On the Margins in Australia

I found this interesting article about Cornelia Rau, a schizophrenic Australian woman who was mistaken for an illegal immigrant and locked away under terrible circumstances. The nation is guiltily examining the way it treats the mentally ill, refugees and illegals.

Cornelia's family had a really open-minded approach to her illness. As her brother said to Australian TV:

Initially, we accepted, okay, you know, she has always battled the system, she wants her freedom. We thought, "Well, okay, why should we continually hound her?" No-one wants to interfere in somebody's life who's a grown woman who's had a successful career, who's clever, who has everything going for them. But we were very concerned that she would put herself at risk.

However, apparently Australia also tries to force treatment on people. Despite her family's wishes, the government tried to force her to take medication, something which terrified her. As a result Cornelia disappeared. Again, in her brother's words:

It didn't surprise us because we know that she hates hospital, she dislikes medication and she doesn't think that she's ill and therefore why should she take medication. And she knew that she would have been under an order that was a compulsory medication order the next day, so she had, you know, quite carefully planned her escape for the day before.

She wandered around until two good samaritans came along and reported that there was a lost, seemingly ill woman for whom they were concerned. Cornelia made the mistake of telling responding police officer that she was "Anna Brotmeyer" who had arrived in the country after traveling, "by train to Russia and China and then ... by boat from Indonesia with a people smuggler." She was locked in a criminal prison where she now began to insist that her name was "Anna Schmit". Another inmate described Cornelia's ordeal:

She was manhandled every day to get back in her cell. She'd be forced back in. They'd push her in and slam the door. She had no concept of where she was and she couldn't understand why they were being so mean to her. She cried all day.

She saw two psychiatrists, one who thought she was somewhat ill and another who thought she was simply odd.

Despite the fact that her parents had reported her missing, she was not identified as the person in custody. She was shipped off to immigration, where she was not allowed access to an attorney. As a result she languished in custody for ten long months.

Even after she was recognized and "released", Cornelia was dragged off to a psychiatric hospital and kept against her will. At least they were no longer holding her in solitary confinement or otherwise physically abusing her. However, they were still forcing her to take medication because of how "crazy" she had acted in custody, even though arguably she was only behaving so badly because she was being abused and wrongfully detained.

Cornelia Rau was released from the hospital a few days ago, but was only able to savor her freedom briefly. A "series of events" caused the authorities to decide she needed to be locked up again. What did she do you ask? Did she have a "fit" in public? Did she attack someone? Harm herself?

None of the above. According to the paper, "[S]he left her accommodation in the morning and did not return until late that night. While she was essentially free to come and go as she pleased, her long absence raised concerns."

In other words, they were afraid she'd run off again to avoid forced medication.

It sounds like she's still a prisoner to me.

Tom Cruise and Brooke Sheilds

Over the years I've come to feel badly for the Scientologists. Yeah, the whole zemu thing is very odd, but they have a right to believe whatever they want. I just wish they had steered clear of the psychiatric debate. Too many people think bad things about scientology and it can make things very uncomfortable for other activists.

On that note, we look at Tom Cruise's recent comments about Brooke Shields using Paxil to help her with post-partum depression. In his own words:

"These drugs are dangerous. I have actually helped people come off," Cruise maintains to Bush. "When you talk about postpartum, you can take people today, women, and what you do is you use vitamins. There is a hormonal thing that is going on, scientifically, you can prove that. But when you talk about emotional, chemical imbalances in people, there is no science behind that. You can use vitamins to help a woman through those things."

And many in the press groaned ... in their minds it has long been decided that depression is a chemical imbalance. I groan because I think most depression is emotional.

While looking around online I found this clip that I thought was particularly eloquent:

ALL emotional responses have a chemical consequence. When we laugh, for example, there is a greater amount of chemical endorphins (natural painkillers) released into the blood stream. Endorphins do not cause laughter however, they are a consequence of it.

Until recently, and partly because of drug-company marketing, the widespread belief was that depression was a biological illness. It’s even been called a ‘disease.’

Depression is 10 times more common in people born since 1945 compared to people born before 1945. So, ten times as people are becoming depressed now as compared to fifty years ago (and this research takes into account increased reporting and public awareness). Biology doesn't change this fast. Genes don’t alter this rapidly - so this is a clue that clinical depression and its increase are more to do with the way society and lifestyles are changing. Depression is not an inevitable consequence of adverse life circumstances either, as only a minority of people exposed to difficult situations go on to develop clinical depression.
...
The way we respond to situations (with thoughts of hopelessness, helplessness, anxiety, anger, etc.) effects the emotions we feel which, in turn effect the chemicals which are released.

So according to this theory, the reason why Brooke Shields and other women suffer from post-partum depression and psychosis is because their stress levels are high, which effects their emotional state. I would venture to guess that hormones make them more emotional in general as well. I know I was very weepy with both joy and sorrow when my child was born. And all this emotion, change, and stress, and inability to deal with the stress, causes depression.

That makes a lot more sense to me than biological psychiatry's assertion that it's all purely physical. Oddly, I get the feeling that that's what Cruise is advocating as well - that it's all hormonal.

Still doubt me and my "for 90% of people depression is emotional" theory? Well, consider this: a few weeks before Brooke Shield’s child was born her father died of cancer after a long illness and she and her husband moved to a new apartment. Then they gave birth. That sounds like mountains of stress to me. I might spend a lot of time crying too under those difficult circumstances.

It's about people's hearts and souls. It's about who they are in the most profound sense. What it is not about is a pill, whether it's Paxil or a vitamin supplement. There are no magic solutions to bad feelings. <>

Implant Device for Depression

The New York Times published an article today called "FDA Considers Implant Device for Depression" (reg required). Here's a clip:

The Food and Drug Administration may soon approve a medical device that would be the first new treatment option for severely depressed patients in a generation, despite the misgivings of many experts who say there is little evidence that it works

The pacemaker-like device, called a vagus nerve stimulator, is surgically implanted in the upper chest, and its wires are threaded into the neck, where it stimulates a nerve leading to the brain. It has been approved since 1997 for the treatment of some epilepsy patients, and the drug agency has told the manufacturer that it is now "approvable" for severe depression that is resistant to other treatment.

But in the only rigorously controlled trial so far in depressed patients, the stimulator was no more effective than surgery in which it was implanted but not turned on.

While some patients show significantly improved moods after having the $15,000 device implanted, most do not, the study found. And once the device is implanted, it is hard to remove entirely; surgeons say the wire leads are usually left inside the neck.

Proponents say that many severely depressed patients do not respond to antidepressants or electroshock therapy and that those patients are desperate for any treatment to relieve their suffering.

"These people have no other options, so we need to consider anything that shows potential to help," said Dr. Harold A. Sackeim, chief of biological psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, who consults for Cyberonics Inc., the Houston company that makes the stimulator.
-------------

This prompted me to write the following Letter to the Editor:

Dear Editor,

In Benedict Carey's article "FDA Considers Implant Device for Depression", Dr. Harold Sackeim said of those who are severely depressed,"These people have no other options, so we need to consider anything that shows potential to help".

Those words sound frighteningly similar to the phrase "anything that holds out hope should be tried". Last time psychiatry fell into that thinking 50,000 Americans, one of them my own grandmother, were lobotomized. The effects were devastating for the patients and their families who were left to deal with the aftermath. Psychiatry simply moved on to the next vogue, and profitable, "treatment".

Sincerely,

Christine Johnson

To Help the Babies

This is a fascinating story of a woman who has spent most of her life in and out of trouble with New York State because of her delusions. The entire four-part series is well-worth reading, but I have pasted some telling quotes below:

On June 16, Tara approached a mother pushing her seven-month-old daughter in a stroller down Montague Street. Tara tried to touch the baby, then followed the mother into Waldenbooks, tailed her to the second floor, and reached over to touch the child again. On June 20, Tara strode down Clinton Street alongside a nanny with a stroller. "Give me the baby!" she said. "Give me the baby!" She accosted this same nanny later that day and grabbed the child's legs.
...

Tara's concern was not new, just a variation on thoughts that had been tumbling around her mind for years. For more than a decade, she'd been obsessed with plastic rain covers—the ones that parents place over a stroller to keep their baby dry. Whenever Tara saw a baby under a plastic cover, she was convinced that the baby could not breathe, that it desperately needed fresh air. She would approach people she saw pushing baby carriages and ask them to lift the cover. If they refused, Tara would try to do it herself.
...

Tara's arrest made the papers. "Woman Busted as Serial Baby Grabber," declared the Daily News. The New York Post dubbed her a "Kidnap-Rap Wacko."
...

The Prolixin injections kept Tara's delusions at bay, but there were side effects too. "When I'm not on medication, I think about a zillion things during the day," she said. "A lot of times, I felt like I was in heaven." Prolixin suppressed not only her delusions, but also her imagination. Now she was bored all the time, and depressed too. "I can't think of anything while I'm on this medication," she said. "Your mind doesn't turn the same way it used to. It's almost like a little lobotomy."
...

The documents that angered Jean the most were the insurance claim forms from Pilgrim state hospital, where Tara had spent 18 months at a cost of about $15,000 per month. Medicare paid these bills, but to Jean they represented yet another insane aspect of the mental health system: The price tag for Tara's stay at Pilgrim had come to more than $180,000 a year, and yet Tara had come out no better than she went in. "Where the hell does all the money go?" Jean would say. "It's absolutely mind-boggling! For that kind of money, each patient could go on a world tour with a private therapist."
...

Ever since Jean had started going to court for Tara, she paid close attention to news stories about the criminal justice system. One of the cases that bothered her the most involved Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson, the young couple from New Jersey who killed their newborn son by putting him in a plastic bag and tossing him in a dumpster. Brian spent only 20 months in prison; Amy did 24 months. Already, Tara had been in Rikers longer than both of them.
...

Many parents liked the Mental Health Court because it kept their children out of state prison, but Jean was skeptical about whether it would work for Tara. To get into a mental health program, Tara would have to plead guilty to attempted kidnapping. If she completed the program without getting into any more trouble, the felony would be erased from her record and she'd be allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. It seemed simple enough, except that when it came to Tara nothing was ever simple. If things went awry—if, for example, she convinced someone to decrease her Prolixin dosage, the delusions returned, and she began trying to save babies once again—she was going to state prison for at least seven years.
...

April 11 marked her 1000th day locked up without a conviction.

Marijuana Madness

One can't help but be suspicious when the American Government, perpetrator of the decades long failure called "The Drug War", declares that cannabis causes mental illness. A quote:

"A growing body of evidence now demonstrates that smoking marijuana can increase the risk of serious mental health problems," said John P. Walters, director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy.

Administration officials pointed to a handful of studies to make their case. One, from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, found adult marijuana smokers who first began using the drug before age 12 were twice as likely to have suffered a serious mental illness in the past year as those who began smoking after 18."

Perhaps people who start smoking marijuana before age 12 have been neglected or otherwise abused by their parents. Neglect has been known to cause mental and emotional issues. I imagine that people who became drunk on alcohol for the first time before they were 12 have similar mental health statistics. Tens of millions of people have managed to smoke cannabis without becoming schizophrenic or depressed. Sadly there are no medical journal articles about the person who smoked cannabis, ate a lot of snacks, took a nap, and woke up fine.

Surprisingly, both the liberal group "The Sentencing Project" and the ultra-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) have called for "renewed national discussion" about the drug war. AEI reported that, ‘despite spending at about $40 billion a year now and toughening drug sentencing laws, "America continues to experience the Western world's worst drug problems."'

There may be a mental health issue here, but it's not that of potheads. It seems that the government is in denial. It cannot accept the fact that it cannot stop adults from using illicit substances if they really want to. If they cannot stop drugs in prison, the most restrictive and civil rights-free place in the country, how do they expect to stop them in public? It's delusional. Maybe they should be forced to take medications that come from a nice, safe pharmaceutical company. Lord knows no one was ever harmed by Valium, Thorozine, or Oxycontin.