Treating the soul with medication
Back when I became a psychiatric patient, the first thing they did was give me medication. A black pill and a white pill. “You can’t trick me!”, I thought as I swallowed the white pill and hid the black pill in my cheek to spit it out later when the doctor wasn’t looking.
I had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital because I had developed acute psychosis. That’s how I would describe it today. At the time, I described my condition as an existential crisis.
In psychiatry, the primary treatment is drugs. Even when dealing with problems of the soul. I recognised that I was not well. Or at least that I had behaved inappropriately in some situations. I took responsibility for those actions and was willing to work with my personality to try to fix them. In any event, I spent a long time seeking alternatives to standard medicine for treating psychosis. Today, I recognize that my medication helps me. Despite the significant side-effects.
Lack of acceptance of the illness
The problem with diagnostic practise is that the doctor bases their assessment of the patient’s emotions and thought patterns on observations of the patient’s behaviour and explanations. This often results in treatment of behaviours based on the doctor’s wishes rather than on helping the patient. That is what happened to me. My thoughts didn’t make me ill, and many years would pass before I voluntarily accepted the medical treatment offered to me. It was the doctor who assessed that I was ill. And my questioning of the diagnosis, my lack of acceptance of my illness was also a symptom of the disease. I was caught in a trap.
Today, I understand my illness very well. But that is only because I started seeing things from my doctor’s perspective, rather than expecting the opposite, as I did in the beginning. My doctor is not necessarily a better person than me, but I fit into society better now that I follow my doctor’s recommendations. Again, I would have expected the opposite: that society should adapt to me as an individual.
Effect or side-effect?
I was always in a hurry as a child and adolescent. Without a diagnosis, I was very active, especially with music.
In fact, my psychotic symptoms may very well have been the result of that high level of activity. Especially, the higher activity in my brain. I didn’t learn to just be in my body, to be grounded, and suddenly, I found myself in an existential crisis. And psychosis was apparently the only way I could deal with it.
Medication slows down this activity. At first, I thought this phenomenon was a side-effect and that always bothered me. But now I can see that the reduced activity is the effect of the medicine. Which is a shame, because I would be able to produce music if I had more energy! And my body also feels better when it has the energy to be active than when it feels fatigued. But lack of initiative is better than psychosis. The doctors have managed to convince me of that. After many years as a psychiatric patient.
Alternatives to medicine
My ironic critique is aimed at our society rather than at the individual doctor. I truly wish I didn’t need anti-psychotic medication. And I have always been a proponent of alternative approaches to treating mental illness.
However, when psychiatrists ask for concrete information about these alternative approaches which patients so long for, I’m stumped. If it were that simple to explain what I would do differently, there wouldn’t be a problem.
We burned witches at the stake. We conducted lobotomies. We have come a long way. But there is still work to be done! And even though the doctors are talented and good people, the patients’ voice in this process is crucial. Both those patients who have come a long way in their recovery process and those who still have a long way to go.
“Lack of initiative is better than psychosis. The doctors have managed to convince me of that.” (Photo: Mette Munch)