Blow me down - a positive spin on drugs for mental illness!

I was a bit hard on The Age a post or two ago, but I was very pleased to read this with my morning cup of tea. An article outlining what can happen to mentally ill folk if they don't take their medication, including suicide, hostility toward others and jail.

Without a course of antidepressants when I needed it I would be dead. Period. Without antipsychotic medication my Aunt would probably be in jail. The article stated that the media didn't help with the stigma associated with drugs for mental illness, but from my experience, neither did my family and friends. Here's a snippet from a letter I sent somewhere else, it sums up my feelings nicely!

As a sufferer for twenty years, I have seen it all. From people who will go out of their way for you as though you are an emotional invalid, to people who pretend they don’t know, to the contemptuous and dismissive "get over it" types. Here are some examples, I am sure fellow sufferers will be familiar:

Dismissal of suicide attempts as “a cry for help” or “attention seeking”.

Angry accusations of selfishness after suicide attempts “how could you do this to us?” (irony alert).

Asking loudly and in company how your “depresso drugs” are going, and whether they are working yet.

Jokes about borrowing your prescription medication “to pep me up, I’ve had a bad day.”

Being told you are no better than a heroin addict or alcoholic because you have a “chemical dependency”.

People tip-toeing around you as though you have been recently bereft.

Accusations of “putting it on” to get out of commitments or obtain prescribed uppers.

It's really no wonder people resist seeking help and taking medication. If they do eventually seek help, they keep it under their hats. Recovering from depression would be much easier without having to cope with the attitudes of thoughtless and ignorant people. The people I am most grateful for are the pragmatic ones. They accept that I am sick, satisfy themselves that I am getting treatment and ask if there is anything they can do. Unfortunately, they are the exception.