Inadequately Trained Therapists Pose a Risk to Childhood Trauma Survivors
Mental health professionals must be trained in the dynamics of addiction and abuse if they are to help survivors of childhood trauma.
WARNING: May Cause Moral Failure
As the SNRI molecules sluggishly evacuated my bloodstream and I progressively regained my emotions, the gravity of what I had done descended upon me. I couldn’t believe I had actually been capable of committing several crimes over an extended period of time, without stopping to think about the risks to my wife and kids, or even myself.
The Year I Lost Everything, Psychiatry Offered Nothing
After a failed suicide attempt following my son's death, New York State incarcerated me in a mental institution for 21 days. The environment was degrading, stultifying, and downright depressing.
My Involuntary Metamorphosis
After day treatment, I went once a week to a “continuing care” group. What was “continued” was the lesson that you had a fault that was shameful, volatile and dangerous.
When Treatment Makes You Sick: The Eating Disorder Clinic
Eight years after beginning ‘treatment’ for an ‘eating disorder’, I was eating worse than ever. Yet three years after quitting that ‘treatment’, food is a pleasure, not a problem.
Human
God-like, they assured me they knew what was wrong with me and had the elixir. But their elixir was a poison.
The Gauntlet of Protracted Benzodiazepine Withdrawal
My doctor insisted that my symptoms could not be associated with withdrawal – they had to be symptoms of an underlying condition. I have since learned from legitimate sources that protracted withdrawal syndrome from benzodiazepines can intensify long before it abates, with some symptoms lasting for years.
The Great Grey Beast
I am not the only child to have been devoured by the great grey beast that is the American psychiatric system. You're eaten away little by little, every single day, until what's left is barely a person.
First Do No Harm: Restraining the Restrainer
I was face down on a cold hospital floor. My submissiveness came before the needle made contact. The shock and shame of such a violation silenced me.
My Story and My Fight Against Antidepressants, Part II
Healing mental health issues through correct supplements as well as nutrition is, I believe, the final factor for me in my journey. This is possibly what was missing in my first attempt at coming off, and why my brain and body couldn’t handle the extreme anxiety I felt in December 2013. I am ensuring that as I prepare to taper off the Lexapro in 2015, my brain and body are being supported in every way possible.
Disability as a Creative Practice
I wanted to explore how time and sequence work when memory is disrupted, in my case due to traumatic brain injury. I needed to document and reclaim my own sensorium.
Inside My Suicidal Mind
I need somebody who will push through that thick cotton wool ball with me until that moment when we can toss it away altogether. Someone who really tries to look at this world through the lens of my life, not theirs.
Functional Medicine: My Path Out of Psychiatry
My blood work indicated a host of issues that had been lurking under the surface of my “psychiatric diagnoses” for years. I’d seen various mental health professionals and none had recommended these types of tests, or stopped to think about any underlying factors, aside from the well-known “serotonin myth.”
On the Other Side
It was the first time in my Klonopin journey it occurred to me the problem might not be inherent in me. The problem might actually be the Klonopin. Convinced my very life was at stake, I made the firm decision to get off the stuff once and for all.
Mental Health Services Turned My Daughter’s Crisis into a Way of Life
My world turned upside down when my daughter nearly died from a serious suicide attempt. After several years as her caretaker I began to wonder: What can we do to change the way our mental health services are organized so they won't turn a crisis into a way of life for already distressed and vulnerable people?
On Psychotherapeutic Literacy
The counselor, a rather awkward individual, did his best to play the role of an effective psychotherapist. Our sessions continued to be a quiet standoff, a battle of nerves to see who would break the silence first.
Peer Behind the Mask of My Smile
Inside the hospital, I was a social butterfly and knew practically everyone on my wing, but at home, I was a nobody and a loner. If only I had the energy to fake it one hundred percent of the time, then nobody would suspect a thing.
The Poison Isn’t the Medicine: Antipsychotics, Mania and Sleep
To test the theory that a lack of sleep would trigger mania and resumption of sleep would restore health, I conducted what I thought would be a straightforward experiment: while still on lithium and a low dose of antipsychotics, I suppressed sleep for a few days.
Akathisia: Very Nearly the Death of Me
Akathisia is truly an indescribable thing—and has to be one of the most hellish experiences on earth. It’s like your brain is hijacked. Every day I thought could be my last.
The Misery of Being Misdiagnosed and Overmedicated
From an early age, relatives and doctors alike had told me I was severely mentally ill. Naturally, I believed them.
Overprescribed and Overlooked: A Preventable Tragedy
My friend’s death was entirely preventable. We need more regulation of psychiatric medication in America.
I Was God: And You Were A Figment Of My Imagination
The drugs combined with my desire to know how life worked and what made a human broke down all past social conditioning of my individual self. I realized I was God. So was everyone else and I shared with anyone who would listen, but found no one who could understand or navigate the territory. There was little internet to speak of then and no Google to find others who experienced life as I was, so I voyaged on my own as best I could.
I Am Looking for People I Miss
It’s a community of like-minded people; we should stick together. Maybe, hopefully, I will find my hospital friends.
Beneath the Fog
The medication left me emotionally numb, making it impossible to connect with people or sense the aliveness of the world around me. But after two years on antidepressants, I found something that gave me jolt of feeling strong enough to wake me up for a moment. I then spent the next seven years giving myself daily doses of horror to induce an emotional reaction.
The Day I Became Schizophrenic
Schizophrenia, to me, is nothing more than a word. All it really means is that you experience psychosis on a regular enough basis that it’s a factor in your life. And that you actually do, as the word “schizophrenia” indicates, have a mind that you share with some sort of outside presence.
