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by SomeStupidPoint
3472 days ago
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Just to comment on a case I know personally: the person had semi-regular psychotic episodes, a few per quarter, but every day meds to prevent them definitely made him less smart and... "there" on the good days (in addition to stopping episodes). That's how he was treated until about 20, when he managed to convince a doctor he should just have an as-needed supply of fast acting ones. I know it's anecdata, but my experience is that there are a fair number of borderline cases where they can't hold it together sporadically, but the meds definitely lower the quality of the "good days" to fix that. Sometimes there's a fast acting med that can work; often there's not and patients are faced with a stark choice. I think we see a lot more homelessness in that group of people than we should, because we basically trap them there after one or two episodes, even though if we fixed it and got them some help (usually better coping techniques; occasionally meds), we'd see a lot less homelessness. I do think that meds have become a substitute for real coping technique teaching, and that in many of those cases, the caregiver isn't making the optimal choice for the patient, because they're optimizing cost or time invested, rather than long-term quality of life. There are obviously things like hardcore schizophrenia where that isn't the case, but even for more sporadic delusion disorders, it can be. |
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> I think we see a lot more homelessness in that group of people than we should, because we basically trap them there after one or two episodes,
yes, this exactly: the system "traps" its patients with medications that do not address the cause of their psychotic presentations.
My friend just needed sobriety, but all she got were tranquilizers and other "bad prescriptions". She briefly escaped from her court-ordered medications, but then she got an SSRI which destroyed all the progress I'd made with her. See my comment history.