h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello there! .. I noticed your posting to one forum or other (I'll leave it up to you to guess as to which one it was), and following my usual link-clicking habit, decided to explore your userspace.. but it's so empty! *blinks*.. ergo I thought that I'd drop you a message to say hi! .. and since your userspace is a little empty, I bear .. .. how are you?

- njan

Hi njan

I appreciate your coming over to say hi, and I'm grateful for you wishing to, not really knowing you or even which threads we've encountered each other on, apart from the Star Wars character one of course - but I've got to say as much as I'm happy you called, I'm upset with you at the moment.

It's just that on visiting your space and conversations, I found a journal entry by Saturnine describing the anxiety attacks she's suffering from, which seems to have turned into an argument over the validity of treatment for mental health problems in general.

Qualitative analyses of the usefulness of medications aside - and sure, it might be a gamble, but *what isn't* - I thought it very unfair to Saturnine to treat her personal journal as a springboard for soapboxing about psychiatric propriety, as she's clearly going through a difficult time, and counting on the support of her friends there.

Apart from that, neurochemistry is the most personal of businesses and as someone said, 'One man's bread is another man's pain'; it can't be right to demonize all forms of treatment when our experience of them is completely personal and what may ruin one's life might save another.

I say all this because I myself suffer from PTSD and take medication for depression and anxiety, without which I'd be a great deal less functional, possibly dead - something which, apart from anything else, might explain the limited scope of my personal space.

Sorry, njan, I had to get that off my chest, as I hope you can understand - I read you've had your own experiences with depression so I'm sure you can appreciate why these things are important. I hope it doesn't intrude on our ability to be friends.

Take care,

C

*smiles*.. thankyou for replying. With response '[treating] her personal journal as a springboard for soapboxing about psychiatric propriety', I intended to do no such thing; as far as I'm concerned, most places in h2g2 are just as good as any others for talking about most topics under the sun.. in deference to the original topic of the thread, I didn't particularly verbosely argue to begin with; what I said was intended as a reaction to something which one hootooer suggested as being a remedy for some of saturnine's problems (in that respect, I consider what I originally started to say to be a devil's advocate's way of ensuring that any help offered to saturnine was as even handed as possible).

Trust me on the fact that were the journal entry to have turned into an argument, you'd know about it.

In any case, as I'd hoped what I was saying said for itself, the reason for my posting was to advocate a view exactly like this; the light in which drugs were being presented in the forum in question was an extremely blinded, positive one, and I don't think that any drugs deserve to be viewed in any such light; even taking the fact that the medical profession have no idea as to any of the side effects of many drugs they use, the mental health profession have no idea even as to the side effects and shortcomings of the drugs which they prescribe which are documented. It's an extremely shoddily regulated and managed field of the profession, as far as I can see. I know at least a dozen people who've been quite seriously screwed over by the profession in this country (the UK) alone, and the number of people I know who've had serious problems due both to incorrect prescriptions of extremely potent drugs and prescriptions based in incorrect and incomplete information are numerous also.

I don't deny that medication DOES have benefits. As I posted, I don't think that it would be used if it didn't; but the first queen elizabeth used powdered mercury as a skin whitening agent, for good reason - powdered mercury whitens the skin extremely effectively. An extreme example, perhaps, but one which illustrates my point.

I apologise for your suffering. .. .. I sympathise: further to depression, I do have experience with similar.

Hopefully continuing discussion on a lighter note,



- njan

Fair enough. I agree with you as far as the range of expertise goes with mental health, as it's probably the last but one frontier in medical science (i'm thinking of gene modification as the last) and desperately needs infinitely more and better research and regulation.

Too often people have suffered a great deal as a consequence of bad mental health services - many have died - but it's dangerous to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" as far as treatment goes, because someone might read such an argument against finding treatment and decide not to look for it, which could be equally damaging to them, and anyone who cares for them.

My point was that that forum was not the place to argue about it. That forum was, as far as I can tell, about Saturnine and how she was feeling. It might have been better to ask her what was causing her distress and what her friends could do to help her.

If someone comes into a room complaining that they've cut themselves, it doesn't help them much to precipitate an argument over the qualities of Dettol vs. Savlon. That's the best argument I can come up with this morning

Now I have to work Hope to talk to you again soon,

C

well, maybe. I'd like to think that there were mitigating factors in saturnine's journal.. .. in any case, if someone comes in complaining that they've cut themselves, and they're heartily told that rubbing earth into the wound will make it much better, I'll be likely to argue - at least for a moment - regardless of the casualty; people are far too apt to take each others' advice when they shouldn't, and not when they should.

Whereabouts do you work?

- njan

in Ipswich, in a cinema. It's been a terminally slow day, and this lunch-hour scoot to the library is in fact the highlight of it. Still, sat around waiting for a customer (and it has been that slow today) is okay, keeping in mind that I can open any one of a choice of 5 doors and be instantly transported to Middle Earth, the North Korean de-militarized zone, the Romulan neutral zone, 19th Century Manhattan (which would appear to be almost completely brown) or 1950's Chicago, and be promised adventure and excitement and really wild things etc..

That's my rationalization anyway. I am free! keep repeating, I am free! Salted or sweet?

I read you're in Southampton Uni - I went to my first ever gig there in 92, living as I was in Andover. The band was Lush, and the event was too. Are you enjoying it there?