Guest Post: Mental Health
Welcome, friends! I am pleased to bring you another guest post on the subject of mental health. You may or may not know that I have struggled with anxiety and depression my entire life and have been suicidal at times. I take mental health very seriously and I encourage everyone to seek treatment for mental health issues. Our mental health is just as important as our physical health and I believe that telling our stories and sharing our experiences helps breakdown the stigma around mental illness and lets us know that we are never alone.
What do we really know about the treatment of mental illness? Do you know how they treat mental patients today? The author of this month’s guest post is Ashley Cote and she is sharing with you some history of psychiatric care and some of her experience being treated for mental illness today.
Better Treatment For Mental Illness. Aren’t We All A little Crazy?
Treating the mentally ill is certainly not the easiest of tasks, in fact for most, both patients and providers, it is both a struggle and a long road. From fighting with insurance companies for coverage, to the extreme expense of medications and treatments, and the everlasting mental health stigma, it seems to be an ongoing issue. With many of our mentally ill left untreated and uncared for, much in prisons and wandering the streets. It would be an understatement to say we haven’t come a stone’s throw away to finding proper care. Although, we have come far, the question still is, have we come far enough?
With the purpose of this being, to educate on the treatment of mental illness and to encourage the importance of improving mental health treatments and care. We are all only human, the same, but only wired a little different. Difference has always scared the world, when in fact it should intrigue us.
But to take that into effect, we must go back to when mental health treatment was much more inhumane. The era of asylums around the 1700s, was born and filled with our mentally ill. “The purpose of the earliest mental institutions was neither treatment nor cure, but rather the enforced segregation of inmates from society,” (Jeffrey A. Lieberman in Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry) Back when the mentally ill were seen more as misfits and deviants to society.
Treatments such as hydrotherapy was performed, with the belief that the water reduced agitation, particularly for patients having episodes of mania. Patients were put in a bath for hours at a time, wrapped in a “pack” or sprayed with water at extreme temperatures to shock the system.
Restraints were used, such as straight jackets, leather wristlets, and manacles, for hours at a time. Professionals at these facilities made claims that these kept the patients safe, when more or less, it was a means of controlling overpopulated conditions.
Dr. Benjamin Rush was believed to be the first to decide that mental illness wasn’t caused by demonic possession, which was believed by many cultures for centuries before. Yet, he still attempted arbitrary treatments, he made his patients vomit, blister, purge and bleed in his belief that something with the body fluids wasn’t right. Julius Wagner-Jauregg even experimented with producing fevers in people diagnosed with schizophrenia by injecting the patients with malaria-infected blood.
Next was different types of shock therapies. Such as insulin shock therapy, by a neurologist by the name of Manfred Sakel, where insulin was injected into patients at high levels, causing seizures which lead to a coma. After several hours they would take them out of their coma and revive the patient, which this in turn, according to the doctor, would cure them of their madness.
Among the few chemical shock therapies, there was also actual electroshock therapy. Dated as far back as the 1rst century A.D. Where it is alleged that “the malaise and headaches of the Roman emperor Claudius were treated by the application of a torpedo fish — better known as an electric ray — on his forehead.” (De Young) The new age shock treatment began in 1938, which was also alleged to cure or subside mental illness symptoms. But it doesn’t go without side effects and nasty ones at that. It can cause severe headache, muscle aches and tenderness, suicidal tendencies, amnesia and more.
Ernest Hemingway, himself, endured twenty strenuous trials of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to help cure Ernest of his deep depression. But he lost many of his memories, consequently. He later said that “It was a brilliant cure, but we lost the patient,” he ended his own life not long after.
What I have personally endured as a “mental patient” is nothing compared to what I have read of others. It is astonishing, that the world we live in can still be so dark and cold. So misguided and tortured. I can grasp that it is hard to understand the thoughts of one diagnosed with a mental illness.
Why we say what we say? Why we react the way we do? Is every case so different and unique? I’m sure many of us who suffer with mental illness have asked these very questions ourselves. And for the most part we don’t know. All we know is the desperate need to feel better, to find some scrape of normalcy in a life scattered amongst the wind.
I remember the countless doctors surrounding me, being the obstacle of everyone’s attention. Yet, my voice went unheard. They murmur amongst themselves of what they felt was “wrong” with me and what next medication or therapy they were going to attempt. I felt like I was at a museum, laid out, vulnerable and unwanted, for all to see. A million times I tried to tell them what medications I already tried, but they insisted amongst themselves that I try these medications again. To no avail of course. But that was what was familiar and known to them. All that was known to me was darkness. A lonely emptiness, slowly swallowing me.
“Really the only thing left for you is ECT” they put in pretty terms, of which I guess I agreed to, but honestly the “therapy” wiped all memory of that. As well as God only knows what. All I know was the next few weeks were a total fog, that is forever lost. Months went by and I still struggled to recall even the simplest of things. I do remember a flash, getting rolled into a room, given medicine to fall asleep, then waking up scared, surrounded by others in beds all trying to remember why we were there. But I’ve heard ECT works wonders for some, so I will never disgrace any treatment. For we are all different and we all must follow our own path to one's vision of a happy way of life.
I could go on, but honestly, I think that probably has disgusted and scared people enough and I only was using the information to suggest, yes, we still have far to go when it comes to treatment, but we have surpassed a very dark history.
To many of the psych doctors I have experienced, treat you like a number. Patient number 567 with severe bipolar disorder, I once read on my medical chart when the doctor left the room. And it wasn’t pretty. Scary in fact, to read. I wasn’t that number; I was Ashley, with an actual life and personality. To me it seemed that nothing I said was real, which made it all the scarier for me. I was constantly over-looked and, ignored like so many others.
But there is always hope, the general public needs to be educated more on mental illness. Our struggles and dangers seen visible, along with our triumphs and hard work. So, we can be better not only for ourselves, but for society. Spread the word, and let’s get more help, better help, for our mentally ill. Let the world know your own personal experiences with mental care. Nothing will improve and nothing will grow, in darkness. We must push through to the light, carry on for those of us who no longer can. We are people, and we deserve just as much respect and dignity as anyone else. Knowledge is power; speak up; and stop the stigma.
Resources:
The History of Inhumane Mental Health Treatments
Fabian
https://www.talkspace.com/blog/history-inhumane-mental-health-treatments/
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Shocking treatment
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2005/09/15/shocking-treatment
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I want to thank Ashley for her informative and vulnerable post. I think it’s important to know that we still have a long way to go in terms of proper mental health treatment. I did work in a hospital for many years and really found a lack of resources for children and adult psychiatric care. I hope that eventually we can offer enough counseling, enough guidance and enough treatment facilities for people with mental illness.
Comment below to stop the stigma.
Ashley Elizabeth Cote was raised most of her life in a small town in Vermont, with her two brothers and two sisters. She moved around a lot, most of her adult life living in Massachusetts, Virginia Beach and Florida, but settled in North Carolina. Although she missed the ocean, she loves the great outdoors of the mountains. A single mother of two beautiful daughters, she strives every day to be the best for them. But being diagnosed at 15 with bipolar disorder, manic depression, anxiety, ADD and PTSD, makes it a struggle every day. Regardless, she pushes forward and seeks out and experiments with new treatments as often as possible. Striving to spread factual information and personal experience about her mental health struggles. With the end goal being to help people, like Ashley, who suffer among her and to help end the mental health stigma.
