"90% of Americans value mental and physical health equally"

[Blitz2006]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/01/health/mental-health-stigmas-shift-poor-access/

More propaganada for medical students to choose Psych.

But tis' the season.

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[notdeadyet]

90% of all Americans also say they are going to vote.

 

[Dharma]

Chill son.

 

[Blitz2006]

Well whatever percentage believes in mental health, whether its 10% or 90%, its only going to keep growing:

"Between 1999 and 2013, nationwide suicide rates have increased 19.9%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Tragedies like Robin Williams is putting mental health on the map.

 

[erg923]

MH (BHMOs) "carve outs" continue to exist. Explain....

 

[masterofmonkeys]

Based on their lifestyle choices, they don't seem to value physical health very much either...so yeah, sounds about right.

 

[birchswing]

Well whatever percentage believes in mental health, whether its 10% or 90%, its only going to keep growing:

"Between 1999 and 2013, nationwide suicide rates have increased 19.9%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Tragedies like Robin Williams is putting mental health on the map.

When there are suicides or overdoses, it often doesn't make the mental health system look good. A lot of celebrities have just completed rehab when they overdose, which I believe is an argument against the 12 Step/abstinence model in many rehab clinics. These clinics believe in shame just as much as early 20th century doctors with regard to addictions. They've co-opted 12 step, which is in my opinion more religious than Narconon. For all people say about Narconon they actually implement a medical detox in addition to the new age stuff, as opposed to 12 step which is purely religious and has been co-opted by secular medicine. Anyhow, Robin Williams had just been through rehab and was on psychiatric medicines when he died. In his case, his doctors say Lewy body dementia was the "most critical" cause of his suicide.

But in other cases, people are medically detoxed and sent back into the world and then overdose. It might put mental health on the map, but not in a great light. It's not a clarion call that we need to support mental health more. It's that the way it works now doesn't work that well and for some reason is still religion and shame-based (that is how I see 12 step—I think it's pretty evident that's the case, others might disagree). I remember the day after Robin Williams died, Kathie Lee Gifford was on TV saying, "Didn't he know how much people loved him?" Made me cringe. There's still so much emphasis within and outside the mental health community on moral character and fighting vs. losing and bravery vs. shame.

This is a good editorial on the death of Cory Monteith and the failure of these moralistic programs that are more interested in dogma than health:

http://www.thefix.com/content/cory-monteith-addiction-treatment-maintenance-therapy8023

 

[smalltownpsych]

When there are suicides or overdoses, it often doesn't make the mental health system look good. A lot of celebrities have just completed rehab when they overdose, which I believe is an argument against the 12 Step/abstinence model in many rehab clinics. These clinics believe in shame just as much as early 20th century doctors with regard to addictions. They've co-opted 12 step, which is in my opinion more religious than Narconon. For all people say about Narconon they actually implement a medical detox in addition to the new age stuff, as opposed to 12 step which is purely religious and has been co-opted by secular medicine. Anyhow, Robin Williams had just been through rehab and was on psychiatric medicines when he died. In his case, his doctors say Lewy body dementia was the "most critical" cause of his suicide.

But in other cases, people are medically detoxed and sent back into the world and then overdose. It might put mental health on the map, but not in a great light. It's not a clarion call that we need to support mental health more. It's that the way it works now doesn't work that well and for some reason is still religion and shame-based (that is how I see 12 step—I think it's pretty evident that's the case, others might disagree). I remember the day after Robin Williams died, Kathie Lee Gifford was on TV saying, "Didn't he know how much people loved him?" Made me cringe. There's still so much emphasis within and outside the mental health community on moral character and fighting vs. losing and bravery vs. shame.

This is a good editorial on the death of Cory Monteith and the failure of these moralistic programs that are more interested in dogma than health:

http://www.thefix.com/content/cory-monteith-addiction-treatment-maintenance-therapy8023

Any professional treatment facility that says they use a 12-step approach should be avoided. The 12 steps are not a treatment for addiction. They are spiritual in nature and designed to help people who want to participate in them maintain sobriety. There are many individual dogmatic 12-steppers who think that their way is the only way and they are a problem. On the other side of the coin are people who believe that all addicts are dual diagnosed and need medications to function. The people in recovery are terrified of medications and the medical community is all about medications. Makes it hard to work together for the same goal.

 

[WingedOx]

Any professional treatment facility that says they use a 12-step approach should be avoided. The 12 steps are not a treatment for addiction. They are spiritual in nature and designed to help people who want to participate in them maintain sobriety. There are many individual dogmatic 12-steppers who think that their way is the only way and they are a problem. On the other side of the coin are people who believe that all addicts are dual diagnosed and need medications to function. The people in recovery are terrified of medications and the medical community is all about medications. Makes it hard to work together for the same goal.

The most dangerous thing to exist in psychiatry is a DSM in the hands of a concrete thinker.

 

[Officially Unofficial]

Propaganda? What an interesting way to put it.

The article is mainly pointing out that more people are aware of the significance that mental wellness plays apart in their well being. Isn't that a positive thing overall? I mean, maybe I view it that way because I'm a "glass is half full" kind of person. More awareness, creates more of a normalcy and acceptance for patients or a society as a whole to rid the negative stigma of mental health. I'm well aware that you're connecting that with the potential of an increase of MDs within the psychiatry community, but why is that a bad thing? With the potential of having others in the community, it could possibly open up new research findings, and expand the ever growing DSM, and whats not to love about that? haha. But in all seriousness, chill out and eat a snickers.

 

[smalltownpsych]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/01/health/mental-health-stigmas-shift-poor-access/

More propaganada for medical students to choose Psych.

But tis' the season.

Astaounding survey. 90% of Americans don't want to be crazy or sick! I am more worried about the 10% who want to be crazy and sick.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Any professional treatment facility that says they use a 12-step approach should be avoided. The 12 steps are not a treatment for addiction. They are spiritual in nature and designed to help people who want to participate in them maintain sobriety. There are many individual dogmatic 12-steppers who think that their way is the only way and they are a problem. On the other side of the coin are people who believe that all addicts are dual diagnosed and need medications to function. The people in recovery are terrified of medications and the medical community is all about medications. Makes it hard to work together for the same goal.

Most of the addiction treatment facilities that I'm aware of still use a 12 step model, so avoiding them isn't that realistic. Medical care providers are definitely stuck with a 12 step model if they seek treatment for themselves -- most of the places that treat physicians are 12 step based. I agree though that I would avoid a facility that doesn't have psychiatric care, which is hopefully becoming less common.

 

[Blitz2006]

Ugh, that's why I posted it. It's promoting psych in a positive light.

I was referring to my post as "propaganda" as a semi joke, since I had been promoting psych few weeks ago...

Propaganda? What an interesting way to put it.

The article is mainly pointing out that more people are aware of the significance that mental wellness plays apart in their well being. Isn't that a positive thing overall? I mean, maybe I view it that way because I'm a "glass is half full" kind of person. More awareness, creates more of a normalcy and acceptance for patients or a society as a whole to rid the negative stigma of mental health. I'm well aware that you're connecting that with the potential of an increase of MDs within the psychiatry community, but why is that a bad thing? With the potential of having others in the community, it could possibly open up new research findings, and expand the ever growing DSM, and whats not to love about that? haha. But in all seriousness, chill out and eat a snickers.

 

[birchswing]

Most of the addiction treatment facilities that I'm aware of still use a 12 step model, so avoiding them isn't that realistic. Medical care providers are definitely stuck with a 12 step model if they seek treatment for themselves -- most of the places that treat physicians are 12 step based. I agree though that I would avoid a facility that doesn't have psychiatric care, which is hopefully becoming less common.

The place near me is known for treating professionals with addictions and helping them get their licenses back. Professionals come in from around the country. They also treat the general public, but they're in a different section of the facility and according to reviews are treated like second class citizens. It's the only rehab close to where I live, and it uses 12 step. I've looked into them for help in tapering my prescribed benzodiazepines and was told in very adamant, non-understanding terms that I would have to commit to abstinence and 12 step. They couldn't answer the most basic questions about how they deal with a taper, or if the even do tapers. I was told they have no addictive drugs on the property. I asked, well what happens if I go into a seizure, am I still supposed to be abstinent? "No, we would give you something." OK . . .

Anyhow, I looked into people who work there. They do have one psychiatrist, but the psychiatrists has received treatment herself and is under state monitoring for drug/alcohol use. What concerns me is not that a person has had experience with drug/alcohol abuse. What concerns me is that they have had success through 12 step. Because, while it's great if it works for someone, it is a religion and it becomes applied as mindlessly as a religion as if it's the only way. Some of the online reviews of the facility mention the psychiatrist who works on the rehab side of the facility (there's also an inpatient psychiatric side) is quite rude, dismissive, and laughs at patient concerns and constantly compares their experiences to her own. I know people for whom AA has worked. I also know people for whom various religions work. It doesn't mean I want to join their religion, or that AA which started in the early 20th century before benzodiazepines were discovered has any understanding of the best methods of benzodiazepine withdrawal.

I don't see why rehab can't take place in a hospital and be treated like anything else. This rehab place I contacted could give me almost no info on how they handle things except that they have 12 step. They basically tell you that you just have to surrender and trust that the doctor knows what they're doing. When they're asking you to shell out $6,000 a week, that doesn't cut it. It wouldn't cut it for cancer treatment. A patient deserves informed consent. And they also deserve not to be put into a shame-based religious program that has nothing to do with evidence-based medicine.

 

[smalltownpsych]

Most of the addiction treatment facilities that I'm aware of still use a 12 step model, so avoiding them isn't that realistic. Medical care providers are definitely stuck with a 12 step model if they seek treatment for themselves -- most of the places that treat physicians are 12 step based. I agree though that I would avoid a facility that doesn't have psychiatric care, which is hopefully becoming less common.

Any treatment facility can and probably should encourage involvement in community support groups. I saw one study that showed the best predictor of positive outcome was the frequency of the van trips to those community meetings. Trying to mimic a community support group in a professional setting has not been demonstrated to be effective and there is evidence to show that it can be harmful when using non-professional staff with an increase in boundary violations and confrontative stances.

 

[Ceke2002]

I remember the day after Robin Williams died, Kathie Lee Gifford was on TV saying, "Didn't he know how much people loved him?" Made me cringe. There's still so much emphasis within and outside the mental health community on moral character and fighting vs. losing and bravery vs. shame.

Actually if Kathie Lee Gifford was a friend of Robin's then that's a perfectly understandable thing for her to say, and has more to do with a lot of the grief process after a suicide than it does with a comment on a person's moral character. I've been actively suicidal, and survived a serious attempt on my life (as in it's kind of a miracle I'm actually still here to type this now), so I know that suicide has nothing to do with a failing of moral character, but when I attended the funeral service of one of my friends who had died by suicidal hanging I said more or less exactly the same thing to myself that Kathie Lee Gifford said about Robin Williams. So many people turned up to the service the chapel was overflowing, and I can remember looking at this sea of people and thinking "You bl**dy idiot! Look at how many people are here, didn't you know how much you were loved and cared about? How could you have not known that? Why the hell couldn't you have waited just one more day, things might have been better in the morning." Mourning a suicide is a really strange mix of grief and just being so damn angry at the person for leaving that way, and nine times out of ten that anger in grief says nothing about a person's judgement on anyone's character.

 

[birchswing]

Actually if Kathie Lee Gifford was a friend of Robin's then that's a perfectly understandable thing for her to say, and has more to do with a lot of the grief process after a suicide than it does with a comment on a person's moral character. I've been actively suicidal, and survived a serious attempt on my life (as in it's kind of a miracle I'm actually still here to type this now), so I know that suicide has nothing to do with a failing of moral character, but when I attended the funeral service of one of my friends who had died by suicidal hanging I said more or less exactly the same thing to myself that Kathie Lee Gifford said about Robin Williams. So many people turned up to the service the chapel was overflowing, and I can remember looking at this sea of people and thinking "You bl**dy idiot! Look at how many people are here, didn't you know how much you were loved and cared about? How could you have not known that? Why the hell couldn't you have waited just one more day, things might have been better in the morning." Mourning a suicide is a really strange mix of grief and just being so damn angry at the person for leaving that way, and nine times out of ten that anger in grief says nothing about a person's judgement on anyone's character.

Yeah, that makes complete sense. When you care you're mad that the person isn't there. I was thinking of it from the suicide victim's point-of-view, which isn't entirely logical as the person is no longer there. It's a very normal feeling, and you're right that if the person could have waited, things could have been completely different.