Television drama-documentary on a doctor with schizophrenia

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Tomorrow night (22nd April) at 10pm Channel 4 in the UK will be broadcasting The Doctor Who Hears Voices. See http://www.channel4.com/health and click on the name of the programme.

It tells the true story of Ruth (not her real name) a young doctor who was suspended from her job after admitting to feeling suicidal. She is not only depressed, she also hears a male voice in her head telling her to do things like kill herself, kill other people. She gets treatment from clinical psychologist Dr Rufus May (his real name, he plays himself).

Dr. May "believes that medicating people like Ruth makes them 'stupid' and can destroy lives. Instead, he tries to break the hold the voice has on Ruth by talking to it and working out who it represents."

He was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 18 and is active in the alternative psychiatry/mental health movement in the UK. His website is http://www.rufusmay.com

This drama-documentary "exposes huge issues over how we treat mental illness and addresses that darkest of questions - what it means to be 'mad'."

(Qoutations are taken from the preview in the Radio Times television and radio guide).

This is not the first medical doctor who has suffered with Schizophrenia...or any other chronic illness for that matter.

Why do people seem so surprised that "professionals" can become ill with such chronic illnesses like the rest of us?

I saw the documentary. As I expected it had a happy ending. Ruth was assessed by the hospital authorities where she worked and allowed to resume her work as a doctor. She didn't tell them she still hears voices.

Her voices were really a high school bully who bullied her for two years.

A psychiatrist who was interviewed said that if he had a mental illness such as schizophrenia, he would answer 'no' to a direct question on a job application form asking if he ever had a mental illness. He agreed with compulsorily detaining schizophrenics in mental hospitals if they hear voices telling them to harm themselves or other people; and if they refuse to take their medication, forcibly restraining them and injecting them with it.

Color me skeptical.

I saw this online and it was very interesting. I don't believe that thing would work for everyone but classic mental help doesn't either.

It is a difficult call to make the idea of do we ban a person on mental health grounds from a job or profession. I work in a place where if you lose your grip on reality you can then have a nasty accident which can either harm you or your coworkers. I know one case of a man in my profession whose mind fell apart, he developed schizophrenia and started to leave things in a dangerous state in the workplace and he thought that Interpol wanted him. It was finally spotted when he went to his supervisor and asked him to turn him into interpol. He was clearly losing his mind so he was taken to see a medical doctor who thought that he needed to be detained under the UK mental health law for a short time in a hospital for observation. A second doctor agreed and he was taken to a mental ward. He then escaped from the mental health ward and walked into a police station and told them that he had just escaped from a mental ward. Because he had escaped the rules changed and he was then kept in the hospital for a very long time. Months later he was released, he had recovered and he has never had any trouble with schizophrenia since.

So it is possible to recover from schizophrenia. I have been told that 33 % of all people with schizophrenia have it once in their life only, 33 % have it for life but can keep it under control with treatment while sadly the last 33 % have the active disease for years and do not respond to treatment. From what I know of the condition I would say that it would frighten the living daylights out of me, I always say that I am grateful that in many ways I am a normal man.

I once encounterd a pair of do-gooders who said that it is wrong to ever discriminate against a person whose grip on reaility is failing. Years ago I was doing a job where I had to be medically cleared for the work, I once asked the boss of the health and safety rules if anyone had ever failed the medical. He told me that part of the medical involves a moment when the medical doctor talks to you to see if you are lucid and have a grip on reality. Some people had failed that test.

I hold a view that a person who seems to not to be either lucid or have a firm grip on reality should be banned from some high risk types of work, until a detailed accessment of them can be made.

These two "do gooders" were horrified by this idea, they thought that it discriminated against people with mental health trouble. But they could never get their mind around the fact that plenty of sane people who show dire character flaws get excluded from. The man who turns up for work drunk, somkes dope in the toliets or steals from work can be a bigger problem than a person with a mental illness.

Given the choice I would rather work with a bunch of people who have depression, schizophrenia and other mental health trouble than work with a bunch of criminals, drunks and yobs.

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

Believe it or not, I am almost in full agreement with the Scientologists and the anti psychiatry crowds (Szasz and that crowd) that psychiatric drugs do more harm than good. They've pretty much ruined my life, which I am trying to regroup, although, in this economy, is next to impossible.