Psychiatrists MUST tell their patients of harmful effects of withdrawing from psychiatric drugs too rapidly

THIS MUST BE MANDATORY!

It has come to my attention that psychiatrists STILL do not tell their patients that there is a need to withdraw slowly from major tranquilisers/ neuroleptics/ ‘anti-psychotics’.

This is a breach of ‘informed consent’. Not giving this information to a patient, means a person can be put through unnecessary suffering, which can be very dangerous, even deadly. This suffering could be alleviated, if they were informed to withdraw slowly, and, in ideal circumstances, aided and helped by a psychiatrist or GP in doing this.

People who may stop taking psych drugs for very good reasons. Quite often people don’t want to take them forever, because of the horrific debilitating side-effects, and, because they don't really do what psychiatrists claim they should be doing.

People often get told by psychiatrists that they have to take neuroleptics forever. This is not reasonable, especially when there are so many side-effects, when important social functions such as driving, reading, sex function, conversation and operating machinery are hampered. Especially when there is Tardive Dyskinesia, or akinesia emerging, and this harm caused by the drug is dismissed or ignored by the treating psychiatrist… what is a person to do? People as young as 23 complain of feeling like they have Alzheimer’s on these drugs. I felt that way myself, until I came off them. I was sure my brains had eroded. No, it was the neuroleptic.  There’s also those 25 years that get torn from the lives of people on a regimen of neuroleptics. Read enough and you’ll know all this, and that you need to come off psych drugs slowly. But if your sight is blurring because of the drugs and your thoughts are clouded and you’re chronically fatigued, then how are you going to do that?

I’ve seen over a hundred psychiatrists in a 14 year period and none of them informed me of the horrific withdrawal effects of neuroleptics. Yet psychiatrists do know to withdraw people slowly from one neuroleptic before getting a person to take another, or they should.

Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist, writes at length about withdrawing from neuroleptics in his book, ‘Your drug may be your problem.’

Icarus project has a free pdf on ‘Harm reduction’.

All psychiatric, medical, clinical psychology, mental health and psychiatric drug related websites should include something similar about slow withdrawal from drugs/ harm reduction.

Psychiatrists should be informing all patients about drug related harm reduction. Australia has got to make this mandatory for psychiatrists to do.

Hospitals have systems in place for harm reduction for stimulant use.

It is ridiculous that these hard drugs, which are major tranquilisers, have for so long been written off in documents by ‘Mental Health’ organisations as not having harmful withdrawal effects. It is ridiculous that these withdrawal effects are seen as ‘symptoms of psychosis’. They are NOT.

I came off Solian, from 200mg to nothing and my whole face and body twitched as parts of me came back to life. I had a headache that lasted 2 weeks. At that time, 2009, I didn’t know you were meant to come of these drugs slowly, but I’d been medicalised by psychiatry since 1998!

It has taken me 2 years, after slow reduction from Zuclopenthixol, to get my emotions to stabilise and the Tourette’s caused by this drug to fade. I have had a lot of support from friends, Intervoice, my tafe, colleagues and my partner, that allow discussions of what had other years been denied.

I think this INFORMING OF PATIENTS is essential and must be made MANDATORY. I think everyone could agree to that, in the very least of things that need to be done, to stop psychiatric abuse, that government could put some legislation in to make certain that this occurs.

There are documents that have said this pressure on people’s minds/bodies, of quickly withdrawing, has been a factor in many horrific shootings by youth, that have happened in the USA.

Certainly drug/alcohol rehabilitation services are well-studied in how to safely withdraw from other hard drugs.

So, please, see that this, is done. Make it mandatory for psychiatrists to inform people to withdraw slowly, never quickly, and to do so under their supervision, so that tablets are not quartered in a way that is unsafe. I don’t want to see another person harmed unnecessarily by withdrawing too quickly from drugs.

(If you are attempting to do this, ask, remind and let your psychiatrist know why you need to reduce your harmful drug. Do not talk of stopping the drug. Just talk about reducing it. Then they are more likely to give you a prescription of a smaller pill, I’ve found. If they refuse, keep asking, get back up, books, a lawyer, or an understanding friend.)

As an individual please make enough conversation happen to grant MANDATORY HARM REDUCTION INFORMATION TO BE GIVEN, BY ALL PSYCHIATRISTS IN REGARDS TO PSYCHIATRIC DRUG WITHDRAWAL, TO THEIR PATIENTS. And please feel free to write emails to RANZCP and the AMA letting them know why this must be made mandatory.

Please sign our petition to stop psychiatric abuse

 

click here

Talking about anger turned inward, grief and voices

Those who have read some of my blog, will recognise I do carry a fair whack of anger about certain issues relevant to the mental health system as it currently is. I put all that aside, when I think about love, when I listen to another’s poetry, and, when I’m at work.

                There are definite systems that allow us to exist, while getting us to focus on building things like recovery, hope for the future, alternatives, as well as established, recognised workable therapies. My work place fits well with my ideology, my training as a Transpersonal Art Therapist and also makes my writing and editing diploma relevant. It also makes me think beyond the wrecking-ball, towards building. It is a workplace, that I’m very happy to be in. One of the few work places that see my lived-experience as a skill and insight, rather than a problem.

                I’m delivering a talk, with a colleague, on: Anger turned inward, grief and voices. This topic is something I’ve been working on since January, but have thought a lot about before.

A memoir of mine, Naked ladies, looks at how grief and anger denied and suppressed can lead to voices and unusual belief systems that end up with hospitalisations and psychiatric labels. It also shows how anger and grief can be intertwined. I have, developed my ideas a lot further, though, since writing this action based memoir. I also have a lot better coping strategies.

I’ll mostly be talking about established ways of coping and paradigms of thinking towards being all you're meant to be. There is a lot new material, but it’s not something I’ve done on my own, it’s something I’ve developed alongside many others who have similar experiences. This talk is relevant to health professionals, social workers, carers, as well as voice-hearers and those who want to understand unusual percipience, their own thoughts, theories of mind etc

Bookings are essential and can be made HERE on the Voices Vic website. The talk will be an all day session, held on Wednesday 24th of July 2013 at 211 Chapel Street, Prahran.

A little drum

Bought a little hand-drum

And as I travel on the road,

My lover asks me to play.

It’s wonderful to have that

Encouragement from him

Compared to the memory

Of others telling me that

My rhythm should go away,

That my music isn’t their sway…

I beat out the intrusive past nagging.

I beat out what’s going on now,

Not between us lovers but

In government policy. Crimes…

So many things just around

The wrong way, still, today.

Laws that call torture ‘medicine,’

Laws that call forced-drugging ‘care’.

I’m throwing up the past inside

That flashes back its sense-memory.

And I pound and I pound my palms

As I hear those kind words,

‘You’re going to beat this

You’re going to beat this

Thing you’re not wanting,

This thing that stops progression,

That suicides a person’s health.

You’re going to beat this

Thing that has no right to exist

Psychiatric abuse cannot persist.’

All becomes sound

As I pound out the feeling

And the bad emotions go away

Gets put into the sound,

Sound that is heard, outside me,

Sound that says so much more

Than words will ever really.

I never want to misdirect

My justifiable anger from much

Denied rights and the damning

Of so many others still feeling

The pain psychiatry inflicts,

With which I very much empathise.

I never want to misdirect this.

I have memory of other things,

That sometimes get me too,

But I don’t misdirect that,

I don’t want another to suffer

The wounds of abuse

Ricocheting from my words,

That just need a drum sound

To clip their harsh content.

No, I don’t misdirect it,

That anger has a place to go…

And I have my little hand-drum

To beat and beat and beat

And a lover that is someone

Who gives me incredible amity

Such that I could never imagine

Possible before… He recognises

The serious flaws in mental health

Laws that attempt to manage

Diversity by crippling ability,

By infringing basic rights,

By dehumanising and debilitating.

I beat and beat and beat

So all goes into sound and I can

Find another way, another way

Another way that might get there

And give a panacea to pain

That intrudes from the past,

Traumas that demand some kind

Of way of being heard,

Even if not always through

Sensible words and legalese.

The beat becomes easy

And travels and morphs

Back to where I want to be

In the land of love, traveling home

With my lover beside me.

Beat out my heart then,

And the emotion between,

Love, love, love, that dream,

It cures all, that beautiful sense

Of connection drumming.