Adverse effects of medication become the psychiatric patient’s identity and the misguided excuse to over-medicate them. Hospital staff assumed that our older daughter was having a severe mania after they over-dosed her with Haldol and she almost died from Neuroleptic Malignancy Syndrome (NMS). Week-end, nursing staff did not recognize the signal of imminent onset of NMS which is labeled in early psychiatric literature as Excited Delirium, but my husband did recognize it. Her father had searched the literature for an explanation for why she was having the worst reaction to medication that he had ever seen. In that state of Haldol-induced Excited Delirium, her organs had begun to fail and breakdown and her autonomic control of bladder and bowel then failed , along with a rise in temperature which caused her to remove clothing. The lab counts later confirmed the NMS event despite that she hadn’t yet developed rigid limbs when the emergency was addressed. When I walked into the aftermath, she was lying naked and unable to talk and could only utter surreal, high pitched, metallic, chirpy-chattering sounds. A search of the literature suggested to me that anaphylactic shock had swollen her tissues so rigidly that her vocal chords were capable of metallic sounds. She shoved her thumb into her throat, presumably to make space for air or to assess her own condition. She was angry, of course, and tossed water from her paper cup and gave me the middle finger, which she had never done before. Mom and Dad had not been able to protect her from the “Power-Take-Off” that pulled her in and chemically battered her because there was no “Safety Switch” to turn off the impersonal psychiatric machine.
I’m sure many here would like to hear your story, Bombria.
We would love to hear your veteran’s testimony, I’m sure. Amy Biancolli is here to help.
Thank you for the excellent testimony. I posted it at my place of worship. I will send it to a local radio station. I also began to read your content-rich article from 2011 regarding toxic encephalopathy. That article alone is enough evidence to justify wide-ranging changes in the societal response to mental health challenges. Yet here we are in 2023 doing OUR due diligence to tell truth again, to be continued as long as necessary. Our family also has still more true stories to be written dating back to 2006 that need to be told. I want to push the stories beyond this wonderful venue to reach more minds.
This is a very helpful story, unfortunately at your loved one’s and family’s expense. My intent is to share this with others ASAP, along with your other stories. Mad In America should be required reading.
I’m so fortunate to be the beneficiary of the talents and service of Miranda Spencer and now Amy Biancolli, along with all the other dedicated, servant-leaders with Robert Whitaker here at Mad In America and all contributors, professionals and lay people alike. I am humbled and grateful.
We definitely share huge swaths of agreement.
As for my family’s lived experience, I speak from my ” field observations” and medical testing info that support my position that some of us are more vulnerable than others to inflammatory agents which negatively impact our mental health, whether those inflammatory agents are the toxic psychiatric drugs or the other crap that is in our environment. At MIA, I only know of one professional who offered her insights on the matter of inflammation’s impact on mental health and she is Dr. Jill L. Littrell. I will forever be grateful to Dr. Littrell for her compassion and integrity to offer her knowledge for our benefit.
Your artwork is really great. Thank you!
Aurora, I hope you don’t mind that I used the word delightful to describe your song that conveys lonely, sadness, yearning. Your song IS so sweet and it reminded me of listening to our own Catherine play her ukelele and sing. I think she would have really liked you.
Delightful song, Aurora! Your voice is so sweet; I closed my eyes to savor your gift. Your insights are so mature and loving. Tremendous message and very convicting.
Oh, on second thought, I could just search for a reference myself. Sorry to bother you.
Please provide the references for these valuable points you made. I disseminate important info such as this to friends, associates, and in group newsletters and most of those people would want to know the source of the info. Many people will not suddenly drop want they are doing and wade through books about psychiatry, so being able to give them quick facts with a reference is very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Someone Else, for that info.
Oh, you are a balm. Thank you for your beautiful encouragement.
That’s right. Exactl. There will never be peer-reviewed articles and there shouldn’t be the expectation that they are necessary to defend our nature as individuals.
I’m still stymied why I’m getting messages that sound as though the reader doesn’t think that I “get it”. So, I have to give whomever the benefit of the doubt that I did not explain the situation adequately. The situation had to do with us trying to solicit some compassion from a psychiatrist to honor Best Practices of medication management, including the expertise of Dr. Guy Chouinard, and to show some concern about avoiding the development of Super-Sensitivity Psychosis and other important matters that sorely afflicted our precious daughter. I only share here to add our experience to the rest who refuse to remain silent.
I regret that I wrote my posts in haste. It is difficult to remain silent sometimes, not knowing how long it will take for me to find the exact language that I need.
I think we would agree that what we find ourselves doing in order to be heard becomes surreal and shouldn’t have to be that way, and is certainly not fail-safe. Well said.
Daiphanous Weeping, Beautifully said, I agree!
Our daughter was long past enjoying the path of life here. She was on a path toward death. Please don’t rub it in.
Registeredforthissite: Thank you for reading my post. Was your response intended to criticize our use of a study to bring an important matter to the attention of the attending psychiatrist? Or were you being rhetorical and satirizing that advocates shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to have concerns validated?
Outside of psychiatry, patients frequently present articles to their personal care physicians during treatment discussions. That happens in the best of situations when the doctor actually is interested and free to do what is in your best interests. However, in psychiatry, as you already know , it is too commonly a losing battle to be heard and helped by a psychiatrist.
As parents we have witnessed the slow torture of our daughter over years, and that is also torture for us. When the psychiatrist wasted our child’s shrinking opportunity to taper meds to spare her from ruin, we did what we could to be heard.
As for the neediest: Their greatest need may be the freedom not to be forced into social constructs that don’t fit them, free not to take into their bodies toxic substances, free to learn their own way, free to holistically explore the world and make their own path in it.
Among the events involving inflammatory conditions that have preceded a loved-one’s psychiatric set-back was the development of hypo-motility of the gastro-intestinal tract with serious entero-fissure that has become common with the use of clozapine. This required an antibiotic, as I recall. A medical advisory now dictates that all clozapine patients be closely monitored for this complication and be given preventive supplements to keep the G.I. system moving. During this extended period of forced clozapine use, the patient developed debilitating rheumatoid inflammation featuring swelling and painful joints of her hands, wrists, ankles, feet. Within this context of toxic debilitation and inflammation, said patient developed a mania that led to a psychiatric hospitalization out of town. During my advocacy for her, I discovered in plain sight in her apartment an overdue lab requisition for a screen for rheumatoid factors. That was exactly what I needed to advocate for her inflammatory conditions to be addressed so that she could begin to resolve her mania in hospital. I delivered the lab requisition with a message to the ward. A week later, I met with the attending physician and presented a list of studies that validated the role of inflammation in the development of psychiatric systems. I endured a haughty, mocking, and dismissive attitude from the attending physician, who had still not seen the rheumatology lab requisition and my message that I had delivered the week before. I stood my ground. He seemed eager to badger my concerns. Perhaps he attacked my certainty because of his loyalty to the profession to neutralize threats of liability. Fortunately, there was another doctor present to witness our exchange; he remained silent. Mysteriously, our daughter began to improve after that. Was it simply a matter of time after the removal of the toxic and inflammatory clozapine for the mania to resolve? Or, did the effect of an anti-inflammatory supplement potentiate the resolution of her mania?
As for therapeutic elements, the patient had become distraught when a male patient stalked her and actually entered her room while she was in the shower. This was very frightening for her, especially because she had been given thorazine that made her joints so stiff that she couldn’t raise her arms to change clothes , much less to defend herself. The stalker was removed.
Could it be trauma that makes this next recollection to be somewhat uncertain? The hospitalization described above occurred while my second and now deceased daughter was still in her notorious hospitalization of 2017, or it was very close in time to it.
Among the events of inflammatory conditions preceding psychiatric set-back that have occurred in one daughter was the development of the now validated hypo-motility of the gastro-intestinal tract with serious entero-fissure that occurs with the use of clozapine. This required an antibiotic, as I recall. A medical advisory now dictates that all clozapine patients be closely monitored for this complication and be given preventive supplements to keep the G.I. system moving. During this extended period of forced clozapine use, said daughter also developed debilitating rheumatoid inflammation featuring swelling and painful joints of her hands, wrists, ankles, feet. Within this context of toxic debilitation and inflammation, said daughter developed a mania that resulted in a psychiatric hospitalization out of town. During my advocacy for her, I discovered in plain sight in my daughter’s apartment an overdue lab requisition for a screen for rheumatoid factors. That was exactly what I needed to advocate for her inflammatory conditions to be addressed so that she could begin to resolve her mania in hospital. I delivered the lab requisition with a message to the ward. A week later, I met with the attending physician and presented a list of studies that validated the role of inflammation in the development of psychiatric systems. I endured a haughty, mocking, and dismissive attitude from the attending physician, who had still not seen the lab req and message that I had delivered to the nurses’ desk a week earlier. I stood my ground. I suspect that it was his fun to torment me and that he already knew what I was talking about. Perhaps he attacked my certainty because of his loyalty to the profession to neutralize threats of liability. Fortunately, there was another doctor present to witness our exchange; he remained silent. Mysteriously, our daughter began to improve after that. Was it simply a matter of time after the removal of the toxic and inflammatory clozapine or some additional anti-inflammatory supplement that potentiated the resolution of her mania?
I do admire Dr. Gotzsche’s work and his chutz·pah. I won’t pretend to have the ability to critique The Critical Psychiatry Textbook. As usual, I do have questions and also the conviction that my family’s lived experience has afforded valuable and meaningful observations, so I value that here at M.I.A. I can actually log a question and hopefully Dr. Gotzsche will see it.
A really big question that I have is, “Don’t we have a dilemma as to how to determine what would be a sufficient proof of any claims about how the brain does or does not work? It seems that Randomized Control Trials are only of limited value and that holding patients hostage to RCTs or to the luck of a peer reviewed article is abusive and wrong. I recall that my deceased daughter’s attending physician said that if we wanted to bring in a document to discuss with her, she would only discuss peer reviewed papers with us in treatment team meetings. But on the other hand, it would seem that we need to be fair about not dismissing the real possibilities that important causal relationships exist within individual patients , and that we will never be able to control for the complexity of the brain in order to establish their existence. It would seem that we can sin against the patients’ best interests no matter what camp we are in. ..I have more questions, but now I must pull myself away for a family matter.
I also want to discuss the issue of inflammation. I refer to inflammation, but perhaps the more accurate term is the activity of the cytokines of the immune system, which result in the symptoms of inflammation. I have observed on multiple occasions that the presence of infections which I have referred to as inflammatory conditions have triggered psychotic manias or hypomanias in both of two daughters. I have made multiple observations of these kinds of events and have wondered that perhaps over time there are multiple opportunities to disrupt or resolve the manic or psychotic process. With all the complexity of interconnections, perhaps that also allows for multiple points of intervention to resolve the manic process, in the sense that there are perhaps many micro-pillars for stability. The emotions are important, and the manic process itself appears to be a volatile energy. My observations of these different infections , inflammatory conditions, and their resolution , are consistent with what the literature says about the importance of “inflammation” and infections perturbing the HPA axis , and also that antibiotics can perturb the HPA axis. I’ve seen it “all” . I also think that when patients do improve in hospital it is probably due more to the exended period of better nutrition, the resolution of infections, the eventual benefit of restored sleep, and possibly therapeutic connections, etc. I think the more resilient patients may get better despite the psychosis drugs, so I think there is sometimes fraud to claim that the psyhosis drugs helped the patient. The more sensitive and less resilient patients are the ones who are then labeled Treatment Resistant and they are then delivered to ECT. So, the neediest are treated the worst. Putting the patients through failed, toxic, drug trials, protects the hospital from liability for damage from ECT, don’t you think? It’s impossible to prove what specifically caused the ruin of the patient. What a hell hole for anyone’s child.
I think I am not a material-secularist-reductionist re: the activity of mind, emotions, and spirituality; but I do believe that the physical matter of our neuroendocrine system is subject to genetically encoded differences that make some of us more fit for survival than others, some more resilient to inflammatory injury, altered neuronal signalling, cell death and apoptosis. The literature about this seems reasonable to me and is exactly what I would expect to read based on what I’ve seen, despite that so much of what afflicted my daughter was kept shrouded in mystery by the doctors who withheld information from us and seemed to be waiting patiently for our naive efforts to advocate for our daughter to fail and for their neutralization of our agency as guardians to be completed.
There is a spectrum of opinions here. No one here is calling for promotion of ECT. One ugly reality in the wake of neuroleptic-induced debilitation is the occurrence of catatonia which can be lethal. One male in his mid-sixites, who had been trapped in the system for most of his life, wasn’t lucky enough to be able to escape the psych oppression as the survivors here have done. (Chaya Grossberg’s article on Ableism comes to mind here.) He began to waste away in catatonic state, until he was given ECT, afterwhich he started eating again and made a comeback well enough to do some public speaking, and participate in group events with family and friends during his outings away from the group residence. I still grieve to think how much better his life could have been if he had been given access to better care. If you could make psychiatry go away right now, you would be flushing away people such as him. That would be eugenic.
This cruel debilitation will be repeated upon those who are powerless to escape unless we expose the fraud, the medical neglect, the exploitation, and educate the public on what CAN BE DONE DIFFERENTLY RIGHT NOW. WHEN patients are treated better, many of them will be able to find the EXIT.
That’s WHY we need to welcome help from whomever, even Dr. Healy, to expose the wrongs and abuses committed with psychiatric interventions. Psychiatry doesn’t need Dr. David Healy to promote ECT; the momentum of the oppressor is sufficient.
Well, not the only way, but a very important first step.
Hello, Richard, and Others: I just had two contradictory Ah-HAH moments. First thought: Dr. Healy’s article has potential to shorten the line of candidates for the ECT train. When Patients become terribly screwed up from the polypharmacy then ECT may be coerced upon them. The trials of toxic meds seem to serve as a necessary staging process to find those candidates for ECT research. Avoiding the toxic drugs and polypharmacy will help to halt the ECT train, WHEN and IF the patients are offered Functional-Holistic therapies such as those that resolve inflammatory conditions that do trigger mania or psychosis!
Now for the Second and Contradictory Thought: To be fair toward Richard’s concerns, I met a psychiatrist who thinks ECT should be a First Line Treatment! ! So what IF Fans of ECT want the system to skip the toxic meds and offer ECT as First Line Treatment so that they can have “cleaner” research subjects? THAT WOULD BE HORRIBLE and it would be committing the great sin of neglecting the need for medical attention to resolve infections or other sources of inflammation. Treating inflammatory medical conditions that fuel symptoms of mental illness should be the First Line of Treatment! ! ! This is another reason for me to advocate everywhere for a Functional-Holistic paradigm of mental health care. That is the only way to curtail human rights abuses in mental health, I believe.
Lisa, thank you for your powerful story. I hope and pray for continued healing for you and Lori and everyone who has been pulled through the psychiatric mill.
Thank you for sharing your seriously important story. I am going to find ways to share it on my side of the map and with some contacts on your side. There are many people of influence who just don’t seem to know enough about this despicable abuse going on all around us. I hope and pray that you have or will have access to therapeutic and beautiful moments to soothe and encourage your spirit. I hope that San Diego is a good place for you to be. I could check with a couple contacts out there for more possible resources, if you would like that.
Thank you so much James Hall for the validation and your even-handed ways. I’m really glad that you are familiar with VGCC. I could learn a lot about that topic from your reference group. One thing that comes to mind, is that the totality of truth does not take sides, but how we respond to it is the “pivot point”.
Thank you, Steve. That is important detail that deserves to become a big item in a strong platform of what needs to change. Do you have favorite references for this info? Please write more about the neglected sub-groups and how studies fail the needs of kids. We need to use humane and natural ways to help the subgroups and not give them over to pharma control. If kids are in need, the natural approaches should be the first line of treatment. We need to stop labeling kids and subjecting them to guild interests and big pharma.
Boans, Yes, question the science. And Follow what Big Pharma is doing which is what I thought MIA has been doing. I apologize for not being clear. I was contrasting two points: 1) that Big Pharma has been exploiting discoveries in neuro-endocrinology with development and sale of drugs, and 2) that there is an obvious, safer, and immediate way to benefit patients with a different application of the same, recent discoveries. I referred to the advancing knowledge re: mechanics of Voltage Gated Calcium Channels (VGCC), now referred to as “calcionics” , in the production of inflammation that is understood to kindle psychiatric symptoms. The more direct way of creating public benefit with the knowledge of “calcionics” does not require drug development. Rather, education with an emphasis on the particulars of the anti-inflammatory lifestyle in childhood and adolescence, pediatrics, and public policy would lower rates of First Episode Psychosis and admission to psych wards. Validating the action of VGCC in the mechanics of kindling of inflammation , as a Proof of Concept, would be foundational to acceptance of curriculum for children in elementary and secondary schools re: the anti-inflammatory lifestyle. Important survival info is being hoarded by Pharma and universities that needs to be instilled at an early age for children’s best interests. Alas, the marriage of psychiatry with Big Pharma, teaching hospitals, state hospitals and out-patient support services is a huge Economic Engine that exploits the vulnerable, unsuspecting, inflamed patient.
My comment is not intended to promote ECT research, but to raise awareness of inflammation’s impact on holistic health, and if it can be a starting point for conversation with Dr. Healy, why not? We are all adults and need not become inflamed over it.
Steve McCrea: We all know that Big Pharma is following science to make money. But the public is not very well advised of how the new knowledge could benefit us in more natural and non-pharma ways. Question: What percent of the advances in neuro-endocrinology have been funded by pharma and what percent by the government? Is the knowledge of inflammation of the Central Nervous System (CNS) hoarded by universities, by big pharma, and by the government? For example, the Voltage Gated Calcium Channels, which include fragile variants that are vulnerable to inflammation , have been observed to play a role in immunology as well as mental health. They are expressed the most in the heart, then the brain, and to lesser extent in other organs. Was the medical community advised to apply this information in the clinical setting to coach patients and the public in the anti-inflammatory lifestyle? This important information should be taught in the secondary schools; That would reduce psych ED emergencies. Whether we agree with claims about genetics or not, psychiatrists have been advised about variant genes believed to control the development of fragile Voltage Gated Calcium Channels VGCC as a risk factor for psychiatric illness, but have they been trained to understand that VGCC risk factor as linked to inflammation and therefore as an indication and opportunity to coach patients in the anti-inflammatory life style? We could ask Dr. Healy what he has to say about the VGCC and whether he is familiar with any ECT research that acknowledges the mechanism of the VGCC. Other specialties have indeed found application for the Voltage Gated Calcium Channels, such as in cardiology and opthalmology pulmonology, etc. While the fastest and most natural application of this knowledge has been denied disclosure to “lowly” psychiatric patients, the medical specialties have been rewarded to find profitable application for this knowledge. Immunologists who were studying viruses were indeed thinking about the mechanics of voltage gated calcium channels and they published a study on December 30, 2019, shortly before the revelation of the covid 19 outbreak :
Cells
. 2019 Dec 30;9(1):94.
doi: 10.3390/cells9010094.
Host Calcium Channels and Pumps in Viral Infections
Xingjuan Chen 1 2 , Ruiyuan Cao 2 , Wu Zhong 2
Affiliations
Ca2+ is essential for virus entry, viral gene replication, virion maturation, and release. The alteration of host cells Ca2+ homeostasis is one of the strategies that viruses use to modulate host cells signal transduction mechanisms in their favor. Host calcium-permeable channels and pumps (including voltage-gated calcium channels, store-operated channels, receptor-operated channels, transient receptor potential ion channels, and Ca2+-ATPase) mediate Ca2+ across the plasma membrane or subcellular organelles, modulating intracellular free Ca2+. Therefore, these Ca2+ channels or pumps present important aspects of viral pathogenesis and virus-host interaction. It has been reported that viruses hijack host calcium channels or pumps, disturbing the cellular homeostatic balance of Ca2+. Such a disturbance benefits virus lifecycles while inducing host cells’ morbidity. Evidence has emerged that pharmacologically targeting the calcium channel or calcium release from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) can obstruct virus lifecycles. Impeding virus-induced abnormal intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis is becoming a useful strategy in the development of potent antiviral drugs. In this present review, the recent identified cellular calcium channels and pumps as targets for virus attack are emphasized.
By experiential truth, I simply mean observing first hand or up close something significantly undesirable and most likely caused by toxic medications or ECT. The findings/proclamations of psychiatric research alone must not be allowed to dominate the validation of development of psychiatric harm. The right to validate psychiatric harm needs to be restored to the victims. I personally need a discussion on the inadequacy and the impossibility of a validation of harm process that solely depends on an expert witness who must be a doctor. How do we work around this impossible legal standard? Doctors and lawyers are so afraid of having their licenses taken away or losing business or being fired that they won’t agree to be expert witness. Am I wrong on that?
Yes, the suffering is horrible.
These same voltage gated calcium channels are considered to be the most common risk factors for psychiatric symptoms. Well, well, well. So science has discovered that inflammation causes psychiatric problems. Think on that and extrapolate how that affects public policy. Follow the science.
I found a research article that I perceived to be an oblique admission of the harm caused by ECT. The thrust of the article was that ECT “works” by causing inflammation, but that more research needs to be done to learn how to better control the inflammation ! !. How horrifying that any of us should be exploited for research, and how grandiose and misguided under the lucrative reward system for the teaching hospitals and researchers! Some of us have variant gated calcium channels that make our cells more vulnerable to cell death in context of the inflammation. Are we the targets of eugenics?
An older friend who had multiple ECT long ago said that the euphoria was short lived and then she was depressed again. The drugs and the ECT have left her a fragile person.
Thank you, rasselas.redux for the info and your time.
LivingPast27, thank you for sharing your experience of the relationship between Paxil, alcohol and increased risk for depression. I’m glad you are here to talk about it.
James, If I have missed a point here, please point it out. Also, A rat swimming test is not the basis of any position that I take, but I’m happy to have given some of you a good laugh. Regarding the taking of positions on “other” hot topics, EVERY-one has vested interests.
James Hall, I do agree with your concerns about quickness to find fault with others who think differently on points that usually have not been questioned openly among MIA. However, the lived experience of “long-timers” at MIA could not possibly represent ALL lived experience of existing survivors. I came to both NAMI and MIA and found that at both places virtually NO one was disclosing important aspects of their lived experience that overlapped with our lived experience. We were a new variation of “unique”. Therefore, when the “party line” does not match up with our experience, I’m going with our experience and with the science that seems relevant to that. Not only does the limited focus of psychiatric research fall terribly short to reveal truth, but the group’s totality of lived experience is inadequate to judge the truth that is experienced by everyone.
I’m sure that the behaviors that I have seen and call OCD do not match some others’ understanding of OCD. If there is a better term to use for what I’ve seen, I’m certainly willing to receive it. There is no question, however, that our wonderful daughter became a prisoner of impulses that never appeared until after she was forced to take neuroleptic drugs.
Dr. Sherman, thank you for your contribution here at MIA. I intend to read your work and give it consideration. I have been convinced for some time now that sex based differences need to be acknowledged in the advocacy for personalized and humane care. Your words are addressing a felt need. Thank you for your example of purpose and productivity during your golden years. I am adding your name to my list of doctors whose work seems very relevant to the best interests of women, such as: Dr. Jill L. Littrell re: inflammation of the Central Nervous System (CNS), Dr. Christine Marx re: the metabolites of progesterone , and Dr. Donald Stein of Emory University re: the synergistic effect of “Hormone Vitamin D3” and progesterone to reduce inflammation of the CNS. Giving patients authentic Differential Diagnosis and applying your insights and other evidence-based alternatives would give many patients hope.
On a different note, I also am intrigued by the report that select “branched chain amino acids(Leucine, Isoleucine, Valine)” have been observed to resolve mania in context of “tyrosine depletion”. I wonder how that fits with the seasonal cycles of neanderthal adaptation. I’ve wondered how the extreme conditions of the mountains and valleys of european winters may have driven genetic adaptation over the ages and if what seems manic or depressive today is really our “gene-skill set” experiencing a mismatch with modern environments. Climbing mountain slopes, bearing heavy loads, hard labor etc. requires energy and strength that drives the hormonal conversions that occur in context of stress, yes? It’s interesting that when the female is greatly stressed , her cortisol levels rise and the progesterone that is needed for gestating children drops. I think that conception during the growing season would provide the fetus with a good nutritional start, and the mother could rest and live off stored food during the winter hibernation season, to give birth in spring in time to eat the sprouting greens needed for lactation. In these kinds of conditions, the specialization of male and female roles seem to have been necessary in order to make successful gestation possible.
Thank you so much for responding. When we were on the defense trying to accomplish damage control after our daughter’s rights were violated and our rights to advocate for her and protect her from forced clozapine and ECT were violated, having any discussion with the Treatment Team that would acknowledge the damage from the clozapine, etc. was valuable, regardless of the exact terms used. The last doctor to hold our daughter captive did not deny that clozapine could cause or worsen OCD, rather, she tried to divert focus to a family history, which proves nothing against our claim. Shortly after this time, I was encouraged to see that a local student pharmacy organization published a review of the topic that acknowledged the action of clozapine as a possible cause of OCD. That was a step in the right direction in terms of raising awareness and creating documentation that advocates could use.
This is an excerpt from the ncbi article cited above: “Although progesterone is primarily associated with the reproductive system, it also plays a functional role in the neuroendocrine axis. Progesterone may demonstrate neuroprotective factors in both the central as well as the peripheral nervous system, affecting myelination processes and regulation of astroglial plasticity. Additionally, progesterone functions to aid neuron survival in the setting of neurodegenerative diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. These effects are due to the expression of progesterone receptors located throughout the nervous system.[12]”
AND, I could go on and on posting articles on what I call the “thrive and maintenance role of the sex hormones”
 Â
Here is more basic knowledge that the public deserves to know:
Jessie K. Cable; Michael H. Grider.
Author Information
Authors
Jessie K. Cable1; Michael H. Grider2.
Affiliations
1 Kansas City University of Medicine
2 High Point University
Last Update: May 8, 2022.
Adolescents are forced to attend school in crowded and stressful public school settings where they are subjected to lots of challenges. Many feel threatened and insecure and have to muster a facade of confidence or unflappability. Many of these kids are also suffering from systemic inflammation-triggered depression which could be traced to a list of environmental insults in combination with hormonal fluctuations. Additionally, in the public schools, the comfort that is available in the practice of religion is frowned upon. The popular culture has grown increasingly nihilistic. In this toxic and discomforting environment, the social-emotional stability of children is challenged. In this state of stress, many children yearn for escape and turn to high risk behaviors. Before children have “mastered” the skill of critical analysis, logical thinking, and before they have learned survival skills and the holistic- anti-inflammatory style of living, they are thrown into the chaos described above. There is so much wrong in the environment that is forced upon children in the name of public education.
I don’t know the intended definition of Clinician Bias, but I would think that those clinicians who have a broad knowledge base, who have training in a functional-holistic approach to health, and who are familiar with the concept of Translational Lag in the incorporation of advances in neuroendocrinology into clinical practice, and who have witnessed exploitation of patients for corporate research interests , would probably have concerns about how to respond to the minor child who expresses gender dysphoria.
Who among the respondents here are neuroscientists or pharmacologists and have expertise in the design of research in neuro-endocrinology? Not me, that’s for sure. Nevertheless, as an imperfect sentient being with a passion for reading to better understand what has happened to my children, I will continue to read the topics relevant to their suffering within the allopathic psychiatric system. Medication-induced, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is definitely a thing. I will post more about it. Please let me know if I missed something. Thank you.
Agreed. Psychiatric research is responsible for horrible suffering in sentient beings. I believe that my daughter’s best interests were sacrificed in locked wards to the professional goals of resident doctors and teaching professionals. Common sense-based objections to cruel treatment are gaslighted and suppressed. Very early, we found ourselves in “damage control” mode, hoping that we could help our daughter recover from toxic drugs, then ECT. Years ago, one of the local wards had an official notice posted on the wall that said, “You have certain rights that can be suspended for clinical reasons.” Right here under the U.S. Constitution…..We’ve all laughed over the forced swimming test for rats who “took performance- enhancing drugs.” You had a laugh on me. I admit that I overlooked that rather obvious possible explanation. I have to wonder whether my credibility now here at this venue is permanently damaged because I made reference to the forced swimming test…… I want to emphasize that I do understand that any study, no matter how well-thought, not to mention how ridiculous, should only be interpreted within the limits of the design of that study, and obvious flaws need to be pointed or “laughed” out.
My intent for including references to studies re: sex hormones is simply to make the point that they have been recognized as playing a complex role in holistic health and much research remains to be done.
I’m pleased to find more research on the topic as follows:
“Stress, sex hormones, inflammation, and major depressive disorder: Extending Social Signal Transduction Theory of Depression to account for sex differences in mood disorders”
George M. Slavich1 and Julia Sacher2
“Sex hormone levels in females of different ages suffering from depression”
Rong Lei, Yan Sun, Jiawen Liao, Yuan Yuan, Linlin Sun, Yugeng Liu, Xinyu Yang, Wenyou Ma & Zhenjian YuÂ
BMC Women’s Health volume 21, Article number: 215 (2021)
This study reports that progesterone was found to be higher after use of anti-depressants, but I think the discussion about that was lacking. For example, it is said that anti-depressants cause a numbing of one’s emotions. If that numbing has the effect to lower cortisol levels then I would assume that progesterone levels would be higher because cortisol is said to compete with progesterone. Given the adverse effects of anti-depressants, it would seem safer to use lower risk therapies to reduce anxiety and cortisol which would result in better production of progesterone.
Thank you, Patrick, for “nailing it”.
Boans, I can relate to the injury from false statements in medical records. It leaves you feeling “beaten up” and worse. It’s a matter of life and death.
One more thing: There is an evidence-base to include Amino Acid Therapy to improve mental status of the psychiatric patient, of course under guidance of a knowledgeable doctor. Additionally, for mania, the psychiatric literature reports that the use of leucine, isoleucine, and valine have resolved mania in some patients. The combination of these three particular amino acids (there are others) is said to compete with tyrosine which has an activating effect on the Central Nervous System.
Genetic testing is available which can provide some guidance of medications to avoid and others that may be kinder to the patient’s metabolic system. Genetic testing is not a panacea for all possible problems caused by toxic medications.
I tend to use the words “holistic” and “functional” interchangeably. Sorry for any confusion.
In addition to the importance to addressing the issue of diet and inflammation, the Functional Medicine approach would investigate and treat other underlying medical conditions that impact mental health. Any unresolved infections in the body fuel the inflammation that destabilizes mental health; this includes infections in the mouth such as from periodontal disease. The scholarly literature reports that admission to a psychiatric ward delays the diagnosis of treatable medical conditions. I have seen psychiatric patients become worse when suffering from a treatable infection and have informed hospital staff of the need to provide appropriate care.
Thank you, Hunttmila, for reaching out. I think it is possible for many patients to improve when their treatment includes help from functional medicine. I understand that when you don’t have guardianship and you don’t have your son’s cooperation then your son’s treatment team may not be motivated to change what they are doing. If your son’s treatment team is not responding to you then I would continue to gather information about the holistic approach to mental health treatment and to submit a letter to your son’s treatment team. Be prepared to follow-up. If the treatment team does not respond in a constructive way, be prepared to submit your concerns to an administrator and to the Office of Mental Health in your area, if necessary. I would encourage you to ask someone who has done this before to review your letter and make suggestions.
How the treatment team responds may depend on the policies governing mental health in your state. In our area, hospitals have a list of approved “adjunct” treatments that can be used. You could ask the doctor about what adjunct treatments are available.
You could inform yourself about anti-inflammatory supplements and the anti-inflammatory diet, and observe the quality of food being served to patients. Poor quality foods will have ingredients that raise inflammation factors that undermine mental stability.
Psychiatric patients tend to have genetic vulnerability to inflammatory states that impact the Central Nervous System. It has been my observation that the psych ward does not do enough to reduce inflammatory factors in the diet and they neglect to educate the patients on a healthy diet that reduces inflammation.
When we have no choice but to suffer the neglect and maltreatment of our children, we must bear down like a mother in labor and do the painful work to defend their right to humane care. I know this is not easy because I was not able to intervene effectively before our Catherine was injured by the psychiatric system. So we are left to do damage control and to try to create assets for them to have a chance to get better. By assets, I mean the improvement in care that does make a difference. May God Almighty bless your perseverance.
The compassionate responses here are much appreciated. Thank you, Harper, too. There is comfort in knowing that people like you provide informed and compassionate care.
Now the NFL is including a link at their website for ways to support mental health initiatives in education. What is that all about? What paradigm are they promoting? I doubt that all the football players know anything about it. WHO decides HOW the platform of professional football will be leveraged?
Hello, Richard, I can see the reasonableness for your suggestion for a pivot point in James article, however, I think that what followed in your suggestion would have been too much for most people to swallow. How about something more open-ended? On the other hand, I myself have trouble being straight-forward / direct. I think that in good faith it is important to stick to the topic that was agreed upon in advance. Dr. Healy knows that MIA is already a hornet’s nest of opposition to ECT. ….So how can we elicit from him his help and cooperation to address the contexts of harm from ECT?
From a search page: “Is OCD related to dopamine or serotonin?
In obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the success of pharmacological treatment with serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and atypical antipsychotic drugs suggests that both the central serotonergic and dopaminergic systems are involved in the pathophysiology of the disorder.Oct 30, 2005”
I value your comments about OCD. Forced medication produced something horrible in our child that possibly fit the description of OCD , but it was not about excessive hand washing or things like that. I believe that it rapidly produced Super-Sensitivity (SS) of the Dopamine Receptors because behaviors that had not previously characterized her then developed. She developed excessive climbing preoccupation. You can imagine my remorse to read of climbing behaviors in rats in psychiatric research. The following is not necessarily about SS but you will read that clomipramine caused increased motor activity that in rats presented as climbing in a cage. Our poor daughter, it is painful to recall what she was forced to become with toxic drugging. Next is an excerpt of the study: “Frequency of climbing behavior as a predictor of altered motor activity in rat forced swimming test”
October 2008Neuroscience Letters 445(2):170-3
DOI:10.1016/j.neulet.2008.09.001
SourcePubMed
Project: Ethological evaluation of the forced swimming test (nÂş: 2008.0319)
Deleted at poster’s request.
A big thank you to Dr. Healy for this interview re: polypharmacy and for the specific analogy: ” Polluting Our Internal Environments”, which I think needs to be emphasized continually in creative ways such as he has done. Our revered Myth-Busters have been describing the problem of drug toxicity so patiently and faithfully for years, yet possibly the technical discussions alone remain daunting for many lay people who need a handle on basic truths that activate their sense of self-sovereignty and survival instinct, and that help them “spread the word” among peers and among the next tier above them which is their local service providers.
I think that technical elucidation needs to be further translated into dialogue that the lay person can use. We need to be circumspect of the brainwashing and grooming that has taken place in public education and the community. Marketing “just-so” sound bites continually nudge stressed parents and youth in the direction of the allopathic psychiatric wards, and often under pressure from support-service providers that could result in Child Protective Referrals. We survivors and advocates are challenged to be heard. The delay to effect systemic change is beyond frustrating. Motivating others to see ourselves as part of the environment deserving of protection is wise and necessary.
Removed at request of poster.
Removed at request of poster.
[Duplicate comment.]
Note: I meant to say that ECT results in professional advancement for “hungry” doctors and also lack of accountability by them.
Speaking of ECT: The culture surrounding the use of ECT has displayed to our family so much secrecy, betrayal, defamation of patients and family, exploitation, ignorance of the patient and therefore of her best interests, trauma, damage; presumably disconnectivity of important brain voxels needed for self awareness and integration of thought-feeling-will-self control that results in loss of the holistic person and her functional social life; and lucrative reward for the hospitals and staff and lack of accountability and professional advancement for the doctors; that I don’t see how it can be represented as a legitimate therapy. I would LOVE for Dr. Healy to be on a review board for my daughter’s case to give a totally objective review of what happened to her, if and only if we could both have total access to the sealed records and the doctors’ notes. Her case would be a bio-social autopsy of a hijacked kid who never had a chance among”hungry” (as John Grisham uses the word) and professionally ambitious so-called doctors et.al. with conflicts of interest.
A big thank you to Dr. Healy for this interview re: The Perils of Polypharmacy and for the specific analogy:” Polluting Our Internal Environment”, which I think needs to be relayed many times around the globe. Our revered Myth-Busters have been describing this problem so patiently for years, but in technical language that remains daunting for many lay people who need of a handle on basic truths about health in order to avoid deception by the exploitative interests, and to “spread the word”. We need to be mindful of the brainwashing and grooming that has taken place in public education and the community, the “just-so” sound bites, that continually nudge stressed parents and youth to the allopathic psychiatric wards, and often under pressure from support-service providers that could result in a Child Protective Referral.
There has developed over the past twenty years or more a great body of literature re: the effect of sex hormones to reduce the vulnerability to inflammation of the Central Nervous System. The conversions of sex hormones are complex and I think not completely understood, but their importance for health of Central Nervous System is substantiated. In addition to the documentation re: inflammation, I have seen the change of mental status to psychotic mania in a person afflicted with inflammatory issues. I also have seen a sudden improvement in mental status in a female patient when progesterone was restored. Dr. Christine Marx of Duke University has also conducted “proof of concept” research on the action of a metabolite of progesterone to improve symptoms and mental status of patients with BPD and schizophrenia. Dr. Donald Stein, neuroscientist and Professor Emeritus of Emergency Medicine at Emory University et.al. have observed the effect of progesterone to reduce inflammation of the Central Nervous System. Neuroscience and endocrinology have amassed a huge amount of evidence on the importance of the sex hormones for mental health. It angers me that the public is so poorly informed on the importance of foundational health concepts; is that also the fault of capitalism?
I do appreciate your warnings and information. Thank you.
Yes, Steve, I totally agree with you about the bullshit. I guess I have a nagging, naive belief that it is possible to actually find a way to correct the big bullshit lie with an information campaign having the force of a tsunami. Why NOT?
I have friends whose son suffers terribly from medication-induced OCD. I was glad to see reference to Donepezil and nicotine patches; maybe those could be helpful.
How does psychiatry justify the following claim? ” Antidepressants of the tricyclic and monoamine oxidase inhibitor classes can induce mania in patients with pre-existing bipolar affective disorder.” (taken from an online search) How would you refute that claim? Are there any comparisons from the medical specialties that expose the faulting reasoning? Is the claim simply a deception that exploits the general ignorance of the toxicology and physiological changes that are possible among users who are genetically different in their metabolic processes? Has anyone provided laboratory evidence of what is really happening?
Deleted at request of poster.
Removed at request of poster.
Late in the saga, the state hospital doctor told us that the type of gradual tapering we were requesting for our daughter would not be approved. What did we do next? That’s a good question; I don’t remember, but we had been generally discouraged and feeling obstructed by the system for years. It looks as if we lacked confidence, faith, hope… and love? Is it pure love that will not accept the negativity that must be the predisposition for failure? …Better information all along the way would have helped. Freedom of information is lacking in allopathic psychiatry.
Thank you very much for this crucially important interview with Dr. Healy. Quick question: Does anyone know the status of the freedom of compounding pharmacies to continue to do business in different states and the efforts to thwart them?
The best interests of patients who have been damaged by allopathic psychiatry and who benefit from evidence-based-natural supplements are at risk. What arrangement can be introduced to improve this serious situation? Some type of business cooperative?
Maybe we should just stick to factual documentation and name names instead of using labels that create misunderstanding about who is doing what. It seems that every system that runs some portion of our life employs people from diverse political persuasions. These systems create collateral damage and people are complicit because they want to keep their jobs and to survive.
A lot of labeling going on here is troubling. Time to focus on something that I can control. Some degree of control over one’s life is good for everyone. So sad that big systems are crushing vulnerable individuals whose identities are mostly unknown and leaving people traumatized or dead.
It just occurred to me that the psychiatric end of Pharma has a lot to do with the 1%. Recently, We have seen Pharma shifting to new and provocative products, perhaps because the truth about psych meds is spreading virulently.
Admission to a psychiatric ward is reported to delay diagnosis of treatable medical conditions.
The mute roommate of my daughter who stepped close to my face and opened her mouth for me to see her black teeth and putrid green periodontal disease is a memory that raises the question as to how long it took for her to get the antibiotics and periodontal care that would have been prerequisite for mental health. I did report that condition to the nurse who walked into the room.
May I digress and suggest some things that would be far better than the drugs? Physically induced inflammation plus stress-induced inflammation (whatever source of inflammation) equals onset of hypomania which usually escalates, in our lived experience. Our understanding is that lithium does have anti-inflammatory properties. However, I have not seen any research that evaluates a holistic and anti-inflammatory response to mania, using lab tests if necessary and the best definition of Differential Diagnosis. We have seen that lithium by itself is rarely used to disrupt mania because it takes too long, i.e, several weeks. To hasten stabilization, the trial and error use of antipsychotic is used and if you are one of The Unlucky Ones then you can be left in a state of akathisia for weeks while the doctor “proves” the drug to see if it is therapeutic at the highest level; this sounds like and looked like covert and cruel research to me. This orchestrated failure of trials of one or more antipsychotics may be followed by coercion for ECT. ]Therefore, to reduce harm, why not be kind and try something natural other than chancy and torturous antipsychotic drug trials and ECT? ] In 2003 and again more recently a study reported that a solution of amino acids valine, isoleucine and leucine resolved mania, but that the beverage had an unpleasant taste, so why not use capsules? Why not use kindness, nutritious food, anti-inflammatory therapies , amino acids and whatever natural or safer things are indicated by a Differential Investigation and Diagnosis? Our culture has vast wealth for whatever PLEASES us. When we take pleasure in kindness it will be more lucrative than Disney.
Perhaps, I was unclear. I think that first responders need the type of information that you detailed in order to understand better what is happening to patients.
A well-thought, learner-friendly tool. You have anticipated the readers’ need for frames of reference. This would be a great seminar for first responders, anyone who is interested in people who take psychiatric medications, med-students doing rotations, parents, everybody.
When one of my daughters was not so long ago in a mania, following stress and onset of an inflammatory condition, the police officers were calm, thoughtful and kind as they sought connection with her frame of mind. She chose to go with them cheerfully and calmly to the psych ward. As the gathering of officers left the scene, I responded to a question about medication compliance with my recently gained information that a person in the throes of mania will metabolize their lithium faster and the level will fall. The officer expressed thoughtful appreciation for that info re: lithium; my point being that I have found the police officers to be compassionate and wanting to learn more about the details of medication and the needs of patients. I have seen that when the first responders are given knowledge of the needs of patients , they respond well and do their best. I would like for your keen insights to be made available to first responders in our area….BTW, I would also like to lift your summary paragraph and use it to introduce your article when I repost it.
A quick scan tells me to save this article to read again. I gotta rush. THANK YOU for your interest in this topic.
Ok, I just need to think more about making transitions in conversation to the real issue in a positive way, which is what we’ve been doing. That’s the necessary work.
People who want to be humble and sympathetic to us will refer to the grief that we must be feeling. I wonder why they only talk about grief. I wonder if they presume that we are just “hung up” and can’t get over our daughter’s death. I don’t want to discuss grief with them. I want to generate interest in the injustice that directed cruel treatment of our daughter.
Thank you for your attention to this topic. I offer my thoughts about “GRIEF’ free of influence from experts on the topic. The pathologization of grief is a strategic tool to bury the sins of oppressors and to facilitate the rewriting of history and tryanny.
It would be fine to live someplace where pumpkin bins could be searched every day for hours until the dopamine receptors or whatever receptor is involved in OCD cools down, if that is even possible. But, real life does not afford those ideal situations.
Medication-induced OCD can be horrible and totally mess up a once hopeful life. The psychiatrist wanted to quibble about whether a family history of OCD exists; that is an effort to blame the patient for the OCD. It is VERY clear when exposure to anti-psychotics causes bizarre behavior in your child. After hospital discharge, a trip to the pumpkin farm became a very prolonged search of the pumpkin bin. EVERY pumpkin had to be sought, handled, picked up, over and over again. This is a bitter sweet memory, to recall how our delightful daughter became distorted to this degree, during mistreatment with forced medication until all hope for a normal life was ruined. Back in 2017, around the time of a foolish and forced hospitalization, she said that she just wanted to be normal. That dream was smashed by forced medication with anti-psychotics.
L. Hansen, thank you for telling your story. I’m hoping for the best for you. I believe that your words will save others. I hope that you will find all the insights, and hope, and connections to keep going. It’s wonderful that you are standing on these hardships to speak life-saving words to others. You are an encouragement. You are making a difference. Thank You.
I’m so sorry for your loss. You are in my heart. May Julian rest in peace. May this story save others.
Alishia, Your story is beautifully and powerfully written. It resonated so much with me. I will encourage others to read it. You have described so well what we and our loved ones need to thrive.
Adverse effects of medication become the psychiatric patient’s identity and the misguided excuse to over-medicate them. Hospital staff assumed that our older daughter was having a severe mania after they over-dosed her with Haldol and she almost died from Neuroleptic Malignancy Syndrome (NMS). Week-end, nursing staff did not recognize the signal of imminent onset of NMS which is labeled in early psychiatric literature as Excited Delirium, but my husband did recognize it. Her father had searched the literature for an explanation for why she was having the worst reaction to medication that he had ever seen. In that state of Haldol-induced Excited Delirium, her organs had begun to fail and breakdown and her autonomic control of bladder and bowel then failed , along with a rise in temperature which caused her to remove clothing. The lab counts later confirmed the NMS event despite that she hadn’t yet developed rigid limbs when the emergency was addressed. When I walked into the aftermath, she was lying naked and unable to talk and could only utter surreal, high pitched, metallic, chirpy-chattering sounds. A search of the literature suggested to me that anaphylactic shock had swollen her tissues so rigidly that her vocal chords were capable of metallic sounds. She shoved her thumb into her throat, presumably to make space for air or to assess her own condition. She was angry, of course, and tossed water from her paper cup and gave me the middle finger, which she had never done before. Mom and Dad had not been able to protect her from the “Power-Take-Off” that pulled her in and chemically battered her because there was no “Safety Switch” to turn off the impersonal psychiatric machine.
I’m sure many here would like to hear your story, Bombria.
We would love to hear your veteran’s testimony, I’m sure. Amy Biancolli is here to help.
Thank you for the excellent testimony. I posted it at my place of worship. I will send it to a local radio station. I also began to read your content-rich article from 2011 regarding toxic encephalopathy. That article alone is enough evidence to justify wide-ranging changes in the societal response to mental health challenges. Yet here we are in 2023 doing OUR due diligence to tell truth again, to be continued as long as necessary. Our family also has still more true stories to be written dating back to 2006 that need to be told. I want to push the stories beyond this wonderful venue to reach more minds.
This is a very helpful story, unfortunately at your loved one’s and family’s expense. My intent is to share this with others ASAP, along with your other stories. Mad In America should be required reading.
I’m so fortunate to be the beneficiary of the talents and service of Miranda Spencer and now Amy Biancolli, along with all the other dedicated, servant-leaders with Robert Whitaker here at Mad In America and all contributors, professionals and lay people alike. I am humbled and grateful.
We definitely share huge swaths of agreement.
As for my family’s lived experience, I speak from my ” field observations” and medical testing info that support my position that some of us are more vulnerable than others to inflammatory agents which negatively impact our mental health, whether those inflammatory agents are the toxic psychiatric drugs or the other crap that is in our environment. At MIA, I only know of one professional who offered her insights on the matter of inflammation’s impact on mental health and she is Dr. Jill L. Littrell. I will forever be grateful to Dr. Littrell for her compassion and integrity to offer her knowledge for our benefit.
Your artwork is really great. Thank you!
Aurora, I hope you don’t mind that I used the word delightful to describe your song that conveys lonely, sadness, yearning. Your song IS so sweet and it reminded me of listening to our own Catherine play her ukelele and sing. I think she would have really liked you.
Delightful song, Aurora! Your voice is so sweet; I closed my eyes to savor your gift. Your insights are so mature and loving. Tremendous message and very convicting.
Oh, on second thought, I could just search for a reference myself. Sorry to bother you.
Please provide the references for these valuable points you made. I disseminate important info such as this to friends, associates, and in group newsletters and most of those people would want to know the source of the info. Many people will not suddenly drop want they are doing and wade through books about psychiatry, so being able to give them quick facts with a reference is very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Someone Else, for that info.
Oh, you are a balm. Thank you for your beautiful encouragement.
That’s right. Exactl. There will never be peer-reviewed articles and there shouldn’t be the expectation that they are necessary to defend our nature as individuals.
I’m still stymied why I’m getting messages that sound as though the reader doesn’t think that I “get it”. So, I have to give whomever the benefit of the doubt that I did not explain the situation adequately. The situation had to do with us trying to solicit some compassion from a psychiatrist to honor Best Practices of medication management, including the expertise of Dr. Guy Chouinard, and to show some concern about avoiding the development of Super-Sensitivity Psychosis and other important matters that sorely afflicted our precious daughter. I only share here to add our experience to the rest who refuse to remain silent.
I regret that I wrote my posts in haste. It is difficult to remain silent sometimes, not knowing how long it will take for me to find the exact language that I need.
I think we would agree that what we find ourselves doing in order to be heard becomes surreal and shouldn’t have to be that way, and is certainly not fail-safe. Well said.
Daiphanous Weeping, Beautifully said, I agree!
Our daughter was long past enjoying the path of life here. She was on a path toward death. Please don’t rub it in.
Registeredforthissite: Thank you for reading my post. Was your response intended to criticize our use of a study to bring an important matter to the attention of the attending psychiatrist? Or were you being rhetorical and satirizing that advocates shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to have concerns validated?
Outside of psychiatry, patients frequently present articles to their personal care physicians during treatment discussions. That happens in the best of situations when the doctor actually is interested and free to do what is in your best interests. However, in psychiatry, as you already know , it is too commonly a losing battle to be heard and helped by a psychiatrist.
As parents we have witnessed the slow torture of our daughter over years, and that is also torture for us. When the psychiatrist wasted our child’s shrinking opportunity to taper meds to spare her from ruin, we did what we could to be heard.
As for the neediest: Their greatest need may be the freedom not to be forced into social constructs that don’t fit them, free not to take into their bodies toxic substances, free to learn their own way, free to holistically explore the world and make their own path in it.
Among the events involving inflammatory conditions that have preceded a loved-one’s psychiatric set-back was the development of hypo-motility of the gastro-intestinal tract with serious entero-fissure that has become common with the use of clozapine. This required an antibiotic, as I recall. A medical advisory now dictates that all clozapine patients be closely monitored for this complication and be given preventive supplements to keep the G.I. system moving. During this extended period of forced clozapine use, the patient developed debilitating rheumatoid inflammation featuring swelling and painful joints of her hands, wrists, ankles, feet. Within this context of toxic debilitation and inflammation, said patient developed a mania that led to a psychiatric hospitalization out of town. During my advocacy for her, I discovered in plain sight in her apartment an overdue lab requisition for a screen for rheumatoid factors. That was exactly what I needed to advocate for her inflammatory conditions to be addressed so that she could begin to resolve her mania in hospital. I delivered the lab requisition with a message to the ward. A week later, I met with the attending physician and presented a list of studies that validated the role of inflammation in the development of psychiatric systems. I endured a haughty, mocking, and dismissive attitude from the attending physician, who had still not seen the rheumatology lab requisition and my message that I had delivered the week before. I stood my ground. He seemed eager to badger my concerns. Perhaps he attacked my certainty because of his loyalty to the profession to neutralize threats of liability. Fortunately, there was another doctor present to witness our exchange; he remained silent. Mysteriously, our daughter began to improve after that. Was it simply a matter of time after the removal of the toxic and inflammatory clozapine for the mania to resolve? Or, did the effect of an anti-inflammatory supplement potentiate the resolution of her mania?
As for therapeutic elements, the patient had become distraught when a male patient stalked her and actually entered her room while she was in the shower. This was very frightening for her, especially because she had been given thorazine that made her joints so stiff that she couldn’t raise her arms to change clothes , much less to defend herself. The stalker was removed.
Could it be trauma that makes this next recollection to be somewhat uncertain? The hospitalization described above occurred while my second and now deceased daughter was still in her notorious hospitalization of 2017, or it was very close in time to it.
Among the events of inflammatory conditions preceding psychiatric set-back that have occurred in one daughter was the development of the now validated hypo-motility of the gastro-intestinal tract with serious entero-fissure that occurs with the use of clozapine. This required an antibiotic, as I recall. A medical advisory now dictates that all clozapine patients be closely monitored for this complication and be given preventive supplements to keep the G.I. system moving. During this extended period of forced clozapine use, said daughter also developed debilitating rheumatoid inflammation featuring swelling and painful joints of her hands, wrists, ankles, feet. Within this context of toxic debilitation and inflammation, said daughter developed a mania that resulted in a psychiatric hospitalization out of town. During my advocacy for her, I discovered in plain sight in my daughter’s apartment an overdue lab requisition for a screen for rheumatoid factors. That was exactly what I needed to advocate for her inflammatory conditions to be addressed so that she could begin to resolve her mania in hospital. I delivered the lab requisition with a message to the ward. A week later, I met with the attending physician and presented a list of studies that validated the role of inflammation in the development of psychiatric systems. I endured a haughty, mocking, and dismissive attitude from the attending physician, who had still not seen the lab req and message that I had delivered to the nurses’ desk a week earlier. I stood my ground. I suspect that it was his fun to torment me and that he already knew what I was talking about. Perhaps he attacked my certainty because of his loyalty to the profession to neutralize threats of liability. Fortunately, there was another doctor present to witness our exchange; he remained silent. Mysteriously, our daughter began to improve after that. Was it simply a matter of time after the removal of the toxic and inflammatory clozapine or some additional anti-inflammatory supplement that potentiated the resolution of her mania?
I do admire Dr. Gotzsche’s work and his chutz·pah. I won’t pretend to have the ability to critique The Critical Psychiatry Textbook. As usual, I do have questions and also the conviction that my family’s lived experience has afforded valuable and meaningful observations, so I value that here at M.I.A. I can actually log a question and hopefully Dr. Gotzsche will see it.
A really big question that I have is, “Don’t we have a dilemma as to how to determine what would be a sufficient proof of any claims about how the brain does or does not work? It seems that Randomized Control Trials are only of limited value and that holding patients hostage to RCTs or to the luck of a peer reviewed article is abusive and wrong. I recall that my deceased daughter’s attending physician said that if we wanted to bring in a document to discuss with her, she would only discuss peer reviewed papers with us in treatment team meetings. But on the other hand, it would seem that we need to be fair about not dismissing the real possibilities that important causal relationships exist within individual patients , and that we will never be able to control for the complexity of the brain in order to establish their existence. It would seem that we can sin against the patients’ best interests no matter what camp we are in. ..I have more questions, but now I must pull myself away for a family matter.
I also want to discuss the issue of inflammation. I refer to inflammation, but perhaps the more accurate term is the activity of the cytokines of the immune system, which result in the symptoms of inflammation. I have observed on multiple occasions that the presence of infections which I have referred to as inflammatory conditions have triggered psychotic manias or hypomanias in both of two daughters. I have made multiple observations of these kinds of events and have wondered that perhaps over time there are multiple opportunities to disrupt or resolve the manic or psychotic process. With all the complexity of interconnections, perhaps that also allows for multiple points of intervention to resolve the manic process, in the sense that there are perhaps many micro-pillars for stability. The emotions are important, and the manic process itself appears to be a volatile energy. My observations of these different infections , inflammatory conditions, and their resolution , are consistent with what the literature says about the importance of “inflammation” and infections perturbing the HPA axis , and also that antibiotics can perturb the HPA axis. I’ve seen it “all” . I also think that when patients do improve in hospital it is probably due more to the exended period of better nutrition, the resolution of infections, the eventual benefit of restored sleep, and possibly therapeutic connections, etc. I think the more resilient patients may get better despite the psychosis drugs, so I think there is sometimes fraud to claim that the psyhosis drugs helped the patient. The more sensitive and less resilient patients are the ones who are then labeled Treatment Resistant and they are then delivered to ECT. So, the neediest are treated the worst. Putting the patients through failed, toxic, drug trials, protects the hospital from liability for damage from ECT, don’t you think? It’s impossible to prove what specifically caused the ruin of the patient. What a hell hole for anyone’s child.
I think I am not a material-secularist-reductionist re: the activity of mind, emotions, and spirituality; but I do believe that the physical matter of our neuroendocrine system is subject to genetically encoded differences that make some of us more fit for survival than others, some more resilient to inflammatory injury, altered neuronal signalling, cell death and apoptosis. The literature about this seems reasonable to me and is exactly what I would expect to read based on what I’ve seen, despite that so much of what afflicted my daughter was kept shrouded in mystery by the doctors who withheld information from us and seemed to be waiting patiently for our naive efforts to advocate for our daughter to fail and for their neutralization of our agency as guardians to be completed.
There is a spectrum of opinions here. No one here is calling for promotion of ECT. One ugly reality in the wake of neuroleptic-induced debilitation is the occurrence of catatonia which can be lethal. One male in his mid-sixites, who had been trapped in the system for most of his life, wasn’t lucky enough to be able to escape the psych oppression as the survivors here have done. (Chaya Grossberg’s article on Ableism comes to mind here.) He began to waste away in catatonic state, until he was given ECT, afterwhich he started eating again and made a comeback well enough to do some public speaking, and participate in group events with family and friends during his outings away from the group residence. I still grieve to think how much better his life could have been if he had been given access to better care. If you could make psychiatry go away right now, you would be flushing away people such as him. That would be eugenic.
This cruel debilitation will be repeated upon those who are powerless to escape unless we expose the fraud, the medical neglect, the exploitation, and educate the public on what CAN BE DONE DIFFERENTLY RIGHT NOW. WHEN patients are treated better, many of them will be able to find the EXIT.
That’s WHY we need to welcome help from whomever, even Dr. Healy, to expose the wrongs and abuses committed with psychiatric interventions. Psychiatry doesn’t need Dr. David Healy to promote ECT; the momentum of the oppressor is sufficient.
Well, not the only way, but a very important first step.
Hello, Richard, and Others: I just had two contradictory Ah-HAH moments. First thought: Dr. Healy’s article has potential to shorten the line of candidates for the ECT train. When Patients become terribly screwed up from the polypharmacy then ECT may be coerced upon them. The trials of toxic meds seem to serve as a necessary staging process to find those candidates for ECT research. Avoiding the toxic drugs and polypharmacy will help to halt the ECT train, WHEN and IF the patients are offered Functional-Holistic therapies such as those that resolve inflammatory conditions that do trigger mania or psychosis!
Now for the Second and Contradictory Thought: To be fair toward Richard’s concerns, I met a psychiatrist who thinks ECT should be a First Line Treatment! ! So what IF Fans of ECT want the system to skip the toxic meds and offer ECT as First Line Treatment so that they can have “cleaner” research subjects? THAT WOULD BE HORRIBLE and it would be committing the great sin of neglecting the need for medical attention to resolve infections or other sources of inflammation. Treating inflammatory medical conditions that fuel symptoms of mental illness should be the First Line of Treatment! ! ! This is another reason for me to advocate everywhere for a Functional-Holistic paradigm of mental health care. That is the only way to curtail human rights abuses in mental health, I believe.
Lisa, thank you for your powerful story. I hope and pray for continued healing for you and Lori and everyone who has been pulled through the psychiatric mill.
Thank you for sharing your seriously important story. I am going to find ways to share it on my side of the map and with some contacts on your side. There are many people of influence who just don’t seem to know enough about this despicable abuse going on all around us. I hope and pray that you have or will have access to therapeutic and beautiful moments to soothe and encourage your spirit. I hope that San Diego is a good place for you to be. I could check with a couple contacts out there for more possible resources, if you would like that.
Thank you so much James Hall for the validation and your even-handed ways. I’m really glad that you are familiar with VGCC. I could learn a lot about that topic from your reference group. One thing that comes to mind, is that the totality of truth does not take sides, but how we respond to it is the “pivot point”.
Thank you, Steve. That is important detail that deserves to become a big item in a strong platform of what needs to change. Do you have favorite references for this info? Please write more about the neglected sub-groups and how studies fail the needs of kids. We need to use humane and natural ways to help the subgroups and not give them over to pharma control. If kids are in need, the natural approaches should be the first line of treatment. We need to stop labeling kids and subjecting them to guild interests and big pharma.
Boans, Yes, question the science. And Follow what Big Pharma is doing which is what I thought MIA has been doing. I apologize for not being clear. I was contrasting two points: 1) that Big Pharma has been exploiting discoveries in neuro-endocrinology with development and sale of drugs, and 2) that there is an obvious, safer, and immediate way to benefit patients with a different application of the same, recent discoveries. I referred to the advancing knowledge re: mechanics of Voltage Gated Calcium Channels (VGCC), now referred to as “calcionics” , in the production of inflammation that is understood to kindle psychiatric symptoms. The more direct way of creating public benefit with the knowledge of “calcionics” does not require drug development. Rather, education with an emphasis on the particulars of the anti-inflammatory lifestyle in childhood and adolescence, pediatrics, and public policy would lower rates of First Episode Psychosis and admission to psych wards. Validating the action of VGCC in the mechanics of kindling of inflammation , as a Proof of Concept, would be foundational to acceptance of curriculum for children in elementary and secondary schools re: the anti-inflammatory lifestyle. Important survival info is being hoarded by Pharma and universities that needs to be instilled at an early age for children’s best interests. Alas, the marriage of psychiatry with Big Pharma, teaching hospitals, state hospitals and out-patient support services is a huge Economic Engine that exploits the vulnerable, unsuspecting, inflamed patient.
My comment is not intended to promote ECT research, but to raise awareness of inflammation’s impact on holistic health, and if it can be a starting point for conversation with Dr. Healy, why not? We are all adults and need not become inflamed over it.
Steve McCrea: We all know that Big Pharma is following science to make money. But the public is not very well advised of how the new knowledge could benefit us in more natural and non-pharma ways. Question: What percent of the advances in neuro-endocrinology have been funded by pharma and what percent by the government? Is the knowledge of inflammation of the Central Nervous System (CNS) hoarded by universities, by big pharma, and by the government? For example, the Voltage Gated Calcium Channels, which include fragile variants that are vulnerable to inflammation , have been observed to play a role in immunology as well as mental health. They are expressed the most in the heart, then the brain, and to lesser extent in other organs. Was the medical community advised to apply this information in the clinical setting to coach patients and the public in the anti-inflammatory lifestyle? This important information should be taught in the secondary schools; That would reduce psych ED emergencies. Whether we agree with claims about genetics or not, psychiatrists have been advised about variant genes believed to control the development of fragile Voltage Gated Calcium Channels VGCC as a risk factor for psychiatric illness, but have they been trained to understand that VGCC risk factor as linked to inflammation and therefore as an indication and opportunity to coach patients in the anti-inflammatory life style? We could ask Dr. Healy what he has to say about the VGCC and whether he is familiar with any ECT research that acknowledges the mechanism of the VGCC. Other specialties have indeed found application for the Voltage Gated Calcium Channels, such as in cardiology and opthalmology pulmonology, etc. While the fastest and most natural application of this knowledge has been denied disclosure to “lowly” psychiatric patients, the medical specialties have been rewarded to find profitable application for this knowledge. Immunologists who were studying viruses were indeed thinking about the mechanics of voltage gated calcium channels and they published a study on December 30, 2019, shortly before the revelation of the covid 19 outbreak :
Cells
. 2019 Dec 30;9(1):94.
doi: 10.3390/cells9010094.
Host Calcium Channels and Pumps in Viral Infections
Xingjuan Chen 1 2 , Ruiyuan Cao 2 , Wu Zhong 2
Affiliations
PMID: 31905994 PMCID: PMC7016755 DOI: 10.3390/cells9010094
Free PMC article
Abstract
Ca2+ is essential for virus entry, viral gene replication, virion maturation, and release. The alteration of host cells Ca2+ homeostasis is one of the strategies that viruses use to modulate host cells signal transduction mechanisms in their favor. Host calcium-permeable channels and pumps (including voltage-gated calcium channels, store-operated channels, receptor-operated channels, transient receptor potential ion channels, and Ca2+-ATPase) mediate Ca2+ across the plasma membrane or subcellular organelles, modulating intracellular free Ca2+. Therefore, these Ca2+ channels or pumps present important aspects of viral pathogenesis and virus-host interaction. It has been reported that viruses hijack host calcium channels or pumps, disturbing the cellular homeostatic balance of Ca2+. Such a disturbance benefits virus lifecycles while inducing host cells’ morbidity. Evidence has emerged that pharmacologically targeting the calcium channel or calcium release from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) can obstruct virus lifecycles. Impeding virus-induced abnormal intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis is becoming a useful strategy in the development of potent antiviral drugs. In this present review, the recent identified cellular calcium channels and pumps as targets for virus attack are emphasized.
Keywords: antiviral; calcium channels; calcium pumps; virus; virus–host interaction.
By experiential truth, I simply mean observing first hand or up close something significantly undesirable and most likely caused by toxic medications or ECT. The findings/proclamations of psychiatric research alone must not be allowed to dominate the validation of development of psychiatric harm. The right to validate psychiatric harm needs to be restored to the victims. I personally need a discussion on the inadequacy and the impossibility of a validation of harm process that solely depends on an expert witness who must be a doctor. How do we work around this impossible legal standard? Doctors and lawyers are so afraid of having their licenses taken away or losing business or being fired that they won’t agree to be expert witness. Am I wrong on that?
Yes, the suffering is horrible.
These same voltage gated calcium channels are considered to be the most common risk factors for psychiatric symptoms. Well, well, well. So science has discovered that inflammation causes psychiatric problems. Think on that and extrapolate how that affects public policy. Follow the science.
I found a research article that I perceived to be an oblique admission of the harm caused by ECT. The thrust of the article was that ECT “works” by causing inflammation, but that more research needs to be done to learn how to better control the inflammation ! !. How horrifying that any of us should be exploited for research, and how grandiose and misguided under the lucrative reward system for the teaching hospitals and researchers! Some of us have variant gated calcium channels that make our cells more vulnerable to cell death in context of the inflammation. Are we the targets of eugenics?
An older friend who had multiple ECT long ago said that the euphoria was short lived and then she was depressed again. The drugs and the ECT have left her a fragile person.
Thank you, rasselas.redux for the info and your time.
LivingPast27, thank you for sharing your experience of the relationship between Paxil, alcohol and increased risk for depression. I’m glad you are here to talk about it.
James, If I have missed a point here, please point it out. Also, A rat swimming test is not the basis of any position that I take, but I’m happy to have given some of you a good laugh. Regarding the taking of positions on “other” hot topics, EVERY-one has vested interests.
James Hall, I do agree with your concerns about quickness to find fault with others who think differently on points that usually have not been questioned openly among MIA. However, the lived experience of “long-timers” at MIA could not possibly represent ALL lived experience of existing survivors. I came to both NAMI and MIA and found that at both places virtually NO one was disclosing important aspects of their lived experience that overlapped with our lived experience. We were a new variation of “unique”. Therefore, when the “party line” does not match up with our experience, I’m going with our experience and with the science that seems relevant to that. Not only does the limited focus of psychiatric research fall terribly short to reveal truth, but the group’s totality of lived experience is inadequate to judge the truth that is experienced by everyone.
I’m sure that the behaviors that I have seen and call OCD do not match some others’ understanding of OCD. If there is a better term to use for what I’ve seen, I’m certainly willing to receive it. There is no question, however, that our wonderful daughter became a prisoner of impulses that never appeared until after she was forced to take neuroleptic drugs.
Dr. Sherman, thank you for your contribution here at MIA. I intend to read your work and give it consideration. I have been convinced for some time now that sex based differences need to be acknowledged in the advocacy for personalized and humane care. Your words are addressing a felt need. Thank you for your example of purpose and productivity during your golden years. I am adding your name to my list of doctors whose work seems very relevant to the best interests of women, such as: Dr. Jill L. Littrell re: inflammation of the Central Nervous System (CNS), Dr. Christine Marx re: the metabolites of progesterone , and Dr. Donald Stein of Emory University re: the synergistic effect of “Hormone Vitamin D3” and progesterone to reduce inflammation of the CNS. Giving patients authentic Differential Diagnosis and applying your insights and other evidence-based alternatives would give many patients hope.
On a different note, I also am intrigued by the report that select “branched chain amino acids(Leucine, Isoleucine, Valine)” have been observed to resolve mania in context of “tyrosine depletion”. I wonder how that fits with the seasonal cycles of neanderthal adaptation. I’ve wondered how the extreme conditions of the mountains and valleys of european winters may have driven genetic adaptation over the ages and if what seems manic or depressive today is really our “gene-skill set” experiencing a mismatch with modern environments. Climbing mountain slopes, bearing heavy loads, hard labor etc. requires energy and strength that drives the hormonal conversions that occur in context of stress, yes? It’s interesting that when the female is greatly stressed , her cortisol levels rise and the progesterone that is needed for gestating children drops. I think that conception during the growing season would provide the fetus with a good nutritional start, and the mother could rest and live off stored food during the winter hibernation season, to give birth in spring in time to eat the sprouting greens needed for lactation. In these kinds of conditions, the specialization of male and female roles seem to have been necessary in order to make successful gestation possible.
Here’s the article: https://rhochistj.org/RhoChiPost/antipsychotic-induced-obsessive-compulsive-disorder/
Thank you so much for responding. When we were on the defense trying to accomplish damage control after our daughter’s rights were violated and our rights to advocate for her and protect her from forced clozapine and ECT were violated, having any discussion with the Treatment Team that would acknowledge the damage from the clozapine, etc. was valuable, regardless of the exact terms used. The last doctor to hold our daughter captive did not deny that clozapine could cause or worsen OCD, rather, she tried to divert focus to a family history, which proves nothing against our claim. Shortly after this time, I was encouraged to see that a local student pharmacy organization published a review of the topic that acknowledged the action of clozapine as a possible cause of OCD. That was a step in the right direction in terms of raising awareness and creating documentation that advocates could use.
This is an excerpt from the ncbi article cited above: “Although progesterone is primarily associated with the reproductive system, it also plays a functional role in the neuroendocrine axis. Progesterone may demonstrate neuroprotective factors in both the central as well as the peripheral nervous system, affecting myelination processes and regulation of astroglial plasticity. Additionally, progesterone functions to aid neuron survival in the setting of neurodegenerative diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. These effects are due to the expression of progesterone receptors located throughout the nervous system.[12]”
AND, I could go on and on posting articles on what I call the “thrive and maintenance role of the sex hormones”
 Â
Here is more basic knowledge that the public deserves to know:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK558960/
Physiology, Progesterone
Jessie K. Cable; Michael H. Grider.
Author Information
Authors
Jessie K. Cable1; Michael H. Grider2.
Affiliations
1 Kansas City University of Medicine
2 High Point University
Last Update: May 8, 2022.
Adolescents are forced to attend school in crowded and stressful public school settings where they are subjected to lots of challenges. Many feel threatened and insecure and have to muster a facade of confidence or unflappability. Many of these kids are also suffering from systemic inflammation-triggered depression which could be traced to a list of environmental insults in combination with hormonal fluctuations. Additionally, in the public schools, the comfort that is available in the practice of religion is frowned upon. The popular culture has grown increasingly nihilistic. In this toxic and discomforting environment, the social-emotional stability of children is challenged. In this state of stress, many children yearn for escape and turn to high risk behaviors. Before children have “mastered” the skill of critical analysis, logical thinking, and before they have learned survival skills and the holistic- anti-inflammatory style of living, they are thrown into the chaos described above. There is so much wrong in the environment that is forced upon children in the name of public education.
I don’t know the intended definition of Clinician Bias, but I would think that those clinicians who have a broad knowledge base, who have training in a functional-holistic approach to health, and who are familiar with the concept of Translational Lag in the incorporation of advances in neuroendocrinology into clinical practice, and who have witnessed exploitation of patients for corporate research interests , would probably have concerns about how to respond to the minor child who expresses gender dysphoria.
Who among the respondents here are neuroscientists or pharmacologists and have expertise in the design of research in neuro-endocrinology? Not me, that’s for sure. Nevertheless, as an imperfect sentient being with a passion for reading to better understand what has happened to my children, I will continue to read the topics relevant to their suffering within the allopathic psychiatric system. Medication-induced, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is definitely a thing. I will post more about it. Please let me know if I missed something. Thank you.
Agreed. Psychiatric research is responsible for horrible suffering in sentient beings. I believe that my daughter’s best interests were sacrificed in locked wards to the professional goals of resident doctors and teaching professionals. Common sense-based objections to cruel treatment are gaslighted and suppressed. Very early, we found ourselves in “damage control” mode, hoping that we could help our daughter recover from toxic drugs, then ECT. Years ago, one of the local wards had an official notice posted on the wall that said, “You have certain rights that can be suspended for clinical reasons.” Right here under the U.S. Constitution…..We’ve all laughed over the forced swimming test for rats who “took performance- enhancing drugs.” You had a laugh on me. I admit that I overlooked that rather obvious possible explanation. I have to wonder whether my credibility now here at this venue is permanently damaged because I made reference to the forced swimming test…… I want to emphasize that I do understand that any study, no matter how well-thought, not to mention how ridiculous, should only be interpreted within the limits of the design of that study, and obvious flaws need to be pointed or “laughed” out.
My intent for including references to studies re: sex hormones is simply to make the point that they have been recognized as playing a complex role in holistic health and much research remains to be done.
I’m pleased to find more research on the topic as follows:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6821593/
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2019 Oct; 236(10): 3063–3079.
“Stress, sex hormones, inflammation, and major depressive disorder: Extending Social Signal Transduction Theory of Depression to account for sex differences in mood disorders”
George M. Slavich1 and Julia Sacher2
Here’s another study: https://bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12905-021-01350-0 Published: 22 May 2021
“Sex hormone levels in females of different ages suffering from depression”
Rong Lei, Yan Sun, Jiawen Liao, Yuan Yuan, Linlin Sun, Yugeng Liu, Xinyu Yang, Wenyou Ma & Zhenjian YuÂ
BMC Women’s Health volume 21, Article number: 215 (2021)
This study reports that progesterone was found to be higher after use of anti-depressants, but I think the discussion about that was lacking. For example, it is said that anti-depressants cause a numbing of one’s emotions. If that numbing has the effect to lower cortisol levels then I would assume that progesterone levels would be higher because cortisol is said to compete with progesterone. Given the adverse effects of anti-depressants, it would seem safer to use lower risk therapies to reduce anxiety and cortisol which would result in better production of progesterone.
Thank you, Patrick, for “nailing it”.
Boans, I can relate to the injury from false statements in medical records. It leaves you feeling “beaten up” and worse. It’s a matter of life and death.
One more thing: There is an evidence-base to include Amino Acid Therapy to improve mental status of the psychiatric patient, of course under guidance of a knowledgeable doctor. Additionally, for mania, the psychiatric literature reports that the use of leucine, isoleucine, and valine have resolved mania in some patients. The combination of these three particular amino acids (there are others) is said to compete with tyrosine which has an activating effect on the Central Nervous System.
Genetic testing is available which can provide some guidance of medications to avoid and others that may be kinder to the patient’s metabolic system. Genetic testing is not a panacea for all possible problems caused by toxic medications.
I tend to use the words “holistic” and “functional” interchangeably. Sorry for any confusion.
In addition to the importance to addressing the issue of diet and inflammation, the Functional Medicine approach would investigate and treat other underlying medical conditions that impact mental health. Any unresolved infections in the body fuel the inflammation that destabilizes mental health; this includes infections in the mouth such as from periodontal disease. The scholarly literature reports that admission to a psychiatric ward delays the diagnosis of treatable medical conditions. I have seen psychiatric patients become worse when suffering from a treatable infection and have informed hospital staff of the need to provide appropriate care.
Thank you, Hunttmila, for reaching out. I think it is possible for many patients to improve when their treatment includes help from functional medicine. I understand that when you don’t have guardianship and you don’t have your son’s cooperation then your son’s treatment team may not be motivated to change what they are doing. If your son’s treatment team is not responding to you then I would continue to gather information about the holistic approach to mental health treatment and to submit a letter to your son’s treatment team. Be prepared to follow-up. If the treatment team does not respond in a constructive way, be prepared to submit your concerns to an administrator and to the Office of Mental Health in your area, if necessary. I would encourage you to ask someone who has done this before to review your letter and make suggestions.
How the treatment team responds may depend on the policies governing mental health in your state. In our area, hospitals have a list of approved “adjunct” treatments that can be used. You could ask the doctor about what adjunct treatments are available.
You could inform yourself about anti-inflammatory supplements and the anti-inflammatory diet, and observe the quality of food being served to patients. Poor quality foods will have ingredients that raise inflammation factors that undermine mental stability.
Psychiatric patients tend to have genetic vulnerability to inflammatory states that impact the Central Nervous System. It has been my observation that the psych ward does not do enough to reduce inflammatory factors in the diet and they neglect to educate the patients on a healthy diet that reduces inflammation.
When we have no choice but to suffer the neglect and maltreatment of our children, we must bear down like a mother in labor and do the painful work to defend their right to humane care. I know this is not easy because I was not able to intervene effectively before our Catherine was injured by the psychiatric system. So we are left to do damage control and to try to create assets for them to have a chance to get better. By assets, I mean the improvement in care that does make a difference. May God Almighty bless your perseverance.
The compassionate responses here are much appreciated. Thank you, Harper, too. There is comfort in knowing that people like you provide informed and compassionate care.
Now the NFL is including a link at their website for ways to support mental health initiatives in education. What is that all about? What paradigm are they promoting? I doubt that all the football players know anything about it. WHO decides HOW the platform of professional football will be leveraged?
Hello, Richard, I can see the reasonableness for your suggestion for a pivot point in James article, however, I think that what followed in your suggestion would have been too much for most people to swallow. How about something more open-ended? On the other hand, I myself have trouble being straight-forward / direct. I think that in good faith it is important to stick to the topic that was agreed upon in advance. Dr. Healy knows that MIA is already a hornet’s nest of opposition to ECT. ….So how can we elicit from him his help and cooperation to address the contexts of harm from ECT?
From a search page: “Is OCD related to dopamine or serotonin?
In obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the success of pharmacological treatment with serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and atypical antipsychotic drugs suggests that both the central serotonergic and dopaminergic systems are involved in the pathophysiology of the disorder.Oct 30, 2005”
I value your comments about OCD. Forced medication produced something horrible in our child that possibly fit the description of OCD , but it was not about excessive hand washing or things like that. I believe that it rapidly produced Super-Sensitivity (SS) of the Dopamine Receptors because behaviors that had not previously characterized her then developed. She developed excessive climbing preoccupation. You can imagine my remorse to read of climbing behaviors in rats in psychiatric research. The following is not necessarily about SS but you will read that clomipramine caused increased motor activity that in rats presented as climbing in a cage. Our poor daughter, it is painful to recall what she was forced to become with toxic drugging. Next is an excerpt of the study: “Frequency of climbing behavior as a predictor of altered motor activity in rat forced swimming test”
October 2008Neuroscience Letters 445(2):170-3
DOI:10.1016/j.neulet.2008.09.001
SourcePubMed
Project: Ethological evaluation of the forced swimming test (nÂş: 2008.0319)
Deleted at poster’s request.
A big thank you to Dr. Healy for this interview re: polypharmacy and for the specific analogy: ” Polluting Our Internal Environments”, which I think needs to be emphasized continually in creative ways such as he has done. Our revered Myth-Busters have been describing the problem of drug toxicity so patiently and faithfully for years, yet possibly the technical discussions alone remain daunting for many lay people who need a handle on basic truths that activate their sense of self-sovereignty and survival instinct, and that help them “spread the word” among peers and among the next tier above them which is their local service providers.
I think that technical elucidation needs to be further translated into dialogue that the lay person can use. We need to be circumspect of the brainwashing and grooming that has taken place in public education and the community. Marketing “just-so” sound bites continually nudge stressed parents and youth in the direction of the allopathic psychiatric wards, and often under pressure from support-service providers that could result in Child Protective Referrals. We survivors and advocates are challenged to be heard. The delay to effect systemic change is beyond frustrating. Motivating others to see ourselves as part of the environment deserving of protection is wise and necessary.
Removed at request of poster.
Removed at request of poster.
[Duplicate comment.]
Note: I meant to say that ECT results in professional advancement for “hungry” doctors and also lack of accountability by them.
Speaking of ECT: The culture surrounding the use of ECT has displayed to our family so much secrecy, betrayal, defamation of patients and family, exploitation, ignorance of the patient and therefore of her best interests, trauma, damage; presumably disconnectivity of important brain voxels needed for self awareness and integration of thought-feeling-will-self control that results in loss of the holistic person and her functional social life; and lucrative reward for the hospitals and staff and lack of accountability and professional advancement for the doctors; that I don’t see how it can be represented as a legitimate therapy. I would LOVE for Dr. Healy to be on a review board for my daughter’s case to give a totally objective review of what happened to her, if and only if we could both have total access to the sealed records and the doctors’ notes. Her case would be a bio-social autopsy of a hijacked kid who never had a chance among”hungry” (as John Grisham uses the word) and professionally ambitious so-called doctors et.al. with conflicts of interest.
A big thank you to Dr. Healy for this interview re: The Perils of Polypharmacy and for the specific analogy:” Polluting Our Internal Environment”, which I think needs to be relayed many times around the globe. Our revered Myth-Busters have been describing this problem so patiently for years, but in technical language that remains daunting for many lay people who need of a handle on basic truths about health in order to avoid deception by the exploitative interests, and to “spread the word”. We need to be mindful of the brainwashing and grooming that has taken place in public education and the community, the “just-so” sound bites, that continually nudge stressed parents and youth to the allopathic psychiatric wards, and often under pressure from support-service providers that could result in a Child Protective Referral.
There has developed over the past twenty years or more a great body of literature re: the effect of sex hormones to reduce the vulnerability to inflammation of the Central Nervous System. The conversions of sex hormones are complex and I think not completely understood, but their importance for health of Central Nervous System is substantiated. In addition to the documentation re: inflammation, I have seen the change of mental status to psychotic mania in a person afflicted with inflammatory issues. I also have seen a sudden improvement in mental status in a female patient when progesterone was restored. Dr. Christine Marx of Duke University has also conducted “proof of concept” research on the action of a metabolite of progesterone to improve symptoms and mental status of patients with BPD and schizophrenia. Dr. Donald Stein, neuroscientist and Professor Emeritus of Emergency Medicine at Emory University et.al. have observed the effect of progesterone to reduce inflammation of the Central Nervous System. Neuroscience and endocrinology have amassed a huge amount of evidence on the importance of the sex hormones for mental health. It angers me that the public is so poorly informed on the importance of foundational health concepts; is that also the fault of capitalism?
I do appreciate your warnings and information. Thank you.
Yes, Steve, I totally agree with you about the bullshit. I guess I have a nagging, naive belief that it is possible to actually find a way to correct the big bullshit lie with an information campaign having the force of a tsunami. Why NOT?
I have friends whose son suffers terribly from medication-induced OCD. I was glad to see reference to Donepezil and nicotine patches; maybe those could be helpful.
How does psychiatry justify the following claim? ” Antidepressants of the tricyclic and monoamine oxidase inhibitor classes can induce mania in patients with pre-existing bipolar affective disorder.” (taken from an online search) How would you refute that claim? Are there any comparisons from the medical specialties that expose the faulting reasoning? Is the claim simply a deception that exploits the general ignorance of the toxicology and physiological changes that are possible among users who are genetically different in their metabolic processes? Has anyone provided laboratory evidence of what is really happening?
Deleted at request of poster.
Removed at request of poster.
Late in the saga, the state hospital doctor told us that the type of gradual tapering we were requesting for our daughter would not be approved. What did we do next? That’s a good question; I don’t remember, but we had been generally discouraged and feeling obstructed by the system for years. It looks as if we lacked confidence, faith, hope… and love? Is it pure love that will not accept the negativity that must be the predisposition for failure? …Better information all along the way would have helped. Freedom of information is lacking in allopathic psychiatry.
Thank you very much for this crucially important interview with Dr. Healy. Quick question: Does anyone know the status of the freedom of compounding pharmacies to continue to do business in different states and the efforts to thwart them?
The best interests of patients who have been damaged by allopathic psychiatry and who benefit from evidence-based-natural supplements are at risk. What arrangement can be introduced to improve this serious situation? Some type of business cooperative?
Maybe we should just stick to factual documentation and name names instead of using labels that create misunderstanding about who is doing what. It seems that every system that runs some portion of our life employs people from diverse political persuasions. These systems create collateral damage and people are complicit because they want to keep their jobs and to survive.
A lot of labeling going on here is troubling. Time to focus on something that I can control. Some degree of control over one’s life is good for everyone. So sad that big systems are crushing vulnerable individuals whose identities are mostly unknown and leaving people traumatized or dead.
It just occurred to me that the psychiatric end of Pharma has a lot to do with the 1%. Recently, We have seen Pharma shifting to new and provocative products, perhaps because the truth about psych meds is spreading virulently.
Admission to a psychiatric ward is reported to delay diagnosis of treatable medical conditions.
The mute roommate of my daughter who stepped close to my face and opened her mouth for me to see her black teeth and putrid green periodontal disease is a memory that raises the question as to how long it took for her to get the antibiotics and periodontal care that would have been prerequisite for mental health. I did report that condition to the nurse who walked into the room.
May I digress and suggest some things that would be far better than the drugs? Physically induced inflammation plus stress-induced inflammation (whatever source of inflammation) equals onset of hypomania which usually escalates, in our lived experience. Our understanding is that lithium does have anti-inflammatory properties. However, I have not seen any research that evaluates a holistic and anti-inflammatory response to mania, using lab tests if necessary and the best definition of Differential Diagnosis. We have seen that lithium by itself is rarely used to disrupt mania because it takes too long, i.e, several weeks. To hasten stabilization, the trial and error use of antipsychotic is used and if you are one of The Unlucky Ones then you can be left in a state of akathisia for weeks while the doctor “proves” the drug to see if it is therapeutic at the highest level; this sounds like and looked like covert and cruel research to me. This orchestrated failure of trials of one or more antipsychotics may be followed by coercion for ECT. ]Therefore, to reduce harm, why not be kind and try something natural other than chancy and torturous antipsychotic drug trials and ECT? ] In 2003 and again more recently a study reported that a solution of amino acids valine, isoleucine and leucine resolved mania, but that the beverage had an unpleasant taste, so why not use capsules? Why not use kindness, nutritious food, anti-inflammatory therapies , amino acids and whatever natural or safer things are indicated by a Differential Investigation and Diagnosis? Our culture has vast wealth for whatever PLEASES us. When we take pleasure in kindness it will be more lucrative than Disney.
Perhaps, I was unclear. I think that first responders need the type of information that you detailed in order to understand better what is happening to patients.
A well-thought, learner-friendly tool. You have anticipated the readers’ need for frames of reference. This would be a great seminar for first responders, anyone who is interested in people who take psychiatric medications, med-students doing rotations, parents, everybody.
When one of my daughters was not so long ago in a mania, following stress and onset of an inflammatory condition, the police officers were calm, thoughtful and kind as they sought connection with her frame of mind. She chose to go with them cheerfully and calmly to the psych ward. As the gathering of officers left the scene, I responded to a question about medication compliance with my recently gained information that a person in the throes of mania will metabolize their lithium faster and the level will fall. The officer expressed thoughtful appreciation for that info re: lithium; my point being that I have found the police officers to be compassionate and wanting to learn more about the details of medication and the needs of patients. I have seen that when the first responders are given knowledge of the needs of patients , they respond well and do their best. I would like for your keen insights to be made available to first responders in our area….BTW, I would also like to lift your summary paragraph and use it to introduce your article when I repost it.
A quick scan tells me to save this article to read again. I gotta rush. THANK YOU for your interest in this topic.
Ok, I just need to think more about making transitions in conversation to the real issue in a positive way, which is what we’ve been doing. That’s the necessary work.
People who want to be humble and sympathetic to us will refer to the grief that we must be feeling. I wonder why they only talk about grief. I wonder if they presume that we are just “hung up” and can’t get over our daughter’s death. I don’t want to discuss grief with them. I want to generate interest in the injustice that directed cruel treatment of our daughter.
Thank you for your attention to this topic. I offer my thoughts about “GRIEF’ free of influence from experts on the topic. The pathologization of grief is a strategic tool to bury the sins of oppressors and to facilitate the rewriting of history and tryanny.
It would be fine to live someplace where pumpkin bins could be searched every day for hours until the dopamine receptors or whatever receptor is involved in OCD cools down, if that is even possible. But, real life does not afford those ideal situations.
Medication-induced OCD can be horrible and totally mess up a once hopeful life. The psychiatrist wanted to quibble about whether a family history of OCD exists; that is an effort to blame the patient for the OCD. It is VERY clear when exposure to anti-psychotics causes bizarre behavior in your child. After hospital discharge, a trip to the pumpkin farm became a very prolonged search of the pumpkin bin. EVERY pumpkin had to be sought, handled, picked up, over and over again. This is a bitter sweet memory, to recall how our delightful daughter became distorted to this degree, during mistreatment with forced medication until all hope for a normal life was ruined. Back in 2017, around the time of a foolish and forced hospitalization, she said that she just wanted to be normal. That dream was smashed by forced medication with anti-psychotics.
L. Hansen, thank you for telling your story. I’m hoping for the best for you. I believe that your words will save others. I hope that you will find all the insights, and hope, and connections to keep going. It’s wonderful that you are standing on these hardships to speak life-saving words to others. You are an encouragement. You are making a difference. Thank You.
I’m so sorry for your loss. You are in my heart. May Julian rest in peace. May this story save others.
Alishia, Your story is beautifully and powerfully written. It resonated so much with me. I will encourage others to read it. You have described so well what we and our loved ones need to thrive.