A few months ago, after being advised to write down my experiences with my illness etc, I have 'finished'. I use inverted commas here because as is the usual with me, I took short cuts and the easy way out. I abbreviated my story heavily and because I couldn't motivate myself to write it properly, I decided to convert my writing into a video. I haven't decided yet whether or not to put it onto YouTube but I think I probably will, only keeping my identity as secret as I do on this blog. Someone who knows my experiences with 'schizophrenia' will probably know it's me straight away but I don't think anyone I know personally who doesn't know about my illness will be able to identify me from it.
The only problem with the video is that it's really long! It's nearly 20 minutes long but I couldn't really see anyway of cutting it down any further then I already did. I used 5 or 6 songs in it, all but one of them really meant something to me which is why I included them.
The last song I used was 'Albatross' by Fleetwood Mac. I'm not an avid Fleetwood Mac fan, but there are a few songs by them that I'd quite happily listen to and enjoy. I recently learned that Peter Green, a musician and the 'founder' of Fleetwood Mac was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 70s and underwent ECT (Electro Convulsive Therapy) with many people saying that he looked 'lethargic' and 'trancelike' during this time. For the last song in my video, I wanted relaxing music and remembered that 'Albatross' was a very relaxing song - it fitted perfectly into the video. I have nothing but respect for Peter Green for his 're-emergence' after a public battle with schizophrenia and an ECT survivor. As someone who was threatened with ECT less than 4 years ago, his description whilst undergoing ECT is making me relieved that I was too ill (physically) to go through even a single ECT session.
I was again on the BBC news website and found a statistic that I found shocking.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19061271 is the article I was reading which says that even 'mild' mental illness raises the risk of premature death. I had read a statistic somewhere else that said that schizophrenics die on average 10 years younger than the national average. This BBC article above says:
"People with severe mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia die, on average, 20 years earlier than the rest of us."
The scariest thing is that there's not many things being done to help reduce this figure! Frankly, I think I would rather have cancer than schizophrenia - at least cancer sufferers aren't discriminated in the same way as schizophrenics and with cancer, there is at least chance of a complete recovery. Studies into cancer destroying drugs are not biased in the way psychiatric drug studies are. Plus, cancer specialists aren't being paid lucrative sums of money to sign their name on fraudulent trials into drugs that are downright dangerous the way psychiatrists are.
The following article I found quite interesting about this:
http://psychdata.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/state-hired-psychiatrists-paid-by-drug.html
The number of times I told doctors and nurses about this to be told that it wasn't true, I was delusional etc is frustrating to say the least. The number of times I was drugged up when trying to prove that I was right is downright disgraceful. But I can't make complaints about my 'treatments' because psych doctors and nurses stick together no matter how obvious the lie and even the most minor of psychiatric illnesses can nullify complaints in a court of law. I am angry about this. But there's not a thing I can do about it.
OK, my ranting is finished and now I have things to do. My little dog is looking at me with puppy dog eyes, telling me she is hungry. I can't say no to her, can I?!
No comments:
Post a Comment