Mental health from both sides
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…
I have referred to the diagnosis of personality disorder in a few of my previous posts. It’s something I have thought about a lot, both in my own dealings with psychiatry as a patient, and also as a psychiatrist, and I can never feel comfortable with it. I’ve tried to justify it as a response…
Continue reading ➞ The difficult diagnosis of personality disorder
I try not to think about ECT too much, but I have been quite open about having had it, and, given that I work as a psychiatrist, there are inevitable reminders. I don’t think that I will ever be able to dwell on it without a degree of inquietude, and there are various reasons for…
A few weeks ago I wrote something about moral injury. This was in the context of reduced alcohol and drug services during the covid pandemic, but I hesitated to post it, as I was concerned that it might seem critical of the organisation where I work, which was not my intent. I have continued to…
Lockdown continues, and my hair carries on growing. Trivial, yet trying, and it does make you think, given that there’s plenty of time to do so. In my youth, I was relatively low maintenance - I was one of those girls who had long hair when it wasn’t fashionable, and I rarely went to the…
The last couple of weeks have been trying for all of us, wherever we live. Fear of covid-19, fear of illness, fear for loved ones, fear for livelihood, fear of isolation. All of these are massive stressors in their own right, so thrown all together their impact is grim. But it is the usual lot…
I’ve already written about psychiatric drugs, but this is a new post, and perhaps more personal than the last. For me, and I suspect others, taking psychiatric medication is a problem every day of my life. It’s like I have two people in me, one saying – ‘Yes, you know you need to take them,…
As patients, we often ponder whether our doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals are caring enough. As a psychiatrist myself, I assume that I am caring. But how do you measure caringness, what exactly is it? How do we know if we have it, and how can we train others to acquire it? Even…
Mental illness is very personal, and also very immediate. When it happens to you, it is all that there is, surrounding you, bending your thinking, affecting what you say to others. But those people that are listening to you are not always in the same place as you, even those who have experienced similar illnesses…
Dead toad on the roadWhere were you going?Who did you hope to meetWhen everything stopped? Toad you are forgottenNo-one mourns youWhat spawn you have begottenThink not of you.
Frog, your legs were long, symmetrical and braveAnd also deadYour arms were crossed across your breastYou looked at rest. What creature killed you, Frog,And left you there?A sacrificed amphibianOn a cold, stone stair.
My mind is souredLike pickles caught in teethLingering past the tasteAnd spreading doubt.I hate the cloak I wearOf clinging knowledgeI hate the doubts I feelAnd they are me and youAnd you.No longer do I taste of milkFresh and sweet and pureMy thoughts are long fermented.I will never know quite whereBut the road to deathIs paved…