The Ives Wellness Group

A Cautionary Tale

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The deficiencies of the medical paradigm approach to mental health care was made clear to me as I began to work in the field.  One particular case changed my life.  This is that case.

 

​     In the spring of 2010 I (Tim Ives) was contacted by a woman whose daughter had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for about two years.  Her daughter had become dependent on the treatment and the medications that were prescribed for her.  During those hospitalizations she had been diagnosed and labeled as having many different diseases.  The diagnosis changed often and the perscriptions changed also but nothing seemed to help.  Her mother decided that drug therapy was not helping her and sought out my help.  We decided on a very rigorous course of analysis.  She agreed to come see me four times a week.  She also agreed to begin to step down her medications with the goal of getting medication-free.  Our goal, at the very least, was to keep her from needing medications and periodic hospitalizations to survive. 

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     She was very willing to do anything or try anything because she had tried to commit suicide right before her mother came to see me.  She had tried to commit suicide because of a terrible reaction she had to drinking alcohol and taking her medications.  She thought the reaction was caused by the antidepressant she was taking. She described the reaction as the worst feeling she had every had.  Her description made me believe that she had experienced one of the most troubling side effects of any antidepressant-akathisia.  Akathisia is a kind of dysphoria caused by antidepressants that is so terrible that it often leads to suicide or worse.  (It is probably what Robin Williams experienced the night he took his life.)  That is what my patient described.  She felt so bad, she said, that almost anything seemed better to her than the feeling, including suicide.  We agreed that she should not drink alcohol until she was completely free of the medications she was taking.

 

     Over the next months my client was quite serious about her appointments.  They were early in the morning and she rarely missed them or changed them.  Her story unfolded as we worked together.  Her growing-up years had been unremarkable in many ways.  She had been an above-average student who had many interests and musical talent.  When the time, came she applied to college and was accepted.  She went to a college in the northeast.  The transition was particularly hard for her because she had been so close to her family.  Like many students she struggled in her first year.  She found she couldn't handle it.  On one night she went to the campus infirmery and was diagnosed with depression.  She was prescribed medication.  She never righted herself and returned home.  Once home, the failure of the event and the failure of the medication to address her feelings put her in a downward spiral.  She was dignosed as bipolar, schizophrenic, schizo effective disorder, borderline etc. etc.  She was hospitalized again and again.  What might be characterized originally as a" failure to launch" was labeled a severe pathology.  She continued to get worse until she came to me.

 

     As I indicated, our goal was to keep her out of the hospital and to move her off medications.  She did well.  She stepped down her medications and she never mentioned the hospital again.  As the drugs were removed she started to come to life.  She did very well and after about six months she felt ready to return to school.  She was down to taking just one antidepressant by this time.  She made plans to take a couple classes at a nearby university.  On the first day of classes she went to class, registered her vehicle so she could park there, and then perhaps as a celebration went and bought a six pack of beer. She committed suicide that afternoon after having had two beers.  Evidently the akathisia returned.

 

    There was nothing in her behavior or her demeanor that indicated that she was suicidal.  Her mother found a list of to dos written on the morning before she died.  Her last words to me were all about the fact that this was the first step.  Her plan was to move on to campus the next semester.  She was as happy as I had ever seen her.  I believe she suffered the same reaction she had before she came to see me.  In retrospect, I wish I had pushed harder for her to quit that antidepressant.  Everything I read says go slow, and we did.  It was her intention to stop medication completely that fall. 

 

     Since then it has become very evident to me that medication is not the way to get better.   Almost daily I read or hear a story about the failure of medication that too often leads to tragedy.  If a person really wants to be healthy, he or she has to deal with the demons and not just cover them up.  That is why The Ives Wellness Group was formed.  There must be an alternative to the present paradigm.  That is what we offer.