I realised last week that I might need to take a bit of time off work. I’m not very ill – I wouldn’t be writing this if I were – but neither am I completely well, if well is as good as it gets, or ought to get. I have had a diagnosis of a…
Tag: psychiatrist
Being good and staying alive
When I was young and hopeful and sixteen, striving for dreams and ideas, I learnt German at school. I must have learnt quite a lot, because I read Bertolt Brecht and listened to Lieder, and was probably quite a pain in the arse. I’ve forgotten most of it since, but there is a phrase that…
Risk and fear
I sometimes wonder why we talk differently about risk in psychiatry than we do in other medical specialties. The risk of harm or death is high in many illnesses, yet in psychiatry we manage risk in a way that seems much more personally attributable. There are balances of risk in diagnosing and managing heart disease,…
Depression – a lack of energy
What is energy, as we experience it? It is a word with a positive force behind it, that glows and lives, and is the opposite of all that one usually experiences when depressed. Personally I find it quite difficult to recognise the feeling of low mood when I’m depressed, but reduced energy is actually more…
Alcohol – pleasure or poison
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,…
Remission or recovery
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…
Stories of illness
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…
Merry Christmas!
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…
Lockdown Toxicity
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…
Changing minds
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…
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;…
Behind the mask
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…
The difficult diagnosis of personality disorder
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
Recovering from lockdown
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…
Beauty in lockdown
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 trouble with psychiatric drugs
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,…
The good enough psychiatrist
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…
Remembering life and illness
So many moments make up a life. Some are forgotten almost instantly, some fade with time, and some are written hard on memory. Some of these are happy, some painful and humiliating. Do we really remember them, or do they curl into something else, worn by memory itself? Do we talk about them, look at…
DNA
A poem warning of the dangers of ancestry testing & the consequent risk of ill-founded doubt (with thanks to Sylvia Plath) Daddy give me a break Won't you? Daddy what will it take For you To see That I am a part of you? What do you see when you see me Daddy? Is there…
Privilege
Privilege is a word that is uppermost in many minds at present. It drips off the tongue, coated in caviar, champagne and cocaine, and no-one can really decide whether they want it or not. Does it help? Does it condemn? I consider myself privileged and feel guilty for being so. I’m not privileged enough to…