voluntary madness lost and found in the mental healthcare system

Still, she should have educated herself MUCH better on the subject of severe mental illness and the drugs used to treat it before filling Voluntary Madness with her baseless opinions. Vincent seems intent on making a career of posing as things that she is not. This is something Vincent would have known had she done a bit of research. Well, unlike aspirin, these drugs usually take weeks and even months to build up to a theraputic level in the body. She also observed that antidepressants and antipsychotics did not seem to work on the real patients on her ward. Vincent demonizes Effexor, for example, as causing withdrawal, but she never mentions that this withdrawal is avoidable. Stopping any psychiatric drug slowly and gradually, under a doctor's supervision, is also an easy way to avoid a painful withdrawal.

Unless I missed it, Vincent failed to mention that this simple solution to these problems is even possible. If and when people experience these side effects from drugs, their doctors should withdraw them slowly and gradually while starting them (also slowly and gradually) on new ones. I could also tell Vincent that I certainly DO NOT twitch, drool, or fall asleep during daily activities! While the drug was sedating at first, my body adjusted to it very quickly (it is usually taken at bedtime for this reason). They were also easy to distinguish from real sounds and ceased to be frightening-they became merely annoying and easy to ignore. The delusions stopped almost completely, and what voices I heard from then on were and are few and far between. When my doctor tried giving me Seroquel, however, my life returned to normal as the drug built up in my system. I was treated with a variety of drugs, the first of which were not very helpful for me. The onset of my illness brought loud and threatening hallucinations (voices that threatened to kill me and worse). I was really dismayed by Vincent's depiction of psychiatric drugs in Voluntary Madness, particularly antipsychotic drugs like Seroquel.Īs someone whose mental illness (schizoaffective disorder) is and was NOT voluntary, I could tell Vincent that, for me, Seroquel made and continues to make the difference between life and a living death.

Voluntary madness lost and found in the mental healthcare system