Here is the video I wanted to show my listeners, titled “Outdoors LLC” from YouTube
Well, this was a kind of long podcast. I wanted to talk for a little while about how part of my illness is bipolar which causes me to have elevated moods and at other times sink into a deep depression. All this happens while I can be affected by the part of me that has symptoms of schizophrenia, and for even more fun, I have an anxiety disorder.
One of the reasons I wanted to describe all of these is that while there are likely thousands of people with the exact same diagnosis, all of us are unique and have different needs. We would require different medications and different doses for the same things and may respond better to some medications over others. The reason I say this is because I am often asked what medications I take by well meaning people who either want to ask about them for themselves or for a family member. This makes me very reluctant to name my medications. It can become easy at times to want to play doctor, but without the education and a proper license, over time you will most likely do more harm than good. In this podcast I did name my medications and explained some of their good and bad effects.
One of the interesting things about psychiatry is, if you are a good psychiatrist who is effective in helping patients, you really need to get to know them as well as you know your own mother. That makes two suggestions I have for improving the lives of people in hospitals, one being that they should have more times when the staff bonds with the patients to get to know them better by playing team games or even a game of earth ball soccer. The other thing I think would be cool would be if they were to package together a course like a course in Alberta schools which is called “Career and Life Management” or CALM. It is a mandatory course for all high school students, and teaches them skills from how to make friends or go on dates all the way to how using a cast iron frying pan gives your body needed iron, all the while helping students to understand better where they are going in life and what they will need to do to get there.
I bought one of the books they use in the CALM course a few years ago, which was called “Becoming a Master Student” and really wish I could have taken a course like it back when I was school age. If administrators and doctors were to implement such education in psychiatric hospitals, I am positive you would see less re-admissions and people would get better control over their own lives. Instead of being dependant on psychiatrists and other mental health team members, the patients could partner with them (great book: “I’m not sick, I don’t need help” By Xavier Amador who emphasizes the power of the LEAP method for helping people accept diagnosis and treatment. Listen, Empathize, Agree and Partner). One thing I feel is really a tragedy of hospitals in North America is that a person goes in, attends a few support groups, gets a tweak on their medications and then go back to the same situation that caused them to be hospitalized in the first place.
Why can’t you set up a program to teach patients marketable skills in the hospital such as operating a floor polisher, then hiring them at low wages to do as much of the floor cleaning or cooking or dish washing as they are able to. I lived in a group home for 15 years and we all had to take turns cooking supper and cleaning up after supper the next night and received no pay or priveliges. I loved doing it most of the time, and learned a lot of important cooking and cleaning skills I have been able to put to good use in the ten years now I have been on my own.
Well, mental hospital reform will hopefully come one day. While we are waiting for it, something I want to suggest that I don’t claim any license to is, if you have a family member who you really want to give a nice gift to who lives in a major city, give them 10 $5 coffee gift cards. Tell them to distribute them to homeless people as needed. Often it will get them a food item and a coffee that could help them through some pretty dark times without the giver having to wonder if they will use a $5 bill to buy drugs or alcohol with, and you will be giving the greatest gift ever, a gift that teaches the joy of helping and giving.
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