An unfortunate reality of having a mental illness is that it’s fairly likely that inaccurate information will make it into your medical record at some point along the way. That might take the form of a misdiagnosis, inaccurate descriptions of how you were presenting, or inaccurate accounts of things you said. You might only learn …
When There’s Inaccurate Information on Your Psych Medical Record Read More »
The raging mouse infestation on the ward where I was recently hospitalized strikes me as something that wouldn’t be allowed to continue on a non-psychiatric unit, but I’m guessing that stigma stops anyone from paying attention to it happening on a psych ward. This is what I’ve come up with so far to email to …
A Mouse-Infested Psych Ward: Does No One Care About Crazy People? Read More »
I wrote this to share with my psychiatrist, and I thought I’d share it with all of you, too. Thanks to Kat for the “dickless prick” phrasing. I thought we had established my background, but it seems like we/you need a bit of a refresher, so here we go. I used to be a pharmacist. …
Sharing my blog with treatment providers came up for me for the first time recently during my inpatient hospital stay. The fact that I had a blog came up during my first meeting with a psychiatrist in ER, as he’d asked what I do with my time since I’ve been on disability. My psychiatrist here …
Do You Share Your Blog with Mental Health Treatment Providers? Read More »
So, where to begin? Things began trending sharply downhill around Christmas. Hospital was something I considered but really didn’t want to do, given the negative experiences I’ve had before. Things picked up a bit in February, but then crashed back down. I had a meltdown that exploded in the direction of an unfortunate friend, at …
Investing in mental health care and workplace mental health programs takes money, and in the short term, that can be an obvious deterrent. However, it can really pay off in the longer term. A number of organizations have each put together solid economic cases for investment in mental health, and this post will take a …
Today is World Mental Health Day 2021, and this post’s title is this year’s campaign slogan. Mental health conditions don’t get the same attention as physical health conditions, and there has been chronic underinvestment in mental health care for years. That needs to change. According to the World Health Organization: Depression is a leading cause …
Mental Health Care for All: Let’s Make It a Reality Read More »
When Skinny Hobbit shared an iNews article with me the other day about the mistreatment of high-service-needs people with mental illness, I had no idea just how deep of a rabbit hole the whole thing would be. The story of Serenity Integrated Mentoring, the NHS (the UK’s National Health Service), and the way the whole …
Serenity Integrated Mentoring: Suicide Attempt? Do Not Pass Go Read More »
I first heard of the Open Dialogue approach in the book My Beautiful Psychosis by Emma Goude. It’s an alternative way of managing psychosis, and I wanted to explore it further. What Open Dialogue is Open Dialogue was first conceived in the Western Lapland province of Finland in the early 1980s. It emphasizes listening with …
Now is a far better time to be mentally ill than it was a few hundred years ago. Institutions like the infamous Bedlam were not happy places, and you might just find yourself chained to the wall for years on end. In the 1800s, you may have ended up in the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in …
The Downside of Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization Read More »
