Naomi Judd's Suicide May Reveal the Depressing State of Mental Health TX

Medications are big business and billions are spent on pills for mental health disorders, yet the suffering continues because it is more complex than we know.

Photo by Gadiel Lazcano on Unsplash

People are desperate for relief from mental health disorders despite the dramatic claims of “breakthrough treatments” that don’t work adequately. Why? Because we may still be blindly stumbling through the mind’s billions of neuron networks that make up who we are and how we live our lives. Read the ad warnings on the bottom of your TV screen, and you’ll find two disturbing side effects of current meds; suicide or death.

Advances have been made, but IMHO, they have been aimed at simple solutions, primarily neurotransmitter-affecting medications, that bring on yet more problems. We still don’t know what causes all the mental health disorders identified. And, please keep in mind the word “identified” because the workgroups will probably refine what is there and what needs to be included in the future.

I believe mental health disorders, regardless of which one you pick (depression, for one), are like cancer—many exist, but we are still trying to “cure” them. And, yes, they even tried in the darker ages of psychiatry to cut out the mental health disorders via hysterectomy, removal of teeth, lobotomy, drilling holes in the head, bloodletting, or injections of insulin to promote a coma.

TV ads show us happy homemakers, paint sales clerks, supermarket workers, and families at play, yet they treat an iatrogenic disorder brought on by the original pharmaceutical medication. Do you think tardive kinesia (TD) springs up as a separate disorder? It’s a side effect of medication, and some of its symptoms can be very frightening for patients. They include:

• Blinking rapidly.

• Chewing motions.

• Grimacing or frowning.

• Smacking lips or making sucking motions with the mouth.

• Sticking out your tongue or probing the inside of your cheeks with your tongue.

• Make repetitive finger movements like playing the piano.

• Thrust or rock your pelvis.

• Walk with a duck-like gait.

• Trouble breathing (when TD affects the muscles of the diaphragm).

Take a look in the “Bible” of disorders (the DSM), and you won’t find TD as a disorder. You WILL find it as a side effect of a medication in the digital version of the Physician’s Desk Reference. Do they say it’s a side effect or a rare side effect? Different medicines can have other side effects, both common and rare.

Realizing the limitations of current pharmaceutical and invasive treatments (ECT, vagus nerve stimulation, TMS), researchers are now reaching out into the once-forbidden areas of psychedelics. The work seems promising, but again, is this the entire web of a mental disorder being affected or only a portion?

Medical science is still on a mission to find the answers to many disorders. Mental ones may be intertwined with physical ones (diabetic patients experience depression and so do Alzheimer’s patients). There are no easy solutions, so we have to hope that treating what is apparent may provide sufficient relief to the patients until a more comprehensive treatment is available.

I am not indicating that psychiatric/psychological treatments are unwarranted; they are needed. Be aware of the effects, the length of treatment before change can be expected, and the future possibilities. Keep yourself informed and read everything with a careful eye to the negatives and the positives.