Tag: mental-illness

One of the things I feel most people forget in the modern world is that no one is intended to live on pharmaceutical medications like ongoing forever. Kudos to individuals pointing out insulin, anti-rejection medications and the like. I get it. There are conditions for which people may expect to be on medications forever. Knowing these medications exist has not stopped scientists from looking for a cure ergo no one is intended to live a healthy life on medication forever. I guess this is a better way of putting it – no medication should be considered a cure rather a momentary remedy to a potentially chronic issue spanning multiple generations. With this in mind, we all need to be willing to be accountable for the disaster that has been created within the pharmaceutical industry. We see medication provided as unknowing masks to maintain the baseline a.k.a. status quo. This has created some conflict in that those individuals within elite and other generally healthier groups who may function quite well with just one or two masks. This can be sustainable. That doesn’t mean that it should be nor is it the end all for healthy living. Unfortunately, those very same people are in the groups that hold places of power and therefore make decisions. Often this is accompanied by a skewed view and understanding of not only what is happening but what potential there is to come.

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It would be irresponsible for us to not hold ourselves accountable for what the medical industry has become. In its origin, the American Medical System was primarily interested in infectious disease control and the preventing disease onset altogether. Over time we have had brilliant discoveries which were intended to aid in this process. For the longest period advice given by doctors was to eat right and exercise. Have you ever encountered someone that heard this who became so upset? I blame the discovery of penicillin for so much consequence. Individual expectations of immediate end to suffering is absolutely one of them. This expectancy combined with the consumerist nature of business relationships in the U.S. led us to a space of dilemma. Do people with blood pressure and cholesterol conflict not realize they are intended to use a pharmaceutical as a crutch to prevent death while allowing time to implement healthy life changes which may reverse the effects and lead towards the discontinuing of medicine? In a similar manner and with regard to my own experience with mental health conflict I credit ongoing effective Rx treatment for my ADHD to allow space for my ability to sort through the disorganized thought processes which had been created by my life’s traumas. Once I arrived to a space where I could keep up with my thoughts without the need for medication, I began experiencing adverse symptoms associated with the medication I was on. Many individuals are misinterpreting that their Rx should be seen as a way to combat their symptoms while also sorting through a means to exist without the medicine or at least minimum medications. We do not possess the literature to support maintaining all these multiple medications at a time ongoing and is why we often see adverse reactions go unattended or misinterpreted by physicians and the research.

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It was election day when I sent my brother a text that went ignored as my bizarre thoughts tend to be by him. As a PICU doctor my brother is obviously highly trained in medicine. And he, like many providers, lack understanding to chronic illness or how to approach them. The question I posed on that day was “Do you think the conflict of the balance of humors in 1300s Europe could be considered comparable to the autoimmune conflict happening now?” – The irony that I read a similar point of view a week later in Gabor Mate’s The Myth of Normal,  which in that moment was sitting on my bedside table. This is where I see a great gap as well as great opportunity in the medical industry currently. Specifically, as it relates to mental health – we are becoming involved in people’s experience at younger ages and with an ability to interrupt lifelong conflict which used to be assumed to accompany severe mental health crisis. For myself, I have been in a lifelong relationship with the mental health system, first beginning at age 16. After nearly 7 years of maltreatment primarily by means of overmedication, I got pregnant. I often credit the pregnancy of my son for saving my life and my marriage. At this point I went off all medication and was able to attend weekly therapy arriving to what I have called a factual level of healing. This was followed by postpartum psychosis to accompany the 6 week postpartum hormone rush leaving me in a recovery rut. A year later, I continued this factual healing through finally attending some level of higher education with an ability to complete it successfully. I ended with a four-year degree in psychology while simultaneously implementing preventative care to my firstborn through adequate testing and positive reinforcement psychology parenting class. After extensive time attempting to establish my career, I reached a point of needing additional mental health support. This came in the form of therapy which involved some EMDR, Internal Family Systems – a favorite of mine personally and professionally, and intense levels of shadow work. I credit this time period for the ability to heal on an emotional level.

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And currently, I am at the place of preparedness to heal the physical remains of what’s been revealed to be a lifetime lived in survival mode and with the discovery of a gastrointestinal condition surfacing after more than three decades of symptoms. We are at a place where there are increasing numbers in my position with an extreme limitation to the options available, particularly for anyone in less than the Elite level demographic – this is both economically and locality. One conflict I have in particular with the practice of mental health is that by it’s design it is beneficial to those with high level intellectual capabilities as well as financial stability. This does not largely describe the population of people with a current mental health need. Moreover, the field of mental health should be leaning into holistic options for releasing trauma rather than forcing the front loaded talk therapy version which is currently causing more destruction than anything. Personally, the early interventions I had with mental health largely contributed to forcing me into a place of learned helplessness when I now realize I had been so resilient before their encounter. I find it interesting that advanced level therapies such as EMDR are training people to dissociate from what surfaced through their more traditional CBT. In this regard, I think many therapists would benefit from the concept “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”. And by this I mean, maybe the underlying conflict is too much to process for some individuals. This can be due to their current environment not providing enough support, lacking the intellectual ability to fully process, or their trauma being too difficult to cope with on a surface level. My physical and spiritual healing have both been aided by the phenomenal treatment of Myofascial release. This is backed by more than thirty years of research and is beginning to be utilized in medical clinics. When I tried to bring this up to my cohort of master of social work students, holistic care was scoffed at as being unattainable due to cost. In my mind, given so many providers leaning to holistic and interdisciplinary options, it seems to me the conflict that needs resolved is access to these therapies rather than scrutiny and continued pushing of the current failing biomedical model.

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How many of us with a one in a million condition must unite before you hear the damage being caused by a standardized medical system employing the least qualified at the most crucial space – entry level. I am personally in possession of the first psychiatric assessment I went through, ironically on April Fools’ day in 2003. His final prediction was that he was likely wrong in his psychiatric assessment referring that I would likely find benefit in rheumatology – twenty years later, I am. Of course when medical malpractice only covers two years back, who could believe someone in my condition could find stability in time to have any form of justice. Not that the psychiatrist was the sole to blame. I frequently think back to my PCP with a longstanding history of providing me with antibiotics without confirmed medical need who also prescribed off-label antipsychotics to address my severe headaches which are in current remission through the assistance of drinking homemade Baja Gold mineral water. A tip I became aware of when Gary Brecka started showing up on my feed last summer. I remember sitting there with my PCP as teenager, at a complete loss and in extreme pain with him retorting “pffft, you could try yoga”. I so often think back to that moment and wonder, had he taken the time and intention to really express concern for how stress can impact the body and mind, maybe I would have found that alternate reliever at an earlier time in my life. It just felt as though I was constantly cast aside. The carrying out of the current American Medical System has created a monopoly of availed care. Those of us who are suffering most require access to alternatives from what current evidenced based practices can provide. For decades we have pushed through pharmaceutical studies at inadequate rates potentially causing their efficacies to be forever questionable. We have done this out of desperation to help those in need – and from someone who has been on both the patient and professional side of this I wholeheartedly understand. I question what more longterm recovery could have been achieved had we instead created partnerships for those in highest need. This would include access to clean foods, away from the commotion of the city involving access to nature, and with job training and ability to learn about ones own condition. In terms of equity – those of us who are most tormented are deserving of this option. I can only hope for the research breakthroughs that could be made to surround healing beyond and within the biomedical model of treatment. Imagine a world where people with psychotic symptoms realized they may not need an antipsychotic and for them to be surrounded by a community that could help identify this need and to coach them through it.

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#alternativeswithcare #melodramaticmeredith #dearmelodramaticmeredith #holisticcounselor #holisticcounseling #alternativemedicine #mindbody #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #suicideprevention

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We are in a space where the treatment for substance use disorder is far surpassing the treatment for general mental health. I’ve done papers, presentations, and endless advocacy surrounding this topic. All the while, information provided appears to be mostly streaming in one ear, right through another. The superficial reasoning is easy to see – money. It took exacerbated mental health conflict going on in the form of the current havoc that chemical addictions have taken on communities to gain any funding attention to mental health at all. Now you bear witness to the conflict of the very systems who’ve created and led towards this conflict having a desire to equally capitalize from the chaos they are themselves responsible.

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The COVID19 pandemic brought to light just how damaging isolation is to our mental health and really our health overall. People who have been stigmatized through experiencing mental illness have been all too familiar with this for ages. Over the course of my professional career and studies, I have noticed the ongoing trend of resources funneling towards treatment of SUD. This has left those who fall outside of criterion for substances as their primary treatment need are even further in isolation than ever previously.

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An additional conflict I have been subject to in being taken seriously is my willingness to be forthcoming regarding my own history with a significant battle for my mental wellness. This is exposing to the large lack of representation there is currently to peers of those with diagnosable mental illness –specifically those who have fallen in the “severe” category. These most often include schizophrenia, bipolar and related disorders. I cannot speak to how many times I would be attempting to provide insight to colleagues, only for them to make a passive, judgmental social cue towards another almost in “isn’t that cute” fashion. Though I preferred the gestures which indicated they were not taking me seriously above those with any remnant indicating fear. Even after more than a decade of time keeping myself in check, being the bigger person, and obtaining an impressively backed master’s degree along the way – I was still kept in a confined manner with regards to having influence. It was announced that they would begin to utilize peer involvement into our processes. I volunteered with overwhelming zest as someone from a rural resources deprived environment, I am one degree of separation from so many with significant mental health duress. This includes myself, my family, and my community – all of which I have continually been open regarding in attempt to help with informing those professionals around me who lacked lived experience. The response I received was that they were more interested in external peer influence. Revealing, not the interest in peer involvement per se, but rather an interest in the illusion that it has been made.

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If you were to picture yourself in SUD treatment—you are surrounded by peer recovery staff, peers in advanced level positions, persons next to you with 20+ years sober who have relapsed and are right back where you are. In this, one can see themselves making something out of what they are going through. Not only that, there is a pathway that has been illuminated as a guide for individuals to follow. It is being widely revealed that we learn and heal through the sharing of experiences. In general mental health treatment, there is none of this. There are group homes and avoiding them, with not much in between. There is not a peer or a community element that has been able to be accessed. It is being filled with the encouragement to develop skills they’ve no experience with, in settings that there aren’t opportunities to access, and show up in your pajamas monthly or biweekly if you are lucky. Those who are stable and doing well in a living arrangement, often are estranged from family and filled with little substance in their connections. Those in long-term treatment on the coasts, programs swallowing six-figures and again producing no real speakable recoveries but rather a palatable explanation of existence for their affluent families.

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The day I received a serious mental illness diagnosis I was sixteen years old. I went into the office filled with what little hope remained in me. Before that day, I was incredibly future oriented and excited for what would be. Afterwards, it was like my world was slowly caving in around me. My dreams and desires were being suffocated, and the future being painted was bleak. This seems like a great direction to take on when one is already battling thoughts of taking their own life. My future and potentials were ripped away like a band aid and all that was left was the stinging flesh beneath. My psychiatrist treatment plan took me from desperately seeking to want to be alive into a person totally indifferent about life and living at all. It affected my goals and changed any idea for what my life could be. It altered my sense of self in a way I don’t know how to begin to describe. It challenged my ability to practice my values. My experience with the mental health system is that it is incredibly limiting to those with mental illness. It is not supportive to a healthy future or a way beyond their care.

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There is not currently a more oppressive system that exists than the mental healthcare system. When I went to therapy over the course of my pregnancy in 2009, I came to the realization of how wrong the mental heathcare system had gotten it in my situation. Over the course of nine months, I went to therapy weekly – without medication. I told them when they diagnosed me and I first started medication I would not take it while pregnant. They wouldn’t be able to produce enough research to allow me to consider it. The therapy over my pregnancy took place with an LMFT, who are incredibly undervalued in the field in my opinion. She gave me one assignment – to make a list of coping skills. In my presenting them to her in session two she revealed the value of my sensory functioning mind combined with a deep mother wound. This timeframe allowed me ability to heal from what I had gone through on a factual level. This was unfortunately complicated by postpartum psychosis. Though mine was due to malnourishment (I was fifteen pounds less than pre-pregnancy weight less than six weeks to follow) and sleep deprivation. This made room for the physicians – who wouldn’t even make eye contact with me, to negate 40 weeks of progress in therapy.

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It wouldn’t be until June 2019 I would go back to therapy one last time and officially receive a correct diagnosis. This was after seven years with no treatment – my attempt to prove them wrong. During the gap I obtained a BS in psychology and successfully implemented preventative care for my child. This time when I was in therapy to the end of 2020, I credit to helping me heal the emotional component of the trauma wounds I’ve encountered to where I could process emotions in any sort of healthy way. Then I would continued to my MSW with mental health addictions focus. And now, now I am on to the next step. One of healing the physical remains of trauma and the overall concept of remission supported by a medical doctor. Of course, this is a rheumatologist and as a former mental health leadership personnel told me when I was looking, “they are a joke”. I can understand how the medical community is needing to discredit this specialty though – I am successfully treating the physical symptom of over thirty years of daily food regurgitation with a specific breathwork. This is backed by thirty years of research and is in no way supportive to earning a chronic patient by my doctor. The current US healthcare system is not approaching mental health treatment in a way that supports individuals with symptoms of severe mental illness. It is inconsiderate to the individual’s self-awareness and self-determination. For this to be remedied requires peer and community and hope for the future. This system is not it. I survived despite it.

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#alternativeswithcare #melodramaticmeredith #dearmelodramaticmeredith #holisticcounselor #holisticcounseling #alternativemedicine #mindbody #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #suicideprevention

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Today I will discuss the first three “professional” mental health providers I saw. Each whose flaws would set me up for an incredibly long and tumultuous battle with the mental health system and within my family. The first occurred around 7^th grade. My mother took me to the Christian counselor that she herself had seen for three years. This woman was dumb enough to have attempted use of negative reinforcement on my mom and I can only think of the extended damage she caused. By this time, I had long been considered “difficult” and had a lot of somatic issues or physical complaints without recognizable medical cause, most notable were severe migraines and food regurgitation beginning around school age. This person was located in a nearby small town, above a shop downtown. I definitely wanted to speak with someone at that point. I was so confused by emotions and my brain. I knew enough to know I needed to infantize myself in some ways to this woman and I definitely knew my faith in God could not be called into question. I decided to give her just a couple of tidbits of information to see if she could be trusted. I remember expressing to her a lifetime of feeling overwhelmed by my emotions – specifically that I would begin to cry without knowing why. I remember telling her I was confused and would sit in front of the mirror to watch myself. And I told her I had always felt a tendency to feel down without a reason. I’m sure somewhere in there had to be the primary underlying theme of not living up to my mother’s desires. At the end of our session, my mother and the Christian counselor spoke privately and then we were on our way. It was left up to me whether I would see her again. On the drive home, my mother said back to me verbatim the information I had chosen to disclose. That was one hell of a foreshadowing to the rights I could one day expect in my mental health treatment. And no, I did not return.

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My second interaction would be three years later with, you guessed it – another Christian Counselor! This one is a helluva story. She was another middle-aged woman, similar to my mother. She lived in a townhouse on Purdue’s campus and was studying to get her master’s degree in counseling – she was not even done, yet felt qualified to offer services. She knew just enough to be damaging in making me feel seen but did not know how to direct it, making me feel more like a freak than I already had. And she did not know enough to ask the right questions to be guiding in her diagnosis. What she found out very quickly with me was that she was in over her head.. After telling my mother that I could not drive down the street without wanting to drive my car into a tree and being unable to trust myself enough to promise her I would not, I was sent to West Lafayette, in a vehicle, to see an unlicensed, not even graduated, super unqualified woman who had no trouble with my parents paying her to be in negligent treatment towards me. For my mother, it mattered less that she was qualified and more that she was Christian. This counselor would refer me to a psychiatrist because she had no idea what she was doing and never had any business offering counseling at that period in her learning. I have looked her up online recently. She has a practice in Indianapolis now that she actually has a degree and her license. Twenty-one years later, I wonder if she ever thinks of me, the one she really got it wrong on.

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The third and absolutely most damaging provider I would see was the first encounter with a licensed mental health provider. Of course, I was already on some psychiatric medication. They were being used off-label to “treat” my physical health symptoms I had battled more than a decade at that point. It wouldn’t be until the last year I was given the diagnosis for the autoimmune disorder I was most likely born with which provides much explanation to my lifelong physical and mental health symptom — something that psychiatrist actually predicted in the last line of his assessment before he continued to maltreat me all the same. At that point in time, I was still very strong in my belief system which was Evangelical Presbyterian. I was a straight A student, and I had no doubt that I would go to a private university with full tuition scholarship just as both of my older siblings had – I just desperately wanted to stop wanting to kill myself every moment of the day. As he worked his way through his assessment, he had a clear agenda for his diagnosis. He was looking at this through a lens of mood turbulence and little else. He assigned me the same diagnosis he would one day give the Purdue shooter – where I was a student at the time. It really was his pop diagnosis and favorite for this well-known over prescriber. The medication he would prescribe was pointed out by the Clinical Psychologist I was a research assistant for was not even correct for the diagnosis he gave. His final words with his prescription to me were “I am going to put you on a double dosage of antidepressant to ‘jump start’ you out of depression – even if it throws you into mania” without further explanation, I was to see him 3 weeks later. It wouldn’t be until I worked in acute mental healthcare 15 years later with an amazingly knowledgeable LMHC that I would learn – if you put someone with ADHD on an SSRI it can induce symptoms of mania. This doctor essentially created symptoms and in the long run, he used them against me. The analogy I have used to describe what these doctors are doing is giving people a gun and bullets without teaching them how to use them properly, hoping they’ll get it right. I guess I was just playing Russian roulette with two bullets instead of one. This doctor created behaviors that were out of line with my values. I was literally behaving in impulsive ways that I did not recognize. And three weeks later, the intrusive thought I had successfully fought on my own without medication successfully took over. The last thought that went through my brain was “anything has to be better than this”. I can tell you everything got much, much worse. This provider was at the beginning of his psychiatric tenure. I can only imagine he got a bonus for serving a resource deprived area – one that would have done better altogether without him if you asked me.

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Consider that medical maltreatment only goes back two years. Do we really think that is enough time for anyone who has had severe mental illness with horrible treatment to be able to clear up and defend themselves? I can tell you from experience, even if you could, no one is there to stand up for you. My mother went to a presentation by a psychologist at Purdue where she would share my story in brief and he looked at her apologetically stating that was not the way it was supposed to be carried out. It is unfortunate that so many don’t realize a psychiatrist should be considered a last resort and so far from the end all be all of mental health treatment. It is as unfortunate that individuals allow faith to impede appropriate care. I will repeat to the end of time, poor mental health treatment is far worse than no treatment at all. We have currently over professionalized the mental health field. There is an attempt to sell a narrative of assurance surrounding effectiveness of evidenced based practices that if they were being honest, they don’t have adequate information to prove in many ways and is continuously disproven through subgroup populations. Since all of this time that has passed, my small hometown has had what little services they did have removed. I have been affiliated with two agencies that had claimed to serve that county but did not. Now that I have put more than 2 decades of research into the phenomenon I experienced I am foregoing licensure. I am doing this in attempt to bring services to the level of need currently happening and to highlight the limitations to individual treatment processes due to regulatory standards. The community I grew up in was effectively destroyed through an outsider with limited understanding to relational and generational psychological effects and wreaking havoc through the overprescribing of medications. Now that I have paved my own path to recovery, I want to share with others the power of their own light.

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#alternativeswithcare #melodramaticmeredith #dearmelodramaticmeredith #holisticcounselor #holisticcounseling #alternativemedicine #mindbody #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #suicideprevention

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#msw #socialwork #psychology #selfcare #selflove #communitycare #communitylove #mutualaid #neurodivergent #recovery #equality #equity #inclusivity #antioppresive #hope #supportsmallbusiness

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#spreadlovenothate #unitedwestand #dividedwewillfall #meetmeinthemiddle