Ophelia’s Scrapbook: What It’s Like to Be Dead
I took this photo of what I might look like should I ever take my own life. I know it’s a terrible thing to think about, but let’s be honest, here: People who suffer with mental illness think about this shit. A lot. Because you always have it in the back of your mind: If it gets too horrible, I have a way out. No one can tell me I have to go through the pain. I’m choosing, every day, to stick it out. And when I choose not to, I’ll call it quits.
I don’t think these are suicidal thoughts, precisely. I think they’re designed to give us an illusion of control, to quash the fears and the nagging voice that says, “What if it happens again? How can I survive it?”
[And on a lighter note—and anything would be lighter at this point—I want to acknowledge the other sad truth of this image: I have a double chin. I assure you it's just the way I was being all dead-like that caused it. It's not normally there, at least in my live state.]
liz | 5:57 PM | Uncategorized
More Canadian mayhem
I don’t mean to pick on Canada today, nor focus morbidly on suicide, but a story like this really gets my Irish up. (I wish I could say, “This really gets my Jewish up,” But I’ve never heard that. Let’s start it now. You can use it when referring to something especially Jewish like, “They bought their High Holiday tickets at the last minute, and now they’re sitting in the front row. That really gets my Jewish up!” Or “It says on the menu they have sable, but they only have whitefish. That really gets my Jewish up!”)
Anyway. Ahem.
This article is about a doctor in Canada who killed a nurse (pictured) with whom he’d had an affair. The hospital concluded in a report that the murder of the nurse was “unforeseen.” I’ve never heard such a load of horseshit in my life. The history of violence this man had—particularly with nurses, and particularly with this nurse—was a clear indicator that there was potential for disaster. In almost every case of murder-suicide, there’s a history of domestic abuse. If anything, this case reads like a roadmap to murder; I can’t see how anyone would come to any other conclusion. Add to that the negligence of the hospital for losing the doctor’s paperwork … well, read it for yourself.
Oh, and the guy was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which is why it came across my transom.
Hospital murder-suicide unforeseen, report concludes
liz | 2:13 PM | Uncategorized
Behavioral care = make them behave
I think most people who read this blog are highly suspicious of big pharma, particularly if you’ve gone through the mill of doctors and prescriptions and pharmacies for years. Now comes this exhaustive look at big pharma and, in particular, off-label prescribing, by Evelyn Pringle for OpEdNews.com. One thing she talks about is geriatric prescribing in nursing homes, where residents are given higher doses of drugs than is indictaed for their illnesses. Like rowdy children being medicatied in kindergarten, the elderly are seen as difficult. So dope ’em up! It’s awful.
For more of Pringle’s reporting on the pharmaceutical industry, go here.
Big Pharma Bankrupting US Health Care System
liz | 12:45 PM | Uncategorized
Double suicide
What a tragedy—the bodies of two teen boys in Quebec were found in a field. The had apparently made a suicide pact, and either shot each other or shot themselves. Their school had a suicide prevention program in place for 23 years.
Here’s the sentence I find strangest in the whole article (emphasis mine):
On the first day of school, normally a day filled with optimism, principal Gilles Charest, staff and teachers at Bousquet and Peland’s school had to tackle the difficult subject of suicide.
Wow. Canada really is a different country.
Quebec teens’ deaths likely result of suicide pact
liz | 12:07 PM | Uncategorized
Baylor out
From WTVQ 36 in Lexington comes this tidbit:
Doctors at Baylor College of Medicine are testing the use of electroencephalography (EEG) as a potential measure of treatment response in depression. Laura Marangell, M.D., Psychiatrist says in patients with depression, the front areas of the brain aren’t working properly. Medications help the brain to “wake up” and regain more normal function. EEG is a measure of brain activity. In theory, if a medication has any effect on the brain, doctors should be able to measure the response with an EEG. Once medication is started, the EEG can detect the brain changes within a few days (versus several weeks for observational changes).
Researchers are testing EEG with two FDA-approved medications: Lexapro® or Wellbutrin XL®. Patients will receive one or a combination of the two drugs. If EEG proves to be a good prediction tool for medication response, patients will be able to avoid long, fruitless trials of medication and get effective treatments faster. In addition to Baylor College of Medicine, the study is also taking place at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Northwestern University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas Southwestern, UCLA and University of California San Diego.
I like how the doctor is called Laura Marangell, M.D., Psychiatrist. Errant capitalization, yes, but fun.
liz | 11:04 AM | Uncategorized
Concerts and columns
My latest column came out today, and it’s all about my Barcelona trip, so go here. (Plus, the more you go here, the more people here like me and want to give me a raise.
Also, tonight I’m hosting PW’s Concerts in the Park at Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. The bands playing are Cordalene and the A-Sides. The concert starts at 7 p.m. If you’re in the area, stop by to hear some good music, and watch me hold my stomach in for a full two hours.
liz | 4:48 PM | Uncategorized
New drug for schizophrenia?
For some reason I can’t quite pinpoint—perhaps the fact that drugs companies are so corrupt—this item makes my skin crawl. I worry about the people with schizophrenia who are signed up for this study; are they giving truly informed consent? I don’t say that to be condescendiing—most of us with treated mental illnesses are quite capable of making informed decisions, thank you very much. But I’ve known people who have been at their wit’s end with their diseases, and they’re often the ones who enter these drug trials. If nothing else has worked, why not? Good luck, guys. I hope it goes well.
From the Washington Biz Journal
Vanda signs up patients for Phase III drug tests
by Vandana Sinha
Staff ReporterVanda Pharmaceuticals has finished signing up patients to participate in its third phase of testing for one drug that treats schizophrenia and another that treats transient insomnia. As of Aug. 29, the biotech company enrolled the last of 604 patients with schizophrenia to be tested in Phase III trials of its drug, iloperidone.
Last week, after reaching 412 patients, the company stopped enlisting healthy people for its Phase III trials for VEC-162 for insomnia. The Rockville company had finished enrollment for both earlier than expected, so it must still finalize the sites for both trials. But it hopes to launch both soon, and receive results as early as January.
After that, company officials said they would need to conduct additional trials of VEC-162. But if the results match expectations for iloperidone, then Vanda hopes to file for a new-drug application for the schizophrenia treatment with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the end of next year.
And does it strike anyone else as weird that the reporter’s name is almost the same as the company’s? I bet she’s taken a lot of ribbing at the water cooler for that.
liz | 4:55 PM | Uncategorized
Is it true?
Have I really only posted one thing today? There are several reasons for that:
1. Yesterday had so many posts, I became exhausted.
2. One of the posts yesterday was about a copy-editing error in a Comcast ad, and I’m just so delighted by the idea of people seeing that, I don’t want to obscure it.
3. Another of the posts was a video of my sugar gliders, and I’m just so delighted by the idea of people seeing that, I don’t want to obscure it.
4. I’ve been in meetings all day and am now off to see Dr. Fink, the Shrink.
Meanwhile, please enjoy this link, Speaking of Faith: The Soul in Depression, sent in by blog reader Rob, who submitted this in without knowing that our theme today is religion.
[The image is by me of a chapel high up on Montserrat, the serrated mountain in Northern Spain where people come to see La Moreneta, the black virgin Mary, for advice and succor. Sometimes faith can inspire such beauty.]
liz | 2:16 PM | Uncategorized
Onward Christian social workers
I admit, I’m not much of a Christian. Okay, I’m not a Christian at all, but I’ve always admired the way some true Christians behave, i.e., with tolerance and understanding of those less fortunate. My sister is a born-again Christian, and in some ways it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her, though I feel a gulf between us has opened up. Well, maybe not a gulf, but a little rivulet or something.
Given the atrocious things that are carried on in Christ’s name—Bush’s foreign and domestic policies; discrimination of GLBTs; anti-choice and anti-stem cell rigidity of thought—it’s always lovely to see a church doing something good. There are a lot of good Catholics out there, but the Catholic Church, capital C, leaves something to be desired. The Presbyterian Church, capital C, is quite progressive, and continues on in that spirit with Serious Mental Illness: Seeking a Comprehensive Christian Response. The document, prepared by the Task Force on Serious Mental Illness of the Advisory Committe on Social Witness Policy, was created with this in mind:
“The goal is to encourage and challenge the church to study ways people living with mental illness are included or excluded from participating in the work of the church and society in general. How do we share in God’s joy and grace with those who experience great pain and brokenness, without patronizing or avoiding systemic, social issues?”
The study guide uses legitimate psychiatry (and no, doubters, that’s not an oxymoron in these parts) to provide a backdrop, so that the people who bring God into the equation have science in their minds as well. It seems like a good recipe to me for religious people who are struggling. Sometimes they feel God is with them, but their communities are not. And if the church people are put off, does that mean God is alienated as well?
For my part, though I’m not religious, I always took solace in religious observance, but it would be nice to think that the clergyman or woman leading the ritual was speaking to everyone’s pleasure—and everyone’s pain, including people with mental illnesses.
[This image is of a Philadelphia Presbyterian Church. As a collector of 19th-century photographs, I couldn't resist it.]
liz | 9:03 AM | Uncategorized
I must speak. I can’t hold it in any longer.
Bill Thomas, a Philadelphia Weekly reader, sent this to me. It was, as he points out, also sent to thousands of Comcast subscribers. There are two errors in this mailing, and I just got another one from Comcast, which also has errors in it.
Get a proofreader, for heaven’s sake! That would be Comcastic.
liz | 3:15 PM | Uncategorized
