“See, I will send venomous snakes among you, vipers that cannot be charmed, and they will bite you…”
– Jeremiah 8:17
You might remember a few months ago when the ‘Net lit up over the upcoming Samuel L. Jackson film, SNAKES ON A PLANE.
Not to be left out of the fun, I blogged it, too.
Well, kids, it’s almost here. And for your enlightenment and amusement, here are some scenes from the movie.
From CNN Report: Mentally ill troops forced into combat
The paper reported that some service members who committed suicide in 2004 or 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for “extended deployments.”
I believe it’s been like that in most wars. Has our culture stopped evolving? Certainly a large block of Americans, most of whom voted for Bush, fight evolution tooth and nail. I guess fear of change goes very deep in some folks.
I seem to recall an interview with a fellow who was a doctor in WWII. He told about how when soldiers came in shell-shocked (severely traumatized), they’d keep them in the field hospital, dope them into oblivion for a period of time to let the worst of it pass, then take them off the drugs and send them right back out to their unit. I forget how long they kept them, just a few days I think. The doctor was pretty sure that these poor fellows were going to be completely unable to take care of themselves, much less engage in combat. He was pretty sure he was sending them back to die. It seemed that it had been haunting him for the last 50 years. You can bet that this war isn’t going to haunt Bush and Rummy, not even for a minute.
In WWII we were facing an aggressor who had already swept across Europe. He had a face, Hitler’s face. And we didn’t go in until every friend of ours except Britain had fallen. What is our symbol in this war? Saddam Hussein? Hey, we got him. Osama Bin Laden? We aren’t even *thinking* about him any more. The World Trade Center and its 3000 deaths? Iraq had nothing to do with that – it was perpetrated by Saudis protesting our continued presence in Saudi Arabia. What the hell *is* this war about?
The aggressor is just beginning to sweep across the Middle East. It’s not clear to our soldiers who they are fighting. Many of them feel as if they are little more than bodyguards for civilian contractors. They drive Halliburton employees and other civilians back and forth from the green zone to the airport through a well-established corridor, like ducks in a shooting gallery. And in between trips they sit in tents in a big maze of Jersey barriers waiting for one of the locals to slip in and set off a bomb.
The word that the suicide rate is high in this war came out a couple of years ago. Every war has suicides. Yes, even The Big One, WWII. But when you are supporting the war, as just about everyone did during WWII, suicides make bad press so you don’t cover them. You want to show newsreels of Axis bombs and dead foreign children, not films of mentally ill American soldiers – hardly more than children themselves – committing suicide.
One interesting difference in this war is that at the beginning of the war, if you check the numbers, the casualties were mostly older people with families and well-paid jobs back home. These are folks whose lives back home are being systematically disassembled by their extended absence. You join the Army Reserves with the understanding that you will serve as a stop-gap until the military can muster and train enough recruits to step in, maybe six months and certainly not two years. You join the National Guard with the understanding that your job is to protect the people here at home in during emergencies. Something got really screwed up here.
Oh, this is a good line. This fellow makes it sound as if every soldier is a time bomb waiting to go off.
“Ritchie insisted the military works hard to prevent suicides, but it is a challenge because every soldier has access to a weapon.”
I lost count. Have we killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein yet?
But I digress… the war in Iraq isn’t a desperate struggle against a madman with intentions of World Domination: quite the contrary. From the beginning we haven’t even attempted to be sure to have enough men and materiel to successfully complete our mission against this most nebulous enemy, Terror, either.
Finally, and most importantly, in the 21st century you’d think that our species would be sensitive to each other’s psychological needs. When did we lose our ability to empathize? We have taken huge steps back in so many areas – environment, new energy sources, “Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights: it’s all wrong” – and I want to know why this is.
Who are these people who want to ignore the hard lessons of the last 60 years and go back to an idyllic past that never was?
I think it’s time for me to read up on exactly what this NeoCon movement is about.
[Lyric above is from Gil Scott Heron’s excellent invective against Ronald Reagan, B Movie, from his 1981 album Reflections.]
To persuade a man that his experience is not real or is worthless is to be a propagandist for some vested interest.
The other night we were watching TV and my husband decided that he didn’t want to watch Crossing Jordan because it looked “too heavy.” I was about to get up and limp to the computer room, but he had flipped to a medical show called “Gray’s Anatomy
Ok, I thought, could be interesting. I watched this show once before and I don’t recall actively hating it.
Umpteen minutes later the show was over without ever having actually begun. There was no diagnostic drama, no medical facts. Just a bunch of people wandering around in a daze, occasionally bumping into one another and reacting to their own reactions. Incomprehensible medical decisions were made, preceded by much fanfare and pointless drama but little logic.
My husband said it’s a chick show.
I have to ask this, then, because I have always thought like an engineer… The show was clearly intended for someone who doesn’t like to focus. Do a lot of chicks really wander around in an unfocused daze? It certainly explains a thing or two.
Update 5/12:
I have been informed that it’s not so much a chick show as it is a Generation X show.
It seems that the young adults today are less interested in co-creating their realities and more concerned with using their anatomy to the best advantage. What, the ’50s are back?
I have also just learned that Jill Hennessey of Crossing Jordan is bipolar. She’s a fine fox, too. I’m going to have to watch it more often.
In appearing normal to others, one becomes a habit-ridden plaything of social pressures and expectations.
The criterion of “success” has shifted from exclusive attention to behavior to concern for the quality of experience.
<RANT>
I am not swayed by vague, impassioned arguments. If I was, I’d be a Republican. The reason the Republicans are stomping us is this:
They put huge amounts of money into the infrastructure of the party. Think Tanks, framing the arguments. The Democrats don’t invest, they throw money away. The tone of the latest JohnKerry.com email was just plain dumb. It is far below Kerry’s intellectual capabilities and I’m getting rather tired of his ineffectual stumping.
PLEASE, get a backbone. Be proactive: as long as you are reactive you don’t have a good enough foothold to argue your point. We have to be proactive participants in the Democratic process, not reactive little paramecia.
Listening to Kerry trying to be politically correct during the debates was painful. Stop trying so hard not to offend anyone. Progressives’ morality on the abortion issue is about the QUALITY of life vs. the inhumane exercise of bringing unwanted children into the world. “Pro-life” indeed! My morality is far more valid than theirs, yet Kerry fumbled for words during the debate, sounded as if he is ashamed of his beliefs. As if any woman *wants* to abort her children. Nobody *wants* an abortion.
Life is an evolutionary continuum, not a series of separate creations. An early first-trimester fetus looks like a prawn and though the potential for human life is there, it is not sentient life. Not yet.
I saw Kerry on one of the Sunday morning political shows recently. The guy is still campaigning, still stumping. He is capable of so much more. How about some well-thought-out, *deep* insights from him for once.
And don’t let them call you “elite” just because you are educated. Bush has the same education as Kerry, but apparently he has chosen not to use it.
Republicans can give quick, definitive answers because they have already reduced the issues to black-and-white, with immutable, inhumane answers. They don’t have to stop and think. We think things through so it looks as if we are weak and indecisive.
And stop giving away money to people who don’t deserve it. Invest your money in the future instead. Put money into job training and childcare. Don’t put money into encouraging impoverished women to have more illegitimate babies. Many of these women are teens who don’t have access to the information that would have prevented the pregnancy. Teach birth control in the schools. Make the boy’s parents pay for the baby’s support – don’t encourage teens to have babies by offering them cash incentives to do so. If they get older they keep having them, offer them cash incentives to get free sterilizations instead.
Let’s make it really clear that white women have illegitimate kids,too, it’s not just a minority problem.
Tell everyone with an SUV that they aren’t safe from terrorists in their big metal womb. Each week your SUV uses enough gas to run my Prius for a two weeks or more. Get over 9-11, even if it requires psychiatric intervention. Especially if it requires psychiatric intervention. Don’t trade your freedom for a false sense of security. And PLEASE, the attacks on 9-11 were by Saudis, not by Iraqis and not by the Taliban. Our unprovoked attack on Iraq was and still is an obscenity. The war in Iraq is about the oil interests of all the people in the White House. Karl Rove acts like an evil wraith, Cheney acts like a sociopath, and Bush acts as if he is cognitively impaired from years of alcohol abuse.
And I act as if there is still a place in America for Democrats and other Progressives.
</RANT>
You’re out of the woods,
You’re out of the dark,
You’re out of the night.
Step into the sun, Step into the light.Keep straight ahead for the most glorious place
On the Face of the Earth or the sky.
Hold onto your breath, Hold onto your heart, Hold onto your hope.
March up to the gate and bid it open…………….open.From The Wizard of Oz
,
Optimistic Voices,
lyrics by EH Harburg and music by Harold Arlen
Check it out: Dr. Charles K. Bunch PhD, the author of “Soft Bipolar : Vivid Thoughts, Mood Shifts and Swings, Depression, and Anxiety of the Mild Mood Disorders Affecting Millions of Americans” has put out a new book about cinematherapy, how to use the metaphors in popular cinema as a vehicle for healing.
And what more powerful movie than The Wizard of Oz? Admit it, you saw it every year for the first ten years of your life and can recite it from memory. You undoubtedly have at one time or another used the characters in the movies as metaphor. Never mind the man behind the curtain! Well, Dr. Bunch’s new book, The Wizard of Oz: The Symbolic Quest to Find Your Inner Heroes, Face Your Worst Enemy, and Attain Wholeness, will help you use the archetypes present in any movie to understand yourself and the world around you.
I ordered it from Amazon as soon as I heard about it. I’m sure it will be excellent.
Our possibilities of experiencing are infinite and infinitely beyond that splinter of awareness we acknowledge, call “normal,” and disclose to others.
“A functioning police state needs no police.”
— William S. Burroughs
“Shock Therapy” is that ugly dog collar and backpack combination that they use in some detention centers to control kids with behavior problems. Yes, read that to mean psychological problems. Don’t get me started on behaviorists. It is used as a behavior modification technique, often without the use of psych meds, to create an aversion to the undesirable behavior.
However, we are talking about ElectroConvulsive Therapy – ECT.
ECT is a pretty drastic measure. They put you under general anesthesia then give your head a big jolt electricity – so big that it would induce convulsions if they didn’t knock you out and paralyze you first. It is one of the last remaining vestiges of a truly brutal era in psychiatry.
There are less extreme modalities available these days. Transcranial Magnetic Therapy is one. See if you can find the IEEE Spectrum at your library. There was a really good article in the March 2006 IEEE Spectrum last month. High-tech devices have fewer side-effects and if used appropriately they are quite effective.
A well-meaning but completely ignorant individual recently tried to convince me that ECT works by activating the parts of the brain that aren’t working right when you’re depressed. If anything, ECT overloads and suppress areas that you *don’t* want to be active. Along with pretty much everything else between the electrodes.
But the fact of the matter is that the way they usually do ECT, they don’t target problem areas and they don’t target specific desirable pathways. They overload the entire brain and if you weren’t anesthetized and paralyzed you’d go into grand mal seizures. In the old days, people who had ECT often broke teeth and bones during the procedure. Many patients suffer permanent memory loss and severe cognitive deficits – not all, but many do. It remains to be seen whether the current (no pun intended) methods produce the kind of brain damage seen in in earlier days.
The point is, there are modern options that should be considered in many cases.
Before you go in for ECT, please ask yourself some questions. What non-medical options have you explored? You can’t settle down enough to do your usual stress-busting activities, you can’t still your mind enough to even begin meditating, you’re afraid to go outside and run around to let off steam? Biofeedback isn’t even working any more, maybe because you’re outside of the normal operating parameters of the equipment available to you?
There is a series on PBS called “Second Opinion.” In the Depression episode, they made ECT sound like a miracle cure for depression. The reporting was unbelievably one-sided. They didn’t cover any of the magnetic therapies so anyone using PBS for their information doesn’t have the whole story. Furthermore, they trivialized the side-effects of ECT by saying, in effect, that it’s far preferable to have a permanent cognitive deficit than to be depressed. It was a fun show, but it was dumbed down way too much to be useful in making an informed decision.
I see that one of the sponsors provided the folks who did the show only limited access to information on MedLine. It appears that they prescreened the data made available – that is, they only provided articles that supported their agenda. Remember that PBS shows often have corporate sponsors who may want, say, to convince the public that an old-fashioned and therefore less expensive modality is better.
CLIC-on-Health provided Second Opinion wiith our pre-determined search access to MedlinePlus.
ECT is somewhat of a black art. The doctors have no idea how or why it works. From Wikipedia:
The exact mechanisms by which ECT exerts its effect are not known, but studies show that repeated applications have effects on several kinds of neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. ECT seems to sensitize two subtypes of serotonin receptor (5-HT receptor), thereby strengthening signaling. ECT also decreases the functioning of norepinephrine and dopamine inhibiting auto-receptors in the locus coeruleus and substantia nigra, respectively, causing more of each to be released.
The National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) also say that the doctors don’t know how or why ECT works. Furthermore, it isn’t totally clear which patients ECT is likely to help the most, nor is there any way of telling in advance if a particular patient is likely to have an adverse experience.
Much additional research is needed into the basic mechanisms by which ECT exerts its therapeutic effects. Studies are also needed to better identify subgroups for whom the treatment is particularly beneficial or toxic and to refine techniques to maximize efficacy and minimize side effects. A national survey should be conducted on the manner and extent of ECT use in the United States.
In fact, one conclusion of that article is that ECT is in use only because it’s been in use for so long.
ECT has been underinvestigated in the past. Among the most important immediate research tasks are:
- Better understanding of negative, positive, and indifferent responses should result in improved treatment practices.
- Identification of the biological mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effects of ECT and the memory deficits resulting from the treatment.
Better delineation of the long-term effects of ECT on the course of affective illnesses and cognitive functions, including clarification of the duration of ECT’s therapeutic effectiveness.
- Precise determination of the mode of electrode placement (unilateral versus bilateral) and the stimulus parameters (form and intensity) that maximize efficacy and minimize cognitive impairment.
- Identification of patient subgroups or types for whom ECT is particularly beneficial or toxic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reiterates the statement that little is known about how ECT works on depression and that little is known about the after-effects of the treatment. In fact, they suggest that the therapeutic effects of ECT may be a result of the anesthesia or even of the nursing care and not to the actual electric shock at all.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is sometimes used to treat severe depressives who do not respond to drug treatment. A recent review and meta-analysis concluded that ECT is probably more effective than drug therapy, though the underlying mechanism is not known. The authors state that “any differences between ECT and drug therapy might not be attributable to the stimulus or shock alone, but could be due to other components of the ECT procedures (including anaesthetic and nursing care)” (100). Only one trial included in the meta-analysis provided data on cognitive functioning: patients treated with ECT had more word recognition errors after treatment compared to patients treated with simulated ECT. At six months this difference was no longer observable. The authors require more evidence for the efficacy of ECT in the subgroups of patients who are presently most likely to receive it: those with treatment-resistant depression and older patients.
Now for adverse effects:
In one recent study of almost 25,000 treatments, a complication rate of 1 per 1,300 to 1,400 treatments was found. These included laryngospasm, circulatory insufficiency, tooth damage, vertebral compression fractures, status epilepticus, peripheral nerve palsy, skin burns, and prolonged apnea.
During the few minutes following the stimulus, profound and potentially dangerous systemic changes occur. First, there may be transient hypotension from bradycardia caused by central vagal stimulation. This may be followed by sinus tachycardia and also sympathetic hyperactivity that leads to a rise in blood pressure, a response that may be more severe in patients with essential hypertension. Intracranial pressure increases during the seizure. Additionally, cardiac arrhythmias during this time are not uncommon (but usually subside without sequelae).
Also, the NIMH makes it very clear that ECT is only effective for a very limited group of illnesses.
The consideration of ECT is most appropriate in those conditions for which efficacy has been established: Delusional and severe endogenous depressions, acute mania, and certain schizophrenic syndromes. ECT should rarely be considered for other psychiatric conditions.
The law requires that a patient give informed consent. In order to give informed consent, the patient should be told about the risk of cognitive deficits and memory loss, particularly since there is a tendency to misrepresent ECT as a “quick fix” to get the patient back to work sooner. Some patients can never go back to work after ECT.
The NIMH is recommending that doctors get patient consent before each treatment in the series, not just for the series as a whole. That way the patient can assess the damage being done and refuse further treatments if necessary. The NIMH assumes that there is a statistically significant risk that a patient who is cognitively impaired by the procedure, even if the damage is only temporary, will not be capable of initiating a request to stop.
This recommendation sounds chillingly like the advice being given to prevent non-consensual sex. I won’t go so far as to call ECT “brain rape,” but only because that particular phrase has already been used by the writer William S. Burroughs in “Meeting of International Conference of Technological Psychiatry” to describe a prefrontal lobotomy. (ed2k link to William S. Burroughs – “Call Me Burroughs” – requires winrar to unarchive.)
That being said, if your doctor insists upon you having ECT, you don’t have much of a choice, do you?
UPDATE 4/15/2007:
Sylvia Caras of People Who accepted this post for inclusion on her own site. Stop over to People Who and check out the tremendous amount of excellent mental health advocacy information she offers.
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