I seem to have experienced a sort of hiatus from blogging as of late. This could be due to a number of factors:
1) An absolutely absurd amount of visitors in August - we didn't go three days without company the whole second half of the month! It was crazy but fun, like we were running our own little bed and breakfast. All the cool kids are coming to Madison to visit, just so you know. It is your turn next.
2) A generally low level of motivation. This is the perfect time for me to be finishing my thesis and I seem to be blocked. Can't write. Can't motivate. But jeesh, the house has never looked so good and the laundry is always done and I sure have been good about responding to emails lately. Ahhhh!
3) Most likely linked to the lack of motivation, a general mood of passivity. Everything has been nice but just a little bit eh lately. I haven't been fired up enough about something to think "wow, that deserves a good blog post..."
Until tonight. Ergh. Tonight, I am annoyed. Perturbed. Maybe even disgusted.
I've been working through some files on one of my individual clients, and looking through her reports makes me want to scream. This little person is so highly medicated that she can hardly tell this from that. It takes me back to the good old days on the adolescent psych ward (working, thank you) where all the kids were so medicated they walked around like zombies in scrubs.
I'd be a hypocrite to say that medicine is totally unnecessary, I know that is not the case and I myself am guilty of popping a pain pill from time to time, but for real. America is the most highly medicated nation - currently 10% of American women take antidepressants, and in a recent study up to 30% of elementary aged children were on medication to treat ADHD. Come on, really? Those kids are not all hyperactive - they just need PE and recess more than once a week, and some boundaries might help too.
So sorry to be the ranting therapist who thinks we all need therapy more than we need drugs, but, well, we do. Check out this article for some more facts: http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/healthcare/a/usmedicated.htm
If this is as depressing for you as it is for me, no worries. Get outside and engage yourself in a good old fashioned workout - it will increase your serotonin and dopamine naturally and at a faster rate than most antidepressant medication. Yeah.
3 comments:
Did you see the article earlier this week about how bipolar diagnoses for kids and teens have increased something like 40% in the last however many years? It's ridiculous - the point being, of course, not necessarily that cases have increased, but that *diagnoses* simply have. And these kids are getting thrown medication before they're even out of puberty. We are so quick to diagnose any normal fluctuations of moods as "disease" - I think it's related to an American inability to recognize sadness as a normal part of the emotional spectrum. Personal pet peeve of mine. And I totally hear ya on the "give 'em some recess, already!" call. No ADD meds necessary if you get away from the frickin video games for a few hours and get some fresh air.
Yes sis, you get it. I did not see that article on bipolar, but I believe it 100%. At the hospital I used to call it "insurance bipolar" because kids would get diagnosed because bipolar allowed for longer hospitalization periods than other illnesses. What? And then you have a 13 year old walking around with a bipolar diagnosis for life...it is truly infuriating. ACK!
one difficulty is that meds are far more reliable than people.
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