28 year old untreated schizophrenic stabs mother 77 times

Tamala wrote:drugs are not the enemy here, my sweets. misdiagnosis and mis-prescription of drugs are what we need to be looking at.

dare i say it, you would be an idiot not to take available drugs to your advantage if you needed them and they could potentially rid you of disease. i dont even understand why there needs to be an argument regarding this.

Totally agree. There is a thrid enemey too though; misinformation. I think each person should be free to make an informed decision about whether or not drug therapy is worth the potential risks.

informed decisions and forced drugging hmmmmmmmmmmm?

forced drugging and it's side effect "akathisia" (extreme aggitation)!

"Akathisia (or "acathisia") is an often extremely unpleasant subjective sensation of "inner" restlessness that manifests itself with an inability to sit still or remain motionless, hence the origin of its name: Greek a (without) + kathesis (sitting).

Akathisia may range in intensity from a mild sense of disquiet or anxiety (which may be easily overlooked) to a total inability to sit still with overwhelming anxiety and severe dysphoria (manifesting as an almost undescribable sense of terror and doom). In the most severe cases, dysphoria can be so severe that the patient is literally compelled to take action, leading, possibly, to suicide attempts. It is not unknown to have patients literally run out of a hospital or emergency room.

Akathisia is often misdiagnosed and can lead the patient to commit suicide in or outside the hospital." (Or acts of violence)

It is a common side effect of certain drugs, notably:

* typical or atypical antipsychotics (also called major tranquilizers), such as haloperidol (Haldol®) and droperidol, olanzapine (Zyprexa®);
* SSRIs, such as paroxetine (Paxil®);
* tricyclic antidepressants, certain antihistamines, such as promethazine and diphenhydramine (Benadryl®);
* and certain anti-emetic drugs, particularly the dopamine blockers (e.g. metoclopramide (Reglan®) and prochlorperazine (Compazine®)).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akathisia

Thanks for that, but believe me I don't need some online encyclopaedia to tell me what akathesia is.

The olanzapine I take is causing those symptoms. I feel like the muscles in my legs and sometimes my arms will be electrocuted if I don't move. Daytime is not so bad; nighttime can be almost unbearable. Cutting teh dose down saw some improvement but also more symptoms.

But I still choose to take it, because even though there are nights when I feel like I can't go on, I'd rather that than the hell I was living before I started taking it. That is what I call an informed decision.

I am not being forced to take it. My psychiatrist has already told me it is entirely up to me what we do next. I take it through choice, knowing what effects it is having and may have in teh future, because it's still better than another ten years of illness (or my reality, if you'd rather look at it that way).

Isme

if psychiatric treatment was always on a voluntary basis; i don't think the antipsychiatry movement would exist.

i just deleted my story of what i went through as an involuntary patient. what can you do about it?

any advocate of psychiatry on any level is a threat to my freedom and liberty, got it? expect debate!

I don't agree that any advocate of psychiatry is a threat to freedom.

I totally agree that involuntary treatment is. But it's difficult for me to condemn it outright; I've posted my mother's story somewhere here. She had depression with psychotic symptoms, that went untreated for a long time. Until it reached a point where her family could no longer offer her the kind of help and support she needed; it culminated in her trying to burn the house to the ground, with her kids inside. She tried suicide also; she was committed and forcibly medicated. It was an infringement of her rights, it was horrible to see her go through that, and it made me incrdeibly angry with the authorities who did that to her.

But she recvered; she has never needed any kind of treatment since (other than meditation and what she does to deal with her depression) and both she and I are still here. We wouldn't have been had she not been treated.

I don't doubt that in different circumstances, with different support, her illness might not have got to the point it did; but a contributary factor for her was being told by a GP that she was 'just depressed' and to 'go and pull herself together'. Depression, she was told, is not a real illness; shake yourself up and get over it. She couldn't. Not being treated would almost certainly have cost both she and I our lives. It's hard for me to condemn sections when there is obviously not enough help there in the first place.

I have also been treated under section. In my case I was given ECT (I posted asking for more information since I do believe it's had a long-term negative effect on my memory for starters) not drug therapy. It didn't actually help me either to be honest. I'm not sure what I can do about it. I don't feel I have to accept treatment to avoid being sectioned again, although I know some do, and I understand why. I accept treatment right now because it's my choice. I would love to know that I'm not ever at risk of being sectioned again.

there is absoultely no proof forced treatment saves lives.

I'm just telling you my experiences of it. I do know of people who have been sectioned and treated (mainly for depressive illnesses) when they wouldn't voluntarily accept treatment, and who have then recovered and been glad they were treated. For those people, being forced to accept treatment did save their lives.

I'm not certain how you'd go about 'proving' it saves lives or otherwise.

And I'm not convinced that a few people being denied the opportunity to kill themselves for long enough to change their minds and be glad they did so actually makes forced treatment anything less than deplorable.

when i was in a ward of forcefully treated patients with long lasting injections of antipsychotics, 14 suicides occurred over a 2 & 1/2 year period.

my friends committed suicide whilst on antipsychotics. akathisia would have been a major contributing factor. your life was just turned to hell on antipsychotics, you just became a obese dribbling zombie and told you'll never recover and you'll be on these drugs for the rest of your life. being treated like a subhuman because you were labeled sz 24/7 destroys your self esteem.

i'm sure if we were all treated in a place like loren moshers soteria many of them would be alive today.

Hi,

I wrote a website about my forced psychiatric care experience. It was Fresno County U.S GOVERNMENT that did it to me. I was perfectly fine and had just complained in a reasonable non-volatile way about how a juvenile was neglected. He was brought in (according to him) by the police and could not get up do to police abuse and I asked for his epilepsy medications for him as he could not himself do to injuries. I asked and asked for his meds for him and he ended up have a grand mal seizure hitting his head on the chair. I asked for 30-45 minutes.

I complained to an employee and got his card, shortly after, like 20 minutes I was threatened by a doctor that never saw before to take meds or be confined and given a shot.

The day after as I was just there because my apartment had problems, I saw a county worker forcefully put a disabled person into confinement. He was a Hispanic developmentally disabled individual who was clapping at me and I was tapping on the table, we were talking. For socializing he was placed in confined isolation by force.

A superior court judge released me from that place. Shortly after because of the things they did to me, my parents moved me out of that city and county. I was dependent upon the social service system that threw me into that place because my apartment was leaking and I asked them to talk to my apartment manager, instead I was taken against my will into a locked facility.

http://www.nathanyoung.net is the website I created for this public complaint, additional I have for songs on there I created with Native American Flutes. They are free and part of my complaint protest website.

I wrote a book on NathanYoung.net called Turning In Big Brother about what went through my mind, what I witnessed and experienced.

In America, I’d expect better, now I’m speaking out and it’s costing me $100+ a month to put ads on Google and yahoo embarrassing the county government when people look up government services and departments in the county government there.

Nathan Young
American Advocate

They do have a sick way with you in hospitals. If you ask some questions and they tell you something and you bring up that they havent answerd your question they'll take that as none compliance.
"Are we going to have a problem?". And they'll shove you and if you turn around they'll jump ontop of you and stick you in the ass with a needle and send you to a "quiet room" ie: isolation. I was in St.Josephs for a few months, Syl Apps for a bit, CPRI in london for near a year, and a place in toronto for a while but i cant recall the name and they all did the same $#%^. They went nuts in toronto though with the needles....there was this kid from detroit i forget his name but they jumped on that kid almost everyday for a month.....he didnt care, he'd tell them to go ###$ themselves. It's best to play ball anyway....there more then happy to restrain you and stick you with a needle.

I dont like antipsychotics.....i refuse to take them, I got the novo-chlorpromazine and i couldnt handle the feeling of being a zombie, i couldnt function. And i hate pill's in general.....i've been put on many over the years and not one has helped. Actully i was on Prozac as a kid and when i went to the psyciatric ward for the first time they took me off and said it was making me violent. Ironicly my current Dr. has put me on them recently....to do with anxiety....havent taken them yet though.

Actully theres one pill i like, lorazepam. Its a tranq pill but i only take it when i need it. Take 5 or 6 of those little bastards and i'm good.

But i wouldnt link medication to violence on a general scale. There was this guy from Montreal Guy Crouteu i think, he stabbed a girl 570 something times and tried to climb into her stomach.....to get back into the womb or something, just some random girl...and this was done while OFF his medication, when on it he wasnt capable of doing such things. I think they put him in penatenguishen (for you who dont know what that is, its like the worst, most dangerous psychiatric hospital for the crimminaly insane in north america) bad bad place. So he's getting his cummuffins...thats for sure.

LOL, thats why knowbody pleads insanity in canada.....because that means a trip to penatenguishen.