As far as mental health and the so-called "mental illnesses" go, we are drugging the wrong people.

My mother was the most committed rule follower you ever met in your life. You tell her (provided you had some constituted authority) to do something, and she would DO it. Except ... for taking her anti-depressants. She'd take them, start to feel better, then stop, cold turkey, and within about a month, the bottom would fall out again, as she failed to ever get talk therapy to help get a handle on the root source of her depression. EVEN the most obedient patient in the world wanted off the anti-D's! NOW, consider this. In my life I have encountered one and only one psychiatrist who ever suggested that one day I might be able to go off my meds. The others insist that I must take these meds forever. This suggest that I have a chronic condition. Let me accept (for the moment) that proposition - I have a chronic MEDICAL condition. Okay, then, somewhere within my body resides a diseased area, or impaired arterial blockages, or fouled up bio-electo-magnetic impulses; something. That being the case, when I die, they can perform an autopsy on me to check out (confirm) the presence of the disease, or at least the degenerated condition. This, after all, is what MEDICAL illness is all about. Surprisingly (to me, anyway), the diagnosis of Alzheimer's is only 90% correct, in the absence of an autopsy! This leads me to conclude, that in point of fact, I DO NOT HAVE A MEDICAL CONDITION that can be detected by modern medical SCIENCE. I do however, have a LABEL, that has been inflicted upon me, and I have suffered greivously for it. Now, for three years, I WAS a good little obedient psychiatric patient, and I took my meds, as prescribed. Fortunately (for me anyway) my pain management doctor (pain management? came down with a disease and is now in a wheel chair. While he rehabbed, his sister, another pain management shrink, took on my case. When I wnet to see her brother, initially, I was in psychic and physical pain, but, I would have grown out of those; I always had before. But, I took the drugs he recommended, eventually increasing my dosage of EFFEXOR from 37.5 mg per day to 225 mg per day, a six-fold increase. What his sister soon noticed, was that I didn't seem so depressed (I didn't seem to her depressed at all; HOWEVER - I did manage to gain 95 pounds in three years, and had enough energy to get out of the house twice a week, each event inspiring me to bath; otherwise, I spent 22 hours / day lying in bed, or watching TV, or glued to the puter; I never left the house - not to go to the library (which I so love); not to go to the used vinyl record store, to see my good buddy John, who kept asking about me, and telling my folks to tell me to go over there;; and I didn't even go to church or the mosque -- this is what life looks like when your anti-depressants work well; you are no longer depressed, you CAN function (I read, I blogged, I played duplicate bridge online) and I suppose this was quite a good enough life, for me to be living, after all, Social Security had deemed me totally disabled, and I had begun to collect SSSDI benefits ($383 / month for meds and the shrink - out of $434 total). Now, that is what an undepressed life looks like. Everybody was pleased, pleased that I had gone ahead and filed the paper work to get the SSSDI bennies, pleased that I was taking my meds, pleased that I ... was not making waves; no splahses. And they didn't really take into account that a man who had formerly played duplicate bridge at the local clubs at least 3 times a week, had taught duplicate bridge at the clubs, and at the park district, who used to play golf 100 times or so a year, who used to play the piano, who sang in the church choirs all his life, who accompanied (when asked) the congregation for certain of the liturgical settings, who rang hand bells in the choir, who auditioned for and was accepted by the New Oratorio Singers (now the Chicago Master Singers) and loved to rehearse with them (I was not so excited about the concerts; for a 240 pound man who did not walk, standing in one spot for several hours is VERY difficult on the knees), that a man who delighted in his son's weekly week end visits no longer saw his son, no longer attended church, no longer attended bible study, no longer attended the mosque (where he HAD taught Sunday School), no one seemed to think about how much I had shrunk (well, there was the additional 95 pounds, that's not much shrinkage), that the man who used to work out 4 days a week at the health club, now had a difficult time drawing breath when walking up the stairs from the family room to the kitchen, NO, it never dawned on these people, my family, (they were the only ones I saw) - no, wait, my parents, my social worker, my shrink, that it never occurred to them that I WAS NOT A HAPPY CAMPER, although, I most assuredly was a non-depressed camper, and I could carry off a conversation quite well enough, it never occurred to them that I was NOT IN A GOOD PSYCHIC or even PHYSICAL place. And then I stopped taking the meds, and I started to play golf again; I started to go to church again; I started to drink again; I started to ride the weekend rails and talk with strangers again; I started to go to bars and talk with both strangers and old friends again, I started to go to the library again, I started to bring homeless people home for shelter, warmth, and food again, I started to play duplicate bridge again, I started to teach bridge again, I started to write poetry again, I started to walk for the pure pleasure of walking again, I started to ride my bicycle again, I started to flirt again! In other words, I went off the meds, and I started to LIVE again! And so you see, the wrong person was taking the meds. Since it is my behavior off the meds that so worries people, (actually, what they think I might do at some indeterminate future moment). So, for all you out there who buy into your loved one having a mental illness that causes him to behave in ways you disapprove - here's my free advice: Take anti-depressants, continuously increasing the dosage until you think about suicide 24 hours a day. Also, take a mood stabalizer. When you start to constantly contemplate suicide, begin the very slow process of going off the anti-depressant. Continue taking the mood stabalizer for the rest of your life. Nothing your beloved one does will ever bother you. Nothing will ever bother you. You will never cry, and you will never know unbridled joy. Welcome to my world!