March 2005

Sero-Quelled

Yesterday night, I ingested Lamictal and Seroquel all at once. I expected a firm and thorough rogering–so I planned to blog the experience, because blogging when impared is original and creative, and not annoying.

This blogger, who seems to suffer from bipolar disorder, had written before about the effects of taking psychiatric medication. He previously had a write up on the effects of temazepam. But he seems to have pulled this sadly.

Lamictal ( a.k.a over here as Lamotrigine) is used for both epilepsy and bipolar disorder.

Seroquel is used as an anti-psychotic and apparently for bipolar disorder.

It is interesting reading about meds from a personal perspective. My desire to experiment with psychiatric meds ended when accidental ingestion of a smear of droperidol made my lip go all numb. Here’s a hint to all the student nurses out there, do not lick your fingers after dispensing liquid medications.

I notice neither of the drug sites above show pictures of people collapsing in the bathroom feeling like they’re dying. Seroquel does make you want to balance stones on top of one another though.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Racism census for mental health care

The first census of mental health units to establish the extent of discrimination against black and minority ethnic patients will be carried out throughout the NHS and private hospitals in England and Wales tomorrow.

The results of this could be quite interesting. Hopefully they won’t find any overt racism .

Sitting at home watching what has to be the worst Easter Songs of Praise ever. The songs and hymns are alright, the linking bit is awful. Someone, Prunella Scales, is reading and ‘acting’ bits from the Gospel of John, she’s doing it really badly.

An easy way to blot it from my memory would be to give myself ECT. Two wires and a plug socket and away I go.

That was my subtle introduction to the topic of this entry. Did you like it ?

Read the rest of this entry »

I am at work at 0530 on the morning the clocks went forward. I am probably about to start having mild hallucinations if I do not do something with myself, it has happened before.

There is only myself and one other member of staff responsible for 14 clients, we have two empty beds. Two staff is more than enough 99% of the time, but woe betide us if anything exciting ever happens. I really enjoy boring shifts due to a surfeit of excitement on previous shifts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Had a couple of days off following nights so I’ve had time to avoid thinking. The question did pop into my head why do we all have to document things in black Biro ink ? A quick search showed that it was not just me, though it was not always done this way further afield.

Just an idle thought.

Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.crimeandsociety.org.uk/

The Foundation believes that the ASBO is often used as a threat to create a change in behaviour as part of the ASB procedure. The Foundation has already been given evidence of families with autistic children who have been threatened with ASB legislation…

Link

C and S Presentation to Home Affairs Select Committee (PDF)

Only autistic children ? Give them time and everyone will the under ASB Orders; noisy neighbours, the suicidal, kids in caps, the mad and the Welsh !

Fresh calls to drop mental health bill

The government today faced renewed calls to scrap its proposed reforms of mental health law after they were condemned as draconian by MPs and peers.

We think there’s a chance legislation that is too draconian will be scrapped ? This Government has been trying for a ridiculous number of years to try and bring in new mental health laws and has repeatedly had them condemned by all and sundry.

Scotland did not have the same problem and has new and improved laws on the books already.

It said the bill, which includes powers equivalent to an antisocial behaviour order -

Of course the new bill does not need this. They can just use actual antisocial behaviour orders.

You can find the actual report here at Joint Committee Reports.

Joint Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill

Updated

The Draft Mental Health Bill proposes the ludicrous situation where you could be detained almost indefinitely for a mental disorder which does not exist, to get treatment that does not work, for things that you have not yet done.

Introduction from an article at The Times Online. A fairly devestating critique of the draft bill.

Who needs their head examined?

Whenever people with mental illess commit violent crimes, care in the community is seen to have failed. But psychiatric patients can be treated without locking them up and throwing away the key, says Dr Raj Persaud

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had a paranoid theory for a while that there is actually a method to the madness of underfunded and understaffed community care. We now live in a country where in many areas there is no 24 hour emergency psychiatric care. With inpatient beds decreasing more unwell people are being made to live in the ‘community’ which will often be a poor quality flat in a bad part of town. Generally pushed there by nimby intolerance or possibly just funding.

Read the rest of this entry »

Security risks over mental health

Psychiatric staff are being put at risk because of inadequate training and funding, according to the Royal College of Nursing.

Why is this happening ?

The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health said shortfalls in government funding for mental health were impacting on in-patient psychiatric wards.

Funding ‘real threat to nursing’

What is the end result ?

“Some acute in-patient wards have acquired a bad reputation, others will have few permanent staff, and therefore the thing can become a spiralling down of the quality of staff in some difficult units.”

Sitting in front of a computer and crying ‘I hate these things’ is not a good way to improve computer skills.

Wired 9.12: Take The AQ Test

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge’s Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults. In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger’s report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives.

I got 35. I must go and arrange my crayons in order of flavour.

I did meet someone who told me he was Jesus, on the wards, he was very nice. Later on he wasn’t Jesus any longer which was sad.

A senior staff nurse (general) used to speak to Jesus when I lived in residences. By ’speak’ I mean ’shout abuse at’. By ’shout abuse at’ I mean ’shout foul mouthed abuse at and throw plates’. Remember that next time you are in hospital. A close friend of the Divine may be looking after you.

But this entry is not about either of these things.

Read the rest of this entry »

Browsing and came across this fabulous blog.

http://www.intueri.org/

This particular entry:

The “two-hit” hypothesis

With these statements:

Prior to this afternoon, I never considered psychiatric disease under the “two-hit” hypothesis of many medical disorders. Why had I never thought that psychosocial stressors could serve as the “second hit”?

Speaking to my colleagues this seems to be a fairly widely held opinion. Though I can’t recall seeing it expressed in any text books, certainly not as clearly as the following paragraph.

The “two-hit” hypothesis goes something like this: A piece of DNA is abnormal (perhaps by genetics, mutation, etc.), but not abnormal enough to result in any overt manifestations of disease. If additional damage (the “second hit”) is done to a related (or same) piece of DNA, then the genetic machinery can crank out abnormal materials to produce disease. This model is frequently used in cancer.

So I thought I would look at this. As our choice of mental disorder we’ll skip mood disorders as many of them have fairly obvious links to ‘life’ factors. We’ll pick the all time classic Schizophrenia, even though it doesn’t actually exist.

My hypothesis :

Having A Crap Life = More Likely To Be Mad

Read the rest of this entry »

Found this blog entry recently.

Stupid Idiots

This is the bit I found interesting from a professional perspective:

I have this one friend. … She seeks mundo attention and when she doesn’t get it…she says she wants to kill herself.

Anybody having worked in mental health for a while will of course be used to this kind of person, and the diagnosis they normally end up with. Depending of course on if there is any suicide attempt and how much they meant it !

I might return to the wonderful world of not so serious suicide attempts in a future post. Don’t start moaning though, I am talking about external perspectives, not internal.

This led to to think about competition in mental health. The following story came to mind. (details changed to protect the mad)

Two family members [P & A] came to visit their beloved, 33 year old, child who was living in a psychiatric establishment under a section. They were talking to one another, not paying much attention to their child.

P: Of course my nerves are shot. They had to put me on diazepam I was so bad.

A: Aye. My nerves were so bad they had to put me on temazepam and sleepers. I’m still on them.

P: After I took my overdose I was in hospital for weeks, they had to pump my stomach.

A: They put me in the psych wing after mine. They had to section me.

P: C here is a terrible trial to me. I am still not well.

A: Well you should see my family. Being in the mental hospital was a holiday.

[and so on and so forth. This conversation was happening in a fairly public place.]

At this point C screams out “FUCK!” and throws himself to floor and starts scratching his face, badly.

P:What do you think you’re doing ? Do you see what he is doing to me ?

[By this stage we intervene]

All the details have been changed. But the spirit of the tale is %100 accurate.

Normally on the wards it is the clients competing, which is part of human nature, not the apparently normal members of the public.

In fact if there’s one thing I have learned from working as an RMN it is that the maddest and oddest people are not the people actually on any of the wards I have worked. It is always the people outside the institutions.