On the challenges of studying suicide | Mind Hacks

http://mindhacks.com/2012/03/30/on-the-challenges-of-studying-suicide/

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In a strange sense my going on medication is a failure

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Action for Happiness - 10 tips for more happiness

http://www.actionforhappiness.org/10-keys

This is pretty good. It's all stuff people have said before but in a nice short form.

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Suicide isn't a right

It is a priviledge to get an assisted suicide. The law is being tested in the UK and other countries have more progressive laws but there's still a long way to go before assisted suicide is consider a legal right in the UK and a legal right for those who have experienced mental illness too.

Assisted death isn't a great option for any human being. It is the end of their life but it is a choice some of us have to make rather than be forced to live with so many days wanting death. There are few solutions I've coming across to living with the desire to die. Those I found didn't seem to work.

Perhaps the shift needs to come with a shift in research into psychosocial options. By this I mean changing society as well as changing people through chemicals and talking.

There is a lot of internal suffering which drives a person to want to die. It is usually a long process when it comes to a suicide with capacity to understand what death means.

I want to kill myself but I haven't always felt this way when things got bad or when things were good. It wasn't an overnight change where I found myself facing more days with suicidal thoughts than without. There were cycles of time and there are still periods where I feel less like wanting to die and simply want to stop living or even don't think about my death at all. Every once in a while I get close to making an attempt and occassionally I try something but I'm still, sadly, alive and not in the frame of mind to make an attempt.

I'm so keen on an assisted dying scheme to help me out. About 150 people with mental illnesses have been given a peaceful death by Dignitas according to their Wikipedia page. I would like to be one of them.

It will take a long time before I have this right. :-(

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Google's new search technology and unwanted search finds

Google is updating its search algorithm - the software which determines what search results come up and in what order - to be more effective. By more effective I mean getting the right web page - the right answer to the question - straight away at the top of the page and even as the first link.

This is a next generation technology which will make finding information ever more easy. But what of things which society doesn't want people to find? For example the ingredients list of a suicide cocktail and where to buy them would be a brilliant search result for those who actively want to die. Current searches don't easily reveal this sort of information. In fact the Wikipedia page has been altered to remove the ingredients list of at least one suicide cocktail.

Will Google continue this subtle censorship of suicide literature or will they automatically serve up the best information which directly answers the query? I suspect Google will adopt the former approach and have less relevant web pages ranking above the information which helps a person end their life. This is in line with current suicide prevention techniques which use suppression of information and access to self-termination materials.

This sort of censorship has never been challenged. It is a shame but it is done to save lives. The problem is some of those people don't want to be saved. They're looking for a solution which they've consciously decided upon: the time and place of their death.

There may be other keywords which also have similar sorts of search censorship from paedophile porn to hacking sites. Standard algorithms did not censor well made and well ranked sites without manual intervention but this manual intervention is easier and perhaps more commonplace when developing a semantic search system, I.e. to get good search results the programmers must have had to spend more time ensuring good results come higher up the rankings. They may have spent time making sure good information about dangerous, illegal or subjectively described as mentally ill or immoral keywords was suppressed and some of this could have been done through manual intervention.

With so much effort put in to suppression suicide by suppressing and monitoring online communication and information it is likely this trend will continue irrespective of privacy and freedom of information. The right to die will change all this I hope.

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Psychiatry's oppression of human types

First incarceration was used to make the mentallly ill disappear. Then drugs were used to free the mentally ill but suppress their symptoms and type. Depressive types were prescribed narcotics to make them cheer up and not be so glum. Manic depressive and schizophrenics had other drugs foisted upon them but these central nervous system drugs were not real treatments.

They were using the power of medical science to change behaviour and being. CNS medications are used to solve psychosocial problems, not real illnesses, but the science is applied as if they were real illnesses and so is the language of change.

Change is what treatment involves but a different type of change to what most physical medications achieve. Drugs for mental disorder arrest the disorder. They can incapacitate individuals to resolve the problem of emotional and behavioural disorders - the stuff which is often a problem for society and can be healed by changes in society or society's norms.

For example, homosexuality is one diagnosis which was healed by forces other than the usual treatment of an illness. It was demedicalised. There still exist other paraphilias which are treated the same way as homosexuality was but today a social change changed the pathologisation of homosexuality. This happened when psychiatrists said it was okay to be gay.

Other 'illnesses' may be healed in similar ways. There is a growing movement who seeks to shift the power-base away from psychiatry's biomedical dogma and domination over humanity. This is the movement which seeks to look at schizophrenia as not an illness. Many just call the idea the social model of mental disorder without fullying comprehending what significance the social model has.

It demands demedicalisation in my opinion because medicalisation - no matter what it purports to achieve - is only one half of the solution. The illness model says the individual must be changed to remove abherrant symptoms. Psychiatry and psychology both work on these aims. They percieve people as ill and healing means changing the person to be more normal.

The social model asks people to consider the impact upon the individual from different cultures and countries, from social factors which can significantly impinge on the disability.

After all, the science of psychiatry exists because of a social problem where the mad were outcast from family and society. Their exclusion was created by dispassionate norms common in the industrial revolution societies. Those who fitted in prospersed. Those who didn't fell into disability and inequality. It was only afterwards when psychiatry and the biomedical model really developed to take custodianship over the asylums and their inmates. This is the beginning of the mental health system and the paradigm of illness as a commonly understood social knowledge about humans who were different in some way.

Unwittingly, psychiatry became a tool of social order instead of something which treats any real illness. Homosexuality was never an illness and neither are any of the paraphilias. They're a social problem for society and a problem for individuals when there aren't suitable structures available in society. This may be hard to accept when considering something like paedophilia but it is easier when considering depression.

Depression may simply be a natural pain which some people suffer. This is the pain of life and a shit life for certain individual types, types who may suffer to much or not feel enough joie de vie. This doesn't have to be an illness but it can be treated by drugs which make the person feel better. The drugs aren't curing any illness because unhappiness isn't an illness however it is also true that some really unhappy people are made happier by SSRIs just as many people are made happy by other things, not all of which are drugs.

Bah...buggered this piece up.

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Portraits of Bob Whitaker speaking (those I didn't like as much.

Different crops and effects and tones in these versions. Some
photographers might prefer some of these to the ones I like. It was a
tough choice to leave some of these out from the final 5.

Portraits of Bob Whitaker speaking

Robert Whitaker created the amazing Mad in America internet site. I saw
him speak last year and he's great.

These are photos from last year's Hearing Voices Network event. It was a
tough shoot as always with my Canon 50D and Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 lens.
The lens only works at f2.8 and at the focusing distances I was shooting
at this meant a depth of field of around 6cm. Perhaps a little more. The
lighting conditions were also poor and these were shot at ISO6400 -
above the natural range of the Canon 50D. I had to rely on a monopod to
help get sharper shots with the lower shutter speeds like 1/90sec at 320mm.

The shots were processed from RAW using Canon Digital Photo
Profressional then edited using Gimp, the opensource alternative to
Photoshop. The converted-from-RAW images are a so different to the final
edited version. The first step is Unsharp Mask. I used settings of
around Pixel Size 1; Amount 250-350%; Threshold 1 or 2. This boost the
sharpness but it also creates bobbling and grain because of the high ISO
which is why I went for black and white for most of the shots. The
colour shots have been colour adjusted using Hue/Saturation to bring out
the colours and correct for any colour casts. The key element is the
editing of curves. I usually deepen the blacks a lot and create a lot of
contrast while sightly boosting highlights to get the look I like.

These 5 are my favourite from 18 different edits made from a variety of
shots. I'll email the ones across which didn't make it.

How Psychotherapy Changes the Brain - Psychiatric Times

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1926705

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Untitled

The sun is shining but I don't feel it on my face. Its shadow feels where I am more comfortable.  Its light isn't my place to be. I feel unclean to be shone upon.

My eyes don't look forward. They look at the pavement. I hope to fall into the cracks and never resurface. I walk on the cracks.

This walk to the shops feels like another journey I don't want to take. I want the end to come quickly so I don't have to walk another weary step. I want to stop now and go no further.

Weary. So fucking weary.

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Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology - Psychiatric Times

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1946385

Thought this might interest you. It's about the power of non-drug effects - like prescriber power or patient willingness to change - having strong effects, sometimes greater than the active effect of the drug itself.

It might not be news to you but the article has some good modern references, for example a benzo study on anxiety where the non-drug effect exceeded the drug effect.

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BBC News - LSD 'helps alcoholics to give up drinking'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17297714

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Surviving suicidal ideation

I suppose this is one area where I have expertise. This blog has slowly developed into the pit where I expunge suicidal feelings.

In a sense it is a technique. It is basically anonymous apart from a few slip ups. My suicidal ideation exists rather than being kept silent within. I could write to a private diary but there I feel it still doesn't exist. Here my desire to die does even if few know it is me. My professional blog also has a small inkling into the darkness which I live with and is in such contrast to my external mask of jovviality.

There are other techniques too which have been built upon through resilience and time. Distraction is one of them. Sometimes I sit and edit photographs rather than wallow in the low. Other times it is sudoku puzzles or writing or whatever. These fill times without directly expressing my deathwish.

In terms of the suicidality itself I know that life gets better as well as worse. There are times it feels like it won't get better and I'm stuck in one of those times but, in a strange sense, I am okay with it because I know this is a false feeling. Well, it is actually true in the sense that my desire to die has escalated rather than gotten better but I mean life in general feels like it can get better when it feels like it is at its worst.

This is a maturation process and one I developed in the abscence of support. The problem with support is it can lead to dependence and this can end up being a negative thing especially when support isn't available.

I know with certainty that I don't want to live a long life. There's is a very high chance I will take my life but it doesn't matter. In fact it is a positive thing for me. I am in control that way. I just wish someone would be willing to take it for me. To end this shit of a life with the kindness of strangers.

Another coping mechanism was this hope but this hope has been dashed. Fucking assisted suicide cunts don't understand how terminal suicidal ideation is. Now it is left up to me and it actually feels better. I don't have to continue with my stupid plan. I can exit when the timing suits me.

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Demedicalisation and legalisation of suicide

it is far from easy because death and self death are the hardest things for the public at large to conceptualise in an advanced way.

Death is death. It is sad and a thing which causes grief. No one should die. Should they?

No is the simple answer and I stay with that simpleness but we don't live in this sort of time. No one should die unless they want to. This is my simple morality.

This may sound strange but it doesn't. This is a product of our time. I am a product of my time. A time which leads me to want death so much.

A century ago suicide was decriminalised. I will not wait for society to progress to the point where advancement means I can have a legal death but perhaps there is a better solution.

No. I'm crazy. The better solution is never driving human beings to suicide in the first place. This is truly crazy because it is difficult and not profitable, or at least not cost effective. It isn't even worth exploring much as any suicidologist would know well.

The solution in the near term - after I'm dead - will be the legalisation of assisted suicide. The future though is a society where people aren't driven to feel that bad or are equipped with skills...no...no...the former is more relevant than the latter.

Physical and mental health will truly be equal in the future.

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A song lyric

I think the song is called mad world.

"The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had."

And yet why is this saddening? This is a sign that hope still exists. It is the hope to die but it is a hope of a voluntary choice being made real.

In real life it may as well be the hope of winning the lottery for most people. A small handful get their wish.

Well, of course, the difference is the subjective judgement. Those left to live while feeling like the song from Donnie Darko are only left to live with their dream while others ensure there is no possibility of it ever happening.

It doesn't matter. If ever I was going to be a millionaire I guess I would be a self made millionaire. I don't play the lottery.

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I can't stand living like this

Things were meant to get better, not worse. I've struggled to keep going and it seems all that I have in my life to focus on. Plans which don't work out but there's one shitty plan I have to stick to: don't kill myself yet.

It would be so generous of me to kill myself now. Generous to myself. There are few people that would be affected, few that would care if I disappeared from existence and no one who cares enough to help me end my life.

Those few who care enough to shed a tear or two are those who I'm burdened by. I can't explain to them what it is like living as I do. I can't ask them to let go and...I can't live alone without those who bring a little light into my shit of a life.

It is just things are so much worse right now, so much shitter than six months ago when things were shit. Penniless and a broken man. This is what I am. I wanted death a long time ago and filling my time waiting for the certainty that my life isn't worth living is time I don't want to wait through.

If I won the lottery I don't think things would get better. I think i'd want death but I would be richer. I don't know what my solution is to wanting death but my situation right now feels like the perfect one to exit this life but for the tears and grief of those I care about and care about me.

I don't want to wait to finish my plan. I hate living like this and I've hated being alive for long enough. Won't someone take this life from me, won't some society understand that self-termination is a sane choice when a soul is ground down to nothing.

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Currently assisted suicide is blocked using by the machine of psychiatry

Why can't people be allowed to die when they want to? Perhaps this is a better title.

The answer is because of mental health. Those who want to die are deemed irrational and mentally ill. They must be 'helped' so they are 'treated' to change their mind, or not in some cases. In some cases they have to live long enough to find the means or will to take their own life.

The law changed in the 20th century to decriminalise suicide but a new system took over, a system without tenets or laws but only what it decides is mental illness or not based on whatever it feels like. This arbitary nature is what law is meant to prevent but mental health presides over the grey.

The greatest trick: compassion. There is no assisted suicide because it is compassionate to believe it will get better and watch a person live when they don't want to. It is compassion to believe life is sacred even when things are so bad the individual wants to end their life.

The truth? The absolute truth is assisted suicide will become legalised. One day. It is inevitable. It may not be in my lifetime but that doesn't matter. I'll kill myself any way. So do many others who do not want to live any more and there is no one who can help.

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Is psychiatry the enemy of extreme creativity

Perhaps. Perhaps it is a tool rather than the enemy.

Difference in thought has always been regulated not by law but by the medical profession. Anyone can say what they want except a patient under a psychiatrist. They live in fear of expressing. Too creative and they are pathologised and drugged with stronger drugs to repress their madness.

Martin Luther King saw the battle against psychiatry as the battle for creativity. The result of his battle: black people are only overdiagnosed with schziophrenia 3 times more in the US. Only. In the UK it is higher.

The drugs themselves work to suppress creative types then the doctors foist art therapies on those made bereft of their true connection to art.

All in the name of mental health.

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If someone dies because a doctor gives them something which they shouldn't then what happens?

Doctors are trusted to get on with it. They're trusted beyond any other profession and they're responsible for their own oversight.

When it goes wrong doctors admit it and then are left to continue to get on with things. This is sort of strange though given the horrors of recent times.

Thalidomide is one example of a drug which was used on pregnant mothers because it was a convenent way to allieviate morning sickness. The government are still paying out compensation to victims of the tragedy.

Clozapine is another example of a similar tragedy where 3% of patients died in the first 6 months. Though the manufacturers withdrew it doctors got it back because it was so effective. Now it only kills 1.5% of patients directly and many indirectly.

The dementia tragedy is the worst in modern times but there are no victims to pay compensation to. They're already dead. What happened there is a clear example of what happens when doctors have a power - the power of the chemical cosh - and the massive manslaughter which can inadvertently happen. 1,800 a year were killed in the UK unnecessarily. Many more would still have their life expectancy halved by treatment which is supposedly necessary though does nothing to heal the brain. In fact it harms the brain and body but alleviates symptoms.

This is a dangerous mode of treatment which doctors far too easily dole out. The antipsychotic is the drug which is shown to reduce life expectancy, cause illness and kill people. It does not heal the organic illness and causes harm. It suppresses symptoms but it does not heal the illness.

Every year these drugs are killing many, many people. Every year no one gives a shit because they trust doctors to get it right and there is no oversight.

When 1,800 elderly people were killed every year there was barely any public outcry. There was no punishment for the profession. Worst of all, the Department of Health wrote back to tell me they were reducing the number of unnecessary deaths to a third.

Who wouldn't want to top themselves given this mad world. I can do nothing more I think. No one cares. Everyone trusts doctors. I am one crazy lonely poor freak.

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