This Week in Mentalists (34)

What day is it? It’s This Week in Mentalists Day!

Bipolar Mo is considering his medication options.

He asked what antidepressants I had tried, I reminded him I had been on Fluoxetine, Imipramine, Venlafaxine, Mirtazapine and L-Tryptophan. I forgot to mention Citalopram which is weird as it was the one I was on the longest. I explained none of them were of any benefit to me and about the only thing I hadn’t tried was an MAOI as life without red wine and cheese would be unbearable…

The Shrink considers the use of complimentary therapies in dementia care.

They can work. Of course, the truth of it is in divining what works. Is it that essential oils in aromatherapy works, or is it that having a staff member spend half an hour to an hour giving one to one time, reassauring physical contact, continuous dialogue and eye contact, all is useful? I would imagine so. I am not sold on lavender as a panacea for all ills, helping sleep and relaxing one and all. Yet the evidence is sound, for many folks it can help. We do it in our service and, for some folk, it really is useful.

Welcome back to Mandy Lifeboats Ahoy, how is now home from the acute unit. While inside, she kept a journal.

I keep asking myself am I mad? In all honesty, I don’t know. Sometimes I think I am too sane. Too acutely aware of how shit things are”

“Weakness. In the rest of the animal world, mostly, I’d probably be dead by now. Nature is a cruel mistress. Darwin’s Theory prevails but there are always exceptions or mitigating circumstances”

“I did relaxation first thing and then coping skills in OT. It bought stuff to the surfacewhich needs to be either safely held or taken somewhere. Timing is important and there wasn’t enough time in the session to look at ways of dealing with the stuff. Not good”

Mental Patient About Town has just been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.

The schizoaffective diagnosis has come along because I have started to experience thought broadcast, the belief that people can hear my thoughts. However I think I already had some of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and have done so since my early 20s. I have this odd need for isolation and social apartness. Notoriously, my idea of an intimate relationship is to have a twenty minute chat every month or so. I manage to get along with just a handful of close friends. I’m sure most people would think I’m a bit weird, though I like to see myself as some kind of friendly alien. Of course being unsocial has made some aspects of life difficult, especially work. And symptoms like paranoia have repeatedly sabotaged my attempts to get an education.

Not Another Nursing Student is out on placement.

Am feeling pretty chuffed with myself actually, did my first depot the other day and despite my fears the lady remains alive and un-maimed. Although she is now in hospital with an unrealated health problem (or so my mentor assures me…). Have also progressed from carpet bowls to being allowed to run the quiz, but it is difficult when every five minutes someone hijacks a different team member to take their blood.

Student Mental Health Nurse ponders the difficulties of being a mature student.

At my current place of training I haven’t declared my background but I know, from the initial flush of support, that my capable self has ‘blossomed’, so to speak and now there’s envy, resentment and a sense of being tolerated. It’s not good. Do I really want another year of this? I love the job, love working with the patients and the team (when they permit this) but I deplore the NHS culture - staff fear of job loss, re-organisation, financial cut back, reduced number of staff, hidden agenda, ‘chinese whispers’ and so on. It’s sad to say, in my own experience over the last 10 months, the older student, who will not easily tolerate being treated like a 19 year old school leaver will question their completing the course.

Seaneen is trying to make ends meet on benefits.

Although the Sun and the Daily Mail would have you believe that “benefit scroungers” like me (who paid their taxes too) would be typing this from their secret villa in Spain, quaffing Blue Nun and chainsmoking. The chainsmoking part is right. But life on benefits is pretty bare. It is for me, anyway, as I live alone and diligently pay all my bills. I need the internet- I’d feel totally cut off without it. There’s electricity, gas, water, cat food, human food, part of my rent, tea bags and cigarettes. I’m not complaining, but it doesn’t leave me with very much. I saved nearly all of my backpayment, but that’s expressly for emergencies and there’s very little left. As it stands, I am wearing clothes four sizes too big (I’m now 8st 13lbs, having now lost the 3 stones I gained on antipsychotics), with holes in, because I can’t afford new clothes. I look disjointed and poor and I feel throughly dour, unfeminine and ugly. It’s a very minor, superficial niggle, but it does affect how I feel about myself quite a lot.

Serotonin is dysthymic.

Anyway ASW has concluded that I probably have Dysthymia (thought that myself tbh) - not that any Shrink has said this outright.I do however get pissed off by the idea that it’s all or mainly down to stuff with Hubby (ASW did throw this in).This is not true as far as I’m concerned, as I have said many times it started in my college years (if not before).Though yeah sure it’s be a complete & utter lie if I didn’t admit Hubby’s illness does have some contribution to my Depression.

Mr Man’s Wife looks back over the years.

When I first realised that Mr Man was suffering from Schizophrenia I didn’t think he would be well ever again. But in time, and usually with medication, things do get better. It can seem slow at times, but then other times you look back and you suddenly realise how far he has come. The key is not to compare to what he was like when he was well, but to compare to what he was like at his worst.

Coloured Mind and Scattered Thoughts has been stuck on waiting lists for CAMHS.

When I phoned to book an appointment there were none, well not for a month and a half. I booked an appointment for mid April and waited. On the day of my assessment the member of staff I was meant to see was ill, I was told this twenty minutes before my appointment. I phoned again to book another appointment but there was another months wait, it was going to be early june when I saw someone. During the four months of trying to arange my referral I had given up hope of ever getting help and given up helping myself. Eventually I met a social worker who took my history and offered me 8-10 sessions of CBT. It all seemed good, until I was told there was a waiting list for CBT. For me it was just too little too late, the next time I saw someone from the CAMHS team was in A&E after my first, and rather pathetic, attempt at an overdose.

Dumped By A Hallucination is seeing CAMHS, but the therapeutic relationship isn’t going well.

And like that’s not bad enough on its own, it’s also with the woman from the Early Intervention team I always end up being obscenely rude to, because she looks at me and goes mmm, yeah and never says anything constructive, and says long winding things then looks at me thoughtfully like it was a question or something, and appears surprised and makes notes when I say look, was that a question or just a topic to think about for a little? because she doesn’t ask anything, she just acts like she does, and expects me to pick it up and run with it, I guess. But the only place I’m running faced with her and her interminable non-questions is out the door. Except they never let me sit near it. Out the window, then. Into the hedge and through the garden to hide in the old folks’ home across the road.