Mental Health - Facts & Numbers

Vive la difference!

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Mental Illness - Facts & Numbers

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How Stupid is the War on Drugs?

The chances are pretty good that you are...

They may have been prescribed for you by
a physician. You may have bought them over
the counter at a pharmacy... perhaps for a
cold, or a headache, or back pain...

You may have bought them from someone
you know, for a good time or to self-medicate
for a condition where there's nothing else
that seems to work.


You may have bought them because you no longer
have any choice- your body demands it now,
whether you feel like it or not.

Maybe you just need that double-shot to go
from the coffee bar on the way to work.

Welcome to the War on Drugs.


It began in the 1960s- another brain child
of Richard Nixon. It was mostly a cynical
undertaking designed to bump his standings
in the polls, and it worked.

After he was re-elected, one by one states
began to pass tough drug laws and sent cops
out to enforce them.

It is now the longest running war in American history.


It is also the most expensive. By far.

Over the last 49 years it has grown and grown
and grown. It is now an American institution.

And by any standard of measurement,
it is also a complete, a total, an utter failure.

The War on Drugs is now an American institution.
Like any other bureaucracy, it's primary mission
now is its' own survival... and growth.

In most of America, it's an easy sell. It smells of
Law and Order. It's central to Tough on Crime. And yet, despite the billions of dollars being spent
every year, drugs are now more powerful and more
available in more places than ever.

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Modern life causes brain overload

 











One of the interesting things about being bipolar for me
is my reluctance to assume that my experience of any
little thing in the world is widely shared. I know it's possible,
but it's not my my default.

So when I saw this study on line one night, I was more
than curious. I've felt overwhelmed by information most
of my life. I marvel at the way so many people seem able
to move through this world with an ease, a comfort level
that has always eluded me.

My usual response to the feeling of information overload
is usually to withdraw- go offline, unplug the phone,
go for a walk, go to sleep, what-have-you... 

I try to calm down and pull myself back together, and get
to whatever as soon as I can...sometimes an hour later,
sometimes longer later. People react to my reaction with
anything from annoyance to anger to dismissal, and go on
to the next person on their list.

... and despite my resolve not to project my reactions on
to other people, there is a part of me that thinks bipolar
people are sometimes similar to the tunnel canaries, used
by miners in days gone by to detect unhealthy changes
in their environment.

Anyway, getting back to that study, here are a couple
of things that gave me pause:

People are bombarded with the equivalent of 34 gigabytes
of information a day. Through email, the internet, television
and other media, people are deluged with around 100,000
words a day – equivalent to 23 words per second,
researchers claim.

“They are so busy processing information
from all directions they are losing the
tendency to think and to feel.

"Much of what they are exposed to is superficial.
People are sacrificing depth and feeling and becoming
cut off and disconnected from other people.”

Part of why it struck me, I think, is because this really
reflects my own experience of people in our digital age.

Something to think about...

 

or not.



I guess.

-30-

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a Picture of Mental Health

OK, it's not so much a picture as it is an infographic,
but it's still food for thought....

source: www.BestMentalHealthDegrees.com



The differences between men and women highlighted
here are interesting to me.

Is it because women are more likely to talk about their feelings and/or ask for hrelp that they are more likely
to be on medication?

Or is it because their lives (underpaid, more responsible
for child-rearing, etc) are more likely to induce and/or
accentuate negative feelings and illnesses?

Serotonin & Dopamine

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Bipolar Alienation?

the Electric Violin    dugg simpson 11/12

i used to be Somebody.


in a small but vital corner of the music business, i was someone
who could Make A Difference in the careers of Artists. every day, all kinds of people would send me emails and call me on the phone. they would seek me out in bars, stalk me in hotel lobbies at conferences and hang on my every word whenever i spoke.

they weren't just sucking up. they weren't hustling me
or god forbid, blowing smoke up my ass. no.

we were a Community, and in that Community, i had a lot
of friends. if i'd been on Facebook then, Friend-wise i coulda
been well into four figures.




now, i'm Nobody.



i'm of No Possible Use to anyone's career. i can't pay for anyone's plane tickets to Vancouver, or pay them money to do what they do, or present them to an audience that will buy their CDs or their key-chains or t-shirts or whatever else they might be selling.

the phone hardly ever rings anymore, and if it does, it's not for me. i get maybe one email a month. nobody notices when i walk into a room... or if i don't. and while i am a devoted blogger on a variety to themes including music, only a precious few people seem to notice if i do... or if i don't, let alone hang on my every word.

one day, i was an Important Member of a Community
and the next day i was Nobody.

c'est la vie.

que sera, sera. 


so it goes.





http://soundseen.blogspot.ca/

http://ratsinthebelfry.blogspot.com/

http://flickrhivemind.net/User/dmixo6




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10 Days in a Madhouse - Nellie Bly

In 1887, already well known for evocative articles on social reform, Nellie Bly took an assignment for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World newspaper to enter the asylum disguised as a patient.

She would feign the symptoms of an added young woman,
in the hope of being assigned to the New York Asylum
and report back on the conditions she found there,
and share the stories of the inmates she met.

"Tell me, are you a woman of the town?"
"I do not understand you," I replied, heartily disgusted with him.
"I mean have you allowed the men to provide for you and keep you?"
I felt like slapping him in the face, but I had to maintain my composure, so I simply said:
"I do not know what you are talking about. I always lived at home."
After many more questions, fully as useless and senseless, he left me and began to talk with the nurse. "Positively demented," he said. "I consider it a hopeless case. She needs to be put where some one will take care of her."
And so I passed my second medical expert.

After this, I began to have a smaller regard for the ability of doctors than I ever had before, and a greater one for myself. I felt sure now that no doctor could tell whether people were insane or not, so long as the case was not violent.

"From the moment I entered the insane ward on the Island,
I made no attempt to keep up the assumed role of insanity.
I talked and acted just as I do in ordinary life.
Yet strange to say, the more sanely I talked and acted,
the crazier I was thought to be by all...."

"The beating I got there were something dreadful. I was pulled around by the hair, held under the water until I strangled,
and I was choked and kicked.

The nurses would always keep a quiet patient stationed at the window to tell them when any of the doctors were approaching.
It was hopeless to complain to the doctors, for they always
said it was the imagination of our diseased brains,
and besides we would get another beating for telling".

"The remembrance of that is enough to make me mad. For crying the nurses beat me with a broom-handle and jumped on me, injuring me internally, so that I shall never get over it. Then they tied my hands and feet, and, throwing a sheet over my head, twisted it tightly around my throat, so I could not scream, and thus put me in a bathtub filled with cold water.



They held me under until I gave up every hope and became senseless. At other times they took hold of my ears and beat my head on the floor and against the wall. Then they pulled out my hair by the roots, so that it will never grow in again."

When her story broke, a grand jury was convened to investigate her allegations. When she and members of the grand jury went to the asylum, the administrators had plenty of advance warning and many changes had been made...




I hardly expected the grand jury to sustain me, after they saw everything different from what it had been while I was there. Yet they did, and their report to the court advises all the changes made that I had proposed.
I have one consolation for my work–on the strength of my story the committee of appropriation provides $1,000,000 more than was ever before given, for the benefit of the insane.













By 1893, the asylum's patients were transferred further up the East River to Ward's Island and the building was given over to more traditional medical services, becoming Metropolitan Hospital until closing in 1955.










Nellie Bly would go on to more to more adventures and a variety of triumphs as a reporter, inventor and industrialist. So would the former asylum...











Nowadays, all that is left of it is the rotunda,
which has been restored and forms the centrepiece
for a block of - you guessed it - condominiums!










The condominium website makes passing mention of the fact
that there once was "a hospital" there, preferring to
linger longer on a visit in 1842 by Charles Dickens, who described
the rotunda as “remarkable,” its flying spiral staircase “spacious and elegant” as it rose from an illuminated glass-brick floor.


Dickens went on to say...
“Everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse air, which was very painful. The moping idiot, cowering down with long disheveled hair; the gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh and pointed finger; the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the gloomy picking of the hands and lips, and munching of the nails: there they were all, without disguise, in naked ugliness and horror.”


more perspectives on asylum life & the impact of Nellie's work

get your FREE PDF of “Nellie Bly's "Ten Days in a Madhouse”

more about The Octagon, the Asylum and what happened next...

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10 things you never knew about Lithium

If you're bipolar, lithium is a fact of life.

Chances are you're already on it, or you're on something
else that's trying to do for you what lithium does for others.
But how much do you really know about this
curious substance that you're ingesting every day?

1) Lithium is a metal, in fact, it is the lightest metal
and has just three electrons.  Lithium’s so light that
it actually floats in water.

2) Lithium is so soft, you can cut it with a knife.

3) The soft drink 7 Up was also a patent medicine,
originally named "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda"
and contained lithium citrate until 1950.

4) The word lithium comes from the Greek word for stone, “lithos”. A freshly cut chunk of lithium is silvery, but tarnishes in a minute
or so in air to give a grey surface.

5) Lithium is actually a form of salt that the body
produces naturally. Lithium is also made via nuclear
fusion in the interiors of stars.

6) There is a town in Missouri named Lithium.

 

7) Lithium is found in seawater and is more concentrated
near thermal vents, but the majority of the world’s
lithium is mined in South America. 

8) Lithium is one of the three elements
synthesized in the Big Bang. 

9) Lithium is used for batteries because it is an excellent
conductor of electricity. Light weight and very reactive,
a battery made of lithium-ion can be smaller and hold
more charge.These charge-to-weight and power-to-weight
ratios make lithium the battery material of choice.

10) Common side effects that come from taking lithium
include tremors, nausea and upset stomach, loss of
appetite, dried and thinning hair, and an itchy sensation.
The more serious side effects include hallucinations, lack
of coordination, extreme thirst or weakness, feelings
of confusion or restlessness, seizures, severely slowed
heart rate, and fainting.

Learn even more about lithium!

Low-dose lithium may extend lifespan

Lithium  - the commodity of the 21st century

An important source of high-purity lithium and a gemstone

Lithium investors will prosper in 2011

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Mental Illnesses & Their Myths

Mental illness has been something to be ashamed of for centuries. Whether one was suffering with a mental illness or was related to someone who was, mental illness personified "different". Imperfect. Impure. Unclean. Diseased.

Cast out by god.

 Nowadays, we call it "stigma".



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The combination of shame with the traditional human fear
of anything different does not usually inspire people
to learn more about something, and mental illness
is no exception.

So over those same centuries, "sane" people have combined ignorance with prejudice to create stereotypes that fit
their paranoid fantasies.
Nice people call them "myths".



Here's one now...

Schizophrenia

The Myth: Schizophrenic people hear voices in their heads.


We all know about schizophrenia, and we’ve all read jokes
about “the voices in my head”. But, contrary to what a lot
of people believe, not all people with schizophrenia hear
voices in their heads.

Auditory hallucinations are very common in schizophrenic
people, but they are more likely to hear voices coming from
some object outside of their body than inside their mind.

Plus, not everyone with schizophrenia experiences the same
symptoms. They may have hallucinations (actually seeing
or hearing things that don’t exist), delusions (believing
unrealistic ideas), disordered thoughts, lack of affect (no
appearance of emotions), or, in catatonic schizophrenia,
even a lack of desire to move at all.

Schizophrenia is a complicated disorder with a wide range
of possible symptoms.


9 more illnesses and their myths right here!
























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No More Drugs?

Haven't found a drug yet that works for you?
Sick of side-effects from the drugs you're already on?
Too bad... just suck all it up, baby, because
there's no new hope on the horizon.

Big pharma pulling back from mental health
drug research: studies

Pharmaceutical companies are focusing fewer resources on developing drugs to combat mental illness, despite the fact it is a leading health issue and represents a potential massive cash cow, a pair of new studies has found.

Two recent reports published in the journal Science Translational Medicine say drug development for major mental illnesses or psychiatric disorders -- such as schizophrenia, depression or bipolar disorder -- is virtually at a standstill.

"Despite high prevalence and unmet medical need, major pharmaceutical companies are de-emphasising or exiting psychiatry, thus removing significant capacity from efforts to discover new medicines,” states one report, written by Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, and Steven Hyman, of Harvard University.

Read more about it at: http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/big-pharma-pulling-back-from-mental-health-drug-research-studies-1.1015154#ixzz2Aj7TSS3p

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Crazy for God

some people are born crazy.
some people have craziness thrust upon them.


and some people choose to be crazy...

being "born again" is like volunteer crazy.
i should know. been there. done that.

it's probably why i find these paintings so strangely
compelling.whatever you might think of their aesthetic
qualities, there is no denying their relentless sincerity.

but is it art?

sorry, but i don't think so.

i don't think so because there is no room in them for me.
they are a fait accompli.

they don't even need me. they are their own beginning
and their own end. closed systems.

and art, for me, is as much about questions as it is about
answers. in these paintings, there is no room for me
because there is no room for doubt.

which may be why this style of art is not only popular
among fundamentalist Christians - it's also popular
with Nazis, Joe Stalin, Mao, beloved North Korean leaders
and other connoisseurs of the efficiencies
of the fascist path..

maybe that's why these paintings - drawn from all these
histories, these different countries and decades - look
so much the same.

the sun is always rising, and the people are always gazing
into the dawn's early light of what sure looks like a better
day.

no wonder these people are always smiling .
they're high on hope. they're totally faced on faith.
they don't have a doubt in their heads.

which is another reason why these paintings aren't
for me. not only is there no room for doubt...
they are downright instructional.

it's pretty creepy. if you ask me.

never mind the "right, two of every animal
on the planet fits in a boat that size" factor.

...which doesn't matter in the slightest.

for all their so-called "realism", images like these
are not concerned with reality. they are fantasies.

they are fascist fantasies - fantasies of compliance.
fantasies of control. fantasies of a simple universe
that even comes with a book of answers...

a simple world. a better world. a world free from want.
a world free from thought.

like i said... creepy.

here, a Nazi soldier comes home to his family...

and here, an American soldier comes home, a la Rockwell...

when the war was over, there were some who found
all this relentless sincerity hard to swallow, and a process
of subversion began which continues to the present day.










thank god.

























see more images like these....

http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai151_folder/151_articles/151_soviet_art_05.html


http://squashint.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/chairman-maos-socialist-realism/

http://pulpcovers.wordpress.com/tag/nazis/


what is "socialist realism"?






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