Great WaPo story and interview

If I could tell people to read just one thing this year, I’d tell them to read Charles Barber’s piece in Sunday’s Washington Post, in which he talks about the way that recovery involves more than just meds. It’s excellent. Here’s an excerpt:

Larry Davidson, a Yale researcher on recovery from severe mental illness, has examined the data and found that this model is flawed, at least in the field of mental health. “In the medical model, you take a person with a mental illness, you provide treatment in the hopes of reducing symptoms, and then they’re supposed to approximate some notion of normality,” he told me. “Our research shows the opposite. You take a person with a mental illness, you then reduce the discrimination and stigma against them, increase their social roles and participation, which provides them a reason to get better in the first place, and then you provide treatment and support. The issue is not so much making them normal but helping them get their lives back.”

Healing a Troubled Mind Takes More Than a Pill

Also check out the transcript of an online chat he did with WaPo readers here.

liz | 3:42 PM | Uncategorized

I swear I’m okay!

People are worried about me, which I appreciate. That’s why I love doing this blog. I have been a little depressed, but the reasons for my not being here for a few days is more complex. So don’t worry. I’m okay. I’m as happy and content as these cute kitties. More or less.

liz | 4:54 PM | Uncategorized

Army sees spike in suicides and suicide attempts

From the AP:

As many as 121 soldiers committed suicide in 2007, an increase of some 20 percent over 2006, according to preliminary figures released Thursday.

The number who tried to commit suicide or injured themselves for some other reason jumped six-fold in the last several years — from 350 in 2002 to about 2,100 incidents last year. Officials said an unknown portion of that increase was likely due to use of a new electronic tracking system that is more thorough in capturing health data than the previous system.

For more of the bad news, click here.

liz | 9:36 AM | Uncategorized

Suicidality and drugs

I have been woefully inadequate in paying attention to Furious Seasons, but today there’s an interesting post on a new FDA warning about suicidal ideation, etc., in relation to Lamictal and Topomax. You can get all the pertinent info from Dawdy, as usual, but he writes:

It’s not clear to me what the implications are for treatment with these drugs in bipolar disorder, but they cannot be very good. In coverage by the New York Times, doctors stressed that the benefits of these drugs outweighed the risks both in treating bipolar disorder and epilepsy. But the more important question is what patients think–doctors sometimes forget that it’s patients’ butts that are on the line–and how they respond to the warning. Obviously, people diagnosed with epilepsy don’t have a lot of options for controlling seizures. Aside from Lithium, patients with bipolar disorder don’t have many options either.

As a patient who is on both Lamictal and Topomax, I feel I can speak to Dawdy’s questions. For me, Lamictal has been an absolute lifesaver. My breakthrough magic-bullet medication cocktail has been Seroquel and Lamictal, with other stuff thrown in as needed. Lamictal keeps my mood even, while the Seroquel keeps the psychosis at bay. Without the Lamictal, I cycle … unpleasantly, to put it mildly. At this point in my treatment, I would never consider going off of it. In fact, anticonvulsants have been extremely effective in controlling my mood symptoms, but I struggled for a long time with side effects. I no longer suffer from any side effects from the Lamictal, though I know from Dawdy’s post that the initial stages of treatment are apparently quite risky. That being said, I worry sometimes about villifying medications that can benefit people. What if I had seen a warning and decided not to try a drug that has truly saved my life? Just had to put that out there.

I take the Topomax for migraines, and I’ve gone from a migraine a day to about two a month. It’s been incredible. But I have no opinion on it for psychiatric concerns. The main side effect for me has been loss of appetite and resultant weight loss, and I’m ashamed to say that I’ve enjoyed that side effect. I’ve only been taking the Topomax for about six months, but lordy, I’m glad those headaches have diminished.

FDA Issues Suicidality Warning For Mood Stabilizers

liz | 12:56 PM | Uncategorized