PTSD and Lord Peter Wimsey

Mental Health in Fiction
Did Dorothy Sayer's fictional detective suffer from PTSD? It would seem so. Link
How writers get PTSD wrong in fiction.
PTSD in the Lord of the Rings, and
PTDS, the West Wing and the Apocalypse
Rachel Manga's PTSD handbook is also reccommended.
In The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey, Sayers tells another story of mental health. A lovely girl marries her doctor, who is pathologically jealous and abusive. By chance a former would-be suitor finds her in the remote Basque mountains, hideously changed - "the face white and puffy, the eyes vacant, the mouth drooled open... a dry fringe of rusty hair [clinging] to the half-bald scalp". From the suitor's description, Lord Peter Wimsey recognises the symptoms of thyroid deficiency, or hypothyroidism. He travels to see her, secretly feeds her the thyroid hormone she needs, rescues her, and restores her to health and beauty.

Senator Grassley's Sleuth

"Grassley's Sleuth Gets Press In Nature
Most of you are aware of a long-running campaign by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to ferret out undisclosed pharma company funding of academic researchers who also wind up taking federal research money. Well, it ain't the Senator who does all the digging that leads to him going after the likes of Emory University psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff and Harvard University psych researchers. Instead, it is Paul Thacker, a former journalist and an investigator for the Senator, who is making researchers' lives hell--and appropriately so. I've known this for a long time but have kept my yapper shut when writing about Sen. Grassley.

Anyway, Nature has a nice article on Thacker and it includes Nemeroff himself basically apologizing for his mess and claiming he was in compliance with disclosure rules plus other researchers defending Nemeroff. Please. In a political world filled with scum and manure, it's good to see one good guy in the fray. And since I'm such a good guy, I'm making a copy of the article (usually requires a subscription) available to all of you. I encourage you to download it and read it."

From Philip Dawdy's wonderful Furious Seasons - PDF on Thacker - Senator Grassley's NAMI investigator

Philip is doing his seasonal fundraiser. Please donate here.... http://www.furiousseasons.com/

More tasty pharma scandals - involving Pfizer and NAMI - are here.

Soul Doctors - Shamans and Jung in the New York Times

"MERCED, Calif. — The patient in Room 328 had diabetes and hypertension. But when Va Meng Lee, a Hmong shaman, began the healing process by looping a coiled thread around the patient’s wrist, Mr. Lee’s chief concern was summoning the ailing man’s runaway soul.

“Doctors are good at disease,” Mr. Lee said as he encircled the patient, Chang Teng Thao, a widower from Laos, in an invisible “protective shield” traced in the air with his finger. “The soul is the shaman’s responsibility.”

At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, where roughly four patients a day are Hmong from northern Laos, healing includes more than IV drips, syringes and blood glucose monitors. Because many Hmong rely on their spiritual beliefs to get them through illnesses, the hospital’s new Hmong shaman policy, the country’s first, formally recognizes the cultural role of traditional healers like Mr. Lee, inviting them to perform nine approved ceremonies in the hospital, including “soul calling” and chanting in a soft voice."

Shamans
Shaman slide show

"This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome.

And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story unfolds. It goes as follows: Man skids into midlife and loses his soul. Man goes looking for soul. After a lot of instructive hardship and adventure — taking place entirely in his head — he finds it again.
Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows. Most of what has been said about the book — what it is, what it means — is the product of guesswork, because from the time it was begun in 1914 in a smallish town in Switzerland, it seems that only about two dozen people have managed to read or even have much of a look at it."

Jung

Turning off the drug company drip feed to doctors

Turning off the drug company drip feed to doctors

"In the United States, the world's biggest drug company Pfizer has agreed to pay a record US$2.3 billion to settle civil and criminal actions brought against it for illegally marketing a painkiller that has since been withdrawn from sale.

Pfizer allegedly instructed sales staff to tell doctors that the drug Bextra could be used to treat acute pain at doses well above those approved by health authorities, even though dangerious side effects - risks to kidneys, skin and heart - increased with dosage.

It's a blatant example of a pharmaceutical company trying to boost profits by swaying the professional decisions of clinicians - something that also happens here in Australia - whether it's drug company freebies like the branded pens and notepads that litter doctors desks, or industry sponsored conferences and education sessions.

Regulating the relationship between doctors and drug companies is an issue that has been excercising the mind of Philip Mitchell, Scientia Professor and Head of the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales.

From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Listen now | download audio here.

Trying to KICK Drugs? Look at this page

DRUGFREE has very sensible advice regarding getting off psychotropic medications - and we like the boot graphic too. Drugfree

WARNING !!!!!
Never abruptly stop taking psychiatric drugs. You are likely to experience dangerous withdrawal effects. This has happened to many others before you. The safe way to quit successfully is to taper off slowly and with caution, and with medical support if possible.


The purpose of the following information is NOT to talk anyone into stopping taking their psychiatric drugs. However, every patient/consumer/survivor has the right to choose their own route to recovery, and not everyone is going to choose drugs. The following information is for people who have already decided that they do not want to take drugs, but do not know how to come off them safely.

The choice not to take psychiatric drugs is a valid choice, and should be respected.

The Icarus Project have created a very good resource for people who are coming off psychiatric drugs called Harm Reduction Guide Coming Off Psych Drugs.

Sadly, many psychiatrists do not tell their patients about the dangers of withdrawal. Simply stating that the medication has "Do not stop taking" on the box is insufficient information. Many psychiatrists leave patients who choose not to take drugs unsupported and do not tell them how to safely taper off these drugs. When their patient suffers withdrawal effects, they are told that this is because they stopped taking the medication. It is implied that this is proof that they need to keep taking the drugs, and information about the the true cause of the problem . withdrawal - is withheld. The drugs will then be re-prescribed, sometimes at a higher dose than last time. Don't let it happen to you.

Continues at Drugfree

For more information, check Ashton and Healey and other resources in our right-hand Links column.

Estrogen and Mental Health

"Estrogen Dominance and Mental Health
by Dr Igor Tabrizian
Taken from his book Nutritional Medicine: Fact & Fiction

Introduction
by Christine Sutherland
of the Lifeworks Group, Perth, Western Australia


Since discovering the work of Safe Harbor, we began to arrive at a much greater appreciation of the medical causes or medical influences on mental disorders, or seeming mental disorders. We then commenced a search to locate a qualified medical practitioner with the depth and breadth of biochemical knowledge and applications which we required to assist us to provide the best possible care for our clients.

We found Dr Igor Tabrizian, a general practitioner in Perth, Western Australia, specializing in nutritional investigation and treatment. Dr Tabrizian is leading the way to the practice of what I call "sane medicine": away from inappropriate pharmacotherapy and toward an informed and intelligent investigation and treatment of the patient's unique biochemistry.

I have a personal reason for my commitment to Dr Tabrizian's work. When you read the excerpt from his book, (at link) below, you will see his description of a typical example of the effects of Estrogen dominance. When I first read it I cried: from both sadness and rage. My own history is very much like that one: losing 6 babies, gall bladder removed in an emergency operation aged only 33, severe post-natal psychosis after the birth of a female baby and total inability to bond, and thyroid malfunction. And none of it needed to happen. What should have been glaringly obvious was completely overlooked. And how could it be any other way? This stuff is not taught to doctors in medical school. The only comprehensive biochemistry or pharmacotherapy they learn comes straight from the pharmaceutical companies.

Medicine must get sane. Doctors must be taught thorough biochemistry. We need to promote the work of doctors like Igor Tabrizian because they are true champions of health."

Continues at Link

Dr Tabrizian's web site is: www.nutritionreviewservice.com.au
Lifeworks' web site is: www.lifeworks-group.com.au

Haldol... and an elderly patient - by Gwen Olsen, author of Confessions of an Rx Pusher

Written by a former top drug company representative - drug seller.

It was the end of the third quarter, and I was behind in my sales quota for Haldol. That meant forfeiting a significant amount of money from the bonus pool if I didn't make quota. My territory was at somewhat of a disadvantage because I didn't have the large number of psychiatrists the reps in other metropolitan areas such as Dallas, Houston, and Austin had. It occurred to me that the most common drawback/objection I received from the general practitioners I called on with this product was patient compliance. (Patients would frequently discontinue the medication because of its side effects.) So, I determined the best way to build my Haldol business would be to campaign for the institutionalized patient. These patients were not only encouraged to take the medication; they were actually given the drug. This completely eliminated the compliance issue.

I set about scheduling training in-services in the local nursing homes and mental health and mental retardation (MHMR) facilities. I increased my call frequency on physicians whom I knew to have nursing home relationships and directorship responsibilities. I littered these offices and institutions with every type of marketing tool known to man. You could not look anywhere in my territory that there wasn't a clock, coffee mug, calendar, candy dish, scratch pad, or pen displaying the Haldol name.

During my so-called "Haldol Blitz," I made weekly visits to my nursing homes. The nursing staff was very supportive and appreciated being the recipients of all the goodies and attention that was rarely placed on them. (Reps notoriously do not like to call on nursing homes or abortion clinics.) They began to eagerly recommend to doctors that patients be placed on Haldol and actually kept track of patients who were put on the drug to report to me on subsequent visits. I rewarded these facilities and staffs with catered-in lunches and gift certificatesto local restaurants.

In my routine visits to one particular nursing home, I met Mrs. Ida Smith. (I have changed her name to protect her privacy.) Mrs. Smith was a petite, fragilelooking woman in her late eighties. Her snow-white hair was always neatly coiffed. She also wore a bright red lipstick that contrasted starkly with her delicate, pale complexion. Ida was a whirlwind of activity in her motorized wheelchair. She was frequently seen motoring from room to room, checking on and visiting with other residents. It was apparent the nursing staff was put out with Mrs. Smith's meddling. Ida often complained to staff about patients who were not properly being cared for. She was the self-appointed hall monitor and was not afraid to let people know she was watching. I got a kick out of observing the nurses' reactions when Mrs. Smith would demand someone change a bedpan or IV bag that had been left unattended. She could definitely hold her own in a debate.

Mrs. Smith became a bright spot in my visits to an otherwise gloomy, depressing facility that reeked with the stench of urine and disinfectant. However, I called on the home one day, and Mrs. Smith was nowhere to be seen. Before departing, I questioned the head nurse about her. "Oh, Mrs. Smith, she's had a bad patch lately," she said. "Her friend in 17B died, and it really upset her. She hadn't been sleeping well and seemed a little disoriented, so we recommended her doctor put her on Haldol. She's doing a lot better now...sleeping through the night...not combative and quarrelsome like she used to be." She concluded, smiling.(It was obvious she thought she was making brownie points with me.)

As I rounded the corner to the front door, I saw an attendant pushing Mrs. Smith in her wheelchair into her room. Her head was hung, and she was drooling on her pretty, pink gown. Mrs. Smith looked like a zombie. She was in complete disarray. Her hair was uncombed, and her signature red lipstick was missing. I felt a pang in the pit of my stomach. Had I been responsible for this turn of events? Surely, Mrs. Smith was not the patient-type for whom I had promoted Haldol. Or was she?

I exceeded my quota in all four of my products that sales quarter. Shortly thereafter, I was promoted to a hospital rep's position in Houston for the Baylor College of Medicine. I would never see Mrs. Smith again. However, my last memory of her would stay fresh in my mind and on my conscience for many years to come.

Link