Do Psychiatric Drugs Reduce Lifespan?

[ms spock]

And it won't necessarily be cut short from taking medications @Lizio - you aren't taking the heavy duty ones. I could be wrong but from what I have read being on medication for a year or two doesn't cut your life short.

 

[Queen Boudica]

I'm hoping it is only a year or 2 @Ms Spock. Not sure how much more I can deal with. Want it all to go away.

 

[Anarchy]

Informed consent

And unbiased information about the options available would be the ideal.

JFI, when I was at school (over 30 years ago) one of the guys had tourettes. He was being medicated, not because he wanted it, but to save him causing others embarrassment with his shouts...

He died suddenly, age 17.
A price worth paying?

I don't know whether it was just that the school nurse had anyone who was on any sort of meds, line up after breakfast, or whether there were an unusually high proportion of kids who were on meds who got dumped in that boarding school by parents who wanted them out of the way...

Anyway, the meds that those kids were on made them noticeability slow, and one or two already had tremors from excessive doses of neuroleptics and other anti psychotics.

 

[Neverthesame]

the fact that more and more mental health patients are handed scripts for the meds or put on multiple concoctions or large doses,

This is something I have noticed as well. Whether here, or any other place people talk about what and how much they are prescribed psyc meds.

I have more than once been absolutely stunned by the laundry list of pills people are taking.

Some of these people have complained of symptoms far worse than mine. Okay, that makes some logical sense.

But other's I have seen, are (to the best of my ability to compare shoes with someone I have never met) about the same symptom wise to me. But they have also been prescribed a dozen or more different drugs. All to treat the mental health issues they have. Plus a couple others to combat the side effects of the psyc meds.

My very elderly Grandmum doesn't take that many pills a day, and she has a laundry list of age related health problems (she's in her 90's).

I've been dealing with PTSD for over a decade now, been through lots of doctors and medications. But never have I had it suggested that I take more than 2 or 3 different meds at a time. I can't fathom it, let alone afford it.

Mind you I am definitely a little biased, in that I hate medication. Currently not on any.

Though admittedly I have been thinking of going on something again.

Still, a dozen separate drugs? How can that be?
That cannot be good for someone, right?

 

[Mammo]

@Lizio - hey, I just watched that episode of Q&A...it was good, but one point that was disheartening was when Fay Jackson pointed out the elephant in the room, that "trauma" is usually the primary driver behind most "mental illness" - not one person clapped.

As much as everyone was passionate about implementing change, and "treating early" and intervening...but, intervening with what???? My fear is that if intervention continues on a medicalised model of "disease" rather than "trauma" the problems will never really get resolved, but just swept under the carpet by focussing on "genes", "chemical imbalances"...or whatever else they come up with next.

sorry for getting off topic a bit.

 

[Neverthesame]

@Anarchy I think I had mentioned somewhere on here before, about one of my aunt's.

She was given meds when she was a teenager, for what specifically, I have never been able to get a straight answer.

All I know is she was very much like the kids you described queued up at the boarding school canteen.

I didn't meet her until years after she had been taken off the drugs she was given as a girl. But I remember she was slow, and she shook like a Parkinson's patient. That was the best late 80's medicine could do for her. Apparently she resembled a lobotomy patient for most of her teenage years.

As for what was actually wrong with her. I have heard everything from paranoid schizophrenia to major depressive disorder, to PMS. (my family is not umm... How do you say?.. Well informed of modern psychiatry.)

The first time I went to family function after my ptsd diagnosis was... Interesting, to put it politely. Once they realized I was safe with the silverware, it went smoother. Lol.

Sadly. My aunt died in her 40's from a pulmonary edema, so I can't ask her myself. Though every time I am prescribed anything, she's the first person that comes to mind. Terrifying to think that the health care system, and stigma. Is what broke her mind, not a disease. Poor woman.

I know that her's, as well as a few other examples. Have made me very leery of just swallowing whatever I am prescribed. Even then I have been burned a couple of times.

For a field of medicine designed to help people. There seems to be very little real help on offer.

While I don't doubt most doctors treating patients, are really trying to help them. The whole thing feels a quagmire of misinformation and money making.

Very difficult to put trust in something when it's your life at stake. Either you take it, and maybe feel better or possibly worse. Or you suffer, never knowing what you can do.

Frustrating, no. Terrifying, that's what it is.

 

[Queen Boudica]

but one point that was disheartening was when Fay Jackson pointed out the elephant in the room, that "trauma" is usually the primary driver behind most "mental illness" - not one person clapped.

I didn't see that bit, came in after. BUT have you watched the mental hospital program that is on over 3 nights. The number of patients there that have trauma symptoms if you ask me and are being diagnosed personality disorder or some other diagnosis, and handed pills. No mention of therapy for trauma. That is what gets me. if you have trauma related mental illness, they just seem to be trying to fit you into some DSM diagnosis and drugs and that is it.

As for Ian Hickie the psychiatrist on that show. I don't think much of him at all. I note he was now saying that we need more psychological care. Yet he is the one who caused Better Access to be reduced to 10 sessions a year, and was claiming that is adequate, with absolutely no research based evidence to back this up. He is very influential in the political circle and his voice seems to be listened to despite his statements not being backed up by research. Funds seem to be going to his research and Headspace. Recently he has been trying to get mental hospital beds cut claiming that they are just full of homeless people. I noticed he distanced himself from that proposal in the Q&A program when it was put to him, he just deflected and moved on. Since he knows the public and Susan Ley are dead against cutting mental hospital beds.

There was some talk at the end about stopping childhood abuse. So obviously there is a recognition that trauma is behind a lot of mental conditions, but I think the overwhelming push is for drug therapy, and this is why therapy to treat trauma is neglected. My opinion. Anyway, why I am interested in interventions in early childhood I think is key.

 

[Queen Boudica]

Still, a dozen separate drugs? How can that be?
That cannot be good for someone, right?

Yes, my sister, she was on such a concoction of drugs. And if you looked at their information, those drugs were not supposed to be long term, or for people with borderline personality, or suicidal or combined. And she was abusing them and using them to zone out. They just gave her pill after pill, to fix one thing and then another and another. She never was psychotic before. Never violent. And yes, when she was 17 they stuck her in a mental ward, pumped her full of antipsychotics so she was like a zombie and claimed she had schizophrenia. Bull she had trauma. That schizophrenic diagnosis stuck with her and it was completely false. Until finally they diagnosed her as borderline personality and psychotic. Yes once my mother and the mental health system had finished her. Makes me so angry.

 

[Mammo]

I didn't see that bit, came in after. BUT have you watched the mental hospital program that is on over 3 ni...

Hi @Lizio - nope not seen that...might look into it...but might be too upsetting. Hospital reminded me greatly of being at home as a kid and not in a good way.

The psychiatry profession I stay away from...psychologists I'll speak to...but with clearly defined limits.

 

[Queen Boudica]

Yes @Mammo, I find it very triggering and disturbing watching it, but sort of drawn because people keep telling me how it has changed since my sister in the 80's and 90's. It scares the shit out of me. And some of the patients are really bad, but as I said, I reckon a lot of them have a trauma history. I don't think I would survive being in that environment.

Yes I won't go near psychiatrists. Again, they prescribed the death concoction for my sister and they also misdiagnosed her, especially hospital psychiatrists. Although have to say, for some bizarre reason, I find the head psychiatrist in that program attractive and he is fat and balled, but something about that south African accent and he seems so cheerful and he does interact well with the patients. However he almost seems a bit too cheerful for my liking though, considering the stuff he is dealing with. Guess you have to have a positive disposition to work in that environment. He seems all caring and knowledgeable, but he holds so many people's lives in his hands. Of all the medical professionals, really I think psychiatrists once they get a hold of you, can determine your whole future. And I reckon it is difficult to get a second opinion by another psychiatrist they just go by the initial assessment. It just looks like witch doctor medical practice to me. They could have made a difference for my sister if they had spotted she was abused and very scared. Instead they doped her up and wrecked the rest of her life. And I reckon there is so much misdiagnosis going on and wrong meds. I don't them to ever get their hands on me. Shudder.

 

[Ellabella44]

I honestly hate that everyone wants to stop child abuse, but nobody wants to look or say something when its in their family.

I think as long as it is a thing that people are embarrassed about it will be hard to get the early intervention.

(Lost my train of thought)

 

[Queen Boudica]

That's why we need educators trained to look for the signs. And education about abuse in schools, and encouraging kids to come forward.