening to, and might seem normal (as, indeed, they are within the bounds of perfectly "normal" behaviors and not intrinsically destructive) or even positive (which they may in fact be). However, having bipolar can cause a susceptibility to psychotic incidents and requires different treatments than depression. Anyway, it seems like much of the medical establishment is still in a very archaic mindset when it comes to treating mental illnesses that involve the potential for violence. Actual quality of life is irrelevant as long as you reduce the likelihood of someone getting physically hurt in the future. Meanwhile, we still use incredibly antiquated drugs like thorazine which are questionably effective and have a mind-numbing list of side effects. Yet the drug companies don't do a whole lot of research on efficacy, safety, or on new drugs because there just isn't much money in it.

tcj_phx 10y ago

> from my personal observation I have to wonder whether those drugs actually help more than they hurt, on average. From my own personal observations, I am certain these drugs do a lot of damage. I've managed to get my girlfriend stabilized with supplements and some safe drugs, and got her into a smaller system to manage her court-ordered treatment. Her new court-ordered psychiatric nurse initially wanted to keep her on the antipsychotic injection, but there was a bureaucratic snafu (pre-authorization) and the injection wore off. After the drugs had lapsed for a month, the psychiatric nurse decided that it wasn't actually necessary. Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic, [1] has looked into the practices of the mental health industry, and makes the case that the standard treatments make people's mental health worse. [1] http://www.madinamerica.com/product/62043/ http://www.madinamerica.com/product/62043/