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Messages - xEnderx

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1
CAN ~ Collective Action Network / Re: Activist groups?
« on: September 10, 2009, 07:58:12 PM »
thanks. :)

2
CAN ~ Collective Action Network / Activist groups?
« on: September 10, 2009, 05:54:39 PM »
I searched a bit, but was unable to find any lists on this site of activist groups. Does anyone know of locally organized groups in any particular region of the US?


Edit: Activist groups that focus on the troubled teen "industry" (the concept of profiting off misery is revolting) in particular that is.

3
I'm 14 years out of a program and have a truly wonderful relationship with my family.

However at 5 years out things were still pretty strained. Honestly I think age and experience play a huge factor in familial relationships regardless of time spent in a program.

4
Psych Hospitals / Re: Are We Really OK With Electroshocking Toddlers?
« on: September 10, 2009, 05:06:39 AM »
Quote from: "Eliscu2"
http://http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-shocking-ray

Ray is a 55-year-old Minnesota resident who is regularly  receiving "Involuntary Outpatient Maintenance Electroshock."
Involuntary outpatient electroshock (IOE) is part of a trend to bring the power of forced psychiatric procedures out into the community.

Your home is no longer your castle... it can become your ward. For example, most USA states have quietly passed laws allowing individuals living at home to be court ordered to take powerful psychiatric drugs against their will. It was only a matter of time until such outpatient coercion included electroshock.

Electroshock itself has made a comeback throughout the USA, and internationally, without adequate human rights protection.

Ray is receiving so-called "maintenance" ongoing weekly electroshock over his expressed wishes while living at home. Falsely believing "new improved" electroshock is safe, the mental health system is at times administering more than 100 "maintenance" electroshocks to a single individual over months and years.

This could happen to Ray. Even his mother, who is a retired nurse who used to administer involuntary electroshocks back in the 1950's, is concerned by the sheer number of forced shocks he has received.

This could happen to anyone.

This could happen to you or a loved one.

The mental health system today has a lot of "buzz words" like empowerment, self-determination, advocacy, recovery, peer support, transformation, consumer-run, trauma-informed care.

How real are buzz words, when Ray Sandford gets forced outpatient electroshock each week :suicide:
http://http://www.mindfreedom.org/ray


No offense, but those article's are pretty blatantly biased.

5
Psych Hospitals / Re: Are We Really OK With Electroshocking Toddlers?
« on: September 09, 2009, 07:31:54 PM »
Gotcha.

I don't disagree with your standpoint, nor with your hesitation to undergo the treatment. It is pretty intense for a non-surgical outpatient procedure. Its important to understand that ECT and Electroshock Therapy are not the same thing. Thats my primary goal in posting on this thread.

Quote
This quick fix is also strikingly similar to the philosophies of programming that are myopically fixated on the short term appearance of change without regard for the damage incurred by the individual.

I'll present the counter point to this comment that alleviation of acute symptoms is sometimes needed before you can address the root causes. If you are actively suicidal then you need to "fix" that before you can look at family of origin concerns. (just as a very generalized example)

I would never say that ECT is a miracle cure, only that in my experience I have seen some clients that appear to derive some therapeutic value from it. Being an informed patient that looks at the research and anecdotal evidence regarding a procedure is a very important and valuable quality.



Interestingly enough we had a long discussion about this very topic during class this morning.



















P.S. I don't support electroshocking toddlers.  :timeout:

6
Psych Hospitals / Re: Are We Really OK With Electroshocking Toddlers?
« on: September 09, 2009, 02:22:07 AM »
Quote from: "Inculcated"
That’s an astonishing recovery. What assessments do you use to get a baseline and to then evaluate the patient’s experience of the effects and their individual ability to tolerate these?[/quote]

I'm not saying the symptoms of their primary presenting behavioral health concern are alleviated in that time frame, simply stating that the most pronounced negative aspects of the ECT are gone within 5-6 hours in every case I've seen.

Most of this type of thing is handled by the ECT personnel at a hospital. As for what we do to gauge a client's negative symptoms when they return to our facility, we do 1:1 interviews 3 times per day with each client, more if they approach us with a desire to talk. We document any negative symptom, and compare it each time when they return to ECT. A fairly simple explanation would be that we compare behavior (in regards to orientation) and interaction with staff to their established pattern of interaction. We also gauge it by the amount of time spent sleeping post-ECT.

Quote
Basically I'm just saying (in a long winded way) that in certain patients, ECT has quite a bit of therapeutic value.

Please elaborate on this

In clients that I have observed, after between 12 and 15 treatments clients report a decrease in anxiety and depression for a sustained period of time. Affects generally improve as well....IE a client presenting as depressed and tearful generally shows more incidence of smiling, joking, higher levels of self motivation, etc. Again, keep in mind that 100% of clients I've seen are doing ECT in conjunction with psych meds, and receive individual treatment from the ECT team from both a procedural standpoint and an aftercare standpoint.

Quote
Please expand on this last part for me, specifically these differences. (I’m sure that it’s not like Ken Kesey’s representation of the procedure.)

Shock Therapy was an "aversion treatment" designed to train the human brain to associate negative stimuli with a behavior or outside stimuli. IE patients were "zapped" when a stimulus was applied, or when they failed to apply a behavior or stimuli in response to something.

ECT is an electrically induced seizure performed while the patient is under clinical anesthesia. First the client is given a short acting drug to "put them under", and once they reach a certian point electrodes are placed on their head, and the seizure is induced. This seizure causes the release of certian neurotransmitters and other chemicals in the brain. The latter is where the therapeutic value of the procedure comes from.

Also, please let me be clear that I am NOT the one performing this procedure. The information I provide is based on what I have gathered from the clients regarding their treatments.

Quote
Again:
If it came up in another thread’s discussion, I missed it. What kind of facility do you work in, and in what capacity?

The easiest way to explain it would be "line staff" at a Crisis Residential facility. I am a CAADAC intern (addiction medicine), and currently working on my second year towards a degree in social work. I also have employment pending (DOJ background check, fingerprinting, etc) in a lockdown facility for adults.

7
Psych Hospitals / Re: Are We Really OK With Electroshocking Toddlers?
« on: September 09, 2009, 01:32:18 AM »
In my experience (which is a bit limited), ECT is very much a "last resort" treatment. I've only seen it used in adult patients that have been completely unresponsive (therapeutically) to less extreme measures. As previously mentioned, the vast majority of cases I've dealt with have been Major Depressive Disorder. From what I've seen, the treatments have been reasonably effective in helping to alleviate the most intense symptoms of the patients. The impact on memory and cognition have been entirely limited to a 5-6 hour window after the procedure. Most times the procedures take place between 7 and 8 AM, and then the patients return to our facility and spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon sleeping. By the time evening group starts at 8ish PM, they are back to "normal" in regards to memory and cognition. I've seen a lot more negative side effects from adjusting to psychiatric meds than I have from ECT.


"Treat and Street", or "Bed Flipping" as it is commonly referred to, happens constantly. Its not limited to any particular procedure. It is however, an inevitable result of managed care. I mean when health care is run as a corporation, do you really expect that corporation to use less monetarily efficient means to treat a disease or disorder? Not saying that its good, right, or that I support it, simply pointing out that managed care has changed health care into a system where patients literally are a medical record number. Some docs are less ethical than others, and the same is true for any profession.

Basically I'm just saying (in a long winded way) that in certain patients, ECT has quite a bit of therapeutic value. I also try to educate people that ECT and "Shock Treatment" are most assuredly NOT the same thing.

8
Open Free for All / Re: Buddhist Cults
« on: September 09, 2009, 12:28:52 AM »
very interesting.

9
The Troubled Teen Industry / Re: How long did you hold your shit in?
« on: September 09, 2009, 12:07:45 AM »
Quote from: "Che Gookin"
I was walking home yesterday, went around a corner, and got to see a 2 year old Chinese kid taking a shit on the sidewalk. Rather common, though disturbing, sight here in China to see young children crapping and pissing on the sidewalk with their parent's encouragement.


Amusing and sad at the same time.








Oh, and I didn't crap for at least a week or two.

10
Three Springs / Re: My Time at three springs paint rock valley boys
« on: September 08, 2009, 11:55:00 PM »
Thank you for this thread. My parents came very close to sending me to Three Springs, but opted for PV instead.

11
I don't feel that people are "controlled" by a substance or an addiction, but I do believe that the negative physical and mental side effects of both addiction and withdrawal compromise an individuals ability to react in a rational manner to outside stimuli. Someone going through intense opiate withdrawal is NOT in their "right" (what a subjective term) mind.

There are other things such as the obsessional and compulsive aspects of addiction that feed into my standpoint, but I don't think they have any real bearing on this discussion.

12
Psych Hospitals / Re: Are We Really OK With Electroshocking Toddlers?
« on: September 08, 2009, 10:57:28 PM »
Quote from: "Inculcated"
My problem with this (a treatment I had at one point considered) is that this ”treatment” is administered with the logic that a trauma team might aptly use to justify extreme life saving measures in physical injuries. The flaws are that all too often the patients who receive ECT are not in an immediate endangered condition that requires an intervention of “last resort” rather they are despondent persons who are desperate to not feel the way they do at that time. Doctors who advocate this treatment are all too willing to accommodate their patient’s need for relief without considering or advising what of their patient will be lost to the treatment. Patients in severely depressed states may not consider the fact that follow up shocks are required to maintain the short term relief (This also perpetuates the side effects).


I do not disagree with any part of  your post, but I feel the issues you brought up have more to do with the doctors or treatment teams than they do with the efficacy (or lack there of) of the procedure.

13
Psych Hospitals / Re: Are We Really OK With Electroshocking Toddlers?
« on: September 08, 2009, 10:52:46 PM »
They do have pretty draconian bureaucracy, but if you know how to navigate things it makes sense. If you are "on the outside looking in" it can seem to be a pretty terrible system though. I think that is where most complaints I've heard originate from.

14
I didn't say that drugs cause changes in brain chemistry, I said that "addiction" causes long term changes in the way that the brain operates. This is readily apparent if you look at the MRI from a long term meth abuser during the time when they are using meth, during the 6 months after they cease to use, and during the 2-3 year period that it can take for the brain to return to "normal" functioning.


I don't understand why you seem to be taking such offense to the things I've said, but I'm certianly not trying to offend anyone.

Addiction potential (as a clinical term) is defined by a drug's interaction with the mesolimbic pathway. When I say that something causes long term changes, I am speaking of the ability of the brain to regulate its production and distribution of neurotransmitters. Crossing the line from "abuse" into "addiction" occurs when the brain can no longer regulate itself or when it becomes unable to produce a chemical. Behaviorally this results in compulsions, obsession, etc. This is why from a treatment standpoint, addiction is considered to be an obsessive disorder.

I think you are under the impression that I am some sort of staunchly anti-drug person. I'm not.


You don't like AA, I get it. I can respect that. I apologize if I said something that made you feel like I'm attacking your stance. Not sure what else to say.


Oh, and when I say medically treated (or whatever), I'm referring to things such as the use of anti-obsessional meds to help combat drug cravings, the use of benzo's (in a clinical setting) to combat life threatening DT's, open and frank use of methadone programs to treat opiate addiction on a long term basis, the use of needle exchange programs without the social stigma and demonization that occurs in America, ethical accountability to "drug docs", education for parents that want to cram their kids full of anti-depressants. Stuff like that. I also want to try and keep an open mind to the fact that psychiatric or medical assistance can mean life or death for someone that is active in their addiction.

15
Quote from: "psy"
That might be your definition, but others have a right to seek happiness as they see fit so long as it doesnt' directly affect others.  You might look at a person shooting smack as a junkie and a loser.  I see a person who has made certain choices and should neither be condemned or made excuses for if he harms somebody.  Freedom and personal responsibility.

I want to be very clear in regards to this statement. I do NOT view addicts or drug abusers as "junkie's", "losers", or anything of the type. If someone I encounter is unhappy and wants help, I will do everything in my professional and personal power to assist them in developing the tools to live a more satisfying life. My responsibility is to assist people in healing the aspects of their behaviors that cause them unhappiness or damage. My responsibility is not to apply my own morals, rules, stigma, or justifications to anything they do.


I did not find this board because I am a drug crusader, I found it because I went through the Peninsula Village program. I now work in the behavioral health field because I believe at the core of my being that compassion and ethical behavior is something that the field needs if we are going to (as a society) assist in the recovery of individuals from behavioral health concerns or addiction, or mental health, or whatever the hell you call it.

I would as soon call someone a junkie as I would call them a nigger. Both are hate filled words that damage both the accuser and the person accused.



As for the AA thing, I feel like I've derailed the thread. I agree with the majority of what you've said...I just view it from a slightly different angle.


Edit: I'm also not a "shrink". I am currently what you would call a "line staff" member. I'm also working towards a degree in social work.

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