“I think most human beings go through some sort of depression in their life. And if they don’t, that’s weird.” Kirsten Dunst

From an article by Josh Patner in Flare magazine, which continues:

Dunst speaks from experience: In 2008, she checked into a rehab center in Utah to be treated for crippling depression.

Things started unraveling in 2006 when critics tore apart Marie Antoinette, which starred Dunst as the French queen.

“The movie was so personal to me, and it was like everyone was stomping on my heart.”

More flops followed, as did a breakup with her boyfriend. But she found herself unable to talk about her pain.

“And because of what I do for a living, I had to keep giving. It can dissolve you.”

Continued: Kirsten Dunst: Dealing With Depression.

Video from World Science Festival: ‘Genius’ Dark Cousin’ – “When talking about geniuses, the conversation inevitably strays towards topics of eccentricity, or even madness. One needs only to look at the lives of artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Mark Rothko, or to mathematician John Nash (pictured)—whose battle with paranoid schizophrenia was made famous in the film A Beautiful Mind—as examples of the thin line between brilliance and insanity.

“But is there really anything to this idea of the “tortured genius”? Or is it just a romanticized notion exaggerated by film and literature? Philip Glass and Julie Taymor respond to striking data presented by Dean Keith Simonton, a psychologist who has studied the nature of genius for decades.”

~ ~

Here is a brief video interview with Shelley Carson, Ph.D. of Harvard University, who teaches and conducts research on creativity, psychopathology, and resilience.

Also listen to my podcast interview: Shelley Carson on enhancing our creative brain

Her book: Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life.

But how valid is the research, and do these notions imply we are more likely to be creative if we have mental health challenges, if we’re unusually neurotic or a bit crazy?

Director Tim Burton may be acclaimed for his films, including “Alice in Wonderland,” but has also been called ‘crazy’ (at least in part for his appearance) or at least ‘eccentric’ – perhaps a polite cover label for ‘mad.’

He has even exploited that sort of reaction, he says: “If you want people to leave you alone then appearing to be crazy is a good thing. If you’re walking down the street talking to yourself people tend to give you a wide berth! But I’ve always been blessed with being easily ignored or avoided. I think maybe it’s because people think I look a little crazy.”

He added, “I have always been an outsider. As a kid I identified with the monsters in the old horror films, like the ‘Creature from the Blue Lagoon’ and ‘Frankenstein’.” [From post 'Crazy' Tim Burton, emusic.tv]

Photo from post Tim Burton on nurturing his unique creative vision

Psychosis

Cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., addresses this topic in a new post of his.

“I do believe that If the mental processes associated with psychosis were evaporated entirely from this world, art would suck. But so would a lot of other things that require imagination.

He notes that psychosis is on a continuum: “Too much psychosis and one is at high risk of going mad. But everyone engages in psychosis-related thought any time they use their imagination. This type of thought activates particular regions of the brain and is especially prominent while day-dreaming and night-dreaming.”

He thinks that without the “ability to transcend immediate reality, art would lose its creativity. Far from insulting artists, I think it makes us appreciate artists even more, and their ability to show us worlds that many not exist yet, but are possible.”

He asks, “So is extreme, debilitating psychosis a prerequisite for art? Absolutely not. Severe mental illness is nothing to take lightly, and can make it very difficult to produce art.”

In a response to a comment, he explains further: “I do not think a ‘psychotic episode’ is necessary for art, but mental processes such as a reduced latent inhibition can be very useful for art. The continuum aspect is key. Extreme psychosis can lead to a psychotic episode, completely detached from reality. That isn’t very adaptive. But there is a sweet spot in which you still use your imagination but have a healthy foot in reality. That sweet spot is one which is heavily conducive to flow, a state that many artists (and other creative people) seek.”

From his post Is Psychosis a Prerequisite for Art?

Madness

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.” Edgar Allan Poe

That quote comes from my post Our continuing fascination with creativity and madness which links to the article Creativity, the Arts, and Madness, by Maureen Neihart, Psy.D., who writes:

“The notion that  inspiration requires  regression and dipping into irrationality in order to access unconscious symbols and thought has been popular across disciplines for hundreds of years. Plato said that creativity is a “divine madness…a gift from the gods”.

She adds a quote attributed to Aristotle: “No great genius was without a mixture of insanity.”

But is that really true?

One consequence of accepting this sort of mythology is you may think you have to be ‘crazier’ than you are in order to be a ‘real artist.’

Or, that you should suffer with depression or other mental health challenges, rather than treat them and ‘lose your creative edge.’

Nonsense.

As musician Sting comments, “Do I have to be in pain to write? I thought so, as most of my contemporaries did; you had to be the struggling artist, the tortured, painful, poetic wreck.

“I tried that for a while, and to a certain extent that was successful. I was ‘The King of Pain’ after all. I only know that people who are getting into this archetype of the tortured poet end up really torturing themselves to death.”

From post Pain and suffering and developing creativity

Pathology and creative ability

In his PowerPoint presentation Creativity and Psychopathology [html] [PPT] creativity researcher Dean Keith Simonton, PhD notes, “Few creative individuals can be considered truly mentally ill. Indeed, outright disorder usually inhibits rather than helps creative expression. Furthermore, a large proportion of creators exhibit no symptoms, at least not to any measurable degree.”

But he also notes that “because some psychopathological symptoms correlate with several of the characteristics making up the creativity cluster, moderate amounts of these symptoms will be positively associated with creative behavior.”

He explains further that “psychopathology is not the only possible source for the creativity cluster. The environment can also nurture creative development. Although some of these developmental influences are also associated with psychopathology, others are not.”

He concludes, “Psychopathology and creativity are closely related, sharing many traits and antecedents, but they are not identical, and outright psychopathology is negatively associated with creativity.

“This fits what Dryden said about the “thin partition” separating “great wits” and “madness. Or, as the highly creative but not truly crazy Surrealist painter Salvador Dali once expressed the distinction: “The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.”

One of Dean Keith Simonton’s books is Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity

Crazy is hard-wired. Oh, really?

In her article The Continuing Adventures of the Mad Musician and the Bipolar Genius, Dr. Judith Schlesinger covered a lot about this topic, and writes:

“Great talent always comes at a great price. To be a genius means to suffer—if not the chronic paralysis of depression, then surely the emotional whiplash of bipolar disorder. The exquisite sensitivity of creative artists is hard-wired with their pathology; moreover, their willingness to brave the treacherous rapids of the unconscious for inspiration makes them even more vulnerable to psychotic collapse.

“This is the heart of the ‘mad genius’ myth that has been integral to Western culture for centuries.

“It is also hogwash.

“The fact is that, despite the efforts of numerous investigators and decades of confident pronouncements by a few, there’s still no concrete, empirical proof that highly creative people are any more likely to be mood-disordered than any other group.”

don’t agree with that opinion, at least in such an extreme form. In her article, she did raise some valid-sounding criticisms of research, such as that of leading authors like psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison, whom I have quoted a number of times over the years.

In the articles linked above, and below, there are many examples of studies linking depression, neuroticism, even psychotic cognition with creative people.

But it isn’t a causal link – being “crazy” does not make you creative. It may mean you should help yourself gain better emotional health so you can be even more productive and creative.

~~~

Related posts and articles:

Creativity, the Arts, and Madness, By Maureen Neihart, Psy.D.

Our continuing fascination with creativity and madness

Creativity and madness: High ability and schizophrenia

On creativity and intelligence, By Dean Keith Simonton, PhD

Highly sensitive people: latent inhibition and creativity – Reduced latent inhibition has been associated with schizophrenia, and creativity.

creativity and mood, creativity and pathology, creativity and depression, artists and depression, artists and mental health, artists and mental illness, madness and creativity

Depression and anxiety are sometimes hard to tell apart. While they may seem like completely different conditions, chronic depression can hide anxiety, while people who suffer from general feelings of anxiety may actually be experiencing a symptom of depression.

Further, when people begin treatment for depression, the new focus on underlying issues sometimes causes anxiety symptoms, such as frequent heart palpitations, agitation and feelings of nervousness.

Which is it?

Many times, the same individual feels depressed and anxious, either at different times or at the same time.

This can make it more challenging to decide whether the main issue is depression or an anxiety disorder.

Symptoms that are the same in both conditions include obsessive thoughts or rumination, panicky feelings, stomach upset and racing heartbeat. …

The goal [of treatment] is to keep levels of mood-regulating neurotransmitters high. While medications can be helpful in this regard, you don’t necessarily need them.

Lifting Mood the Natural Way

Levels of serotonin increase when you exercise, eat a healthy diet and spend time outdoors.

That’s why regular exercise and healthy eating habits are so important for people who suffer from depression and/or anxiety disorders.

Continued in The Link Between Depression And Anxiety

~ ~

“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.” Herman Melville, “Billy Budd, Sailor”

According to the World Health Organization, psychological disorders affect a third to nearly half of people at some point in their life.

Many of the people who suffer mental health challenges are artists – often very accomplished and well-known actors, writers, musicians and others.

Over the course of many years of researching the psychology of creativity and reading about and interviewing artists, this topic of mental health and creativity continues to fascinate me.

Here are just a few more examples of these talented people.

Actor, screenwriter and singer (in her movie “De-Lovely”) Ashley Judd (a Phi Beta Kappa grad of the University of Kentucky, by the way) entered a treatment program in 2006 for personal issues, including depression and codependency.

Continued in Artists and Mental Health

~ ~

In her article Depressed Creativity, nochnoch (Enoch Li) admits that, like many people, she never thought she “had any creativity.” Here are some excerpts from the article:

I equated creativity with artists, innovators, entrepreneurs, designers, fashion… I was none of that – until I sunk into depression last year.

And over the course of a few months, I rediscovered my creativity, which spurred my recovery.

I had always classified myself as ‘not creative’ till I met my fiancé. He could visualize colours, designs, and spaces. He made little crafts and redecorated the home. He had innovative ideas for businesses.

Equally, his friend, a graffiti artist and graphic designer, is what I call creative – all the scribbling and sketches that magically appeared on the canvas. I was in awe.

But it was a limiting belief that I was not creative myself.

Out of many disguised blessings from the period of illness, one is rediscovering my creativity. I say ‘rediscovering’ because in fact I was creative when I was younger – I constructed mumble-jumble poems, short stories, drawings, even a book about Mr Caterpillar having too many feet when I was just 5 years old. I made bookmarks, and ‘laminated’ them with my special tape, I made clothes for Barbie, and I made up stories for my bears.

This is all creativity at play. It’s in the heart somewhere.

Continued in her article Depressed Creativity.

~ ~ ~

Related book: The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression, by Eric Maisel, PhD

Related pages and sections:

Healing & Art

Depression and Creativity site

Also see Depression Relief Products / Programs and Depression relief resources

Jonathan Safran Foer – about his novel Everything Is Illuminated, which made The New York Times best-seller list.

He also commented, “The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible. Profound, bottomless self-doubt: it has no value, what’s the point? In a way, that takes up as much time as anything else.”

Do you relate to those ideas and feelings? Or these:

* Do you secretly worry that others will find out that you’re not as bright and capable as they think you are?

* Do you tend to chalk your accomplishments up to being a “fluke,” “no big deal” or the fact that people just “like” you?

* Do you hate making a mistake, being less than fully prepared or not doing things perfectly?

* Do you tend to feel crushed by even constructive criticism, seeing it as evidence of your “ineptness?”

From the longer Impostor Syndrome Quiz on the site for the Overcoming the Impostor Syndrome program.

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The Psychology Today article, Field Guide to The Self-Doubter: Extra Credit, by Susan Pinker, excerpted below, brings insight into the thoughts and feelings many people have about being incompetent or impostors:

Not giving herself credit

Rosalyn Lang has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, has just completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University, and recently launched her own consulting firm. In other words, she’s a walking advertisement for what it takes to be successful in science: smarts, opportunity, and perseverance.

Yet when she looks back, she takes little credit for her successes. “I felt inadequate the entire time I was in graduate school. If I got a nice compliment, I just felt, ‘What? They’re trying to pull my leg! I can get kicked out at any minute.’”

Feeling like an impostor

Lang now realizes she wasn’t really an impostor. She just felt like one. Like many highly accomplished women, Lang suffered from “impostor syndrome.” On the outside, she was a star and a role model.

Secretly, though, she chalked up her successes to powers beyond her control, and meanwhile felt personally responsible for any failures—a feeling shared by 93 percent of African-American female college students, according to one study.

External success. Internal agony

According to recent studies of medical, dental, and nursing students with impostor feelings, the phenomenon is linked to perfectionism, burnout, and depression. This was true for Rosalyn Lang, whose impostor feelings drove her to work harder. “The work ethic was great. That’s the kind of focus you need to get everything done in graduate school,” she said. But “internal agony” was how she described her psychological state.

Read the full article.

Six steps for matching perceptions to reality.

• Separate your self-assessments from objective evaluations of your skills. Group-based evaluations, promotions, and letters of reference are less biased than the world seen through “impostor”-colored glasses.
• Give yourself opportunities to compete. Don’t let your self-judgment prevent you demonstrating what you know.
• Reduce your isolation. Talk about your feelings with trusted friends and colleagues. Seek out a mentor or advocate in your organization who believes in you.
• Enjoy your successes and acknowledge praise when it comes your way.
• Resist the impulse to deny and deflect compliments.
• Remember that those who project an air of confidence may not know more than you do. Research shows that most people overestimate their abilities.

See Overcoming the Impostor Syndrome for more.

Also see the Impostor syndrome page for more quotes, articles, books etc.
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imposter phenomenon, impostor phenomenon, dealing with self sabotage, impostor feelings, perfectionism, fraud feelings

“Filled with energy… flooded with ideas… driven, restless, and unable to keep still… often works on little sleep… feels brilliant, special, chosen, perhaps even destined to change the world… can be euphoric… becomes easily irritated by minor obstacles… is a risk taker…”

A former entertainment lawyer, Terri Cheney suffered for years from bipolar disorder, and has commented, “Hollywood is an industry of extremes. It is feast or famine, euphoria or despair. Everything has got to be faster, bigger, more, and right now! In a way, you need to be manic to survive.”

Continued in post: A Great Time and Place to be Bipolar?

If adults are uncomfortable with their own emotions they may be especially uncomfortable around the intensities of gifted children. What effect does this have on gifted kids?

Recognizing and valuing these traits in ourselves as gifted adults is also necessary if we are to enjoy, rather than battle against, our natures.

In her book, Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students: Helping Kids Cope With Explosive Feelings, Christine Fonseca shines a light on the importance of recognizing the normality of emotionality and intensity in gifted children.

Gifted children do struggle with their emotional development overall, despite good long-term prognoses.

Problems regarding the stability of mood, existential depression, and performance-based anxiety are typical with this population, but for different reasons than similar traits in other children.

Gifted children behave in this way as a direct outpouring of the intensity that defines this population, as opposed to a dysfunctional aspect of personality that needs to be fixed.

Although the latter responds well to treatment designed to “fix” the problem, the former does not, as it is a normal aspect of many gifted children’s development.

These children require interventions that stem from a thorough understanding of the emotional nature of giftedness and an understanding of the typical intensity inherent in gifted individuals.

Such interventions need to focus on coping strategies as opposed to changing traits that are inherently part of who they are.

Download the first chapter from Christine Fonseca’s blog.

Related

Site: High Ability

Articles: High Ability – gifted/talented

Pages:

Giftedness characteristics

Self-tests: giftedness / high ability

Books:

Mary-Elaine Jacobsen. The Gifted Adult

Marylou Kelly Streznewski. Gifted Grownups: The Mixed Blessings of Extraordinary Potential.
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gifted child today, raising gifted kids, intensity and giftedness, gifted book, Christine Fonseca, child anxiety, existential depression

A diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, for instance, can deeply affect our sense of identity and change the course of our life.

The decision to take medications to treat a mental illness may also have a long-range impact on our physical and emotional well-being.

Meg Hutchinson

In An Interview with Meg Hutchinson on Music and living with Bipolar Disorder, the folk music singer-songwriter talks about her own diagnosis, and her choice to take medication.

[T]hat feeling that you’re just – that nothing can stop you. Before I realized what I was dealing with, I just found those spells of kind of a lightning and electricity and creativity to be so intoxicating. And so that song ["The Living Side"] talks about how, even now, sometimes I miss the extremes of that ride, and yet there’s a lot in the song that says I promise to stay on the living side…

[Medication] has been…a core part of my treatment and something that’s been really challenging. I grew up in a very homeopathic, natural, organic kind of household. We didn’t medicate very much. We didn’t even get all of our vaccinations. These are hippie parents who had a really kind of holistic approach to our health and something I value a lot. So this is a real paradigm shift for me, to get to a place where I went, wow, I need help, and to realize that it was severe, that it was as dangerous as not treating cancer or diabetes or something.

It’s also been something that I’ve been very – you know, paid a lot of attention to to make sure that I wasn’t over-medicated, and to make sure that I made med changes with professional supervision, and that I did it slowly and carefully, and that before I made any changes I looked at my lifestyle and said, “What do I need to do before I’m ready for the next change here?”

And for me that’s been starting a meditation practice, changing my relationship with alcohol, you know, many things that all factor in to my health. So, yes, it’s still a very important part of treatment. It’s not the only part, and I think that’s something that we get pretty confused about in our country, that we just treat the symptom and we don’t look at the underlying causes or the person as a whole and figure out how can we adjust all of these other things towards their health.

But, yes, I feel grateful that there’s medication. I feel grateful that there are mood stabilizers on the market now that have fewer side effects and that we’ve come a long way in the last 30 years, a real long way, as far as treatment options. And I’m glad to be bipolar in this generation, you know. It’s a little bit easier I think.

You know I needed to be in the hospital when I was, but I also knew that the things that would heal me would come outside of that setting, and I needed to return to them. So if you have those things already, go back to them and use them as a way to heal yourself. And if you don’t have them prior to the breakdown, find friends that will help you get to those things that treat you on the deeper levels that I think we need to heal.

Clearly, Hutchinson has been thoughtful in making her treatment decisions. But in spite of an orientation toward natural health instead of drugs, she chose to take psychiatric medications, along with making other changes in her life.

In Giftedness, sensitivity and psychiatric drugs: why do we take them and why do we quit? I take a look at some of the influences that might lead us to take drugs to cope with extreme states and the pressures of high sensitivity and giftedness.

What’s ‘normal’?

Hutchinson’s story is one of apparently severe distress, perhaps outside the range of ‘normal.’ But who decides what’s ‘normal’? Where does hypomania end and mania begin, and who decides what we should do to cope with or eliminate it?

In Peter D. Kramer on normality and mental health, Kramer, author of  Listening to Prozac and Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind. notes the ever-diminishing concept of ‘normal.’

I have been thinking a good deal about normality lately. It’s a concern in the medical world. The complaint is that doctors are abusing [their] privilege, to define the normal.

Ordinary sadness, critics say, has been engulfed by depression. Boyishness stands in the shadow of attention deficits. Social phobia has engineered a hostile takeover of shyness.

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Hutchinson chose to make psychiatric medication a core part of her treatment.

Are psychiatric drugs really effective, and are patients being given the facts about their long-term effects so that they can make a truly informed decision?

Are we really living in a time of better treatment options for people with mental illness?

One author whose work has illuminated my own road to better mental health is journalist Robert Whitaker. In his Huffington Post article, Anatomy Of An Epidemic’: Could Psychiatric Drugs Be Fuelling A Mental Illness Epidemic?, he takes a look at psychiatry’s track record:

The number of adults, ages 18 to 65, on the federal disability rolls due to mental illness jumped from 1.25 million in 1987 to four million in 2007. Roughly one in every 45 working-age adults is now on government disability due to mental illness.

This epidemic has now struck our nation’s children, too. The number of children who receive a federal payment because of a severe mental illness rose from 16,200 in 1987 to 561,569 in 2007, a 35-fold increase.

I wrote Anatomy of an Epidemic to investigate this epidemic, and this pursuit necessarily raises a very uncomfortable question. Although we, as a society, believe that psychiatric medications have “revolutionized” the treatment of mental illness, the disability numbers suggest a very different possibility. Could our drug-based paradigm of care, for some unforeseen reason, be fueling this epidemic?

This does not mean that antipsychotics don’t have a place in psychiatry’s toolbox. But it does mean that psychiatry’s use of these drugs needs to be rethought, and fortunately, a model of care pioneered by a Finnish group in western Lapland provides us with an example of the benefit that can come from doing so.

Twenty years ago, they began using antipsychotics in a selective, cautious manner, and today the long-term outcomes of their first-episode psychotic patients are astonishingly good. At the end of five years, 85% of their patients are either working or back in school, and only 20% are taking antipsychotics.

Life after medications

Like Hutchinson, when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a label I no longer find appropriate, I was grateful to be living today with so many drug options. Yet studies such as those discussed in CVD drives 25-year loss in life expectancy among the mentally ill reveal the health risks of medications, about which most mental health patients are never informed.

Years later, after a long process of withdrawal and recovery from the debilitating physical and emotional side-effects of psychiatric medications, I’ve come to see psychiatric drugs differently. My life after drugs is one I embrace, as I also embrace my high sensitivity and creativity.

Related:

Posts:

Giftedness, sensitivity and psychiatric drugs: why do we take them and why do we quit?

Woman interrupted: misdiagnosis and medication of sensitivity and giftedness

Misdiagnosis of the Gifted

Books:

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Your Drug May Be Your Problem, Revised Edition: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications

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mental illness and creativity, psychology of creativity, creativity and mood swings, mental health and creativity, sensitivity and drugs, sensitivity and giftedness, high sensitivity personality, mental health books, drug books

What are some of the reasons people stop taking medications??

What are the alternatives?

• My inner life, and sometimes my outer life, is painful/chaotic/confusing. The DSM symptoms list for certain mental illnesses seem to fit me so I must be ill.

The mental suffering of sensitive, creative and divergent children and adults is real. Existential depression, loneliness, and emotional overwhelm are very real, as are the complications arising from our use of behaviors and substances to alleviate our suffering.

These experiences don’t require a diagnosis of mental illness in order to be taken seriously. And treating our suffering doesn’t need to include tampering with our highly sensitive brains.

• It is a relief to be given a psychiatric diagnosis.

When I was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder I felt relieved. I thought I finally had an explanation for all the difficult relationships, mistakes and trauma in my life. And there were pills that would fix it all!

I trusted the medical professionals who interpreted my creative energy as mania and my mental energy as ‘racing thoughts,’ because they must know best.

Unaware of high sensitivity and the complex dynamics of giftedness and creativity, I was very self-critical and ashamed of myself.

I’d spent years in therapy and graduate school studying psychology, committed to understanding my mind and taking responsibility for what I thought were my failures and inability to ‘fit in.’ The bipolar diagnosis felt like a huge ‘pass.’ I had a ‘disease’ and it wasn’t my responsibility.

It’s challenging and often lonely to live in this world with a creative, sensitive brain. But it’s not a disease. I take responsibility for learning as much as possible about living a healthy, meaningful life as a gifted HSP in an often unsupportive world. Thankfully, there is much more information available to us now than in the past, and a growing community of people with similar challenges and gifts.

With the growing understanding of these issues, and the support of others with similar personality, I now have a self-concept based on my own interpretation of myself over my entire life, rather than on the opinion of psychiatric professionals who have had only brief encounters with me.

• I need relief now! There’s nothing else I can do but take medication.

When we go to a therapist or psychiatrist we are often in acute distress. Real healing of the mind and body take time, but when we’re suffering we’re especially vulnerable to doctors who may tell us that we have a disease, we need drugs and the drugs will help now.

What they are unlikely to tell us is that no disease has been proven in the case of mental illness, the drugs don’t really ‘cure’ but sedate and alter the brain, and effective alternatives exist.

Even the need for short-term drug intervention for suicidal and delusional patients might be overestimated. Studies have shown various supplemental, nutritional and alternative therapies to be as or more effective in relieving symptoms.

• My doctor must know what she’s talking about and she seems to really care about me.

The reality is that psychiatrists have no idea why and how the drugs they prescribe work, nor are they aware of their long-term effects and the data on their inefficacy.

We all need people who care about us, especially when we’re in emotional crisis, and mental health professionals are usually in that profession because of a sincere desire to alleviate suffering.

But perhaps someone trained by, and very often given perks by, drug corporations and the institutions they support, isn’t the most informed and objective resource.

• Not taking drugs to treat mental illness is as dangerous as not treating cancer or diabetes.

While not treating suicidality or other extreme states can be dangerous, the fact remains that mental illness is not like physical illness.

The question is, do psychiatric medications really treat life-threatening and severely debilitating states, or do they sedate and disable the brain, giving an illusion of improvement?

Might these drugs be even more dangerous than the ‘diseases’ they claim to treat?

• I think I have a mental illness as well as a creative/sensitive personality, so I need medications.

Sounds logical, but even if you decide you really have bipolar disorder or another mental illness, it’s a good idea to think twice before you choose how to treat it.

These drugs have many physical and psychological side effects (often discounted by psychiatrists as symptoms of the purported illness), and more or different drugs may be prescribed to deal with them.

• I just need to take drugs for a little while, then when I’m better I’ll stop.

Getting on psychiatric drugs may be easy, but getting off them can be hell.

It’s becoming clear, through the investigations of people like Robert Whitaker in Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, that the prognosis for those on psychiatric medications is grim: a 10-25 year shorter life span, and the likelihood of permanent disability.

It takes some people years to taper off psychiatric medications, and some are never able to do so successfully. I was lucky – it took me a year of slow tapering to get off multiple psychiatric medications which had caused depression, intense anxiety, sleeplessness, diabetes, tinitus, digestive problems, cognitive dysfunction and more.

Now that I’m drug-free, I sleep, dream and experience my emotions again authentically, but I continue to experience some physical side effects from the medications and may for some time. It’s a long road to recovery.

• What are the alternatives?

There are orthomolecular psychiatrists who actually do tests to determine what underlying physical conditions may be responsible for mental distress.

There are also many books and organizations, some listed below, which provide information on behavioral, nutritional and supplemental alternatives to drugs.

Although supplements can have side effects and need to be carefully chosen, many have been used for thousands of years to effectively treat emotional and mental conditions.

There is life after psychiatric drugs. For me, it’s been a better life.

Related:

Posts:

Woman interrupted: misdiagnosis and medication of sensitivity and giftedness

Misdiagnosis of the Gifted

Books:

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Your Drug May Be Your Problem, Revised Edition: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications

Organizations:

Safe Harbor — Includes links to find medical doctors (by zip code) who can assist with helping people safely get off of psychiatric drugs and medical personnel who will treat people without the use of psychiatric drugs

Alternative to Meds Center — Residential psychiatric medication withdrawal with medical and naturopathic oversight in Sedona, Arizona

Green Mental Health — Holistically-centered mental health care system which reflects traditional environmental, humanitarian, and health conscious values

The Road Back — How to get off psychiatric drugs safely

Soteria House — Alternative and non-drug solutions for people diagnosed schizophrenic

Mind Freedom International — is a nonprofit organization that works to win human rights and provide alternatives for people labeled with psychiatric disabilities

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights
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sensitivity and psychiatric drugs, sensitivity and mental illness, sensitivity and drugs, sensitivity and giftedness, high sensitivity personality, mental health books, drug books, highly sensitive books