Keeping Meili Off Psychiatric Drugs

17
455

Our daughter Meili is diagnosed as autistic and has severe developmental disabilities. She is 29 years old, but mentally she remains a toddler of two. She has a happy disposition and often makes us laugh. She has caused us much trouble and given us much joy.

Meili’s ability to communicate is very limited. She talks a lot but most of it is echolalic (repeating all sorts of things she has heard). She really knows only a few dozen words, gestures, and stereotyped expressions. She can ask for her favorite foods, a drink, a bath, a ride in the car, or bubbles to catch or to hear music or go to the toilet. She cannot ask or answer a question. Repeated attempts to teach her names of body parts have failed. That is one reason why we want to keep her off psychiatric drugs. She would be unable to use words to communicate any resulting pain or discomfort, which would find an outlet in agitated behavior that care workers might not understand. A likely response would be to increase drug dosage, creating a potentially fatal vicious circle.

Another reason why we want to keep Meili off drugs is her ultra-sensitivity to various substances. Her allergic reactions include swelling that could result in suffocation if it spread to the mouth or throat. Recently we consulted a homeopath and tried some homeopathic medicines on Meili, believing them to be safer than conventional drugs. However, one of them produced a very severe allergic reaction, with swelling (“bubble rashes”) over most of her body and part of her face. The medical literature confirms that a small group of individuals are so sensitive that even ultra-dilute homeopathic solutions endanger them. Meili evidently belongs to this group.

Yet other reasons for keeping Meili off psychiatric drugs have to do with the adverse effects of specific commonly prescribed drugs. Some cause substantial gains in weight and our daughter is already overweight. Others disturb the sense of balance, undermine the ability to control body movements, or cause involuntary body movements. Meili’s balance is already impaired by her typically autistic habit of walking on tiptoes.

We first came under pressure to give Meili a psychiatric drug when she was in her mid-teens. She was attending a local school for autistic children but was unable to adapt to their program, which took little account of individual likes and dislikes and placed excessive emphasis on attempts to change behavior by means of “reinforcement” (i.e., rewards). This does not work with Meili because she lives moment by moment and draws no connection between the way she behaves and any rewards that may or may not follow. Her discontent found expression in moods and behaviors that the staff found difficult to manage.

We were urged to consult a psychiatrist with whom the school had a close working relationship. When I met this elderly gentleman he responded to my concern about adverse effects with the standard drug-industry line – at best a half-truth – that the harsh drugs of yesteryear had gone out of use and been replaced by a new generation of gentler medications. He submitted a report in which he recorded my views in a subtly distorted form that made them look odd and irrational (a sign of my own psychopathology perhaps?).

School personnel always insisted on viewing Meili’s behavior solely as a product of her inner condition. They stubbornly resisted the suggestion that Meili might be responding to the way she was being treated. The directors of the school did not welcome criticism of their methods.

In fact Meili was not unhappy for the whole time she was at this school. There was a period of six months during which her daily report slips were uniformly positive. This was when she was following an individualized plan that I had designed for her in collaboration with one of the more empathetic psychologists at the school (I’ll call him Jeff). After all, by law each developmentally disabled child is required to follow an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP). Our plan for Meili was based on games and activities that she enjoyed and objects that held a special fascination for her.

Autism places enormous obstacles in the way of education, but in many cases it also offers opportunities. Autistic people typically have enthusiasms for specific topics and the teacher should exploit these enthusiasms for learning purposes. The enthusiasms vary from one individual to another as well as shifting over time, so a genuinely individualized approach is essential. At one period Meili was very excited at the sight of elephants; for another child it might be tigers or monkeys.

Later I asked repeatedly whether Meili was still on the plan that Jeff and I had devised for her, but I never received a reply. Some years later I happened to run into Jeff again while on my morning walk. He said that he had been dissatisfied at the special school but had now left and felt free to tell me what had happened. A secret decision had been made, over his objections, to put Meili back on the standard program. The trouble, as he explained it, was that the school wanted to expand and pack in more students and that was considered incompatible with genuinely individualized plans. The state’s Department of Developmental Disabilities, faced with ever-increasing numbers of children diagnosed as autistic, also wanted them to expand.

At a certain point we came under sustained pressure to put Meili on a psychiatric drug. As a carrot, we were shown round one of the group homes associated with the school and assured that a place there was waiting for Meili if only we would agree to drug her. At the same time we were urged to consult another psychiatrist who worked at another institution that happened to be controlled by the same people who ran the school. In retrospect I realize that we should have insisted on seeing an independent psychiatrist.

Without our prior knowledge or consent, a film was made showing Meili removing her clothes (one of her “challenging behaviors”) and shown to this psychiatrist to prove to him how difficult Meili’s behavior was and how urgently she needed to be drugged.

School staff also “helped” the psychiatrist by suggesting possible psychiatric diagnoses. One of their ideas was that Meili might be suffering from brain seizures that left no observable trace because they were of extremely brief duration. It was suggested that her echolalic talk about things that had nothing to do with the here-and-now might indicate that she was having hallucinations – an idea that revealed an astonishing ignorance of autism. I responded that the diagnosis of autism accounted quite adequately for all Meili’s behaviors, which were long established and persistent and therefore did not require additional diagnoses. The problem from their point of view was that no psychiatric drug is identified as a “treatment” for autism as such.

So far as we were aware, the attempt to pin a psychiatric diagnosis on Meili was abandoned. Arguably that was a worthwhile achievement in itself. However, the absence of a diagnosis was not considered an adequate reason to avoid drugging. So the psychiatrist – under pressure from a senior psychologist representing the school who was present at the consultation – acceded to the demand of his employers and recommended putting Meili on a drug. Then on the basis of our rejection of the recommendation, Meili was expelled from the school.

What next? Someone suggested to us a way out of the impasse: we should get Meili admitted to the observation unit at a local mental hospital. Youngsters with a wide variety of mental, emotional, and developmental problems stay in this unit for several weeks. The official purpose is to observe and assess them, but the main goal is to try out different drugs on them and find one that they appear to tolerate.

And so Meili entered this unit. It was the first and only time that she has lived away from home. Nevertheless, she adapted quite quickly – even before any drug was tried on her.

The psychiatrist in charge of Meili at the hospital (Dr. Q) was a decent and helpful person. She agreed that some psychiatric drugs, such as Haldol and Lithium, were indeed too dangerous to be given to individuals like Meili. I was unhappy that she placed so few drugs in this category, but she did her best to accommodate our concerns. A drug was finally selected that seemed from the literature to be relatively safe – Tenex.

Dr. Q also arranged a meeting with a senior psychologist from the school Meili had previously attended to see whether it might be possible to negotiate Meili’s return there. It was not, but one thing this man said has stuck in my mind: “Half the time Meili was laughing and I did not understand why. The other half of the time she was crying and I did not understand why.” It was remarkably honest of this man to admit to having so little insight into the minds of the children in his care, but what good had his study of psychology done him?

Meili started the Tenex on what was considered the very low daily dose of 0.25 mg. After a few days I received a call from another psychiatrist at Bradley, who asked us to agree to a doubling of the dose to 0.5 mg. I persuaded him that rather than raising the dose they could increase the effect by giving Meili the drug in the morning instead of at night. And that is what they did. The dose was never increased. However, even at this low dose Meili suffered from severe constipation and when she returned home we discontinued the drug.

Dr. Q got Meili into another special school – a small place we had never heard of. She seemed content there. The staff never raised the issue of medication. At the age of 21 she transferred to the day program of an agency that caters to developmentally disabled adults. She still attends this program and her continued attendance has never been made conditional on her taking a drug.

What enabled us to resist the pressure to put our daughter on drugs? If we had come under such pressure just a few years earlier we might well have succumbed. The chain of events that empowered us began when I lost my position on the faculty of a university. I was unhappy about this at the time, but it did help us protect our children against psychiatry and its drugs. I obtained freelance work while my wife took a job at a group home for emotionally disturbed young women. She took this kind of job specifically in order to learn things that would help us make decisions about Meili’s future. And by directly observing her clients and hearing their tragic life stories she did indeed learn a great deal about the effects of psychiatric drugs and psychiatry as a social institution. I supplemented what she told me by searching out and reading critical literature on psychiatry, especially the books of Dr. Peter Breggin. So when we encountered the drug pushers, we had the knowledge we needed to push back.

As for the future, we realize that we are growing older (I am now 65, my wife not much younger) and that we cannot continue looking after Meili forever. Existing residential agencies are clearly unwilling to provide a place in a group home without a “medication plan.” That is why we tried homeopathy, hoping that it might provide an acceptable alternative to psychiatric drugs.

We acknowledge that in certain cases drugs are necessary on strictly medical grounds – for example, to control brain seizures. But there is no good reason why the majority of people with developmental disabilities, even severe ones, should not be cared for without drugs. It is shameful for further impairment to be inflicted on those who are already impaired and for the most helpless of our fellows to be subjected to torment merely in order to make it a little easier to look after them.

We still hope to protect our daughter from psychiatric drugs by setting up a non-standard arrangement outside the control of the existing agencies. If we can find other families in our area who are in a similar situation and share our views, then we may pool resources with them to set up a new home that will provide drug-free care to adults with severe developmental disabilities. This may take the legal form of a cooperative or a non-profit corporation, each of which has its advantages and disadvantages. Another variant that does not depend on cooperation with other families is shared living with a live-in caregiver.

This is a complicated subject, so here I’ll just point the reader to the two sources of information that I have found most useful:

(1) a book entitled Moving Out: A Family Guide to Residential Planning for Adults with Disabilities by Dafna Krouk-Gordon and Barbara D. Jackins (Woodbine House, 2013);

(2) the website of the organization Autism Housing Pathways (AHP). The detailed information is in the section for members only, so you will have to join, which costs $35 a year.

In non-standard arrangements the family or families usually provide the house from their own resources, food and household expenses are covered by clients’ SSI or SSDI, and funds for staffing come from the state government. This, however, depends on the state government approving the arrangement. Although new federal regulations facilitate and encourage a wide range of non-standard arrangements, state governments still have the right to decide what kinds of arrangements they will recognize for funding purposes. Different states have different policies in this area. AHP is based in Massachusetts, so some of the options they describe may not be available in other states. Some lobbying may be required.

Yesterday I went to my doctor for a flu shot. While sitting in the waiting room I noticed a man accompanied by an Indian lady in a sari. His dull, immobile face gave him a rather strange look. He was single-mindedly eating candies from a bag. The nurse came in and called for him. “You can finish them later,” said the Indian lady, who was clearly there to look after him. But he insisted on finishing the candies first. The inflexibility suggested to me that he might be autistic. Eventually he stood up and shuffled off, shoulders hunched forward.

Did the other people watching this scene in the waiting room understand that the dull, immobile face, the shuffling gait, the hunched shoulders are not part of his developmental condition but signs of tardive dyskinesia, effects of the psychiatric drugs used to control him? Did his caregiver understand this?

What a contrast with Meili – also autistic but otherwise healthy, happy and lively! What does it matter if she is sometimes mischievous or hard to manage? The drug-poisoned man in the doctor’s waiting room – one of how many! – symbolizes for me the fate that may be in store for our daughter despite our best efforts to protect her.

***

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.

***

Mad in America has made some changes to the commenting process. You no longer need to login or create an account on our site to comment. The only information needed is your name, email and comment text. Comments made with an account prior to this change will remain visible on the site.

17 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks so much for your inspiring story. Good for you for resisting the trap of psychiatric drugs–and for embracing your daughter in her true, natural spirit. (She sounds wonderful!) To think of the tardive dyskinesia route–and how tragic that is. May Meili always prosper and be protected. One thing is for sure: Meili is so lucky to have you and your wife…. Best wishes to you.

    Report comment

  2. Kids with developmental challenges really show where psychiatry is coming from. They claim to be scientifically “treating” medical “disorders,” but Meili and her cohorts for the most part had no indicatio of any such “disorder,” if such are even assumed to actually exist. Despite this complete lack of any even pseudo-scientific rationale, they continued to push you to put Meili on drugs. But if she doesn’t have a “mental disorder” that is “treatable” with drugs, what are they proposing the drugs for? The truth is revealed. The primary purpose of these drugs is to control inconvenient behavior and make it easier for the adults to manage their difficult charges. There is no other reason, and they’re not even pretending there is one. This should give anyone pause who is prescribed these drugs for any reason. Not only are they willing to prescribe drugs for any purpose that suits the adults’ needs, regardless of “diagnosis,” they are also apparently willing to lie about their true intentions and the drugs’ adverse effects without compunction.

    Well done holding the line on the “professional” insanity!

    — Steve

    Report comment

    • Stephen, well stated! My hearts go out to autistic people who were given psychiatric drugs and have had to endure terrible side effects, compounding what already is a difficult situation. Not all families can resist this tremendous pressure to drug their children, including kids with so-called ‘ADHD’. What a mess. How can we unwind this massive problem?

      Report comment

  3. Hello,
    Thank you for your moving account of your family’s commitment to avoid unnecessary medications for your daughter. I have had a similar struggle in my family and worry about all those families who may not have the resources, knowledge or determination that you have. This article will help many others understand what’s possible. Best Wishes to you, your daughter and family.

    Report comment

    • Thank you for drawing my attention to this group. I agree with what seems to me their basic philosophy — autistic people should be accepted as they are. Both the use of drugs and manipulative “educational” methods have their roots in the assumption that “bizarre” behavior is intolerable and must be suppressed. The underlying problem facing autistic people and all others who are different from the norm is intolerance of human diversity.

      Thank you, everyone else as well, for your solidarity and kind words.

      Report comment

  4. Thank you Stephen for sharing your courageous story! Your love for your daughter Meili shines in your every word and deed. As one who endured the terrible disabling, torturous effects of these drugs you have saved your daughter from a similar fate.
    You will inspire more people to love and respect their love ones as they are and not as they might desire them to be.

    Report comment

  5. “As for the future, we realize that we are growing older (I am now 65, my wife not much younger) and that we cannot continue looking after Meili forever.”

    This is truly heartbreaking that parents of disabled kids all around the world have to be asking themselves that question: what happens to my child when I’m no longer able to care for him/her?
    It’s unacceptable that we consider drugging healthy people like Meili and making them sick just because they have a mental disability. Finding them psychiatric diagnosis to justify this is even more reprehensible.

    Report comment

  6. Thank you Steven.

    Here in Spain I have a strikingly similar story to yours and Meili. My 24 y.o. son is autistic, very tall (which adds to the fantasies about his supposed extreme violence) excluded from school in his last year and excluded socially now. I am a retired psychiatrist, 73 y.o. , and cannot get him in a day centre for I am against de use of drugs. Sometimes I get angry with all the critics of psychiatry for they focus in matters that I think fancyful (antidepressants and all that) and neglect issues of informed consent in populations like our childern that are being tortured and further disabled by the thousands in our supposed civilized world.under presures like you describe. Even the parents of an asociation which I formed have turned against me because my critical position to do with medication. A practice which itself is a complex bio-psycho social equivalent of religion: salvation through biologism.
    Like you I used once medication, he likes to undress himself, and had the allergy “bubles” problem; like you I had drugs as a condition for admission to day centres etc. I took the issue of my son’s exclusion to Law, ( Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2006) won the case and the administration appealed on the Supreme Court (!!! my son has a disability estimated at 88%). They lost the apeal but nothing happened, perhaps that would be different in the USA, you have attorneys there, but here what the hell he is just a retarded boy, he is got to have something. Or silence and reppraisals
    I was a psychiatrist before I was his father (I had other three, normal and away) and with a very eclectic training in the U.K. hence I used drugs very rarely, never with children or the disabled. And prior to my son exclusiĂłn I knew ( I live in a small town with hardly a dozen autistic youngsters which I know) of five acute intoxications from neuroleptic medication: one dead from neuroleptic asphyxia, one nearly with Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, two severe and lasting dystonias, one “Tower of Pisa”, the other a sort of big torticolis accompanied by acathisia (can you imagine the torture !), one grand mal in a very obese boy. And parents continued with their complicities. Things are so similar to Action T4 the nazi program except that now they do not kill them, they make them economically profitable for the various professions.
    Like you I have a big satisfaction when I compare my son Ramiro, with other boys with autism: he is healthy which is doubly important for us for he was born a grand premature and struggled for his life for more than a year and he is happy. When we cannot continue I hope they finish with him soon.

    To try drugs, behaviour modification, o any therapy in autism is as relevant as in paraplegia o blindness. Autism is a disability and our children need enabling, adecuate environments, and supports from people who understand the condition. Those things are denied to them in favour of faulse hopes, sickening cures, and at the end control and punishments. The professionals who engage in this are not stupid they are above all cowards.
    Any way to unite and empower us?

    A big big hug Steven
    Mariano Almudevar,
    Huesca Spain

    Report comment

  7. “”Sometimes I get angry with all the critics of psychiatry for they focus in matters that I think fancyful (antidepressants and all that) and neglect issues of informed consent in populations like our childern that are being tortured and further disabled by the thousands in our supposed civilized world.under presures like you describe. “”

    At the risk of getting this thread OT, I think you’re being unfair with all due respect. If you have read various articles on this site, it covers the issues you have spoken about such as the elderly, people with disabilities, and folks in foster care getting zapped with psych meds. People on this site have been horrified about that.

    And why is this an either or situation? I have the right to be very critical of how ADs have destroyed my life while at the same time being very upset that nothing has changed and that the vulnerable populations I have mentioned above are big prime time targets.

    Speaking of autism, I worked with autistic students many years ago in a special ed environment. And yes Steven, they were all forced into a one size fits all mentality.

    Report comment

    • I did not mean to be critical of this site, sorry. The example that irritates me in this respect is Götzsche, not MiA,
      I meant that in general the capacity to exercize informed consent is much greater in populations that are the object of ADs than in the ones that concern me. I took ADs for a while, after a bereavement and was cautious enough not to use big dosis and stop after a year; it was much easier than giving up smoking. And the dynamics of the abuses than I am referring to, are far more complicated than “those stupid psychiatrists” . Perhaps in Europe where reimboursements are not a key feature, things are different. And I aggree thta it does not have to be an either or situation.

      Report comment

      • It’s a matter of individual vs stats. When you look at the magnitude of the problem ADs seem to be worse but that does not mean everyone trying to come off them will have a major problem. Like with any other drug really, some folks get a pass.

        Report comment

  8. hi. beautiful essay. i want to give you tremendous kudos for being the very best dad you could possibly be. sending you blessings of health and long life and strength to continue to do right by your daughter.

    all the best

    erin

    Report comment

  9. This essay is wonderfully written and I hope will serve as an eye-opener for many. I love how you explained that when you voiced opposition to drugging in front of the psychiatrist, he claimed you yourself were crazy! Leave it to the profession to turn tables like that.

    One of my best friends growing up was on the spectrum. She was mainstreamed and successfully graduated high school during the same year I did. I had no clue she was autistic. We were not told. It was the 1960”s and 70’s. She was seen as “different” but no one knew for sure what it was. We met up later in life. We identified with each other well since we’d both been subject to teasing in the public schools. Her parents started her in elementary school two years later than usual, I’d say wisely. I had been started early, skipping kindergarten. The only problem for me was that I was already short for my height and being younger meant I was even shorter! And wore glasses at a young age, none of that being my choice nor anything to do with behavior. “Amy” (not her real name) was taller, “developed” earlier than other girls in our grade, but was behind in her verbal ability. She excelled at all forms of visual art. For a while, we spent much time doing art together, even though I didn’t want to admit I wasn’t very good at it.

    I have a rather distinct memory of drawing a likeness of Lucy Van Pelt (from Peanuts) and showing it to my sixth grade teacher. My teacher exclaimed, “I know only one other student who can draw that well: Amy!” I don’t recall anyone else in the room at the time, which was a good thing! I was embarrassed and fled out of there as soon as I could. While the drawing was mine, I’d copied it by sight from one Amy had done.

    I’ve always wondered about the stereotype that those on the spectrum have of “idiot savant.” Although I am not on the spectrum, I, too, have a few such odd talents for which I was never able to find a practical use. These activities kept me amused, I suppose, and perhaps are enriching to the mind.

    Report comment

    • I’ve been reading the story of a girl with Aspergers syndrome who is forcibly “treated” with and eventually killed by psychiatric drugs for seizures that she probably didn’t even have. The story is told by her mother, a Danish teacher named Dorrit Christensen. The title of the book is “Dear Luise.”

      Report comment

LEAVE A REPLY