[Magdalen] Washington Post article on involuntary hospitalization of the ...

[Kate Conant]

I think that although my Uncle John was able to come home from the state
hospital on Thorazine it was Thorazine that caused the heart attack that
killed him at the age of 57 in 1967.   All his siblings lived into their
80s or 90s.

If only lithium had been widely available then.



"What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy, and walk
humbly with your God?"
Micah 6:8

On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 10:21 AM, Kate Conant <kate.conant at gmail.com> wrote:

> The big T may have helped in the short term.  I took it for a while and
> was so glad to stop taking it.  The TCAs were a horror also.  For the past
> 30 years the only things I take (beside an occasional ibuprofen or
> antibiotic) are levothyroxine and lithium carbonate.
>
> "What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy, and
> walk humbly with your God?"
> Micah 6:8
>
> On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 12:23 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
> magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> In a message dated 2/15/2015 11:35:12 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
>> oppenheimerjw at gmail.com writes:
>>
>> Mental  health care has generally been pretty decent; it's only that the
>> electorate  (you and me) absolutely will not pay what it costs to run it
>> correctly, and  never really has.>>>
>> I'm old enough to remember the transition from essentially no
>> drug treatment of mental health issues to the advent of Thorazine  which
>> I think was the first widely utilized psychotherapeutic drug.
>>
>> As a senior in UW-Madison Medical School, we had required day  trips
>> to the three State "mental" hospitals and the "Hospital for the
>> Criminally
>> Insane"
>> for those with violent medical problems.  In every case, I  remember the
>> hospital administrators extolling the wonders of this new drug,
>> Thorazine,
>> with comments like "If you had been taking this tour a year ago
>> (pre-treatment)
>> you would get the impression that mental hospitals are all Bedlam."
>>
>> Pretty much all of that screaming and sometimes violent acting out of
>> patients
>> had been replaced with tranquility.  Was it good treatment for the
>> patients?
>> Probably questionable.  Was it nice for the hospital  staffs?  Quite
>> certainly.
>>
>> In the succeeding years, the population of these four mental  institutions
>> has dropped sharply, with better drugs used on an outpatient basis,  plus
>> the development of "half-way houses" in which an attempt at  ordinary
>> life is arranged for mental patients.
>>
>>
>> David Strang.
>>
>>
>