Travels Through Psychiatry

  I don’t want to interfere with anyone’s desire to try or continue taking psychiatric medications. Depression, anxiety, manic states, intrusive thoughts, and more cause suffering and are hard to manage. Certainly, I tried finding my help there, and these days lots of people defend that choice, rightfully so, but I feel forgotten. Why? It seems if I'm not in the absolutely defending taking psych meds group then I must be in the attacking group. I took psych drugs for a long, long time. I followed each psychiatrist’s instruction, believing the drugs could provide relief, and they didn’t. But still I tried. I tried more and more, in and out of psych units and psychiatrists’ offices and therapists’ offices and therapy groups, and yet I progressively became worse. How is that so, and yet no mental health professional stepped in to evaluate what the heck was going on there? There’s no clear answer, but now, after sometimes wild, sometimes debilitating withdrawal, I don’t take psych me

ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) is a hotly debated psychiatric treatment, but beyond that, what are the parts of the procedure and effects on patients after that aren’t brought into the light? I’ve undergone ECT, so I come from a place of lived experience. I wrote this poem, slightly snarky in tone, but it does explain what happens, what ECT is about, in a better way than me writing straightforward text.           Try it, try it, ECT!           Safe! Effective! (*no guarantee)           Wheel you in on a stretcher bed           Electrodes stuck about your head         The IV’s in, soon you’ll be out         Can’t bite your tongue with this shoved in your mouth         Cuz you will seize, in a grand mal way         Succinyl keeping bone-breaking at bay         Breathe deep, count backwards really slow         Patient’s out and we’re ready to go         Knobs turn, amps up, each wire packed         Hit the brain from front to back         But you don’t know, just wake up later          R