Apathy of Medications Can Kill

Today I read a story on Yahoo about a man who died in Pennsylvania. He had reached a point of critical pain during a snow storm and, 30 hours after the first call to 911, the paramedics finally arrived to claim the dead body. There were several calls made to 911 as well as attempts made to reach the man before he became just a body. The city has taken responsibility for this tragedy; already beginning an investigation into the actions taken that day, as well as attempting to rectify the problem. Although this is an appropriate reaction, the blame cannot be laid entirely upon the shoulders of the city, nor even the individuals involved.

The couple involved, according to the article, met while reasonably dealing with their mental illnesses. As a survivor of the psychological game, I take particular interest in the fact that these two were "appropriately" medicated, but were unable to make the appropriate decisions for their own health. As I read the article I wondered at what point would it have been necessary for this couple to angrily demand emergency services. They were told to walk to meet the ambulance. They canceled the call. Is this even acceptable?

It is clear that there were individuals who made professional errors. That's being addressed, and is not the point here. There is something much more important to be addressed, that most people are going to miss. Although I do have issues with the generalizations made through the diagnosis of various "mental illnesses", I understand that specific types of people will allow apathy to kill them. It's not exactly suicide, but many of these people have had suicidal thoughts, actions or issues of some sort in the past. This is why so many of them are doped to the point of apathy. I suppose it is better to force people to mere existence instead of allowing them to feel a complete range of emotions that might case their existence to cease.

These medications have a variety of side effects, most of which are available for perusal on their web sites or a doctor. Many of them will even refer to the possible impact their chemicals may have on thought process, but none of them will refer to the dangerous apathy many people on these medications have. It may not be just the cause of the medications; people who have been told they are deficient often lose personal value, which I believe also contributes to this status. My experience has been, it is the ones who are medicated who are in the most danger, however.

Because when you are known to get emotionally out-of-control, you tend to over suppress them. When you have gotten irrationally angry and have wanted to react to that anger in unacceptable ways, those moments that require an angry reaction can be pushed aside. After all, it is important to not over-react.

So you have situations like this, where someone who has been medicated in order to control their emotions, has been unable to re-act to a life threatening circumstance. I am not over reacting. Who will stand up for the "crazy people" when they cannot stand up for themselves? Those of us who have been diagnosed with Bi-Polar Disorder, Clinical Depression, or other "mental illnesses" have been lead to believe that experiencing our emotions and acting on them is usually inappropriate. We are given drugs to numb us, irrelevant to the uncontrollable outside interference of everyday life: This combination of chemicals may work well today, but what about when I am trying to deal with a death and my body has something more than just chemicals to make me depressed? What do I do when I know a situation is not right, but I am afraid to get angry?

I have my answers, or at least I am finding them by choosing to direct my own experiment, since I am the guinea pig. Not everyone has that option. That is when it becomes very important for family and friends to get involved. Sometimes those very medications that makes you beloved "crazy" get through the day, are the exact same chemicals that keep them from seeking help when they need it. It is very easy for some of us to die from things like pneumonia or appendicitis even in a world where these things are successfully healed every day. Our personal and physical worth is skewered. More often than not, we understand that pain and our emotional status are directly connected. We are stressed, so naturally our pain will increase. These are the moments when we count on those nearest us to tell us, "This is more than just inside your head" and make us seek aid.

More likely than not, we don't want to be a bother or we are afraid to force the issue. Not everyone has the privilege of understanding that it is sometimes appropriate to be angry and to act on that anger. Even "sane" people have difficulties with this idea, much less someone who has been told they have some kind of "emotional issue". Being angry is rarely the problem, but in how you act on that anger. It is perfectly acceptable to yell at an emergency worker who is not doing their job. Hopefully you don't have to raise your voice in order to actually be heard, but insisting is different than railing. It is OK to stand up for yourself and to be assertive without being aggressive. It is even, on occasion, acceptable to be aggressive; you have a right to survive too.

Each situation calls for unique reactions. It is not right to ask someone to give up their ability to react, unless you are going to guarantee their safety. When someone is medicated, the balance between control and monitoring gets shifted. The idea of medications used for "mental illness" is to allow the user to monitor their emotions in order to be more successful at surviving each day, not to make them so apathetic as to endanger themselves.

"Mental illness" in much more than just surviving one day at a time. It's surviving the big stuff too. As a society we pay too much attention to maintaining a specific, instead of learning to deal with inevitable change. It will be a long while before people understand that our emotions can save us as easily as kill us.