A psychiatrist took me out for dinner tonight

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No, I'm not her client. And I just realised this is the second Thursday in a row where I have met an interesting person en route back to my house. What is with me and Thursday nights. :stare: Blaming LiliWrites for making me write about her now. 

I had attended a talk by Peter Goetszche, a well known Scandinavian scientist famous for his crusade against psychiatry drugs and NSAIDs. I loitered after the talk and managed to grab his business card. Of course, brilliant me didn't check my mobile phone messages till later and turns out he had phoned me earlier about my email the previous day. But unfortunately he was rushing to dinner after the talk so I didn't really push him for an interview then. I only attended this talk because of a tip-off from one of my mentors, Brett, in a prisoners' advocacy group I used to intern at. In fact, if it wasn't for Brett, I don't think I would have been so into the whole criminal justice and mental health sector as I am now. 

So Brett, who had attended the talk as well, ended up introducing me to Yola, a psychiatrist who was a prominent whistleblower in the hospitals she worked at but over the past two decades had been dragged in front of tribunals and shamed and discredited for speaking out against what she saw as widespread misuse of drugs against patients. She also did a PhD on repetitive strain injury (RSI) which got good reviews and backing from prominent individuals but was also trashed by the very same people at the tribunals. 

We wound up in a French restaurant eating mussels and chips, because, you know, French food, finished off with some profiteroles. I handed her my phone with the voice recorded turned on and she used it as a microphone as she poured her life story into the recording. In a nutshell, she saw a lot of corruption and she thinks psychiatry has really gone the wrong way, with prescribing drugs like Prozac making patients suicidal and causing them to commit homicide. And she witnessed many patients who did just that, and spoke out about how the drugs were causing them that way, and she got the whole book thrown at her for speaking out essentially. With the grace of some good friends, she is still practising, and her patients are her staunchest advocates because she focuses on talk therapy and taking a thorough history and withdrawing patients off drugs that had been prescribed by GPs. Yes, she is a psychiatrist. 

I was surprised she did end up speaking so much about this openly and on the record as it was, as she did confess after I turned off my recorder that she had huge disdain for certain mainstream health journalists. After our chat, she insisted on paying for our meals and we parted ways, with a promise she'll send me the documents for Peter Goetzche's talk that I had attended. Before she did leave, she did give me several sage pieces of advice: work hard, check everything and especially check references, including herself. One of those references, incidentally, was my former radio tutor at uni. The world is a small place. 

When I write this now, a part of me knows I'm just touching the tip of an iceberg when it comes to potential corruption and misrepresentation by large companies and I feel extremely daunted by that. And ironically, even as a journalist, I feel powerless to even begin investigating because the publications I write for only stay afloat because of advertising from, surprise surprise, the drug companies that Yola so despises and she says has perpetuated much falsehood and misery upon millions of people around the world. 

Yes, I know antidepressants do work for some people, I know them. I'm also trying to not to be too biased on this topic, because I took antidepressants once. And I completely identify with what Yola and Peter mentioned and how they change you. My GP prescribed me double the recommended dose for my first ever taste of antidepressants (and it was Effexor) and it was the worst experience of my life drug-wise. Even when I switched to Lexapro I felt worse and even more suicidal. And then I stopped cold turkey, and I was probably one of the lucky few who never got too dependent on them because I didn't take them long enough. But that's just my experience. Even though the anxieties are still present, and at times cripple me, it's very easy to trace them back to erroneous assumptions and thoughts that my friends point out and challenge. It's a very mental thinking process that creates very physical distress sometimes, but I know the root is very much in the thinking, and not necessarily in the biological. 

I took a long time to work that out and it's something personal and not necessarily applicable to everyone. And I could still be wrong as well. But I have tried and understood antidepressants are not for me. And from what I heard tonight, there's a very strong case for not prescribing antidepressants to a lot of people as well. More alarming to me though is how large corporations do anything to fudge data and cover up trends and manipulate senior medical bodies in the pursuit of profit. That's what needs investigating. The problem is, what individuals can stand against institutionalised vested interests without being crushed like ants eventually? 

It's funny, because sometimes I feel I care too much. I sweat a lot of small stuff. But then these are the kind of issues where that kind of temperament may be of advantage. I just haven't been able to strike the balance yet between caring too much and caring too little, at the very beginning of my journalism career. 

All I know though is that I do seem to have a knack of attracting deviants in my life. Those who are unafraid to challenge the status quo, who strike a different path. No matter my own desires for wanting to pursue the popular, I end up deeply identifying with those who do not fit the mould. I find a kinship even when the subject matter can be beyond me. I feel sometimes despairing and despondent at imagining living such a life full-time. But somehow I always seem to walk away learning a little bit more about being an individual in a forest of vested interests. 
© 2015 - 2024 julietcaesar
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LiliWrites's avatar
As a quick starting point if you're planning on coming at this from an angle of how other countries deal with health care costs and doctor incentives: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=…