These wards contain so many people’s individual horrors, and there needs to be enough beds and enough people to carry all this and care for them. Otherwise we lose our humanity.
Tag: stigma
Being a psychiatrist – any regrets?
Becoming a psychiatrist was very important to me as a young doctor. As a patient, who had been in and out of a psychiatric hospital, it felt like a lost dream, something I could never hope to achieve. It is true that I had wanted to train as a psychiatrist before I became ill, but…
My family, my illness and me
My family never ask about my mental illness. They never ask how I am, whether I take medication, whether it works. I’ve no idea why, because I don’t ask them why they don’t, either. We’re not that kind of family. By family, I mean my birth family, the one in which I grew up. Of…
Disempowerment in mental illness
The idea that a psychiatrist could feel disempowered by mental illness may well seem ridiculous. Even when that psychiatrist is also a psychiatric patient, the notion may raise an eyebrow or two, although I am well aware that my professional position can put me in a position of power. Perhaps this knowledge is what also…
Self-care or self-spare
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…
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…
Lived experience of mental illness
When I call myself a patient and a doctor, they seem like two opposites, two sides of the same table. In mental illness they are often perceived very differently – one with knowledge and power, one suffering and in need of help. They don’t join together well. They make a whole with an empty centre,…
The word “psychiatry”
Psychiatry and psychiatrist are powerful words. They stop conversations, and create awkward gaps. I try not to say I am a psychiatrist in social settings, sometimes muttering something about being a doctor, and usually wriggling out of anything further. Conversely, in a clinical setting, I always tell patients that I am a psychiatrist, probably because…
Personality
We all have a personality, but, when you move into the realms of psychiatry and mental health, this term can take on a rather different meaning. It is often also very difficult to discuss, something which is hardly surprising, given the fact that personality disorder can be seen as a punitive diagnosis, one of exclusion…
The problem with treatment
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…
Crazy socks for docs
It’s come round again, and so have all those feelings which made me feel so ashamed last year. Ashamed, but also slightly uneasy (a bad combination); and it may just be that the cape acquired at grumpyoldwomen.com is fitting me rather better. But crazy socks for docs has this effect on me, and I’m not…
Shortism
This is pure self-indulgence – I know there are many tall people who would like to be shorter, fat who would like to be thinner, old who would like to be younger, and perhaps the vice versas. And what about those who are shunned for race, sexuality, illness? That is far more grave. But we…
Stigma
I’m never too sure what I think about stigma. If you asked me now, my immediate response would be that it has had no adverse effect on my life, and of course that has to be rubbish. Things affect us insidiously, such that we discount them, or don’t even notice them. Sometimes it’s only when…
Shame
What am I most ashamed of? Not of my diagnosis of bipolar disorder, that’s actually reasonably respectable - which is probably why I don’t find it easy to believe. But shame wraps a tight cloak around us all, one that feeds itself and whispers that no-one must know. What is it that fosters shame? Is…