Reforms are a way of adapting to new information and circumstances. We now know that psychotropic drugs (essentially any mind altering drug used in psychiatry) can have damaging effects on body organs and create drug dependency when used long term. They also create a defeatist mind-set which says 'pills' are the best way to cope with my mental health condition.
Set and forget prescribing of drugs as therapy and treatment of mental illnesses has been a troubling feature of psychiatry to date. A presenting condition being treated using drugs does not prevent the condition. It only masks the expression of problems for the sake of convenience. There is no way to test other therapies and use of psychotropic drugs usually magnifies the symptoms or creates other problem symptoms as side effects. Doing this long term creates people who identify as being 'messed up' rather than 'cured'. Drug therapy is not usually combined with any education about stress management, life experiences, causes of trauma or introspective review of triggering life events.
People have been put onto drugs and told that is all that can be done. They may have been left on a drug which damages their kidneys, liver and thyroid for decades at a time without this therapy ever being reviewed and without them being offered any alternative treatments. Drug therapy is convenience, not cure.
Intervening using drug therapy is not the only or best intervention available. It is certainly not the most responsible or kind.
Psychiatric diagnosis labels and treating medicines have their place during acute episodes of mental illness. However, symptoms constantly overlap. Psychosis is a feature in mental breakdowns and part of acute illness phases in schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, post-natal depression and major depression. Many types of major illnesses include psychosis at some point. Similarly 'mania' a typical symptom in 'bipolar disorder' is also seen in mental breakdowns and extreme anxiety. Depression is a symptom commonly experienced in the community at different times, disclosed or undisclosed. Suicidality can be caused by any mental illness or in response to devastating life experiences and constant trauma.
People can and do recover from all of these phases and types of mental illness. Denying them the achievement of recognition as 'fully recovered' is denying them their humanity and hope.
The reforms outlined, take a mature approach to advancing psychiatry out of the dark ages of labels and drug therapy and lifelong illness with lifelong disability. When we focus on the capacity demonstrated by an individual, we are giving them credit back. When people recover fully, that should be acknowledged. It is not just being set free from a treatment ward either. It is being fully restored in our capacity to cope and manage our own condition, whatever that may be.
The reward will be, you are now in full remission (total recovery) from major depression or bipolar or schizophrenia or extreme anxiety and that label on your life can then be lifted off.
Goal oriented mental health care would force the psychiatry system to be more efficient and effective, transparent and professional about restoring sufferers of mental illness back to "normal". More liability would be put onto our health system to make progress and improve.
Goals are usually very clear, transparent and achievable and can be tracked over time to easily identify what is working and what is not. We need to get the mental health system to cease looking at people as though a mental illness is the end of their capacity to work and live a normal life. They need to cease seeing sufferers as having no potential or capacity to improve their own health care and change the focus of our mental health system completely. We need the mental health system to focus on improving individual's capacity to manage their own life.
Everyone who has been through a life challenge or crisis has some level of expertise in managing themselves. This capacity needs to be built on.
By making diagnoses finite rather than infinite, we are giving sufferers their hope back and a way to gain capacity. The illnesses themselves are not what is bad. The prognosis and the way the mental health system and psychiatry treat the people who have the conditions is bad. The people who flounder for years without making any progress due to being "left" on a medication with no follow up, the people who 'cant understand themselves' and having frequent relapses, the behaviour which scares us out of our wits.. these are the things that create stigma which ruins lives.
In my humble opinion, these reforms are the only dignified way forward to make psychiatry and the mental health system less of a monster:
- goal oriented mental health services.
- compulsory frequent medication reviews.
- compulsory use of combined treatments - not just drug therapy.
- abandonment of lifelong drug therapies - to be made illegal!
- limited application of diagnoses - give credit for recovery
Your signature can help make these changes a reality.
You can make a difference.
Please sign now and share this petition with your friends.