This recently published US strategy on Suicide Prevention epitomizes all that is going wrong in medicine today. It is stuffed full of references to Shared Decision Making, Informed Consent and Lived Experience. Stuffed full of token words, window-dressing, tick-boxing. It will increase rather than reduce suicide rates. It is clear that the people behind this, and … [Read more...] about Challenging My Doctor to Disclose
Withdrawal
Is Your Treatment Making You Suicidal?
This post links to a RxISK Reducing the Risk of Treatment Induced Suicide Resource. The immediate idea for this Resource came from an article by Katinka Newman on the Downward Spiral many prescription drugs can cause. Five years ago RxISK posted lists of drugs that can cause a downward spiral. Three years ago a mother of a 14 year old boy - see Mentally Hijacked by … [Read more...] about Is Your Treatment Making You Suicidal?
Juggling Our Selves and Our Bodies
Illustration: Juggling Act © 2020 created by Niki McQueen Balance in Balancing Our Bodies and Our Selves and Juggling or coordinating Our Selves and Our Bodies are closely linked. Life is a Tightrope Walk and Paul Klee's Tightrope Walker, emphatically concerned with his balance, features in Balancing. Once spotted Niki McQueen's extraordinary Juggling Act had to open this … [Read more...] about Juggling Our Selves and Our Bodies
Ondine’s Curse: Can’t Live With or Without
Ondine's Curse links closely to Balancing our Bodies and next week's Juggling our Selves. Ondine’s Curse sounds like a Greek Myths. Its not. The story began taking shape a few hundred years ago and has been elaborated ever since - ending up featuring in The Little Mermaid and other stories. The standard version is that a faithless man is cursed by Ondine, a water-nymph, … [Read more...] about Ondine’s Curse: Can’t Live With or Without
Balancing Our Bodies and Our Selves
Thanks to R who helped trigger this important RxISK post and some doctoring. . In July 2023, RxISK ran a post, written by R, giving an account of her Persistent Postural Perceptual Dizziness. PPPD was new to us. R had been in regular contact for a decade because of protracted withdrawal problems. Her problems came back in waves that were difficult to manage. She was then … [Read more...] about Balancing Our Bodies and Our Selves
Deprescribing – Where does Responsibility Lie?
This post follows on from last weeks Potentially Inappropriate Deprescribing and has links to this weeks The Creation Narrative and God Complex. It brings up a painfully tricky point. Reducing Medication Burdens is perhaps the most important task in medicine today. Many well-meaning folk are aware of and raising the profile of this need and attempting to work out how to go … [Read more...] about Deprescribing – Where does Responsibility Lie?
Potentially Inappropriate Deprescribing – PID
This post is linked to An Archipelago of Realities on DH.org. The link may not be clear when you start reading Archipelago but half way down it will be apparent. What is being said on Archipelago about SSRIs applies just as much to benzodiazepines here. Geriatric medicine came into being in the 1980s and with it a new word – polypharmacy – a phenomenon particularly … [Read more...] about Potentially Inappropriate Deprescribing – PID
Why Shrink Yourself to Better than Well?
This post is by Harriet Vogt. Emmanuel Macron’s recent political right turn towards ‘Old France’ includes a renewed focus on stimulating French reproduction – a ‘réarmement démographique’. Free fertility checks for 25 year olds, and funding for research into ‘bodily chemicals than can hinder fertility’. Not, of course, the pharmaceutical chemicals that most IVF clinics … [Read more...] about Why Shrink Yourself to Better than Well?
Sex, Fertility, France and Serotonin Timeline
In a recent press conference, Emmanuel Macron said that France faced a Fertility Crisis and needed a Demographic Rearmament - see Liberty, Equality, Fertility. The Timeline below traces an important contribution from the medicines we take to that crisis, left unmentioned in his speech - and the role of an important player, the Industry making those medicines. The Early … [Read more...] about Sex, Fertility, France and Serotonin Timeline
Medicine, Civilization and Cradles
Hush-a-bye baby on the tree-top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, Down will come baby, cradle, and all. We face a problem as important or more important than Climate Change - the changing climate in healthcare - see Pharmageddon and Our Healthcare Climate. For a decade, RxISK has been pointing to a polypharmacy pandemic, … [Read more...] about Medicine, Civilization and Cradles