Vicious Circle
For many families, NAMI’s programs are the only available safe haven after a diagnosis of mental illness has been handed to a family member.
Our family’s first experience sent us into hiding. We did not look for compassion from our neighbors nor did we talk to any doctors other than psychologists and psychiatrists. The diagnosis alone, with all its symptoms and criteria for identification, was a described as a life sentence.
Our daughter had ADHD, bipolar, depression, PTSD, body dysmorphia, borderline personality disorder, etc.. It seemed every new hospital gave her a new diagnosis to add to the list. Somewhere along the way, the diagnoses took over her life. She was these illnesses. She manifested each symptom like a textbook case. Except, when it wasn’t and she didn’t respond to the drug treatment or switched between bipolar and borderline and back or to another set of symptoms. No one, least of all the doctors, could keep track of just exactly which illness best described my daughter.
Where was my daughter in all of this?
Her experiences matched the clinical categories of many of the illnesses attributed to her. We believed in the chemical imbalance theory that was the medical model that the doctors were following. The doctors created drug regimes to fix the imbalances for each diagnosis that was handed down.
My daughter was “sick” for years. And, nothing the doctors prescribed seemed to help. She got worse. She was traumatized in hospitals, stigmatized by her diagnosis and struggled everyday to find herself in the mess her life had become.
When I discovered, very recently, that the notion that a chemical imbalance in the brain was the cause of mental illness was false, an idea built on flimsy research and mostly promulgated by pharmaceutical industry, I had to rethink everything.
I laughed when I read the headline of the Science section of the New York Times on Tuesday July 13, 2010, Is Gravity Real? A Scientist Takes On Newton. Every hard fact was going out the window! This article nailed how I felt. Something that I had been taught to believe in – the chemical imbalance of the brain, the existence of gravity – was now questionable.
I am confronted with the legacy the last treatment center left for my daughter. We were told that she will never be able to live on her own. She will not be able to take care of herself; long-range plans needed to be arranged. Her mental illness was chronic and permanent.
Yet, when she fled the treatment center, she also ran away from the medications – most of them, anyway. And, she started to get better. During the times between episodes, she was beginning to chart a life for herself. She had friends. She lived in an apartment. She free-lanced as a model and an art director. She was getting the hang of not being sick.
She was not the illness anymore.
That is not to say that she has shook off the symptoms that got her the diagnoses in the first place, but I wonder if the manifestations of her experiences are really so easily categorized. I began to wonder if the whole medical model that we so dutifully followed was entirely dictated by the pharmaceutical industry and their manual, the DSM.
Are the pharmaceutical companies behind the writing of the diagnoses?
When shyness, shopping excessively or over-tanning become “illnesses” listed in the DSM (with bullet-point criteria listed to check symptoms against), does the industry win another group of unwitting victims? A future group of chronic users of drug treatments to “fix” the “chemical imbalance”.
75% of NAMI’s funding comes from pharmaceutical companies.
A family arrives at their first NAMI meeting and are told by the group’s spokesperson to be sure that the diagnosed person takes the drugs prescribed by their doctor. Along with the drugs, psychotherapy, support groups and education are key to the individual’s success at managing their illness. Of course, the path of least resistance is to pop a pill. Quick, convenient, and covered by insurance. Support groups and psychotherapy are time consuming.
NAMI is feeding the pharmaceutical industry. Money for alternative research finds its way to pharmaceutical companies to invest in the next generation of drugs. This continues to happen even though there are a growing number of people who are vocal about healing from mental illness through various other techniques not involving medication.
The pharmaceutical industry is writing the guidelines for treatment. The industry teaches psychiatrists how to treat patients who come to them with a certain set of problems. The drugs are prescribed, the patient is hooked and the chronicity begins. More and more drugs are added; the industry grows.
The system is feeding itself. The pharmaceutical industry has grown to a 40 billion dollar a year sham.
I once saw in a doctors’ journal a list of all the medications “borderliners” should/could take. It was scary.
I know a woman who got this diagnosis. She refused to take pills – and she was able to manage without, no matter what the shrinks said.
Hi Sigrun,
That woman was very brave. It is hard to go against the system.
In fact, a personality disorder is not treatable by any drug regime but doctors like to give something to look like they are in control and fixing the problem. They prescribe mood stabilizers and antidepressants and when things are particularly difficult, antipsychotics. But, usually they bounce right off a borderline. It messes with their brain chemistry!
Thanks for sharing more on this topic. I am following in your footsteps for the same reason (Robert Whitaker’s book and some additional research). I remember sitting in NAMI at the beginning of the 12 week “family to family” course, I felt very uncomfortable because it seemed like they were almost a bit too militant about certain things. I know that’s a strong word, but it fits. I kept wanted to remain neutral yet have an open mind. But as time went on I felt myself convinced that they were right, they HAD to be right because two of the class leaders were living proof – both young women that had been in and out of hospitals and diagnosed with some serious mental illnesses, but both seemed so “healthy” and attributed it all to their meds and NAMI. Everyone there agreed that meds are the only answer. I don’t know anymore, all I know is that my son had been told he can’t work, that he is disabled due to his illness and he’s clinging to that diagnosis because it allows him to get a “free ride” even though he is capable of doing anything and everything that he chooses to do.
Hi Barbara,
Your son will have to work through being told how to live his live because he was given a diagnosis based on a faulty system. But, you can help by providing a path to another way of thinking. That is what I am going to try to do for my daughter. What you said in your comment – that the speakers had been in and out of hospitals and were still on meds – I bet if you asked them if those meds had to be tweaked and added to they would have cheerfully said yes. And, if they sometimes still ended up in the hospital, that they might have answered that it was always a possibility but for now the meds had IT under control. Hospitalization, I was told, was going to be a constant in my daughter’s life.
Well, I think that is wrong. I think that she can move away from all the diagnoses and be whole again. Despite having experiences that were/are difficult, she is now able to create new and good in her life. She was told this would probably never happen. And, she is proving the doctors wrong.
xx kris
And, they are militant because they are convinced that psych meds is the ONLY way. They need you to believe them. Your support of the pharmaceutical industry supports them.
xx
A loaded subject for sure. I have had a history of anxiety disorders. Some of the trouble may be physical, a mitral valve prolapse, some perhaps genetic; a history of anxiety disorder in family members. But whatever the cause the manifestation of the disorder has been at times debilitating. Preventing me from working, leaving the house, even making phone calls. Medication has enabled me to re-enter life. I just want people to keep that in mind. Our culture, here in america, always seems to take things too far. So yes, people are over-medicated, doctors take the easy way out, corporate greed runs rampant. But remember, there were people in research who tried really hard to find solutions to what seemed to be unsolvable problems. I’m just saying, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Sorella,
I agree that the brain responds to benzodiazepines fast and efficiently. My daughter is addicted to them. I do wish though, that before she took her first handful, she had been advised to try other methods of relief. Now, her brain cannot function without them.
I don’t intend to dismiss the entire pharmaceutical industry. I do know that other methods are slower to relieve the symptoms of panic disorder – meditation, relaxation techniques, psychotherapy. I also know that in the long-run my daughter’s brain will be clearer and her life will be longer without psych meds involved.
I wrote in a post about a friend of mine whose life was hijacked by panic not long ago. She was put on benzos and sleep aids and was pulled back from a very frightening edge. She needed something immediately to give her relief from the abject fear that panic can bring. Now, she is in psychotherapy trying to understand the cause of this sudden onslaught and is planning to wean off of the drugs. This might be the perfect case scenario for the conscientious use of psych drugs. Maybe she could have avoided drugs all together if she could have put her life on hold and gone to therapy every day. But, that is impossible for most people.
It is the life-long use that I am most concerned with. I do believe that most psychiatrists who prescribe psych drugs assume that they are setting their patients on a lifetime of treatment. They are creating chronic users of this system that, I believe, is so flawed.
It’s such a shame. The first Physiatrist my daughter saw medicated her for ADHD without really getting to the underlining problem.
We told him that when she was younger the school wanted to put her on medication for ADHD. Right away that was her problem.
It was not until she was admitted to hospital in March and she saw a different doctor did he determine it was BPD and not ADHD.
Many people diagnosed as “borderline” are in fact childhood trauma survivors. It makes me upset that they are labeled “personality disordered”. They should instead have the diagnosis Complex PTSD.
The same is true with ADHD. Many traumatized children are labeled ADHD. Dignosis make child abuse “invisible” – and the perpetrators can ontinue their abuse.
Sigrun,
I suggest you read Rossa Forbes recent post on Holistic Recovery from Schizophrenia. http://holisticschizophrenia.blogspot.com/2010/07/throwing-baby-out-with-bathwater.html#comments.
Rose – I would be wary of the most recent label of BPD. Was your daughter by any chance put on an antidepressant for the supposed ADHD? Antidepressants are known to kick start mania, earning the person the new label of bipolar. There is a book called “After Her Brain Broke” written by a mother whose daughter was being treated for depression. She was put on an antidepressant and she then got a diagnosis of bipolar. (Her diagnoses didn’t end there, of course.) Stephany of Soulful Selpucher had a very similar experience with her daughter.
Yes she was put on medication for ADHD. However, she does have all the symptoms of Borderline. They were not wrong this time in their diagnose.
Hi Rose,
My daughter meets every one of the criteria for the diagnosis of BPD and bipolar and lots of other diagnosis (ADHD, PTSD, body dysmorphia, the list goes on and on). I often wonder if much of what she has been diagnosed with isn’t side effects of the drugs she took for all the various symptoms. Many symptoms have abated without the drugs fueling them.
Hi, Rose – I am wary of labels, period. Picking up on Kirstin’s last comment, I have seen all kinds of labelled behavior in my son, whose original diagnosis was schizophrenia. I have seen glimpses of bipolar behavior (re spending and sex), depression, mania, obsessive compulsive, and probably body dysmorphia, if I ever really knew what to look for. The label he got was what got him into the hospital the first time around. Had he showed up a year or two later, under a different set of circumstances, he could have got a different diagnosis. And the funny thing is, whatever your diagnosis, the drugs are all the same. So, after I glommed onto the fact that my son was getting the same drugs as the next guy was getting for a different diagnosis, I realized what a joke a mental health diagnosis really is. Yes, my son had problems, nobody is saying he didn’t, but what was the diagnosis really going to do about it?
To the writer of “can someone define..”
I went to the site the writer is using to post her question. She is struggling. Please stop by and add encouragement for her to seek help from psychotherapy. http://services.abcxue.com/can-someone-define-the-treatment-i-should-be-gettin-so-i-know-what-help-to-ask-the-mental-health-services-for.html