Letters from the Front Lines

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Dear Bob–

Last fall, I was filling in at a clinic for a provider who was on vacation, and saw a woman in her late 40s for this complaint:  “Anxiety/depression worse, wants to go back on meds.”

Prior to my temporary assignment at this clinic, I had made them aware of my stance on avoiding unnecessary drugs for mental health problems.  While not opposed to it, they asked that I tread lightly with their patients who were already on drugs or seeking refills.  They didn’t want me to rock the boat too much.  These were their patients, after all, and I was just filling in.  I told them that I thought it was simply good medicine to be asking questions such as, Do you think the medicines are working?  Have you considered coming off?  What side effects are you experiencing?  What, besides drugs, are you doing to improve your mental wellness?  The clinic was fine with those questions.  It’s a great clinic.  They truly want what’s best for their patients, and those questions all seemed medically appropriate to them.  They just assumed that most of their patients would expect to be prescribed a medication anyway, and they felt uncertain about what else to offer them besides drugs.  I promised to respect their patients and their practice in that way, while also staying true to my own principles.  At any rate, it didn’t portend to be a big problem, as I would be seeing patients for all sorts of ailments, mostly acute care, and it was unlikely I would see too many mental health patients.

So that was the background as I entered the room and encountered a fit middle-aged woman, smiling and serene.  There was no air of depression or anxiety around her.  We spent a few minutes exchanging pleasantries, talking about Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos.  (This is a surefire way to break the ice with anybody in Denver these days–Tebowmania is epidemic.)  Then I proceeded to review some basic information about her health history and asked her what brought her in today.

Her countenance dropped suddenly, and before she could even speak she became emotional.  I handed her a tissue box.  When she gained her composure, she told me that she had been crying a lot recently, with a sense of constant anxiety that was preventing her from sleeping, causing her to withdraw from social activities.  It was taking a toll on her marriage.  She didn’t know what was wrong with her, but something needed to change, and so she thought she probably needed to be back on antidepressants.

She told me she had been on prozac ten years previously for depression for about a year.  It was the only drug she had ever tried.  I asked her why she had been placed on it then, and if it had helped.  She said that she couldn’t really remember why, sort of the same thing, being emotional, feeling a high level of stress.  She remembered that it hadn’t really helped her much, so she stopped.

I had not divulged any bias I held against medicating, so she answered freely when I asked her some questions.  What’s going on in your life right now?  What are you doing for these problems besides drugs?  If the medicine didn’t help before, do you think it would help now?

With that prompting, she shared several stressful situations occurring in her life that were contributing to her crisis.  Financial worries, relationship stress, and mostly the fact that her youngest daughter was now a freshman in college, meaning that she, who had thrown her whole soul into raising her children as a stay-at-home mom, was now a new empty-nester.  She wasn’t exercising as much, she wasn’t eating healthily, she was avoiding old friends–she thought these behaviors were symptoms of an underlying disease, not possible contributory factors to her distress.  Most telling, she offered this:  “I really don’t want to go back on drugs.  I don’t think I need them.  I’m embarrassed to even ask.  But I’m just at a point where I don’t know what else to do.”

By the time she was done sharing–a half tissue box later–there was very little persuading that I needed to do.  She had recognized the problems on her own, and decided, for now at least, against drugs.  I offered sympathy, tried to normalize her experiences (“I think anyone walking in your shoes would feel the same way”), and told her I thought there were a lot of things she could try prior to going back on drugs, especially if she didn’t want to be on them anyway.  Besides, I said, I don’t think you’d like the side effects for whatever minimal benefit they might have.  I then told her that I was a family doctor who tried his best to keep his patients off drugs, and I gave her my handout on non-drug remedies for improved mental well-being.

We made a plan, gave her knowledge and support, and scheduled a follow up visit with her regular provider.  Then she left smiling, still crying, but now with gratitude.

The truth is that I did little except listen.  I offered support, and when I did not offer medications right out of the gate, she intuited her own pathway towards wellness, one that didn’t necessitate drugs.

A few observations from this encounter:

With very little investigation, there were clear social/environmental precipitants for her symptoms.  None of her symptoms suggested a physiological problem or remedy.

There is a high likelihood that, without my modest resistance on this day, she would have been prescribed what she thought she wanted coming in:  drugs.  It is so easy to get onto the train of drugs, and so hard to get off.  She was profoundly, unexpectedly grateful to be offered alternatives.  In this case, not prescribing took much less effort than I would have anticipated, and was equally rewarding for me.

There is very little financial incentive for a prescriber to do what I did.  It does take more time, requires less frequent follow-up, and does not reinforce the patient’s perception that her doctor is essential to her emotional well-being.  Who wants to put themselves out of relevance, or out of a paying customer?

In her hour of angst, she turned to her family doctor and to drugs for help.  Why?  So many factors reinforce the biopsychiatric paradigm:  direct-to-consumer marketing, positive media coverage about medications, cultural acceptance of high-tech medical innovation, her previous experiences with mental health care, social pressures from family and friends to “do something” about her “problem.”  And most family doctors, who prescribe over 75% of psychiatric drugs in America, have only one tool in their toolbox for mental health issues:  drugs.

 

These are observations you and I have obviously discussed before.  No surprises here.  But what is stunning to me is that these situations, and all of these esoteric ideas that we bat around, keep happening over and over again:  a patient in distress, seeking help, expecting drugs, trusting me, willing to explore alternatives when nudged that way, surprised at their own humanity and resilience.

Sometimes, the prospect of real reform in mental health seems impossible.  But sometimes I think we’re not that far away from fundamental change.  Doctors, patients, family members, insurers, government agencies–we know what’s not working, and we want something better.  We’re sick of the corruption, the cynicism, and the inhumanity of it all.  The tide is turning, one patient at a time, a trickle now, but perhaps soon a tsunami? When I’m still, I think I can feel the energy moving in that direction.

Mark

***

Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

9 COMMENTS

  1. Excellent report. This is what Dr’s should be doing. Indeed, it is what we should all be doing for each other: listening, understanding, trying to encourage.

    I think if people who commission GP services could be persuaded to provide a mainly drug free model of helping people in mental distress then your experiences could be the basis of a really good training manual

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  2. Very nicely done. It really isn’t rocket science – most of the time, someone who feels depressed is feeling a loss of control of his/her life in some way or another. You helped her see this and take steps to regain a sense of control, and she felt immediately better for it. This has been my own experience over and over again as a crisis counselor and as an advocate. When you normalize people’s experience and help them focus on some part of it they do have control over, their “symptoms” improve with very little further effort in most cases. One of the worst things about the diagnosis/drug paradigm is that it puts the problem completely outside the control of the patient – “You didn’t create this problem and there’s nothing you can do to fix it.” This inadvertently reinforces the patient’s feeling of helplessness and loss of control that your intervention so deftly brought to the surface and began to address.

    Thanks for your inspiring article. I hope your style of thinking spreads like wildfire. Make sure you tell all the folks in that clinic about your success – it sounds like the might even be willing to try it themselves!

    —- Steve

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  3. The energy is indeed moving in a positive direction! I heard a great way to use the Rx pad from a family doc when I was attending a meeting about the Million Hearts Campaign— rather than write a prescription for meds, write a prescription for what has been agreed upon by doctor and patient such as -walking, yoga, peer support, and other such “alternatives”. One day meds may be the alternative treatment while what we call alternative today will become mainstream!
    Thanks for the post!
    keris

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  4. God will bless you for NOT exploiting her for financial gain- prescribing pills & getting kickbacks from drug companies. this is what happens in psych hospitals.

    Please read & share my FREE book with any future patients: they will find it helpful: Manual for Transformational Healing-god’s answer to Psychiatry. It exposes atheistic psychiary their toxic drugs, and tells how to heal mental & physical illness thru prayer.

    Drs need to know that ‘hearing voices’ which they are taught is auditory hallucinations, a supposaed symptom of psychosis, is NOT. It is NORMAL Christian theology to hear voices. Jesus said “my sheep hear my voice” John 10:27. Everyone hears voices as thoughts in our heads. They come fro the spiritual realm. The word ‘inspiration’ means ‘a spirit goes into it”.

    We are in a secular age where people look to medicine for help when what they need is spiritual counseling. They should be talking to a pastor, but many don’t realize this. Hence they come to dr’s. SO the dr’s need to re-direct them to a spirtual solution, not a medical one. even if we look in the wrong place, God will meet us there and re-direct us to the right solution. God is using you to give people what they really need, not what they think they need. (drugs)_ But you also need to know and let them know about the healing power of GOd and Christ to help with these issues; as my book says, it is GOD’s answer to the questions they have. http://www.1prophespeaks.com

    See my free minibook Spiritual wisdom and article
    “Do you need mental or physical healing” http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-you-need-mental-or-physical-healing.html

    The new testament says mental

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  5. Many thanks for these thoughts, Dr. Mark. All this is a very old story in the field of psychiatry. Many years ago, as a young housewife in 1960, I visited a psychiatrist for advice on what I now call a spiritual emergency (a la Stanislav Grof), wanting some advice on how to handle it. To my horror, the psychiatrist saw nothing but madness and wanted to give me medication. He almost destroyed my morale and very nearly produced in me that very condition, but I had the good judgment to leave his office and never go back. It meant I had to suffer through my crisis alone and unaided, but I know now that it was far more preferable to the “treatment” I would have received from the psychiatrist. I have never regretted my decision.

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  6. Once again prudent judgement won out with prescribing drugs.Recently I went to my family doctor because I have profound rebound insomina (I had tapered off my sleep benzo) and he could only offer drugs like Elival, Trazodone and (OMG) Seroquel as “sleep aides”(I had thought he might know of something non-prescription). I left empty handed. Yes, I have horrid insomnia but hopefully it will work itself out. I’d rather be drug free then drugged.
    Your blog is so refreshing. Thank you. Dr. Foster.

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