Thanks for sharing your observations & genuinely sorry to hear you have bi polar & a psychotic disorder
Here in Australia state & federal governments have taken a different approach to mental health several years before covid a group of organisations dealing with mental health & prominent psychiatrists approached both state & federal governments & basically laid out what was happening. Doctors were giving out antidepressants like smarties & over a six month period the use of meds for depression had risen by 300%.
obviously the state & federal governments had to do something so they said people who see there GP with mental health issues now had to have a mental health plan. This includes 16 free psychological appointments with the psychologist of your choice, psychiatrist if needed of your choice, dietitian all for free. As you can imagine a small minority of doctors weren't happy. it's not a perfect system but less people are taking antidepressants sadly there has been another spike recently but on the whole only the people that actually need meds get them. in my opinion that's a bloody good outcome.
For people with serious mental health issues i think medication is the only option. yes you can add diet & mental well being but for some with out meds it is nigh on impossible to get through each day. i always choose meds because there really wasn't another option it was live or die & no matter how much i tried without meds my brain always choose death. my psychiatrist shocked me recently & i don't get shocked she told me because i have taken strong antipsychotic & antidepressant medication for 40 years it will take 10 years off my life. That's not i wanted to hear at least she is honest
i was under the impression borderline personality disorder had been discredited & was now seen as nonsense is that not the case.
as for people hiding behind the diagnosis to inflict harm that's when i would say man up & accept the consequences of your actions. i would also say to the media when some guy just killed his wife don't jump straight to he's got a mental health problem he's probably just a evil clam.
if your interested try reading Dying for a cure by Rebekah Beddoe
Thanks for the sentiment and arguably it's semantics but I don't really consider myself as "having" those conditions, it's indisputable that I was diagnosed but it's an opinion. It's now been the opinion that the bipolar is in remission, but this has happened during a long period of not taking the suggested meds as they were just awful. So as the condition has gone away concurrently with me saying no thanks to whatever they put me on I do feel somewhat vindicated in my decision. I appreciate that might sound a tad bitter but I'd still be on that crap now, clearly for no good reason and that is fudged up imo.
As for the psychotic side, everyone has the potential to go a bit crazy, that risk is exponentially increased if you're not getting enough sleep, not feeling safe in your home environment and also no access to hot water if a massive one for me but obviously everyone has different triggers...
I was going to ask, I had assumed you were not UK based as you were describing a positive experience with your healthcare! I'm in two minds about how to describe it here, the service has been deliberately run down so laying in to the people that are trying their best with inadequate funding seems harsh but it's also just simply not good enough. That's excellent that something was done to attempt to change the absurd manner in which GPs were dealing with things, I feel the UK and US has done way to go on that.
My friendly advice would always be to speak to professionals but having blind faith in them is potentially super damaging because they're human beings who occasionally make things worse. I've spoken at length on here at various stages about incidents and experiences with the so called support and it's not necessarily positive, there's not a need for me to go through it again. But because I don't engage I am then noted as being non cooperative like it's my fault that they're doing a bad job..
You see I just find that astounding re losing 10 years of your life by being on the meds, it's of course better than the risks you talk about by not taking them and you feel they help / have helped you then fair enough. I don't think it'd be appropriate for me to go in to various factors in why I don't get on with them if they are of use to you (and others) so I shan't. They are a critical part of some people's treatment plan as you say, but also hopefully not a life sentence to those people just being numb / not feeling like themselves anymore..
Interesting on the borderline personality disorder, it's definitely still being spoken about and I haven't seen anything myself that has stated it's flimflam but I wouldn't be surprised. I've known a few people who have allegedly had it and eventually you just notice that some people have a self destructive streak, actively make bad decisions (or no decisions whatsoever), blame everyone else and never look inwardly, it's supremely tiring to be around as nothing you say / do can help until they want to help themselves. Again that's only my experience, not trying to generalize swathes of people.
Cheers for the recommendation, I will have a look.
I'm aware of the dangers of relying only on drugs - I'm not going down that road. I've been deficient in the chemicals department since I was young, always been gloomy without there being any external factor for it so to speak. When I started cipralex a few years back it was like hitting a switch. I got just that bit more energy and lift to not mope around all the time. It's not like it solved all my problems, but it felt like it pushed me up to a more functioning level so to speak. But now the docs wants to switch me to something else because of the manic episode, so I started Seroquel yesterday. I'm working out, meditating, going for walks, staying clear of alcohol and drugs and doing all the right things to get back up on my feet. I also chose my line of work back in the day (Healthcare, I'm basically a kind of specialized nurse) to make my life more meaningful and more in line with actually contributing to something positive in the world (I got my dream job as a sports journalist in my early 20s, but it quickly felt so meaningless to me I had to quit)- I realize it's not only a case of taking some pills, but thanks for your concern.
I'm not quite sure I follow your notion of always being deficient in the chemicals department but I am glad to hear of the positive steps you're taking and apologize if my post was a tad presumptuous in suggesting you weren't doing the other factors necessary in terms of self care / getting back in to it. Fair enough if you feel the diagnosis may help, there are specified time frames in terms of manic episodes and different types of the condition and whilst currently I'm not a mental health professional, it did seem going by your posts that recreational drugs had a lot to do with what led you to being at a manic stage. Obviously that's simply my opinion and I don't have the full picture - Either way, whatever's happened is in the past and the main thing is it seems you're in a better place, with a good routine as you say, which is paramount.
