Return to the Chemistry Experiment

What is it like, this chemistry experiment, you ask.  Somebody did ask, honest.

Prozac Monologues strives to be journalism, not journaling.  I write for education (mine first, then yours), not for therapy.  So when the story turns to the Chemistry Experiment, a topic I write about so often, it gets its own label, I have tried to season my prose only lightly with my personal story.

But the Chemistry Experiment has been excruciatingly personal these last several weeks.  And nowadays, the personal story is one way that journalists frame their reporting.  So here goes.

Michael Hill and Antoinette Tuff: Lesson in Crisis Intervention

On August 20, 2013, at the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Center in Decatur, Georgia
                       -- nobody died.

Tuesday, the first school shooting of the new school year

                       -- didn't happen.

It started the way these things start.  A disturbed young man went off his meds.  He decided he would die that day.  He did what others have done who wanted to die.

Suicide By Cop

The Suicide Monologue

Suicide Humor

They asked for a trigger alert. This is a humor alert. Oh, well.

I realize some people do not find suicide humor humorous. I get that. I respect this opinion and honor the feelings and experiences behind it.

If you have not read Prozac Monologues before, you need to know that it has always aspired to a bent sort of humor. And in honor of the World Health Organization's World Suicide Prevention Day, today's post, a long time coming, is The Suicide Monologue. Watch me while I attempt humor. You don't have to read it. Just know, it is what it is.

Empathy in Health Care

Medical schools are using this video in training. Watch it once just to take it in.

Watch it again.  Which one has schizophrenia?  Which one has bipolar? Which one has PTSD?  Which three are on antidepressants?

Which ones are normal?

Saving Normal - At What Cost?

Rest In Peace, John Ferguson

John Ferguson was executed by the State of Florida on Monday, August 5 at 6:17 p.m. ET.  He killed eight people thirty years ago, and many people can't get too excited about his own death.  I understand that.  As a Christian, I am grieved that my nation kills people to show that killing people is wrong.  But I get it.

The civilized world does not get it.  The United States of America is a member of an elite club, forty-three nations that have executed people in the last ten years (brown in the map below, along with China, Syria, Libya, North Korea -- our good buddies, all of them).  We bear the distinction of being the only member from among the developed nations.

We do place limitations on the death penalty.  Our constitution, since its first passage, prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, the eighth amendment.  Over the years, the Supreme Court has ruled that all forms execution are cruel and unusual, except for lethal injection, the method that Florida used to kill John.

American Medical Association on the Death Penalty

Saving Normal -- The Diagnosis Game

For readers unencumbered by the facts of the matter or any understanding of them, Allen Frances' book Saving Normal is an entertaining romp through the world of psychiatric diagnosis which will support your deepest held suspicions: that there are a few seriously wacko people out there who are very different from the rest of us, but for the most part, mental illness is a sham and you need to just snap out it.

Not to tip my hand, or anything.

The claims made without benefit of facts will take some time to sort through. And a later post will support part of Frances' agenda. In fact, support it enthusiastically. But not this one.

The APA's Cocktail Party, 2009

Farmer Wisdom - For While Waiting

Summer seems like a good time for farmer wisdom, filling in while I am filling out forms for my new psychiatrist appointment.  It's a repeat from a year and a half ago.   It has been getting a few hits lately, bringing it to my attention, and reminding me of two good therapists from my past.  Michael and Liz may or may not be on vacation right now, as they were when I first posted.  In any case, their offices are 2000 miles away, so they may as well be.  I am grateful for my time with the both of them.  I could still use double teaming.

from February 8, 2012:

For When Your Therapist Goes on Vacation