Why Did I Go Off My Medication?
In this PsychCentral.com Show podcast with fellow bipolar blogger and mental health advocate Gabe Howard and his co-host, Vincent M. Wales, I read a letter to the televangelist who inspired me to go off my medication and we discuss how to respond to that person’s misguidance.
In this episode of the Psych Central Show, hosts Gabe Howard and Vincent M. Wales welcome Katie Dale, a young woman with bipolar disorder who was convinced by a pastor to discontinue her medication and instead put her faith in God to heal her.
Unsurprisingly, going off her meds plunged Katie into a serious bipolar episode. She resumed her medications and has been living well ever since.
Katie shares with listeners a touching, yet very pointed letter that she wrote to this pastor explaining how she understood his motives. But, she cautions, this doesn’t change the fact that his advice was harmful.
Check it out here.
For follow up discussion, tell me your thoughts in the comments on why you think those with bipolar find it so tempting to not take their medication?
0 Comments
Foghorn The IKonoclast
Thank you for not making any treatment modality as some kind of total fix. For example even DBT. I never try something in a hope, except God. The genesis of one treatment into a panacea is a cause for concern. I am sure that in the next years a new best therapy will be introduced. ECT is one that will become altmodich.
Katie R. Dale
Hi Foghorn. Thanks for your feedback. To be clear, there are methods out there that do work. I’m proof that CBT and daily medication work…for me. But yes, you cannot pigeonhole all those with bipolar into one standard treatment. I am looking forward to what other treatments scientists and pharmacology discover, no doubt. I think each person’s treatment will look different, but one with bipolar definitely cannot afford to go without it, whichever treatment he/she chooses. God bless!
Foghorn The IKonoclast
There is no way that ECT is really a treatment modality. The pernicious insult to the brain and the purported effects are a bit dodgy.
Electrical impulses through the brain is counter-intuitive. When medicine says how this reboot happens is a mystery. And if the patient lauds it as some sort of panacea, well, that logic is specious, at best.
CBT and Mindfulness are far better treatment modalities. Less invasive and a lot better.
DBT has some inherent flaws and they are major. To date, the methodology in essence trades out the emotion and enters a new calculus. It inserts blind acceptance and factors out the underlying issues. Theoretical for pragmatic outcomes.