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  • 47,412Members
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  • Author : Willy
  • Support : 2
  • Topic : Advocating for change
17 Oct 2022 03:52 PM
Senior Contributor

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I wish I could believe in what you are saying but when I'm in a psychotic episode immersed in delusions backed up by hallucinations it's really scary. I have tried life with[out] antipsychotic meds and inevitably I end up in hospital or unwell at home. I know my life expectancy is about 20yrs less, I know my brain matter is shrinking but anything to avoid another episode please. I never want to go through that ever again, horrifying experience.


Hi Patchworks
Yes psychosis certainly can be a horrific experience. Having suffered from it for most of my adult life and been hospitalised many times as a consequence it is not an experience I would wish on anyone. There is also all the social consequences such as being beaten to near unconsciousness by police not to mention the embarrassment and vilification by people who happen to witness you in that state.

You say you have found something that works for you. You have looked at it and excepted the trades offs for your chosen treatment. To my mind that is good. I fully understand and support your choice and agree that there is a very definite place for medication in mental health treatment. My understanding is that antipsychotic medication unfortunately only works well for about 20% of people. The figures vary a bit but seem to suggest that it doesn't work at all for about 30% of people and doesn't work so well, to varying degrees for the remaining 50% of people. Unfortunately I am one of those people on the extreme of antipsychotic medication not working.

I won't go into all the trials and tribulations of my experiences with medication other than to say that despite the horrific side effects, I still use antipsychotics, but only take them when necessary using a complex self monitoring technique that a senior consultant psychiatrist at a major Melbourne hospital worked out for me more than twenty years ago. This sort of self management is not easy to do but it has kept me out of hospital for more than twenty years except for one stuff up about 3 years ago when I voluntarily admitted myself to hospital for one night. Unfortunately this triggered an alert with the state mental health authorities who ever since have insisted that my use of antipsychotics is "inappropriate" . They claim that because I don't agree with and comply with their advice I am a danger to myself and the public. This of course is utter BS. They have tried on multiple occasions to coerce me into agreeing to Long Term Injections of antipsychotics (LTI's) which given my current age and health are strongly contra-indicated. I have also been threatened with Involuntary Treatment Orders (ITO's) and an Involuntary Confinement Order (ICO) for not agreeing and complying with their demands. A recent complaint to the Victorian Mental Health Complaints Commission (MHCC) about all this was just fobbed off after months of being given the run around.

In order to try and help myself I have done a lot of reading and research on mental health methods and practices. A few years back I became aware of evolving psychological techniques for psychosis that were claimed to be "at least as good as medication". I was keen to at least give it a try but when I started making enquiries I was just given the run around. It took me more than three years to find someone. That person incidentally is employed in the state mental health system but takes on the occasional private client. She has also been a useful source of information about some of the malpractices that take place within the system.

Has the psychological treatment completely cured me? Unfortunately not but at this stage it appears to have helped considerably. I am well aware that many people are not interested in a psychological approach to dealing with psychosis as it can be very emotionally challenging but I can see no reason why this sort of treatment should not be available to anyone who wants to try it or why honest and accurate information about it shouldn't be readily available from the public mental health system.

There is an organisation known as the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) who are connected with the Church of Scientology. They appear to have an agenda to have psychiatry and psychiatric medication abolished. I have nothing to do with either of these organisations and never have. Nor do I in any way support their agenda.

The things that have happened to me are also happening to many others apparently on quite a significant scale. People have written about their experiences of these sorts of abuses on this forum but some people are too scared to even talk about them out of fear of what the mental health authorities may do to them. In the world of hospital psych wards one quickly learns that in order to survive you have to comply with authority.

These are the sorts of issues that I believe need to be reformed.

Regards

Willy

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