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32 votes
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Concussion treatment: the insidious myth about resting protocols that even doctors still believe
22 votes -
Few states cover fertility treatment for same-sex couples, but that could be changing
4 votes -
There is no evidence that CBD products reduce chronic pain, and taking them is a waste of money and potentially harmful to health, new research finds
58 votes -
The war on recovery: how the US is sabotaging its best tools to prevent deaths in the opioid epidemic
17 votes -
Cystic fibrosis breakthrough has given patients a chance to live longer
18 votes -
Feeling lost with mental health treatment
At 22 years old, after months long assessments, I have been diagnosed with severe ADHD, depression and moderate anxiety. Here is a quick timeline of my experience: May - August : I started CBT...
At 22 years old, after months long assessments, I have been diagnosed with severe ADHD, depression and moderate anxiety. Here is a quick timeline of my experience:
- May - August :
- I started CBT therapy and Sertraline 50mg
- Gradually I was upped to the a dose of 75mg.
- In this whole period I did not experience any improvements or side effects, except a loss of appetite in the first few days.
- September:
- I started taking Methylphenidate 18mg and went back to just 50mg of Sertraline.
- From the first day I had felt a sentiment of calmness and control. But it slowly faded away and I still felt I could not concentrate on things or act productive.
- I also stopped going to therapy as I saw that CBT was not effective for me.
- October - November:
- This was a completely different month. I wasn't fully in control of my attention span but it was much better than I've ever been. What was more shocking was how internally I felt at peace and something that I'd describe now as euphoric (as I assume this was just a side effect of the medication). U
- Until mid november I was actually going around telling people I think I might not be depressed anymore, as I had felt for the first time in a way that I haven't felt since early childhood. I was able to accomplish incredible feats related to discipline and I saw my academic results improving greatly. Unfortunately this sentiment slowly faded away and I was back to my old self by the end of November.
- December - Now I was upped to 36mg of Methylphenidate and I noticed a much better control of my attention but unfortunately I have not felt that feeling of relief again. And as it seems the effectiveness of the dose diminished from the first few days to now.
Since December I've had numerous breakdowns, feeling completely exhausted and burnt out. I suffered from classic problems of procrastination starting to work on difficult projects only a couple of days before the deadline and it was all crashing down. I submitted multiple disgustingly low quality pieces of work because I just did not work in time enough but the few days I did work I did incredible amounts of effort and I do feel like the pills helped me stay focused. After this deadline period though I was just met with my normal depression symptoms where I had a long streak of days that I could not even get out of bed or brush my teeth.
I don't know what more to do. I always knew I was broken and needed help. And for all my life I thought that seeing a psychiatrist is a last resort in case "I can't fix myself" on my own. Now it's been almost a whole year and I am in a critical time period where I need to excel and put in the work but I find myself succumbing to my symptoms while jumping up and down with the doses of some pills that barely seem to have an effect.
I didn't have many people around me from the start, and many of them would not understand my condition at all (nobody from my family does). But now it seems that even the few that were empathetic I have unfortunately tired out. I've heard my fair share of bad remarks that have gradually demoralised me (ADHD is not real. I'm just lazy. I just like to complain. etc) and due to the fact that I also have codependency problems this has greatly hurt me and made me feel like I am completely alone and nobody cares for my troubles or has my wellbeing in their best interest. Right now I just wish I'd know what to do. I wish there was some clear step by step goal oriented way to "happiness" or at least normality. I don't even know what more to tell my psychiatrist other than how I don't feel well, which is what I've been telling him since the start.
If you've been through a similar journey, I'd love to hear your experience and any advice you wish you had received earlier.
33 votes - May - August :
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Finland used to have one of the highest suicide rates in the world – how the country halved it and saved countless lives
28 votes -
Rare genetic mutation allows woman to feel no pain
17 votes -
The man in room 117 – Andrey Shevelyov would rather live on the street than take antipsychotic medication. Should it be his decision to make?
21 votes -
Scientists document first-ever transmitted Alzheimer’s cases, tied to no-longer-used medical procedure
28 votes -
AI may spare breast cancer patients unnecessary treatments
5 votes -
Vibrating capsule developed as an obesity treatment
19 votes -
Kidney stone breakthrough procedure at UW called 'game changer' for patients
36 votes -
The Ozempic effect is coming for everything from kidney to heart disease treatments
12 votes -
Distinct immune, hormone responses shed light on mysteries of long COVID: search of treatments for a lingering sickness that is both debilitating and puzzling
12 votes -
Life-changing cystic fibrosis treatment wins US$3-million Breakthrough Prize
15 votes -
The difference between migraine and sinus headache
20 votes -
A new mode of cancer treatment
8 votes -
What was the most valuable technique you have learnt to manage or improve your mental health?
A recent thread had me reflecting on my own mental health journey and what really made a difference for me, I was interested in opening a discussion about what other people found most valuable...
A recent thread had me reflecting on my own mental health journey and what really made a difference for me, I was interested in opening a discussion about what other people found most valuable too. I'll add my own as a comment.
49 votes -
I’m an ER doctor. Here’s how I’m already using ChatGPT to help treat patients.
14 votes -
Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half, says ‘thrilling’ study
11 votes -
One-hour operation could cure prostate cancer by destroying tumours with electric currents
11 votes -
Forget designer babies. Here’s how CRISPR is really changing lives.
6 votes -
Fifth person confirmed to be cured of HIV
13 votes -
Long COVID now looks like a neurological disease, helping doctors to focus treatments
4 votes -
UK girl with deadly inherited condition is cured with gene therapy on NHS
9 votes -
In a first, doctors treat fatal genetic disease before birth
5 votes -
Denmark is using Patient Reported Outcome questionnaires to improve medical care – can the patient's perception of the disease become part of the treatment?
4 votes -
Belgian scientists develop improved treatment for heart failure
4 votes -
How a false science ‘cure’ became Australia’s contribution to the pandemic
5 votes -
I want to give psilocybin a try
Insight once came to me after I was prepped for a surgical procedure. As my body's weight began to evaporate, a pain I had never recognized, but which must have always been sounding in the...
Insight once came to me after I was prepped for a surgical procedure. As my body's weight began to evaporate, a pain I had never recognized, but which must have always been sounding in the background noise of my being, vanished. The superadhesive worry--which sometimes frightened others as much as myself, that in order to socialize, I had learned to sometimes twist into a temporary shape resembling charm--came unstuck and peeled away. Then followed a great thought, a mandate for how I should spend the remainder of my life. Also, I needed to poop. But more than that, I needed to get out of this semi-public hospital bed and to a private space immediately, so I could allow this cosmic insight a moment to fully bloom. Time was against me. Anesthetized, I knew I was slipping toward, maybe even over, the falls past which I would forget everything of this experience until a groggy post-procedure awakening brought dull daylight and its senseless aches back to me. I had to somehow save the thought. I searched, but the bathroom gave up no markers, no specimen cup labels to write on. I wondered about tearing toilet paper into little letters, hiding them above the cabinet. But would I remember to return to read the message? With an increasingly calm desperation, I dug my nails into the flesh of my hand and repeated again and again the life-saving insight delivered during communion with the world that lay beyond pain. Please remember, please remember this thought.
When I regained consciousness, it was waiting for me like a friend who had lost patience, and now seemed much less attractive. What I had somehow stolen from the gods, secreted in my closed palm through a swim across the river Lethe, was this message: “Do Drugs.”
I had realized that analysis, working on the problem of myself both mentally and verbally, had won me no appreciable gains. Insight, I had. But relief, happiness, an improved outlook? Nothing I had done had really helped me feel better. Anesthesia instantly had. These aren’t the words of an addict coming on-line. I was a reluctant user of any substance. However, in the years following I forced myself to again undertake drug trials with my psychiatrists. Methodically, I worked through every class, waltzed backward through the eras of drugs, danced off-label with each oddball wallflower, ingested every twisted molecule to ever win over the FDA with a promise of psychiatric benefit and maybe some that merely had intrigued one of my more historically-curious doctors. When Eddie Haskell, MD wanted to resurrect a drug of the bad old days just to see what it’d do to a person, I was the patient with his hand out.
I overslept and didn’t sleep. I gained and lost a third of my body weight. My head felt like a styrofoam block, then like the slate of a blackboard being scraped with tableware. I was more or less charged, sweaty, sensitive to light, and shaky. Some drugs make you feel like Benjamin Braddock in his birthday diving suit. Others make you feel like an amnesiac idiot in Benjamin Braddock’s birthday diving suit. A common theme emerges. These substances could help me feel slower, distant from the world, claustrophobic, clammy, sensorily distorted. Sometimes, they dulled my anxiety, or dried my hair-trigger tear ducts, but they accomplished this through impairment, and very clumsily. I have never been drunk, but I think it’s like a drunk traffic cop: success in psych meds comes about by the stopping of certain avenues, slowing up of traffic, blocking lawful turns. And it’s sometimes noted in the overall impact that fewer crashes have occurred. To me this is not success. Impairment so far hasn't been healing for me. I want my turn at quoting the line, "I feel like myself again."
And so, my heart sinks at every day's new headline about psychedelics. If you follow health news at all, you know they are a hot topic, showing a ridiculous amount of promise. Despite fitting the diagnostic profile, my former home was far from anywhere with signups for studies. I reached out to several "clinics" offering psychedelic-assisted therapy. They struck me as resembling many legal weed shops--loads of young bros polishing their presentation and sanitizing an extortionate drug deal in hopes of financing a Tesla. With fees starting at 8x the plane ticket to administer and contextualize a drug that costs less than $20 a dose, I wouldn't credit their soft patter as containing much idealism.
And here I am--for other reasons besides. Yes, a part of me thought living here would put legal psychedelics within my reach, but I'm not seeing any opportunities. Now I'm kicking myself for never having tried to cultivate mushroom spores, never having ventured to ask acquaintances for a hand. I'm marooned here and psilocybin is about blow up in the States.
20 votes -
Norway is offering drug-free treatment to people with psychosis
17 votes -
Electric shocks to the tongue can quiet chronic ringing ears
10 votes -
Effect of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients with Covid-19
9 votes -
Eli Lilly says its monoclonal antibody cocktail is effective in treating Covid-19
7 votes -
Trump’s antibody treatment was tested using fetal cells obtained through abortion
18 votes -
97,000 people got convalescent plasma. Who knows if it works?
7 votes -
Hydroxychloroquine: "Extra-scientific factors overrode clear-cut medical evidence"
4 votes -
Study finds hydroxychloroquine may have boosted survival, but other researchers have doubts
5 votes -
US FDA pulls emergency use authorization of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19
6 votes -
Doctors express glimmers of hope as they try out new approaches against coronavirus
5 votes -
Miscounted - Kate Daly's story of being sick with COVID-19 for seven weeks while receiving a false negative test result
4 votes -
The latest obstacle in the search for a coronavirus treatment: Too many drug trials
3 votes -
Remdesivir in adults with severe COVID-19: A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicentre trial
4 votes -
Analysis of treatment with hydroxychloroquine for 368 patients in US veterans hospitals shows more deaths, no benefit
24 votes -
Read about a new COVID-19 treatment study? It probably won't work
5 votes -
Ultrasound destroys eighty percent of prostate cancers in one-year study
8 votes -
Long-awaited cystic fibrosis drug could turn deadly disease into a manageable condition
9 votes -
Eighty years on, the debate over electro-convulsive therapy continues
11 votes