Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
The lonely madness of Alice G
The lonely madness of Alice G
ERIN ANDERSSEN
Globe and Mail Update
June 19, 2008 at 10:04 PM EDT
Alice G was driven mad by a broken heart, so said her doctors.
At 39, the unmarried housekeeper from Belleville, Ont., walked through the doors of the Toronto Asylum for the Insane, as it was called in 1893, and never saw the outside world again.
Her mother, the commitment papers suggest, had appealed to doctors for help. Alice spoke to people who didn't exist. She claimed to be a “prophetess” under orders from Heaven, and predicted she would give birth to two babies, one silver, one gold. She was reportedly infatuated with a local doctor.
Explaining the “supposed existing cause of insanity,” the physician who committed her scrawled on her form: “disappointment in love affairs.”
Beside occupation, he wrote: “Spinster.”
By society's standards, Alice G was to be pitied: childless, poor, lovelorn and, worst of all, insane.
In the asylum, what came to be called 999 Queen Street – and is now the site for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health – Alice was crowded into a dormitory, without a private toilet, where the residents regularly complained of chills and rats.
Read the rest of the article here
ERIN ANDERSSEN
Globe and Mail Update
June 19, 2008 at 10:04 PM EDT
Alice G was driven mad by a broken heart, so said her doctors.
At 39, the unmarried housekeeper from Belleville, Ont., walked through the doors of the Toronto Asylum for the Insane, as it was called in 1893, and never saw the outside world again.
Her mother, the commitment papers suggest, had appealed to doctors for help. Alice spoke to people who didn't exist. She claimed to be a “prophetess” under orders from Heaven, and predicted she would give birth to two babies, one silver, one gold. She was reportedly infatuated with a local doctor.
Explaining the “supposed existing cause of insanity,” the physician who committed her scrawled on her form: “disappointment in love affairs.”
Beside occupation, he wrote: “Spinster.”
By society's standards, Alice G was to be pitied: childless, poor, lovelorn and, worst of all, insane.
In the asylum, what came to be called 999 Queen Street – and is now the site for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health – Alice was crowded into a dormitory, without a private toilet, where the residents regularly complained of chills and rats.
Read the rest of the article here
Monday, August 4, 2008
From Pills to Power
You paid dearly for the meds you no longer take.
This plan is definitely better than throwing old drugs into the sewer system.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Why does your insurer know what meds you take?
"That prescription you just picked up at the drugstore could hurt your chances of getting health insurance.
An untold number of people have been rejected for medical coverage for a reason they never could have guessed: Insurance companies are using huge, commercially available prescription databases to screen out applicants based on their drug purchases.
Privacy and consumer advocates warn that the information can easily be misinterpreted or knowingly misused. At a minimum, the practice is adding another layer of anxiety to a marketplace that many consumers already find baffling. "It's making it harder to find insurance for people," says Jay Horowitz, an independent insurance agent in Overland Park, Kan.
The obstacle primarily confronts people seeking individual health insurance, not those covered under an employer's plan. Walter and Paula Shelton of Gilbert, La., applied to Humana (HUM) in February. They were rejected by the large Louisville insurer after a company representative pulled their drug profiles and questioned them over the telephone about prescriptions from Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) and Randalls, part of the Safeway grocery chain, for blood-pressure and anti-depressant medications.
MENTAL HEALTH IS A RED FLAG
Walter Shelton, a 57-year-old safety consultant in the oil and gas industry, says he tried to explain that the medications weren't for serious ailments. The blood-pressure prescription related to a minor problem his wife, Paula, had with swelling of her ankles. The antidepressant was prescribed to help her sleep—a common "off-label" treatment doctors advise for some menopausal women. But drugs for depression and other mental health conditions are often red flags to insurers."
Read the rest here
An untold number of people have been rejected for medical coverage for a reason they never could have guessed: Insurance companies are using huge, commercially available prescription databases to screen out applicants based on their drug purchases.
Privacy and consumer advocates warn that the information can easily be misinterpreted or knowingly misused. At a minimum, the practice is adding another layer of anxiety to a marketplace that many consumers already find baffling. "It's making it harder to find insurance for people," says Jay Horowitz, an independent insurance agent in Overland Park, Kan.
The obstacle primarily confronts people seeking individual health insurance, not those covered under an employer's plan. Walter and Paula Shelton of Gilbert, La., applied to Humana (HUM) in February. They were rejected by the large Louisville insurer after a company representative pulled their drug profiles and questioned them over the telephone about prescriptions from Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) and Randalls, part of the Safeway grocery chain, for blood-pressure and anti-depressant medications.
MENTAL HEALTH IS A RED FLAG
Walter Shelton, a 57-year-old safety consultant in the oil and gas industry, says he tried to explain that the medications weren't for serious ailments. The blood-pressure prescription related to a minor problem his wife, Paula, had with swelling of her ankles. The antidepressant was prescribed to help her sleep—a common "off-label" treatment doctors advise for some menopausal women. But drugs for depression and other mental health conditions are often red flags to insurers."
Read the rest here
Monday, June 30, 2008
Bitter Pill
Furious Seasons blog owner Philip Dawdy's article on researcher Erick Turner's paper on unpublished anti-depressant efficacy data and what that meant for the class of drugs was reprinted in the Missoula Independent last Thursday. It originally ran in Willamette Week in April, so if you missed it the first time out, check it out. Link
Turner’s paper leaves little question that antidepressants don’t work nearly as well as conventional wisdom would have it. Of the 30 million daily users in this country, many millions would be no worse off if they took a placebo every day. Yet doctors continue to prescribe the drugs, people continue to take them, and Big Pharma rings up the sales.
One could argue, “What’s so wrong with that?” If people are helped by believing that something works, even if it is not medically true, doesn’t it still work?
Carlat, who called Turner’s work important, nevertheless argues that the question may not matter.
“The fact is, we’re not allowed to prescribe placebos in our practices, and we have patients coming to us and banging down our doors because they are miserable,” says Carlat. “We can’t offer them a sugar pill, but we can offer an antidepressant even if its effect is 80 percent sugar pill. A lot of our patients are getting better. That’s why we prescribe antidepressants even in the face of this recurrent data.”
However, there is evidence that taking antidepressants can be harmful to some people’s health. In recent years, the FDA has mandated warnings on all antidepressants due to elevated risks of suicide and suicidal thinking in some people under the age of 25 who take the drugs. In addition, antidepressants can cause very intense withdrawal problems for some patients, most notably with Effexor and Paxil. The drugs can also cause internal agitation—akathisia—in some patients, and, tragically, antidepressant use sometimes has been connected, however peripherally, to school shootings, most famously at Columbine High School in 1999, where one of the shooters, Eric Harris, had been taking Luvox.
There is also the not-insignificant cost of the drugs.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
The mentally ill are victimized - MIND UK
Image after Kienholz. "The State Hospital"
The Mentally Ill Are Victimised
Psychiatric wards are "like pool halls...riddled with illicit drug use, bullying, and sometimes sexual intimidation". Nick Bowles, Bradford University School of Health Studies (Brindle, 2001).
"A 74-year-old was forced to have sex...in the mental health unit at Yardley Green Hospital, Birmingham...A male nurse...was charged with rape and sexual assault...but cleared of both charges. Prosecution and defence admitted the woman had been raped -but there was not enough evidence for a conviction. She died shortly afterwards." (Craven, N, and Merrick, J, 2006).
"The National Patient Safety Agency said there were at least 19 rapes of mental health patients in England, and more than 100 other improper sexual incidents in psychiatric units over the last two years...Eleven of the rapes were alleged to been by NHS staff, but the agency did not disclose whether staff were also involved in 20 cases of consensual sex, three unwanted pregnancies, and allegations of exposure, sexual advances and touching". (Carvel, J, Hall, S and Boseley, S, 2006).
"Patients were slapped, hit, stamped on, starved, kicked and taunted, a hospital trust admits" (Camber 2004).
"Essentially, if you are a mental patient, staff have a licence to assault you, and you have no protection whatsoever" (Justin Horton 2001).
"Low in the pecking order, it is tempting for nurses to vent frustrations on those even lower" (Nursing Times 1997).
"Institutions give inadequate people what they want - power ...many...people are inadequate and unfulfilled and they lust for power and control" (John Vaizey 1959).
"Both male and female bullies are drawn to the caring professions because of the opportunities for power and control over vulnerable clients" Tim Field (Feinmann, 2001).
"Patients detained in psychiatric hospitals are being denied basic human rights...according to the independent watchdog for mental health services" (Guardian 2001).
"Mind-melting drugs are still routinely administered to meet the needs of staff..." Christopher Barber, RCN Ethics Forum (Carvel, 2002).
"...drugs have become used more widely for sedating 'troublesome' residents..." (Matthew Akid 2002).
"...half of the cases of restraints in mental health are carried out in order to enforce medication..." (Mulholland, 2004).
"...up to 22,233 elderly nursing home residents are being given powerful anti-psychotics without medical grounds." (BBC 2003).
"...research found...an estimated 200 psychiatric patients died suddenly and unexpectedly each year in England...causes include... inappropriate restraint methods and high doses of medication" (Community Care 2000).
"There are so many rapes in children's and residential homes and psychiatric institutions because rapists know they can get away with it there" Harriet Wistrich -Solicitor (Taylor, 2001).
MIND's document on how the mentally ill are victimized continues here.
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