Mental health from both sides
I’ve really been doing pretty well over lockdown, at least I thought I was. I’m not so sure now, and I’m finding myself wondering what I mean by ‘doing well’. It is with some dismay that I realise that for me this means not relapsing into severe depression, or requiring even more noxious psychotropic drugs,…
I think a lot about alcohol. This is inevitable, given that I work on an in-patient unit in a psychiatric hospital, treating people who have become alcohol dependent, but my views are less clear than you might think. When I talk about mental illness, I do so from the perspective of both psychiatrist and patient,…
I have always written fairly confidently that ECT has not caused me any brain damage. I have had around 70 treatments in total, over nearly 30 years, and during that time I have – mostly – lived a full life, sitting professional exams and postgraduate degrees, and working as a psychiatrist. I have nothing to…
Lots of people ask this question, or variants on it. Perhaps not that it’s real, but is it what it says it is? There are many possible answers, and these may depend on what is meant by mental illness; but, to my mind, if something has gone wrong with your brain, then you are probably…
Continue reading ➞ Is mental illness the same as physical illness?
When I looked up the meaning of the word confidential just now, it stated that it was information that was intended to be kept secret. Intimate, personal, privileged – these were the kind of words I found. To me that implies something you would keep to yourself and about your person, sharing it only if…
As a psychiatric patient you don’t always hope for a cure. The best you can expect is to go into remission from your illness, perhaps with medication, perhaps with psychological help, or even just with the passage of time. Illness is more often controlled than vanquished, lurking in the wings, ready to return when you…
I’ve wondered recently why we, as doctors and other health professionals, choose to tell our own stories of illness. You would think that we would want to swerve away from all such things, faced as we are with illness and suffering, often on a daily basis. But not only do these stories continue to be…
This is a question that is asked seriously by some, and tongue in cheek by others (usually other doctors). Yet we too go through the slog of medical school, followed by two years as foundation doctors in a variety of specialties, including those in acute hospital settings. At this point, some embark on the long…
2020 hasn’t been the best of years. Think where you were this time last year, and what you expected from this one – I doubt that it was learning to share your screen on zoom. I can’t think of any other skills I’ve attained, and I’m not even very good at that. Break-out rooms sound…
This year has been one of lockdown and restrictions, that have been grim for many. All the normal human things we do, like touch each other, smile and gather in groups, have been snatched away or rationed in a way that we could never have imagined. There is growing concern about the effect on people’s…
Why do we change our minds, and what does this actually mean? Every day we do things, and then decide not to – ‘I’ve changed my mind, I’m not going to come with you to the shops.’ It implies free will as well as a mind to change, neither of which are concepts that are…
What if psychiatry is wrong? I ask myself this question quite often. As a patient, because I find it hard to believe my diagnosis and I hate taking medication; as a doctor because I need conviction to treat my patients well. This is all fine and good, but psychiatry is not a single entity. I…
You said I was resilient, and you smiled; I never understood quite what you meant, but thought it was inside me, deeply furled, then one day I looked inwards, and saw nothing. You had made me think I was a hero, a modified St George without a sword You told me I had courage…
Courage is much overrated in mental illness. When I first wrote about my own experiences, a lot of people told me how brave I was to do so. This made me squirm and feel quite odd, but they would insist that it was so, even when I denied it. It didn’t feel brave or courageous;…
Face blindness, or prosopagnosia, is probably quite rare in its extreme form, when people cannot even recognise a close relative, but perhaps less so in its milder variants. I’ve never found it easy to recognise people’s faces, and tend to rely instead on build, hair, posture and the like, at least until we start to…