This Week in Mentalists (36)

I’m now back from my refreshing holiday in Scarborough. The views of the dog food cannery were excellent, and I recommend the boiled herring. My tour guide Olga, a champion weightlifter and former KGB agent, says I behaved with “satisfactory efficiency” and that I may wax her back hairs for her, should I wish to do so. In return, I would like to use this forum to publicly thank her for her educational tours of the combine harvester factory.

Anyways, on with This Week in Mentalists.

Mandy Lifeboats Ahoy is impatient with being asked questions.

This goes out to all those professionals (coughs) who stand by their checklists and tick boxes and ask me stupid bloody questions that bare little relevance to what I am thinking or feeling.

As my friend who suffers with schizophrenia (or is the spelling scizophrenia. I am always being bollocked for not getting it right) said when the psychiatrist asked them if they hear voices. Their response “yes, I am hearing yours!

Aethelred the Unread worries about anxiety.

‘Anxiety’ is such a limp sounding word. It sounds like something that would be experienced by the “sensitive” heroine in a 19th century novel. It doesn’t sound like it’s a real problem. To me there’s a hierarchy of words that discuss this kind of thing. Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up.

Worried - this is what you feel when you temporarily can’t find your keys or your bank card. A mild sensation of “Oh dear, things aren’t entirely relaxed and comfortable.”

Nervous - a mild sensation of “I wonder what will happen” coupled with a slight sense of “I hope nothing bad happens.”

Anxious - this is what you feel when nervousness no longer quite covers it. Now it’s not so much “I hope nothing bad happens”, as it is “What will I do if something bad happens?”

Scared - “I know there’s something bad out there, and I think it might happen to me, and, please, I don’t want it to.” The appropriate response when you find yourself walking along a dark street late at night and then you start to hear footsteps following you, and they’re a long way behind, but they’re getting closer…

Frightened - “The bad thing is going to happen to me, it’s not going to happen just yet, but I can’t do anything to stop it.” Like the bit in the horror film when you see the shadow of the man with the knife through the smoked glass of the door, you go to phone the police, but the phone-line’s been cut…

Terrified - “The bad thing’s here, it’s now, any second.” The man with the knife’s smashed the glass, he’s in your house, you’re hiding somewhere, shaking and whimpering, then you open your eyes and see the knife right in front of you -

On this scale, anxiety is my default state of existence.

Bipolar Mo has a bizarre, and frankly shocking story.

Timothy Pinkston is a homeless guy with bipolar disorder who manages his symptoms with drugs and alcohol. He sought treatment at St. Joseph’s Hospital psychiatric unit in August where he was subsequently detained. While in an intoxicated state within the unit, he said he wanted to kill the president. Now, how would you expect staff in a psychiatric unit to respond to this type of behaviour… discuss the issue?… distract the guy?… create a calm environment and encourage him to sleep it off?… maybe even sedate him? Err, well no, over at St Joseph’s they came up with a different response, they called in the secret service.

The next day Pinkston said he had been intoxicated and didn’t know what he had been saying but he did admit to the secret service that he did not like the president’s foreign policy or his handling of the Iraq war (wow… what a bizzarre point of view).

The court was very understanding and supportive regarding his mental health problems. U.S. District Judge Susan C. Bucklew sentenced Pinkston to 57 months in prison, just three months short of the statutory maximum for the crime. “Mr. Pinkston, there’s no good answer here,” Bucklew said. “I don’t think I would be doing you any favor in giving you a shorter sentence.”

That’s just ridiculous and appalling. What would they have done if he’d said he was the second coming of Jesus? Written to the Pope?

Coloured Mind and Scattered Thoughts has discovered some advantages to not getting support.

I went off to CAMHS today as planned but rather than telling my social worker how awful things are, I said I was feeling physically ill and that it was affecting my mental state but said very little else. I feel back into the old ‘I’m fine’ routine I do so well and to start with I was annoyed at myself. However, upon reflection I’ve come to realise it perhaps wasn’t such a bad thing, for one it’s given me the kick up the bum I needed to get a few things done that I’d been putting of. Whilst at times it would be nice to have the support I was promised from CAMHS, not having it has simply allowed me to become even more independent and has meant that I’ve had to face my fears and do some difficult things on my own because there simply has been no one else.

The Shrink is not impressed by the National Dementia Strategy.

It’s lengthy, it’s tedious, it has no substance what so ever. It tells me that our patients and their carers need good dementia care, where ever they may be. Well, thank you, so that is where I’ve been going wrong all these years.

Not Another Nursing Student likes night shifts.

£11 an hour to watch DVD’s? Yes please. Of course, the £11 also applies when you spend all night restraining the person who is trying to brain you with a chair….or standing outside of seclusion planning how to give the guy soaked in his own urine and excrement a much needed jab of accuphase i.e. without also getting soaked. Or for the short straw loser who has to go in and untie the ligature off the same blokes genitals.

Seaneen is confronting her body image issues.

I speak so easily about manic depression. It has been so destructive and continues to be, but I can laugh and joke and serve up wide, toothy grins when talking about it.

But with my body issues, I do not laugh and joke. I practically spit out the words through gritted teeth. There are no funny stories. Just endless tales of smashing hand mirrors against walls, of not being able to watch most films because I can’t bear to see how beautiful everyone else is, of finding it difficult to socialise because I am ugly and trollish and dull compared to my friends. It is an entirely dark, shapeless and depressing state.

Serotonin is using thought charts.

I managed to do a Thought Chart last night which again helped.Only problem is with these really I find that they are a temporary fix to a problem bothering me.Sure I can look back at them re read & see if that helps, but in all honesty the anxiety/depression return over & over.Now I know I haven’t done the CBT to combat this part the OCD part of my illness, but I am beginning to wonder whether I am going to benefit in the long term from this therapy anyway.

The Cockroach Catcher looks at the fabrication of PTSD.

Over a period of ten years, Mr. Burkett, using the Freedom of Information Act, found that some 1,700 individuals, including some of the most prominent examples of the Vietnam veteran as dysfunctional loser, had fabricated their war stories. Many had never even been in the services. Some even claimed they were in Vietnam long after the war ended. War did funny things, or was it money?

In my years of practice, I have seen many parents who want a diagnosis for their children that allows them to claim compensation. ADHD is one of the most notable one. The problem is that if we are not careful, children may be put on medication just so that their parents can claim Disability Benefit.

We psychiatrists have to be able to tell the fakes in our work so that the real patients get the care they deserve.