[EMAIL PROTECTED] from [EMAIL PROTECTED] to list re posting Mpls # 1377, Message 1. >>"Too bad people who are homeless and suffer from serious and persistent mental >>illness don't have comparable political clout."
Know ye all now that I lurk on this list and when anyone mentions serious and persistent mental illness, even casually in passing, I will jump in with some scientific knowledge which is sadly lacking in the halls of government, the media, everywhere decisions are made on spending taxpayer money. Here is just one of the millions of items of medical research that illustrate that the billions of taxpayer money we spend to keep people drugged and make them disabled, many times for life, is not necessary. As I pointed out before, people in the poorer countries where they don't have psychiatric drugs recover at a rate of 64% while here the rate is 18%. The Quakers in 1870 had a recovery rate of 70% by treating people with kindness and sympathetic companionship. Thank God I was taken off all drugs before being released from a state hospital in 1955 and continued my recovery at home. Minnesota laws do not allow recovery now. (One person's expenses on Medical Assistance have exceeded one million dollars and he is only 30.) I am not more weird than any of you. I was not then, either, but I was out of step with the milieu in which I lived. The research: Psychotic patients who become worse on neuroleptics. J Clin Psychopharmacol 1988 Dec;8(6):417-21 Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, New Haven, Connecticut A group of psychotic patients became worse early in the course of neuroleptic treatment. They had severe neuroleptic side effects. We propose that some patients with psychoses are uniquely susceptible to neuroleptics. During the last decade, newer "atypical" neuroleptics have been developed-clozapine, risperdone, olanzapine and quitepane-these drugs have a lower risk of EPS and TD, but are associated in varying degrees with sedation, cardiovascular and liver enzyme abnormalities, anticholinergic effects, extreme weight gain (30lbs to 50lbs) which significantly increases the risk for diabetes, sexual dysfunction, NMS, seizures, mania, and (in the case of clozapine) agranulocytosis. Additionally, mounting clinical evidence and findings -from non-industry sponsored research-point to additional, severe, adverse neurological changes in response to long-term exposure to neuroleptics. These drugs' actions suppress certain brain receptors (e.g., dopamine, glutamate), and when such drugs are withdrawn (or a patient stops taking them) the drug-induced receptor changes are unmasked, causing an acute "discontinuation syndrome" (i.e., "rebound psychosis" ) that is often more severe than the original symptoms of the illness. Psychotic relapse can cause months of mental and emotional anguish and loss of functioning and violent and suicidal behavior in patients not previously violent. [Often, these drug-induced reactions are used to justify forcing the person back on the drugs.] **** Fatal status epilepticus associated with olanzapine therapy. Ann Pharmacother 1999 Jul-Aug;33(7-8):787-9 Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, Wright State University, Dayton, OH 45409, USA. [EMAIL PROTECTED] She had been taking olanzapine for five months prior to the event. No other toxic, metabolic, or anatomic abnormalities were identified pre-or postmortem to explain the seizures. Her seizures were a probable adverse drug reaction based on the Naranjo scale. End of research quotes. One more note: Right now in Minnesota, a person is having seizures while being forced to take olanzapine even though the authorities know the person is unable to tolerate olanzapine in any dosage. This is not unusual. This is another tragedy waiting to happen. Louise Bouta Kingfield TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
