Marsha Linehan

Expert on Mental Illness Reveals Her Own Fight - New York Times.

Long interview with some video of the pioneer of Dialectical Behavioural Therapy - which I know from experience is very helpful. She reveals her own struggles with mental illness, her hospitalisation and treatment (including drugs and ECT):

Any real treatment would have to be based not on some theory, she later concluded, but on facts: which precise emotion led to which thought led to the latest gruesome act. It would have to break that chain — and teach a new behavior.

"I was in hell," she said. "And I made a vow: when I get out, I'm going to come back and get others out of here."

Tobacco pushers to sue government

Philip Morris to sue if Australia puts all cigarettes in plain green wrappers

Tobacco firm claims Canberra's ban on logos and other packaging restrictions will lose it billions

Guardian.

Note that the UK govt is talking about doing this as well! As I said earlier.

"The Office for National Statistics doesn't publish tobacco death rates on it's website but theNHS reckons the deaths attributable to tobacco in England in 2008 was 84,000. That's about 236 a day, or 10 per hour! So 25 in 2.5 hours. Assuming the same smoking patterns in the rest of the UK that's about 98,000 for the UK, giving 268 per day, 11 per hour, and 25 in 136 minutes."

Tobacco is a killer. Just ban it. Just make it illegal and fuck the greedy bastards who supply it. Drug pushers.

Fibromyalgia Drugs

Drug Class Review: Drugs for Fibromyalgia: Final Original Report [Internet].

Smith B, Peterson K, Fu R, McDonagh M, Thakurta S.

Portland (OR): Oregon Health & Science University; 2011 Apr.
Drug Class Reviews.

"We compared the effectiveness and harms of tricyclic antidepressants, serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, noradrenergic and specific serotonergic reuptake inhibitor, norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor, serotonin receptor antagonist, antiepileptic drugs, and skeletal muscle relaxants in adults with fibromyalgia."

Abstract and conclusions online via PubMed.

Good article on so-called Chemical Imbalances

The Brain Is Not Made Of Soup - Neuroskeptic

"Neither – in relation to the fastest rising [mental health] diagnoses – is there any evidence of chemical imbalances in the brains of patients. In other words, the problem the [psychiatric] drugs are supposed to solve is an illusion."

"No-one has ever measured the chemical composition of a living human brain."

Neuroskeptic compares the Brain to soup, and treating mental illness as tweaking the ingredients. He doesn't do this to belittle or trivialise, he does it to show what a blunt instrument psychiatry is, and how dosing people with chemicals that affect brain chemistry can be a very doubtful way to get results.

Cameron is a Fucking HYPOCRITE

David Cameron intervenes over BBC plan to axe his local news service

Guardian.

There is NO BENEFIT to Being Debilitated!

Glancing at the disabilities and welfare blogs I read I can see that the situation is dire in the UK. We're doomed basically. All kinds of other policy initiatives introduced by the manic phase new government are being reversed or rethought because they are incredibly unpopular. Welfare reform is not unpopular. And one has to ask whether this is because from day one, aided by a parasitic news media culture, the DWP waged a propaganda war against the benefit system, often stretching the truth to make their point, and making the most extreme abuses seem like the norm for all benefit claimants? Or is the popularity of welfare reform really what people want? I would argue that it is a clear case of manufacturing consent.

The very language here is fucked. The welfare payment is not a benefit, it's a fucking consolation for losing your job (so often because of economic forces outside your control) and/or becoming so ill that one cannot work. It's a minimal payment - and they reinforce the minimal in their communication with the applicant: "this is just enough to stop you dying, but don't get cocky".

There is no benefit to becoming so ill you have to stop working. Even Pollyanna would struggle to look on the bright side of debilitating illness - oh yes it's great not having to work, and the charity shops have the most intriguing range of hand-me-downs; if only I were not in constant pain and able to walk I would feel I was the luckiest person in the world. NOT. And welfare is not claimed, it is applied for certainly, but it is granted by the powers that be whose mercy we are at, and we are never allowed to forget it! Rather than a benefit claimant I would prefer to be known as a Consolation Grant Applicant, and the payment to be called a grant rather than a benefit.

The trouble is no one is listening to people who rely on welfare payments. All they see is someone getting something for nothing. So, even more than bankers, the system targets those who receive welfare, and the general population either supports the measure or quietly turns away and let's it happen. Pray you never get ill - all you able bodied people out there. Pray. Because once you do become ill, you become "outcast".

NHS Reform

From Bananas in Pyjamas: Some free advice on achieving 'world class NHS productivity' McKinsey style.