“In my beginning is my end.”
--T.S. Eliot, East Coker
Credi in UFO’s?
Her immediacy to resist death,
And the recalcitrant fight to submerge in life,
Reminds us not of a battle, but a raging pacifism,
Caught up in the filigree of atomized consciousness,
Left to breed among the Moline crosses of an
Abandoned church falling to the lamented ground by the
Absence of belief.
So afterwards, the drinks sparkled in their own bioluminescence,
As if a parasitic tick was feeding upon our livers, shinning without
The light of the anachronistic human race, but producing its
Own malevolent illumination to cover her resistance with the
Hinting with thoughts of her dying against the meaninglessness of a
Nihilistic dawn with the presence of alien abstraction, and the wounding of time’s linear progression into significance.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
treatment of the mentally ill
When my psychiatrist first offered me the option of being treated with Thorozine, I immediately thought back to the way in which they used to attempt to moderate a patient’s behavior back in the early 1950’s. This controversial drug burst on the scene as an alternative to the infamous “lobotomy” and “insulin shock therapy,” both of which are considered barbaric today. However, given this “opportunity” I had to decline given the greater chances of developing tardive dyskinesia, a condition where the patient’s muscles tend to become stiff and/or move in jerky, uncontrolled movements. Yet all the anti-psychotics have this particular risk. They are not addicting, not by any sense, but have great side-effects, including weight gain (especially the newer “a-typical” anti-psychotics.) I looked into it a bit and chose perphenazine, another old ant-psychotic developed in the late 1950’s, around the time of Thorozine. I chose this medication because it is less sedating, which they all are, and there isn’t as great a chance for tardive dyskinesia. I am thankful for my medication, but sometimes I abhor its possible effects on my mind and body that I may face in the future. But there are only certain things to treat schizoaffective disorder’s psychotic symptoms, and the anti-psychotic, whether it be Zyprexa, one of the newer ones that also made me gain fifty pounds, or Stelazine, one of the older medications. Ironically, it seems to be that the older medications are proving to be more apt at treating the illness than the newer ones.
But before there were anti-psychotic drugs, patients at mental asylums, as they used to call psychiatric hospitals, used to have to face horrible treatments that are considered cruel today, but at the time, they were known to be the best and the best “therapeutic” treatments available, and basically the only as well. The men who invented these treatments won Nobel prizes. For instance Julius, Wagner-Jauregg's introduction of malaria therapy. This was followed by Manfred Sakel’s invention of insulin shock therapy, where the patient is made unconscious through the use of insulin as a catalyst for this coma. This was basically used for dementia praecox (schizophrenia). And then we had, Cardiazol shock therapy, founded on the theoretical notion that there existed a biological antagonism between schizophrenia and epilepsy and that therefore inducing epiletiform fits in schizophrenic patients might effect a cure, was superseded by electroconvulsive therapy, invented by the Italian neurologist Ugo Cerletti. And then, what I consider to be the most inhumane “therapy,” of all, is the lobotomy. Walter Freeman, caught on to the idea by the experiments in Europe, and thought that they appeared to be a logical cure for schizophrenic and depressed patients alike. The procedure was accomplished by sticking an icepick through the eyelid and moved around severing the nerves between the pre-frontal lobes in the brain. Brilliant, yeah, I know. But at the time it was the best thing that they had going for them. Apparently this procedure was performed on well over 1000 patients, almost all of whom suffered brain damage.
Thankfully, the use of the lobotomy was replaced by lithium to treat patients with mood problems, primarily bi-polar patients. And I mean thankfully. I am on lithium and it seems to work well for me. Although I have to have blood tests and be monitored closely, it seems to be working much better than an ice pick.
Entering some of these institutions during the older days (1890-1920) or so, was a like walking into a prison, both literally and figuratively. One can just imagine the shape the patients would be in. Walking zombies they would appear to be, and that is how these people were desired to look and act like, so that they would not hurt or cause havoc in the ward. Or course there were no other treatments, but being chained to a post seems barbarous even in retrospect to the resources they had to use at the time.
We live in a day and age when “madness” has been replaced by “mentally ill,” and “manic depression” has is now known as “bi-polar disorder. Whichever the case, mental illness has certainly gone through evolutionary methods of being treated, but one thing remains steadfast: mental illness is no one’s fault.
But before there were anti-psychotic drugs, patients at mental asylums, as they used to call psychiatric hospitals, used to have to face horrible treatments that are considered cruel today, but at the time, they were known to be the best and the best “therapeutic” treatments available, and basically the only as well. The men who invented these treatments won Nobel prizes. For instance Julius, Wagner-Jauregg's introduction of malaria therapy. This was followed by Manfred Sakel’s invention of insulin shock therapy, where the patient is made unconscious through the use of insulin as a catalyst for this coma. This was basically used for dementia praecox (schizophrenia). And then we had, Cardiazol shock therapy, founded on the theoretical notion that there existed a biological antagonism between schizophrenia and epilepsy and that therefore inducing epiletiform fits in schizophrenic patients might effect a cure, was superseded by electroconvulsive therapy, invented by the Italian neurologist Ugo Cerletti. And then, what I consider to be the most inhumane “therapy,” of all, is the lobotomy. Walter Freeman, caught on to the idea by the experiments in Europe, and thought that they appeared to be a logical cure for schizophrenic and depressed patients alike. The procedure was accomplished by sticking an icepick through the eyelid and moved around severing the nerves between the pre-frontal lobes in the brain. Brilliant, yeah, I know. But at the time it was the best thing that they had going for them. Apparently this procedure was performed on well over 1000 patients, almost all of whom suffered brain damage.
Thankfully, the use of the lobotomy was replaced by lithium to treat patients with mood problems, primarily bi-polar patients. And I mean thankfully. I am on lithium and it seems to work well for me. Although I have to have blood tests and be monitored closely, it seems to be working much better than an ice pick.
Entering some of these institutions during the older days (1890-1920) or so, was a like walking into a prison, both literally and figuratively. One can just imagine the shape the patients would be in. Walking zombies they would appear to be, and that is how these people were desired to look and act like, so that they would not hurt or cause havoc in the ward. Or course there were no other treatments, but being chained to a post seems barbarous even in retrospect to the resources they had to use at the time.
We live in a day and age when “madness” has been replaced by “mentally ill,” and “manic depression” has is now known as “bi-polar disorder. Whichever the case, mental illness has certainly gone through evolutionary methods of being treated, but one thing remains steadfast: mental illness is no one’s fault.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)