don't stop believin', hold on to that feelin'

Tuesday, 06/14/16, 10:11am

I can feel I'm on the mend. I think I'm almost over the big depression rut that I've been in for the last two weeks. There's still complicated grief, but the depression part is improving.

There have been a few times in the last two weeks where Nasser and I have considered talking me to the hospital. Each time we've come to the conclusion that we don't need to go there, but I know I also have this stigma and fear of the hospital. My only experience with it was so tainted by the traumatic intake that I have absolutely no interest in going through that again. 

I've talked with a couple friends recently about hospital experiences, and although they vary, the trapped, jailed feeling is there with any form of involuntary stay. The scared, take away all my rights awfulness. I wish there was a better way to handle that because having those feelings doesn't help someone in a mental health crisis (at least not for me and the people I've talked to). I've thought more about Adam's hospital stays in thinking more about the hospital. I wonder if that trapped feeling was there for him in the same way, and I wonder if it was ever comforting. I could see how it can be for certain situations, especially voluntary stays. You still relinquish control in a voluntary stay in many ways, but maybe in those situations it feels more right and relieving.

I suppose thinking about hospital stays differently helps me to be willing to use that option if needed. I don't think it's needed anymore, but it was certainly close for a bit.

The control thing in the hospital/mental healthcare setting is tough. It really depends on the patient as to what they need to get better. I don't do well if a lot of my control over my life is taken away. But you have to do that in certain situations, like many times for Adam for instance. If someone is in a mental health crisis, with overwhelming feelings of suicide, etc, I guess you sometimes have to save them from themselves. And taking away their control is the only way we know how to do it.

I do appreciate the amount of control I have over my mental healthcare, and I know that it's vastly improved in more recent years. Patient privacy and control are very important, but then that wasn't really right for Adam's case. Perhaps things would have been different if there had been a nurse or doctor who could really take control over his treatment and get him into the programs and housing he really needed but maybe resisted.

Mental healthcare is a very difficult problem in our world, but as all healthcare becomes more personalized, mental healthcare needs to become that way too. A friend recently passed along an article about a blood test that can help doctors determine if someone will respond well to anti-depressants. That is HUGE! And although it's all preliminary research, I have hope that mental healthcare will become less guesswork as we learn more. But we have to be willing to do that. We have to be willing to improve our mental healthcare system based on what we learn, especially if we're going to keep blaming the mass shootings on mental illness. But I won't get on that soapbox today.

I look forward to a day when mental illness is less stigmatized, where mental illness is treated like a real disease, where the healthcare system provides all the resources needed for mental healthcare, and people seek and receive the care that they need.