james:
Mental Health should not be treated like physical ailments for the following reasons:
– The causal link is far from established.
– There are no objective tests – not one – that can confirm or deny a mental illness exists in a person
(alive or dead)
– The process by which Mental Illness are invented is not at all medical or scientific.
That’s why homosexuality stopped being a mental illness – it became too political so they simply
removed in the next DSM.
– Much (if not most) of the research is carried out by drugs companies and slanted trials. I think it was the
Seroxat trails where it was found that “suicidal tendencies” became “adverse reactions”. The tricks of
big-pharma are too numerous to list.
– Many people (such as myself) regain full control of mental faculties and their lives, despite the ‘help’ of the
medical profession, which does not fit the medical hypothesis
– There is no known mechanism by which the drugs “work”…. look at the history of psychiatry too – shesh!

So why should it be treated as medical, when both the research and the treatment don’t fit either the scientific method or the medical one?

@Creative, your points addressed below.
While all causal links aren’t confirmed (some are), there are numerous studies available that recommend standard treatment procedures as though mental illness were any other illness, this is why mental hospitals are ceasing to exist.
There are objective tests available to confirm or deny presence of mental illness, consult your psychiatrist/ psychologist.
In relation to the “invention” of mental health issues: as research advances many of the “conditions” such as homosexuality are having links with mental disease removed. This takes time as you are facing a point of view that has existed since the medieval times.
Psychiatric illness is like any other area of health – the research funding comes from private pharmaceutical companies – if you think they’re going to market a drug that could result in them being wiped out as a result of a faulty claim by a patient, think again. In addition, there are laws that are actively enforced to ensure self interest does not oversee common good.
Seroxat is an antidepressant – the issue to which you are referring (suicidal tendencies) is a result of patients withdrawing too quickly from the drug (giving the patient Discontinuation or Withdrawal Syndrome).
I’m not sure where you’re going with your “Help” from “Medical Professionals”, explain further please.
The history of psychiatry is similar to the history of medicine/surgery, dark and dingy. RE understanding how the medication works, we don’t understand how anaesthesia works, perhaps I, as the nurse anaesthetist, should stop using it as a method of knocking the patient out?
Your argument isn’t based on fact, it’s based on general hearsay. Mental health issues are no different to surgical/medical/general health issues, they should be treated in the same manner.

James.
As someone who has suffered suicidal tendencies as a direct result of an SSRI drug I take exception to your comment.
To say I was not myself is an understatement, I was suffering full on dissociation. This was while taking the prescribed dose as instructed.
How many of those deaths by suicide may have been caused as a result of adverse reactions? It seems we aren’t even trying to find out.

As for adverse reactions that resulted in the deaths of other people.. There’s a number of reports of that.
http://www.ssristories.com

Shanti, take exception all you like – there’s stories compiled by patients who sensationalise their experiences, then statistics compiled by people who know what it is they’re doing. Your next comment will be should we not listen to the patients experiences – no. I ask patients what meds they’re taking and they can tell me what colour the pill is, and I’m generally lucky if they can accurately tell me why it is they’re taking the pill. I’ll listen to the experts, thanks..

@James if you are really a nurse anaesthetist it would be good to know what hospital you are in so that I can avoid it. By saying people sensationalised their stories you are effectively saying that they exaggerated it when someone could in fact be telling the TRUTH. And that you don’t believe the person. You also write about patients in a condescending way. I know exactly what medication I was on and what dosage. I also have 9 foolscap pages from the chemist of the amount of toxic chemicals that were pumped into me after Psychiatry got their hands on me.

And I know who the experts are and they are hard to find in mainstream Psychiatry. I follow the work of Professor David Healy, Professor Ivor Browne, Dr Pat Bracken, Dr Peter Breggin, Dr Joanna Moncrieff, Dr Terry Lynch and a few others. Who are the mental health experts that you refer to? I am also an expert on my own mental health and not ashamed to say it. I have learned the hard way. It requires work but it is not rocket science. Handing over power to Psychiatrists for me was a retrograde step. They nearly destroyed me.

Which experts would those be? The ones being sued for fraud over the off label marketing of their drugs and the suppression of clinical data?
Or the many medical journals which researchers like Ben Goldacre, Richard Smith and John Ionaddis would tell you are really just fancy advertising.. As Ben Goldacre points out in his TED talk Battling Bad Science, there are over 600,000 ways to manipulate clinical data.. That’s a large margin for error, and his article “The Drugs Don’t Work” (the Guardian if memory serves) was less than favourable to the pharmaceutical industries claims to be marketing effective solutions. The British Medical Journals EBM journal puts the amount of drugs on sale that work for their intended purpose at 11%. 51% had “unknown effectiveness”.

I love the way you’re so quick to dismiss patient input, as though they haven’t a mind for themselves, their feelings and experiences are of no consequence – except for we are talking about their mental health, their feelings and experiences are paramount to that. For you to write them of is indicative of a very poor understanding of mental health issues. I sincerely hope that you don’t work in the sector.. Maybe those people who don’t know whether they are coming or going are over medicated?

Aine, I have 7 years of education behind me (a BSc, an MSc and PhD) in nursing, are you telling me that my professional opinion for which I am paid to offer, counts for nothing, whereas a patient who has no education in the area can offer an opinion and be taken that their opinion is worth more than mine? It sounds haughty, but the fact is that if I’m a specialist nurse in my area, I do know more than the patient.

James.
Have you ever suffered an adverse reaction to psychiatric drugs?
Have you ever suffered mental health problems?
Because the patient has, and as such has a larger insight into what it actually feels like, and is more of an expert on their experiences than you are.

If all you see is a prescription then you are missing the point in mental health which is intrinsically linked to emotions.

@James, stick with the Propofol. If that’s what you work with. All those letters don’t matter to me. My last Psychiatrist is educated to Doctorate of Medicine Level but he was unable to let me know that he was labelling me “Schizoaffective” behind my back in letters to my GP. Reading that was very traumatic, but now I realise I am dealing with a Pseudo Scientist. He gave me that label due to “a flattened and blunted affect”. Seemingly I must have been showing no emotion. I wonder would that have something to do with the fact that I was drugged up and traumatised by my treatment in the mental health service? They helped destroy my self confidence.

I have never had a test, objective or otherwise, for any “mental illness”. Because any tests have no scientific basis and are just subjective.

According to Dr Michael Corry (RIP) only about 10% of Consultant Psychiatrists are trained in Psychotherapy and it shows. They do not have basic listening skills. They are too busy judging, labeling and deciding what cocktail of medication to give to the unsuspecting person in emotional distress.

Oh and James..
My doctors got my diagnosis wrong, very wrong. I had some trauma for which I needed counselling and temporal lobe epilepsy. I never had “clinical depression”. I was prescribed drugs to treat a disorder I didn’t have which caused me to suffer an adverse reaction which could very well have ended my life. I was prescribed these drugs after a single consultation. So those psychiatric out patients clinics where you see a different consultant every few weeks for five minutes aren’t really exploring all possible avenues before prescribing the drugs are they?

James C said “Aine, I have 7 years of education behind me (a BSc, an MSc and PhD)” oh my an expert. No time to listen to the patient because the expert knows best.

It’s the reality. Patients sensationalise their experiences. “I was near death, I could see the light in front of me…”, really? You had a bleeding finger. Ask any A&E nurse or doctor – it’s fact.
In nursing and medicine you are taught to recognise symptoms, very little is taken from the patient, because very often the patient doesn’t know.
Absolutely, ask the patient how their experience was, did they get treated, did they get compassion, empathy, respect. Don’t ask them how the service should work – they base their answer on their experience and their experience alone, which is wrong. Ask the people who work the service, who see it for all of its problems and situations, who deal with the service every day for years, see a variety of experiences. Don’t ask the patient or their family who may have had one bad experience for their thoughts on how the service should be run, your answer will be “privatise it”, and that’s not good for anyone.
Prof’s Healy and Browne, Dr’s Bracken, Breggin, Montcrieff and Lynch all agree with each other, that doesn’t make them right. Their general point of view is not one shared by most Psychiatrists, (thankfully).
You are an expert on your own medical care? How? Google? Laughable. You are essentially arguing that if the patient has a poor experience they should go to Google, and not get a second or third or fourth opinion? Irresponsible.
I don’t know you Aine or Shanti, or your experiences, but my guess is that you have axes to grind, therefore you think everything about mental health should be completely changed etc., and that’s your opinion.
By the way, if you think my job is about doling out propefol (I wish), you should follow me for a day. Cardiac arrests, allergic reactions, drug overdoses, pain management, I could keep going.
Also, in mental health, the last thing you ever want to do is put a patient on drugs, it is far more beneficial for the patient to talk through their difficulties, unfortunately, the area of mental health is far more complex than you are portraying it to be, but then you are the expert, and I’m only a nurse, so I should shush.
Shanti, I have never had an allergic reaction but I deal with them all the time, and chances are if there is a drug available (legal or otherwise) I know about it, its’ side affects and it’s shortcomings.
Unfortunately the patient is only an expert on their experience. One experience. Absolutely take on board what they have to say, but it is by far and away not the only thing that should be listened to.
It’s well and dandy to say the patient knows what it is they’re feeling, or experiencing, just because the patient is a patient it does not make them experts, that is why we don’t let patients carry out cardio-thoracic surgery, or work in ICU.
The point of this article was that information wasn’t known about COD of people who had recently engaged with the mental health services. Information is known – ask the right people – the pathologists, the toxicologists, the experts, the information is available.
The mental health service in Ireland is appalling, I agree. It needs changing, and change is happening, yes it is slow, but you are working with a system that has been in place the world over for centuries.
On another note, I am one of the most empathetic people going, and have always listened to my patients, and their families, it’s part of my job. Yes I realise your left upper arm is sore, but it’s not cramp, it’s heart attack, or yes I realise you’re confused and slightly disoriented but its not your head, it’s a UTI. The problem you present with is not always the problem you have, listen to patients, but for gods sake, ask the experts too.

You claim I said this: “You are an expert on your own medical care? How? Google? Laughable”.

I never said I was expert on my own medical care so you have twisted around what I said. I have learned the hard way to work on becoming an expert on my own mental health as when I left it to the so called “experts” I was on a road to nowhere. I have several ways of learning about mental health and have just finished a course at the moment. I also follow true experts who make sense to me. They include Professor Ivor Browne who has nearly 60 years experience as a doctor. If I was still attending a mainstream Psychiatrist, I would probably be in bed now, drugged up with Seroquel or Zyprexa (both of which have lawsuits against the makers due to their link to rapid weight gain, diabetes etc). I would also be on Lithium which eventually would damage my thyroid. And I would see no future. Just exist.

It is not the first time that I came across this arrogance from a nurse, assuming you are a nurse. I just have to think back to May and the abuse I got from my aunt who is a nurse. It seems to go with the territory for some of ye.

You would make a very good mechanic. Because if you were working with a car it would be up to you to find out what was wrong. And you don’t have to worry about the car talking back. I refuse to become a victim of the Psychiatric system the way my father was for 20 years. Drugged up and given electric shock treatment and the works. I refuse to be “compliant” and take damaging drugs that I don’t need. And I will continue to voice by opinion. I am not saying everyone has had a bad experience with the “mental health system”. I myself had a good experience in St. Patrick’s hospital where I managed to escape to for a week from that other backwater hospital. While I was drugged up and sitting beside a poor woman who was going through ECT, at least I was treated with some respect. And not locked up like a criminal, for a crime I never committed.

You say that you agree that the mental health system is appalling but then when someone tries to explain what is wrong with the system you just don’t want to hear. Because you claim to have your PhD so you must know it all. A system that pushes around a trolley of “potions and poisons” (that is what I call it in my diary from hospital) is never going to work if it doesn’t help the person address the root causes of their problems,. So long as the system revolves around the medical model ie drugs and while the Psychosocial model is secondary, people will just get stuck in the revolving door of a Psychiatric unit. That is assuming that they live through the experience.

And to take a quote from someone who was in a Psychiatric hospital in the UK recently “Compassion and being heard is all I needed this year. When they drug you up it is difficult to be heard because you turn ito a zombie”.

So long as you compare physical ailments to emotional distress you will never get the point.

James:
You are factual incorrect on many points and obviously hold your view in an extremely dogmatic way.
Obviously the medical professionals I’m referring to are psychiatrists. The history of which is dark in the sense of what they have done to people such as lobotomy, and not in the sense of an unknowledgeable past.
If, for the sake of argument, we imagine that mental health problems are *not* medical, then you’d have to question the practices.
Or perhaps you think that locking people up with no trail, not giving them exercise, stripping them of their clothes and forcing them to wear pyjamas, insisting that they are ill and that if they don’t accept that then they lack insight int their illness, telling them they’ll be let out tomorrow and tomorrow, forcing them to take drugs against their will under threat of injection, not providing the requested counselling… that all this would inspire mental well-being in average humans who feel there is nothing wrong with them.
I doubt you’ll bother to take the time to imagine it from the “patients” perspective.
When I was in hospital to be allowed time alone I was forced to act up so that they put me in solitary – but my health files don’t mention the fact that I had requested to be put there before being forced there as “punishment”
Personally, I think if you were subjected to these practices yourself, believing them to be unhelpful and believing that you have a problem not related to genetics – you too would find it difficult to cope in those circumstances.

You can lead a man through education but you can’t make him think

Ok James, perhaps it’s best not to assume. The doctor was the one who said I almost died, it wasn’t my exaggeration.

Do I have an axe to grind? Maybe I do. I put my full faith in the doctor to know what was best, as you point out – its their area of expertise and they have alphabet soup after their last names like yourself.

I had two suicide attempts on Cipramil. After the first I voiced my concerns to my psychiatrist and was told it was the “settling in phase” and to KEEP TAKING the medication. I was young, and will admit I didn’t read the safety data on the package insert, but the last thing I was expecting was for the cure to make me want to kill myself.

After my second suicide attempt – where I was informed I’d had a very close call and for that reason they weren’t letting me leave the hospital and I had to go for a ward assessment in the psych hospital.
I refused to keep taking the drugs. They told me it was ok, there was all sorts of drugs they could try me on. I tried Effexor, and for a couple of months I felt great.. I wasn’t eating, I couldn’t. I was only sleeping a few hours every second or third night. I was behaving very strangely and making a holy show of myself – but I didn’t realise any of this at the time.. I believe the clinical term for it is hypomania.
Then I plunged into a far worse depression. I lost all emotions except anger and sadness (dysphoria). Some really great things happened in my life and I was in too dark a place to truly appreciate them, and this was after them upping the dose a few times. I was sleeping 12 hours a day, had been signed off work and onto disability and cried daily. Yeah, *anti* depressants.. I had never been so depressed in my whole life.

I quit, I went cold turkey, it was horrible but I’m glad I am no longer on the drugs. It was a couple of years later that we discovered TLE was what the shrinks had mistaken for depression, as is apparently quite common with TLE.

I then found out about the amount of fraud that goes on in clinical trials, and that the suicidal ideation is a well known side effect of these drugs (necessitating a black box warning) and no one thought to say it to me.. I felt cheated, I felt as though I had been walked into a dangerous situation by the people I trusted to help me. It was after reading up on the subject and listening to people like Ben Goldacre, Richard Smith, Dave Sackett & Andy Oxmann, John Ionnadis etc, that I realised, it’s not the doctors fault. They are not presented with all the relevant data, they are getting a biased sample, so how can they be fully informed?
Couple that with attitudes such as the one you have displayed here and it is easy to see the course of the problems that ensue. The patient reports x, doctor says “it’s not in the clinical data: patient is exaggerating / incorrect / hypochondriac”, doctor doesn’t realise there were ten other studies on said drug that showed the very symptom patient presented with, that were not published because there was no requirement for the drug manufacturer to do so.

In hindsight I feel as though the drugs impeded my recovery. I had people telling me that I had a mental illness, I had something wrong in my brain and taking the drugs was how to fixed it. In a sense it absolved me from any responsibility over taking control of my situation. I just sat back and let my “illness” be my safety blanket. But I never suffered from clinical depression, I had a painful childhood and adolescence, and my temporal lobe kept short circuiting.. No SSRI or SNRI was going to do anything about that. I experienced those adverse reactions for nothing. So perhaps I have good reason to suggest that anti depressants are handed out too easily (my mate was prescribed them for stomach problems which turned out to be a lactose intolerance!!), that their side effects are quite serious and should be communicated to the patient before they are started so that the patient can make an informed decision.
And that when a patient says that they are having strange sensations the doctor considers drug causes rather than writing it off as a symptom of another mental health disorder (eg psychosis, mania, suicidal ideation etc).

But hey, I guess that’s too much to ask.

Ps, I find it absolutely shocking the amount of people who tout their qualifications as health professionals who seem blissfully unaware of how corrupted the “clinical data” is.

Shanti Om,
Thanks for being so open about your story. Powerful stuff!
I guess our friend James thinks the Vision For Change is liberal clap-trap, as it refers to Experts By Experience.

Respect++

Thank You Creatively Maladjusted.

If all of the information was available to doctors. If all conflicts of interest were declared – by authors, publishers and journals. If studies weren’t suppressed, if they weren’t stopped while the going was good to have favourable results to publish, if ghostwriting wasn’t endemic..
If all of what was printed in a medical journal could actually be *trusted* and it said that these drugs worked, then I would consider my case to be a rarity and leave it at that.

But it’s not. And sadly, of my friends, I am not alone. I have had several friends lives shattered by these drugs, too many suicide attempts and friends in ICU. I can’t believe this is *not* something that warrants at least to be recorded, never mind properly researched.

Suicide (and violence – often including murder) are *listed* side effects of SSRI and SNRI class drugs. That is basically ALL modern anti depressants, which were marketed on the basis that they had less side effects than the old tricyclics (I wonder in the trials that demonstrated this whether they gave an above usual dosage of the comparison – or did they give the usual dose of it and a lower than practical dosage of the SSRI / SNRI? Just some of their known methods) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/jan/14/health.medicineandhealth?cat=society&type=article

It’s in the package insert. And we don’t even attempt to take it into consideration when people die. Shane Clancys parents had to go to court to clear their sons name after anti depressants led him into a murder suicide.
Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, all those high profile murder suicides in the states had psychiatric medicine involved.. But instead we are focused on violent movies, and video games (which are already censored according to age), musicians mistaken for “Satanists”, gun availability, etc.. Not very much coverage goes to the mind bending drugs involved, when it’s far more likely to be the cause – after all, it’s a *listed* side effect..

I have no issue with doctors – ones that are objective and realise that this level of fraud exists. But they are few and far between, try explaining to some of them that the med journals are just fancy advertising space, that some of them are owned by the very pharmaceutical companies using it as same, that some of the names on those studies never even read the paper never mind authored it – they call you a conspiracy nut without even looking at the facts..
How long were Vioxx, Bextra, Avandia etc on the market and killing people before it was revealed that these risks were discovered at trial phase?

We put too much faith in the manufacturers to be honest about this thing they seek to make billions from. It’s bad science. It’s blind faith. It’s almost as bad as religion.

@Mary, reply posted above!

James for all your education I would hate to meet you or be nursed by you for any ailment , mental or physical. Everybody can obtain degrees if they study hard enough but it takes something extra to be a good nurse, doctor or social worker and in my opinion you don’t have it ! It is called compassion and empathy and unfortunately for your patients it’s something you can’t learn.

It seems that James Connolly agrees with everything that comes out of his own mouth but not with the people who have had ‘inside’ life experience. Could a so-called ‘medical professional’ really have so little empathy or is he just a randomer delighting in winding people up?
I agree with everything Aine has said. Having had experience with the ‘medical model’ and unhappy pills which left my lovely son dead, CAUSED BY CIPRAMIL, I sincerely hope that this guy’s patients will go elsewhere. Otherwise they may end up in the cemetery along with the other victims of ‘medical professionals’ of his ilk.
Leonie

Also, please refer to clinical papers in your comments. YouTube, blog sites don’t count as peer reviewed work, and only serve to the general pandering that drug companies, doctors and nurses are only out to serve themselves, which couldn’t be further removed from the truth.

Peer review or Poor Review?
http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/12/S4/S13
By Richard Smith former editor of the BMJ.

600,000 ways to manipulate a clinical trial – Ben Goldacres TED talk.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science.html

Lies, Damn Lies, and Medical Science, interview with Dr John Ionnadis
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/

The Drugs Don’t Work – Ben Goldacre
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/21/drugs-industry-scandal-ben-goldacre

Peer review or Poor Review?
http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/12/S4/S13

Now anti depressant induced chronic depression has a name! Tardive Dysphoria..
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/201106/now-antidepressant-induced-chronic-depression-has-name-tardive-dysphoria

I’m off to find myself some ghost written clinical papers on psychoactive medication, sponsored by pharmaceutical companies! I never said that doctors and nurses were out to serve themselves. Some of them do great work. But some of them are also very misled. When I looked into some of the medication I was on I discovered lawsuits against the makers because of the side effects of the drugs. People’s personal experience matter to me. Considering, on some level, the clinical trial for these drugs is the general public.

The youtube video about R D Laing’s work discusses the scientific work that he did using Game theory. While I present my point of view as accurately as I possibly can, this is not my MSc. thesis.

James
If the seratonin levels were an indicator of depression then there would be a test for it. Mental health diagnoses rely almost exclusively upon symptoms. 5 or more on a list in the DSM.

The vast majority of doctors and nurses are in their profession because they wish to help. Of that there is no doubt, they take a duty of care oath. The pharmaceutical industry takes no such oath, they have been exposed myriad times for fraud, and paid out billions in compensation to victims of their disinformation.
Seeing as this industry holds such fierce lobbying power over our governments, the healthcare budget is predominantly focused upon pharmaceutical treatment rather than more holistic approaches – shown to be of more benefit in treating the majority of mental health issues. The doctors are doing the best with the tools at their disposal. It’s not their fault the suppliers name is Acme.

Thank you so much Aine for all your help. I actually wrote this today.

Effexor and my life.

For 10 years i can describe it like this.
Its been snowing all this time, those little white pellets, pelting down
on the inner most sensitive areas of my brain. Nurturing as i thought,
it froze and numbed my emotional senses. cold, numb. thats it.
Coming off it it, the defrost, the long thaw, heat coming back, slush.
When we all see snow disappear, it can look awful, depressing even.
Muck, dirt, everything is not as clean is it was under the snow.
Those electorical brain zaps, like storms, zapping in and out.
Getting warmer, it feels like all the chemical damage is now exposed to the elements.
Brain tissue looking raw, years of chemical exposure, red and sensitive.
The heat coming off it, i’m taking a battering. its like flu symptoms, hot, but
with brain zaps, shaking, not much sweating as when i was on it.
What can nurture this i’m wondering. Fish oil, omega 3 i’m finding on
internet sites might help. How long will this go on for?

Effexor may or may not take suicidal thoughts away, i’ve had them
several times, i have them now. it certainly does NOT take my depression away.
it can also make my pent up never released inner anger more
extreme, thoughts are extreme. you see this was never released.
here you go, heres a plaster, put this on and shut up. the problem
persists.

There has to be a better way, i don’t want to die.
I just viewed briefly Dr Terry Lynch on youtube, i try to trust this information, he said one word ‘numb’
From experience with hse, trust gets squashed, who is trying to sell me a book?, who is trying to get me
into their room and make as much money from me as possible? who has the answer?

Keep the faith Johnny. Don’t give up. Faith in Life itself. I’m just back from a cycle and the gym. I missed Aqua Aerobics because someone on here delayed me! To be mentally healthy we have to be physically healthy. That is what Ivor Browne told me and that is what I’m working in. And I feel better most days. Plus Mindfulness Meditation and relaxation exercises. I set the alarm for 15 minutes. I focus on the breath going slowly in and out. I focus on a spot. When the thoughts come I let them go and get back to the breath. It needs to be done daily. Hope you got to link up with someone. Alcohol is something that can bring me down so I try to avoid it. My mental health requires daily work and awareness of myself. I am reading a Psychology book at the moment called “The Power of your subconscious mind”. So much is determined by what we tell ourselves. I even skimmed over an article today in the Irish Times where the US Military as tapping into the sub-conscious mind in their research and technology: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2012/1108/1224326303333.html

If I am having a heart attack I do not perform CPR on myself. I leave it to the experts or someone trained in First Aid. But my daily lifestyle choices and knowledge can influence my physical health. In the same way my daily lifestyle choices can influence my mental health. There are things and people that are triggers and I need to learn to deal with that. And there are also choices that will help with my mood.

When I suffered from Panic attacks my GP unfortunately gave me anti-depressants which led on to a diagnosis of Bipolar disorder which I am learning to manage at the moment. And the symptoms are subsiding. Simple things like “Do not be seduced by the high” help.

I tried to learn as much as I could about Panic disorder. I bought a book by Dr Aine Tubridy called “When Panic Attacks”. It came with a relaxation CD. I learned to understand Panic and how to breath properly. I went for some therapy. I have to be careful with caffeine and alcohol. So I basically became an expert on my own panic disorder. I did not need to rush out and do a PhD on Panic Disorder to understand it. The more we can learn about what is wrong in our lives, the more we can put it right. Without it becoming too much of a focus. Life can go on and get better.

Johnny – that’s it exactly, NUMB. Except for the anger and sadness of course, they’re magnified..
It was horrible, I stuck it out for 6 years with my partner saying “why are you taking those drugs, they’re not helping” and my doc saying “we’ll try upping your dose”..

You can do it. You can get inside it and force it out, unfortunately each one of us has a key as individual as we are. The trick is finding it, and a decent therapist is a big part of it. I wish you the best of luck on your journey, but may I say you should keep up the writing. You have a great way with words :)