Absolutely Hilarious... If I wasn't so emotionally flattened I'd laugh till I cried...
[Another one of those venting sessions still drafting, drafting in public is a very interesting experiment I think I'll keep doing it... But getting incoherant from tiredness and sleepiness, well actually was already extremely exhausted from the long long looooong (even for me) walk home from the gdoc clinic which I had to do since I can't use public transport in any functional way and I couldn't afford another cab fare... Found out I'm anemic on top of everything else... Gah!]
Have psychiatric wards changed?
If you found yourself locked up against your will in a psychiatric ward, you would probably do your best to get out. But in 1969 a group of people did just the opposite - they tried to get in. A young American psychologist called David Rosenhan persuaded seven friends (two psychologists, a psychiatrist, a doctor, a housewife, a painter and a student) to see whether they could convince doctors that they were mentally ill simply by claiming to hear voices. Now previously unpublished notes from Rosenhan’s private archive reveal what the experience was really like.
Between 1969 and 1972 the team of “pseudo-patients” presented themselves at 12 different US hospitals in five states on the East and West coasts. What would a sane person have to do to convince a doctor they were insane? Not a lot, it seems.
Having claimed to hear words from “thud” and “empty” to “hollow”, words selected because they had never been recorded in psychiatric literature, every pseudo-patient was admitted to hospital for varying lengths of time, from 7 to 52 days. They were given diagnoses of schizophrenia and prescribed a total of 2,100 pills (only two of which were swallowed; in preparation for the study the pseudo-patients had learnt to “cheek” any medication).
Other than giving false names and inventing voices, the patients were to answer all other questions honestly. If they were admitted to hospital they were to say that they felt better and that the voices had disappeared. Not one member of staff suspected them of faking it.
...
Not only could the doctors be fooled, but once Rosenhan had been given a diagnosis the hospital staff began to read into his actions. His study required him to keep detailed observations, so the staff often saw him writing notes. This was described as “writing behaviour”. When one of the other pseudo-patients, a professional painter, sat down one day and began to paint, this was deemed “painting behaviour”.
Looking through Rosenhan’s notes, it’s clear that the whole experience has had a lasting effect on him. “Months spent as a pseudo-patient have evoked in me passions that I hardly believed I knew existed,” he says. He found himself in a Catch-22 situation: even when he told the doctors that he felt better, he still wasn’t allowed to leave. “The only way out was to point out that they were correct. They said I had been insane, I was insane, but I was getting better. It was an affirmation of their views.”
...
The study demonstrates something much broader about human nature, something that psychological research has confirmed many times: once we have a view about a person, we look for anything that backs up our ideas and we explain away any evidence to the contrary. Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, says that within the health sphere this can have far-reaching consequences, “When a patient walks in to see a therapist that person is seen through a patient lens. Very ordinary behaviours are now going to seem extraordinary or pathological.”
So once you're diagnosed with a psychiatric illness...
once we have a view about a person, we look for anything that backs up our ideas and we explain away any evidence to the contrary.
... even behaviours that would be considered utterly normal without a diagnosis are pathologized.
Heh...
He found himself in a Catch-22 situation: even when he told the doctors that he felt better, he still wasn’t allowed to leave. “The only way out was to point out that they were correct. They said I had been insane, I was insane, but I was getting better. It was an affirmation of their views.”
And that's what other patients kept telling me to do instead of just being honest in my reporting, but I am a Manic Depressive, I have a psychiatric condition, I have to be honest with my treating doctors.
But I can see why patients lie, a lot of the time they have to because if they tell the truth they'll be further pathologized... Honestly if everyone were to suddenly present at a psychiatric ward well actually that psychiatric ward (I've been to a good well run one and it wasn't like that, like when a manic patient came in they didn't immediately try to corner and control him in the good place they pulled me in and got me to play table tennis with him while talking him down since I knew what it was like to be manic and could talk him down) and be totally honest with the staff the world would be an empty place and psychiatry wards would be like a clown car.
That and if my experience is anything to go by patients got lied to like when I knew I was manic when I came in, knew in the back of my mind I had to explain that if I took olanzapine under that kind of stress without a muscle relaxant I would have a convulsive Grand Malesque (although I'd never had one that bad before only loss of control and contorting) seiziure so I begged for a chance to calm down (Lots of coping skills, meditation, and things like putting my inner wrists together to increase left right cerebral hempispheric communication and increasing awareness of arousal levels so they'll go down, and I promised I'd go into an isolation ward quietly if they'd leave me in there to calm down, and they said yes so I went in quietly and then was cornered and stabbed anyway... Absolute screaming convulsive seiziure. I'm jealous of epileptics in a way, at least they aren't conscious when it happens... :(
And that was just the beginning. Lies breed more lies, y'know. I didn't start lying but I can definitely see why people would... :/
And when I went into "bizzare behavior" (right there on the pamphlet) from the sodium valproate overdose... Panic response pushing against a bizzare drug induced psychosis where you have no sense of time... Very difficult to communicate in that state, when I was talking to my dad and trying to organize things I had to continually remind him that because I was in such an altered state my theory of mind was utterly altered for us to be able to communicate at all and I needed to communicate since there was no way I could go organize paying rent in the two hours supervised leave that was the only leave I was allowed other than 15 minute smoke breaks.
Oh Welp... le'sigh, If I was manic on the 1 gram of sodium vaproate a day (before I got mindraped by the 1 1/2 gram overdose) in the psychiatric ward then every time I work I will definitely be manic because behaviouraly I will be exactly the same as I was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Place. Just as cheerful and even more physically active although probably a bit less confrontational unless it's part of the job since I won't be constantly reliving [TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE]. And maybe the triggering won't be quite as bad
Not that I can work anyway I know I'm totally and utterly disabled now and will be for several years at the very least -- that's if I'm lucky, and given I have my mothers crazy and my mothers side of the family's physiology I've probably only got a max of 20 years left anyway ('specially since I smoke) before I die horribly of cancer so it's not like I'm going to be much of a burden on the system even if my prognosis is horrible -- and even with this level of mood stabilization that's a pretty painful admission, but hey... What can you do?
I know I'm a Manic Depressive (AKA good old classic Bipolar 1), but that doesn't mean that my treatment in that ward has made me better... I'd like to congratulate it for managing to take me from having a chance of regaining functioning to being totally and utterly disabled...
Even on lithium behaviorally apathetic and depressed and since I'm real sensitive to my internal mood state as a coping mechanism, utterly confused by my internal mood bouncing around without rhyme or reason I'd force myself to apply for jobs sometimes even though I had no chance of even getting an interview, because I desperately wanted to work even though it had gotten to the point where even though I love long walks -- my definition of a short walk is most peoples definition of a long walk, so you can imagine what my long walks are like -- I didn't dare take them because I had a mortal fear of wandering off, perspiring too much and keeling over from lithium toxicity... Now I'm just a disabled wreck...
le'sigh...
Have psychiatric wards changed?
If you found yourself locked up against your will in a psychiatric ward, you would probably do your best to get out. But in 1969 a group of people did just the opposite - they tried to get in. A young American psychologist called David Rosenhan persuaded seven friends (two psychologists, a psychiatrist, a doctor, a housewife, a painter and a student) to see whether they could convince doctors that they were mentally ill simply by claiming to hear voices. Now previously unpublished notes from Rosenhan’s private archive reveal what the experience was really like.
Between 1969 and 1972 the team of “pseudo-patients” presented themselves at 12 different US hospitals in five states on the East and West coasts. What would a sane person have to do to convince a doctor they were insane? Not a lot, it seems.
Having claimed to hear words from “thud” and “empty” to “hollow”, words selected because they had never been recorded in psychiatric literature, every pseudo-patient was admitted to hospital for varying lengths of time, from 7 to 52 days. They were given diagnoses of schizophrenia and prescribed a total of 2,100 pills (only two of which were swallowed; in preparation for the study the pseudo-patients had learnt to “cheek” any medication).
Other than giving false names and inventing voices, the patients were to answer all other questions honestly. If they were admitted to hospital they were to say that they felt better and that the voices had disappeared. Not one member of staff suspected them of faking it.
...
Not only could the doctors be fooled, but once Rosenhan had been given a diagnosis the hospital staff began to read into his actions. His study required him to keep detailed observations, so the staff often saw him writing notes. This was described as “writing behaviour”. When one of the other pseudo-patients, a professional painter, sat down one day and began to paint, this was deemed “painting behaviour”.
Looking through Rosenhan’s notes, it’s clear that the whole experience has had a lasting effect on him. “Months spent as a pseudo-patient have evoked in me passions that I hardly believed I knew existed,” he says. He found himself in a Catch-22 situation: even when he told the doctors that he felt better, he still wasn’t allowed to leave. “The only way out was to point out that they were correct. They said I had been insane, I was insane, but I was getting better. It was an affirmation of their views.”
...
The study demonstrates something much broader about human nature, something that psychological research has confirmed many times: once we have a view about a person, we look for anything that backs up our ideas and we explain away any evidence to the contrary. Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, says that within the health sphere this can have far-reaching consequences, “When a patient walks in to see a therapist that person is seen through a patient lens. Very ordinary behaviours are now going to seem extraordinary or pathological.”
So once you're diagnosed with a psychiatric illness...
once we have a view about a person, we look for anything that backs up our ideas and we explain away any evidence to the contrary.
... even behaviours that would be considered utterly normal without a diagnosis are pathologized.
Heh...
He found himself in a Catch-22 situation: even when he told the doctors that he felt better, he still wasn’t allowed to leave. “The only way out was to point out that they were correct. They said I had been insane, I was insane, but I was getting better. It was an affirmation of their views.”
And that's what other patients kept telling me to do instead of just being honest in my reporting, but I am a Manic Depressive, I have a psychiatric condition, I have to be honest with my treating doctors.
But I can see why patients lie, a lot of the time they have to because if they tell the truth they'll be further pathologized... Honestly if everyone were to suddenly present at a psychiatric ward well actually that psychiatric ward (I've been to a good well run one and it wasn't like that, like when a manic patient came in they didn't immediately try to corner and control him in the good place they pulled me in and got me to play table tennis with him while talking him down since I knew what it was like to be manic and could talk him down) and be totally honest with the staff the world would be an empty place and psychiatry wards would be like a clown car.
That and if my experience is anything to go by patients got lied to like when I knew I was manic when I came in, knew in the back of my mind I had to explain that if I took olanzapine under that kind of stress without a muscle relaxant I would have a convulsive Grand Malesque (although I'd never had one that bad before only loss of control and contorting) seiziure so I begged for a chance to calm down (Lots of coping skills, meditation, and things like putting my inner wrists together to increase left right cerebral hempispheric communication and increasing awareness of arousal levels so they'll go down, and I promised I'd go into an isolation ward quietly if they'd leave me in there to calm down, and they said yes so I went in quietly and then was cornered and stabbed anyway... Absolute screaming convulsive seiziure. I'm jealous of epileptics in a way, at least they aren't conscious when it happens... :(
And that was just the beginning. Lies breed more lies, y'know. I didn't start lying but I can definitely see why people would... :/
And when I went into "bizzare behavior" (right there on the pamphlet) from the sodium valproate overdose... Panic response pushing against a bizzare drug induced psychosis where you have no sense of time... Very difficult to communicate in that state, when I was talking to my dad and trying to organize things I had to continually remind him that because I was in such an altered state my theory of mind was utterly altered for us to be able to communicate at all and I needed to communicate since there was no way I could go organize paying rent in the two hours supervised leave that was the only leave I was allowed other than 15 minute smoke breaks.
Oh Welp... le'sigh, If I was manic on the 1 gram of sodium vaproate a day (before I got mindraped by the 1 1/2 gram overdose) in the psychiatric ward then every time I work I will definitely be manic because behaviouraly I will be exactly the same as I was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Place. Just as cheerful and even more physically active although probably a bit less confrontational unless it's part of the job since I won't be constantly reliving [TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE]. And maybe the triggering won't be quite as bad
Not that I can work anyway I know I'm totally and utterly disabled now and will be for several years at the very least -- that's if I'm lucky, and given I have my mothers crazy and my mothers side of the family's physiology I've probably only got a max of 20 years left anyway ('specially since I smoke) before I die horribly of cancer so it's not like I'm going to be much of a burden on the system even if my prognosis is horrible -- and even with this level of mood stabilization that's a pretty painful admission, but hey... What can you do?
I know I'm a Manic Depressive (AKA good old classic Bipolar 1), but that doesn't mean that my treatment in that ward has made me better... I'd like to congratulate it for managing to take me from having a chance of regaining functioning to being totally and utterly disabled...
Even on lithium behaviorally apathetic and depressed and since I'm real sensitive to my internal mood state as a coping mechanism, utterly confused by my internal mood bouncing around without rhyme or reason I'd force myself to apply for jobs sometimes even though I had no chance of even getting an interview, because I desperately wanted to work even though it had gotten to the point where even though I love long walks -- my definition of a short walk is most peoples definition of a long walk, so you can imagine what my long walks are like -- I didn't dare take them because I had a mortal fear of wandering off, perspiring too much and keeling over from lithium toxicity... Now I'm just a disabled wreck...
le'sigh...