Here’s an interesting one to start off with. The New Republic is an everyday tale of psychiatric folk being told in blog form. This week, the New Republic introduces the cast.
The Shrink
Dr Valkyrie Gorgeous is a 30-something Consultant Psychiatrist who specializes in being very tall, and very, very intelligent. She trained at the Berühmte-Deutsche Krankenhaus Medical School and intercalated in her first year, to research her now rightly acclaimed thesis “The Trajectories of Mad People When Fired From Ballistae: Uses and Abuses of Psychiatric Medicine 1218 - 1479″, for which she was awarded a PhD. Doesn’t like stupid people.
The Community Psychiatric Nurse
Mrs Ludmilla Lurch trained at the Soviet Navy’s School of Psychiatric Rehabilitation in Murmansk, before fleeing the collapse of communism, to take up her first post in the UK, as head of the Scary and Demonic Personality Disorders Unit at HMP Dustbin. She was the runner-up in the 1987 Tiger Wrestling Championship (Moscow Region). Doesn’t like mad people.
The Nurse Consultant
Mr George Normal joined the Army at 17, to “travel the world and help people”. He was, therefore, a little surprised at what happened over the next 21 years. After retiring from the military, he trained as a mental nurse and quickly rose through the ranks, via a fist fight with Dr John Crippen to become Nurse Consultant. He speaks many languages including Irish Gaelic, Arabic, and Portuguese. Doesn’t like violence.
Teen blogger Dumped by a Hallucination is still getting e-mails from people suggesting she has a borderline personality disorder. She decides to take a look at the diagnostic criteria.
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
I hate them, I love them, I forget I ever hated them until I read what I wrote about them when I hated them, their smile isn’t wide enough one day and I hate them, I hate them, of course I never loved them, how dare you even imply I liked them once? But her hair is so nice and I love her, can’t live without her, can’t fall asleep because I’m composing the speech I’m gonna give her tomorrow about how she’s my bestest ever friend and she’s the world to me but she didn’t see me come in the room and I hate her – so, uh, I guess that’s a yep. The kids who stick around with me must have infinitely deep reserves of patience to call upon. Either that or they’re deaf-blind.
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
Uh… see here.
Aethelred the Unread is struggling with paranoia.
Rationally, I understand that I’m extremely unlikely to be under surveillance - I haven’t done anything that would attract the attention of the authorities. Rationally, I understand that if I was under secret surveillance then they wouldn’t be being so obvious about it. Rationally, I understand that when people look at me in the street it’s probably because I flinch away if they even turn their head towards me, and the strangeness of my behaviour is what’s attracting their attention. Rationally, I understand that if a car pulls up alongside me it’s most likely to be for some reason that’s utterly unconnected to me (although it seems to happen so frequently I’m starting to wonder if maybe I’m imagining some or all of the cars, rather than just misinterpreting what real cars are doing).
Rationally, I understand all of this, but at the moment, understanding something rationally is not the same as knowing it. I’m extremely unlikely to be under surveillance - but that doesn’t change the fact that fundamentally I know I am.
Bipolar Mo is worried about weight gain from medication.
Anyway, the bottom line is he has increased my depakote from 2g to 2.5g due to my vast bulk, again reminding me I have put on several stones since I started it, so the dose has to be upped. As I left I almost expected to hear him roaring “So long, you immense fat freak, see ya, you giant mound of blubbering jelly, bye bye fatty, cheerio greedy pig, watch out folks.. fat man walking…. who ate all the pies? who ate all the pies? you fat bastard, you fat bastard, you ate all the pies!”
The Shrink remains of the view that care homes aren’t necessarily as bad as they’re made out to be.
Within half an hour of where I’m sitting there are over 60 registered care homes. There’s plenty of choice. What if a care home can’t undertake the care the man needs and deserves? They’ve not the staffing levels, or experience? Well, resources can be put in place so they can meet his needs. A community team from the Trust can reach in to the care home, supporting their staff with ongoing training and education as well as modeling practical dementia care (e.g. getting him up and out of bed on a morning then having breakfast) so the care staff can learn good practice. If they don’t have staffing levels to continue to attend to this, Continuing Care funding can ensure they do have cash for extra staff to be employed on the shifts so the gentleman can get the time needed. It may be he needs one to one care, if so, we can get it funded and he can get one to one care.
With mental health services providing continuity of his dementia care through a specialist team (which includes a dedicated Consultant Psychiatrist), social services providing funding for a 24 hour specialist care home for him, joint Continuing Care funding for extra staff, a Parkinson’s Disease team providing continuity of care of his PD and mental health services having ongoing training for the care homes, the gentleman can receive exceptionally good care.
Seaneen has a dilemma. She’s an atheist, but she gets religious delusions when she’s psychotic.
I see my own religious mania as a symptom of my mental illness. What a dull way to see it, but that’s how it is. It, like so much more of my psychosis, has no basis in reality whatsoever, no connection to my rational, ordinary beliefs. It was as ridiculous to me as thinking that Danny John Jules was stalking me.
Meaning in life, however, is rather different. This is where my admiration of faith is so expressed; that meaning, that universal feeling of being loved, and being a part of the world, of being a child of god, is a beautiful idea. I often feel extremely lonely in this. There is no “greater purpose” to my suffering, to any suffering. It is just crying into the dark, and not understanding why, or how. I do have great love for humanity, but it is lost in hatred for myself. Living without god means that there are no answers.
Tags: this week in mentalists
