Why take drugs specifically designed to send you insane?
'Yield' was completed in 1997 and released in 1998. In the spring of 1997, I had made a decision to stop taking medications that I had been taking daily since 1988.
I was coming off of a lot of psyche meds and other things.
People are medicated and TV is one of the things that they are medicated with.
I am a rapid-cycling manic-depressive, bi-polar one disorder, which means I can have thirty or forty episodes a year, and I used to have thirty to forty episodes a year.
I think, when it comes to psychiatry, that a lot of people are overmedicated. I think when it comes to ECT a lot of people go through too much. I think there's a lot of guesswork in psychiatry.
In the history of the treatment of depression, there was the dunking stool, purging of the bowels of black bile, hoses, attempts to shock the patient. All of these represent hatred or aggression towards what depression represents in the patient.
In a psychiatric hospital, a lot of people believe that people on TV are talking to them directly through the screen. I'm with about 500 of these people, and I'm on TV every Friday night. As I was queuing up for breakfast one morning, one guy nearly jumped out of his skin. My first thought was to go 'Woooo!'
Although no one treatment will ever be a panacea, research studies indicate that cognitive therapy can be helpful for a variety of disorders in addition to depression.
Antidepressants can have troubling side effects and are addictive for some people.
The use of psychoactive drugs - including both antidepressants and antipsychotics - has exploded...[yet] 'the tally of those who are disabled...increased nearly two and a half times.
Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn't address the social causation of mental illness either.
My medications make me easier to deal with. They don't interfere with my creativity or turn me into a zombie or dull my real personality. They help me connect with people, allow me to stay calm when situations seem overwhelming, and help keep my thoughts from racing out of control. They help me leave the house when I'm scared to. They help.
