New blog!
My favorite theater company now has a blog. The company is truly remarkable, with such a great sense of humor. Even if you don’t enjoy theater as a medium (as I don’t) these guys will make you laugh.
liz | 7:10 PM | Uncategorized
Ou est moi?
In case you wondered, I’m still in L.A. Today I’m hoping to see the world-famous Tar Pits and go to an outdoor farmer’s market. I wish this felt more like a real vacation, but I don’t feel truly unencumbered unless I’m by myself. I suppose it’s because socializing can be a bit of an effort. I’m one of those people who needs approval and wants to be liked, which means I try not to have any “off” moments. I also am aware that people know about my mental health problems, and I want to be a good poster child—proving, through my behavior, that it’s possible to be functional and friendly and happy and personable even with a serious mental illness. Even though I still struggle with mood changes and med maintenance, I consider myself in recovery, at least compared to how I used to be. So I feel like wearing a sign around my neck: “Recovery is possible!” What a dork.
I’m hoping to be able to post one more item later, en route, and one more tonight. If you’re on the East Coast, my schedule might be a little annoying. And if I can’t get a wireless signal later, I guess I won’t be able to post much. Oh, and here’s the deal for tomorrow: I’ll be on a plane for most of the day, so the posts will be scarce. But Thursday I’m back full-throttle.
I hope you’ve all had a wonderful or at least bearable few days during this annoyiing Christmas season. Here’s a link (thanks, HS!) to another good NYT article about troubled children to keep you busy.
[When I went to take a photo for this post, something weird happened. Dude, I'm feeling so fragmented.]
liz | 12:22 PM | Uncategorized
Zyprexa
This is how I can tell my vacation is coming to an end: yet more revelations about Zyprexa, Eli Lilly and assorted bad people affiliated with both. For the latest, go to Philip Dawdy’s Furious Seasons. He’ll give you the lowdown.
liz | 12:48 PM | Uncategorized
The kind of job ad you should see more of
Not the above sign, but this consumer-oriented help wanted ad, sent in by advocate Fran Hazam:
In the near future, the Community Support Programs Branch of the SAMHSA Center for Mental Health Services will be posting a job announcement for up to two Public Health Advisor position(s). Among other candidates, we would very much like to consider mental health consumers for these positions.
A special hiring authority, called Schedule A, allows the Federal government to hire people with psychiatric disabilities on a non-competitive basis. Although the position will be open for competition, the Schedule A provisions make it easier for us to consider qualified consumers for the position.
To help prepare consumers to apply for the upcoming position, we are providing the following information about how to apply under the Schedule A authority. Please save this notice so that you can refer readily to it when the announcement is released.
We look forward to announcing the positions not long after the beginning of the New Year, and to receiving a lot of great applications (through our human resources coordinator) in response.
liz | 11:53 PM | Uncategorized
“Bring the hat”
Here I am in L.A., visiting Vince’s family, and I’ve just learned a very important expression—so important I’m breaking my three-day vow of silence to bring you this:
Bring. The. Hat.
What does this credo mean? Well, let’s let Joey Bertolini, 15, explain it since it’s his coinage:
“So basically ‘bring the hat’ means to do the good thing or do the right thing, or like if you’re gonna do something then just kick ass while you’re doing it. So, for example [slurps grape juice], it could be used in place of ‘good luck,’ ‘break a leg’ or ‘you rock, man.’ Let’s say I was moving the furniture in my friend’s house. He would say to me, ‘All right, we gotta move this furniture, but we gotta bring the hat while we’re doing it.’ Or for example if I was running a 10K, before the gun went off, my friends would tell me to bring the hat.”
To clarify the past tense, says Joey:
“Never say, ‘brung the hat.’ It’s an insult. You have to say, ‘I just brought the hat.’ You can also say, ‘I just brought the hat all over BLANK.’ For example, ‘I just brought the hat all over that chemistry test.’
And finally: “Bring the hat has, to many, become more of a philosophy to base their life around than just a simple phrase. So always remember to bring the hat. In everything you do.”
liz | 6:01 PM | Uncategorized
Signing off
Hey everyone, I’m leaving this online earth and actually going outside in the air. I’ll be offline until Tuesday afternoon and of course I’m afraid everyone will forget about me and not come back. But please come back! I’ll miss you.
Here’s a photo of me saying goodbye. Have a great holiday, and please please please take care of yourselves. My holiday-wellness list is here, in case you missed it the first time. I won’t get all sentimental right now because New Year’s will be the big thank you, but you’ve made my year so beautiful. Just FYI.
Oh, I almost forgot: One more Funday headline. Get this: Study of hallucinogen shows promise in treating mental illness. Stoner friends, high-five!
liz | 2:19 PM | Uncategorized
Funday: Think you’re paranoid? Maybe you’re a private eye!
It’s possible, says a new book, that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was …. schizophrenic! Who doesn’t love some good ol’ literary and ahistorical speculation? (Was Abe Lincoln gay? Sure seems like it now.)
New book detects schizophrenia in Sherlock Holmes’ creator
liz | 1:48 PM | Uncategorized
Funday: Headline of the day
Woman’s bipolar disorder creates chance to serve others
liz | 1:35 PM | Uncategorized
Funday, for real
Sorry for the sad posts! I’m going to L.A. in a couple hours, and then I won’t be heard from again until Tuesday. You’ll have to amuse yourselves in some other way, I guess. Sigh. But look what a positive story this is. First sentence:
“The Mental Health Center of North Alabama is helping adults diagnosed with mental illness to experience a taste of freedom.”
Freedom! Yay!
Mental Health Center provides housing
liz | 1:57 PM | Uncategorized
Funday: ECT study shocks. Ha ha.
As everyone who reads this blog knows, I had ECT in 1996. It helped me for about a month. I was back in the hospital exactly one year later, as depressed as ever. And then one year after that. Not only was the ECT ineffective, it was incredibly damaging to my cognitive functioning and memory. But sometimes it’s hard to be sure of yourself when everyone “credible”—scientists, ECT docs, researchers—are telling you that your reality isn’t real. How many times have I been told my memory loss wasn’t due to ECT but to depression? How many times have I been told that, like a lot of other consumers, I must be perceiving this incorrectly? How many times have people told me that my feelings of trauma related to the ECT are misplaced and unusual? It’s as if I was raped and people kept telling me not to be upset—that it wasn’t that bad. (Oh, wait. That happened too. Separate issue.)
Well, now I’m sitting at my desk and crying—not phlegmy sobs or anything; just prickly tears. I feel like finally, after all these years, my experience is being validated—by the same person, Harold Sackeim, who invalidated it most publicly. (And hey, Miltón, if you’re reading this, gimme a call and apologize. That would make this a banner week.)
Through the years Linda Andre, director of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry, has been an ECT survivor-activist who’s galvanized this movement and made me feel whole. She says everything I would say better than I could, so let’s just give her the floor. (Side note: But I don’t think Sackeim would characterize these results as “permanent.” He’d say “long-term.”)
ECT Causes Permanent Amnesia and Cognitive Deficits, Prominent Researcher Admits
NEW YORK CITY (12/21/06) — In a stunning reversal, an article in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in January 2007 by prominent researcher Harold Sackeim of Columbia University reveals that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) causes permanent amnesia and permanent deficits in cognitive abilities, which affect individuals’ ability to function.
“[T]his study provides the first evidence in a large, prospective sample that adverse cognitive effects can persist for an extended period, and that they characterize routine treatment with ECT in community settings,” the study notes.
liz | 12:17 PM | Uncategorized
