Mental health from both sides
Bipolar disorder is a rather all or nothing term, which can, at times, be quite misleading. It implies that you are either delving the depths of misery or riding a wave of elation – or maybe entirely normal, if you take your treatment like a good patient. Except it quite frequently doesn’t work like that.…
We should all criticise psychiatry, all the time. We criticise many other things in life, and see it as a positive, which it is. We criticise art, literature and music; we criticise science; we criticise each other; and without this criticism we would never learn or grow. Our lives would not be interesting. I like…
I’ve spent much of the past year stuck in a depressive episode. Sometimes I’ve felt a bit better, and at those times I’ve tried harder than anything to haul myself out of the pit – sometimes it works a little, but mostly it’s just made it harder. But because I can talk a bit, maybe…
I think I’m getting a bit better. But it’s always hard to tell. I have bad days and better days. I have days when I don’t have to do anything, so it doesn’t matter. I have days when I have to talk to people, and so it does matter. Some of these, I can manage…
Writing about ECT, as a patient, comes round for me, again and again. Perhaps it’s not a surprise that I’m not entirely sure what I’ve said and written already – indeed, perhaps that’s the whole point. I don’t know how many treatments I’ve had. I know I had quite a lot (?20) last winter, and…
This year hasn’t been great – quite ungreat, actually. Lots of depression, lots of horrible treatment, some irritable and elevated mood and some shorter times of feeling reasonably normal. The problem with feeling better, though, is that it hasn’t lasted, and it’s all very hard to predict. Here I am having ECT again. I thought…
I have written very little in the last few months, as I’ve been quite unwell. Even I realise this, something which suggests rare and blossoming insight – although it may evaporate as soon as normality returns, who knows. But things have been hard. My mood has been very low, my beliefs about myself and my…
The experience of having ECT has always been frightening for me, though – going through that door - repeatedly - to a place I can never really remember.
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…
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…
My brain has been somewhat exercised of late, both by my own internal wrangles about psychiatric treatments and by various online debates, particularly about ECT. These debates often seem to be moral and emotional in nature, making it particularly hard to contribute or indeed come to any conclusions. I am someone with a very precarious…