Sunday 30 November 2014

3 wishes

I die
You suffer
You kill yourself

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What a life I could have had were I not crazy

This is mental illness.

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The untapped mental capital of the elderly

Wisdom. Understanding. Knowledge.

Modern society is blind and this deficit is costly. Very costly but the blind, stupid sheeps can't see it.

The elderly are a vital resource.

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Know mental health and what you purport to represent (esp you @#£% at Mind)

Hey

In short, the dual continua of mental health. Psychopathology and distress. Understand?

Psychopathology is the remit of psychiatry. Distress is different and there's no science for it.

The psychopathology model of depression has a precise definition used to diagnose "clinical" depression. The cluster of symptoms approach. This is essential to scientific validity and reliability. However, its use in clinical practice means not all people suffering are diagnosed as depressed and if they are anyway (eg depression not otherwise specified or something) there is no scientific truth to treatment. It's just guesswork.

Why is this relevant? For a start it isn't what patients expect. They expect depression to be misery but this isn't what psychiatric research focuses on. Psychiatry is an old style, undemocratic power structure. Patient expectations are irrelevant, but not to you. Especially Mind because the dual continua model was promoted by one of the organisations which came together to found it after WWII. Mind (used to?) teach this dual continua theory in its mental health training.

What can be done? This is the hard bit. Basically psychiatric science needs to be adapted. It has to adapt to people showing only 1-4 symptoms or ones which fall outside the list of standard symptoms. This is challenging but, I'm afraid, absolutely necessary.

Without this adaptation to the diversity of distress psychiatry is failing the public and so are you. You're using psychiatric evidence to make false promises of successful treatment otherwise. This is a travesty.

Another example of the absence of consideration of patient expectations is the lack of a meta analysis of major tranquillisers looking for the effect on hallucinations alone. This might exist now but didn't a few years ago. This is a similar travesty which is simple to fix but wasn't in the half century or so of the use of these drugs. It shows if these drugs are just a chemical cosh or have a genuine effect on the quantity which patients expect to be being treated.

Without doubt there are other examples of this flawed, undemocratic approach. Chronic suicidal ideation for example.

You folks are paid well. Earn it. This debarkle of scientific practice is something your stakeholders/members expect you to campaign and lobby against. Don't @#£%ing tell me this isn't Mind's @#£%ing mission.

Regards

Arj

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Thursday 27 November 2014

"Not on my watch"

Can you even understand this? You're heartless and without conscience. Of course you stupid plebs can't. You are monsters and I would show no mercy in executing you if I could.

I know I'm different from a human being. I would never do to me what you did to Arj.

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If you fail you will kill us

If you fail the disabled you drive them to kill themselves.

You, you fucks. You.

You consign us to shit lives then expect us to suffer on?

No. Not on my watch.

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You want to help me?

Fuck you. Kill me. I choose it.

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Monday 24 November 2014

a plea to the government

The mental health system is an abject failure at ethically and effectively handling suicide.

As far as I'm aware there's still no evidence based clinical guidance for acute and chronic suicidal ideation. Psychiatric research is very poor in this area and while suicidal ideation is found as one sub measure in depression research there's very little research focusing solely on this single measure. Suicidology as a focused field of scientific endeavour is small and underfunded. More funding for talking therapies is a flawed solution without specific therapeutic modalities and a more sophisticated diagnosis-treatment relationship designed around the complexities of suicide.

What's worse perhaps is the lack of legal assisted suicide for people with psychosocial disabilities (aka mental health problems). For many life is so awful it is unbearable and this unbearability is profoundly personal. Hopelessness and despair are natural reactions to the poor quality of life especially for severe psychosocial disabilities like schizophrenia. The attempted and successful suicide rate is very high for schizophrenia but there's little that modern psychiatary can do. (Things like the Open Diagalogue Approach are not generally practiced in this country) Suicide is a rational choie to end an awful life with little hope of recovery. It's better than living year upon year, day upon awful day wishing, hoping, for any death.

Mercy is absent. Without mercy there is inhumanity. The inhumanity is the torture of living when wanting to die. It's the curse is the lack of legalisation which forces the suicidal to end a bd life with what's often a bad death. Those who attempt suicide usually go to their deaths alone. If they fail they risk further disability and pain, for example from liver damage caused by overdoses. The most reliable methods inflicit harm and risk injury to innocent people.

It might be thought that those with psychosocial disabilities don't need help in dying but, in my personal experience, it can still be an insurmountable challenge. I beg for the mercy to end my wretched existence and for the right to a good death of one's choosing for those who have no hope of escape or relief but death itself. I beg for this because living life is a torture too great. I have been unable to bear it for many years.

Mercy Mr Clegg. Those failed by the system should not suffer unnecessarily. The mental pain behind suicide is personal but by its very nature is profound. No one should hope for their death but we live in inequitous times. At least let people like me have a good death. Have mercy on us all.

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Thursday 6 November 2014

Stuff

When it is dark.

When light can barely whisper

When it's tomorrow

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About Me

We It comes in part from an appreciation that no one can truly sign their own work. Everything is many influences coming together to the one moment where a work exists. The other is a begrudging acceptance that my work was never my own. There is another consciousness or non-corporeal entity that helps and harms me in everything I do. I am not I because of this force or entity. I am "we"