not to drug the nation. Mental health services don't want to use drugs
like clozapine and other antipsychotics but they have to because there
is no other way.
Lets also consider the human factor. Once you've got something easy and
convenient you won't bother to look for a better solution. You'll end up
justifying why that solution works. I do that with cannabis. It salves
my pain and helps me be.
Results from the highest quality studies show alternatives to drugs
aren't as good as drugs based on psychiatric measures and without the
existence of societal change mental healthcare such as Time to Change
there may be no alternative to psychopharmaceuticals as the first line
for treatment of mental illness. I have no idea if anyone's actually
bothered to find out if TTC has actually impacted on patient outcomes.
In my opinion I think it will have and for the better.
In the hypothetical situation that this sort of study had been done and
the results showed that antistigma and mental health promotion campaigns
improved people's lives on psychiatric measures of outcome then they
alter the prognosis and should be considered mental healthcare.
As always evidence may not support the hypothesis however lets just go
through a series of events.
Distress is one of the outcomes measures somewhere in the tranche of
simplistic quantitative stuff that's used to describe a person's life.
The self stigma of diagnosis, from my personal experience, can cause
distress and illness. When I first was diagnosed I desperately didn't
want to be "mad". It destroyed my life. It made me think I was one of
"them".
I am ashamed now. Back then all I knew of mental illness was the
ignorant stereotype of a deranged loony. I saw the mad without
compassion or humanity. It made me so sad to be one of them. It was like
becoming one of the untouchable class in Indian: the lowest of the low.
The damage self stigma can do is devastating on any number of measures.
I think times are different now. They've changed and it was about time too.
A person given a diagnosis now walks into a mental health hospital and
will see Time to Change posters. If they're lucky they'll also have
access to Mind's information booklets. TTC posters may also be in GPs
surgeries and anywhere else a person might be in touch with mental
health services, serving as a constant reminder that there's nothing
wrong with being mentally ill or mad. In an ideal world throughout their
journey through psychiatric care their self stigma is reduced such that
it doesn't make them feel worse for a label that really means very little.
If that were true and the evidence from this imaginary study supported
the idea that mental healthcare can be achieved by other means in a
cost-effective way then maybe there's a hope for fewer suicides and
fewer people treated with harsh chemicals for the mind.
I'm not the first nor will I be the last to think that changing society
so that it works for all people is an objective for healthcare and for
government.
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