A moment that changed me: when the doctor told me I was psychotic | Anonymous

I was sitting in my living room along with a social worker, mental health nurse and my baffled parents the day the doctor told me I was “psychotic”. It felt like a dream. Just a week before, suffering from anxiety and depression, I had taken leave from the training course I was on. A week of shuffling around the house followed.

Like many people, I was determined to “escape” my unhappiness in any way possible, but thankfully lacked the conviction to do anything about it. Soon I became convinced I had committed some sort of sin that I could never articulate: TV programmes and songs fed a narrative in my mind which was impossible to write down now – it simply made no sense. It involved God, the devil, my boss and the professionals around me, all of whom were part of some major conspiracy reminiscent of The Truman Show. These delusions were common signs of psychosis, a condition that can stem from deep depression.

During my own episode of psychosis I was, in medical terms, detached from reality. But that simple message was not what I heard in the stigma-ridden word, psychotic. It conjured up something very different, and very upsetting: serial killers and fictitious villains. Unsurprisingly, this added more weight to my own delusional and self-loathing narrative.

This was a life-changing moment for me. I didn’t realise it then, but I was experiencing for the first time the true impact of misused words. According to the NHS, somebody who is psychotic will “perceive things differently to those around them; this might involve hallucinations and delusions”. But the word with which “psychotic” is so regularly interchanged is “psychopathic”, defined as a “chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behaviour”.

The two are not linked, and they are certainly not the same. Yet a glance through any film review section, in any newspaper or magazine, will probably suggest something different. As the mental health charity Mind states on its website, “lots of people wrongly think that the word ‘psychotic’ means ‘dangerous’”. As I sat in my living room, being told I was psychotic, I interchanged the word with “dangerous” and felt myself spiral deeper into a delusion of guilt. “So I have done something wrong … maybe I am an evil person,” I thought.

I spent 10 days in a psychiatric hospital, silent and shy. Every patient was a character in my “story”, as were the nurses. I said very little and did even less, but my mind was racing. Like many psychotic patients, I was convinced the nurses were out to get me, and that I was being punished for something. My fantasies of having committed a great sin escalated as I was taunted by one patient who believed she was the devil, and offered salvation by another who sang religious songs and walked around the ward with arms outstretched. We were all orbiting “reality” in our own ways.

Like many people who experience any kind of deep depression I lacked hope, but my warped state of mind took that further

It wasn’t until I had taken the right drugs and rebalanced various chemicals in my brain that I began to listen to the professionals who were there to help me. I read up on psychosis and had several sessions with a community mental health nurse. Listening to my reflections on the negative associations of the word “psychotic”, he explained how common my feelings were in his clients. “That’s the media for you,” he said, brimming with frustration.

He’s right. Examples of journalists’ misuse of the word “psychotic” are everywhere. Trainspotting’s Begbie is described as “psychotic” in practically every review I have read; ranging from the Guardian to the Sun (the latter also describes Begbie as “psychopathic”, using the terms interchangeably). On the Huffington Post, you can find a countdown of The Most Psychotic Movie Villains of All Time, featuring everyone from Freddy Krueger to Norman Bates. A website called allthetests.com, billing itself as “an exciting exploration into your personality and IQ”, allows you to partake in a light-hearted quiz entitled Are You a Psychotic Killer?, claiming it will help you decide “whether or not you should be locked away forever to keep you from killing everyone!” Even if, after all this, you look for a definition of the word in the online dictionary Merriam-Webster, the context given is as follows: “the identity of the psychotic murderer known as the Zodiac Killer remains an intriguing puzzle”.

Meanwhile, Dictionary.com unhelpfully lists “psychopath” as a synonym. I have no doubt that I would have spiralled less, and experienced fewer delusions about my own morality and guilt, were it not for the way mental health terminology is misused.

My life has changed a lot since that day. I’ve returned to work and count myself lucky to be among those who love their job. Yet my life today seemed impossibly out of reach two years ago. Like many people who experience any kind of deep depression I lacked hope, but my warped state of mind took that further. Interpreting my psychotic thoughts with hindsight, I was convinced my future would consist of prison, some sort of pact with the devil and a showdown with lots of malevolent nurses.

Unless I’m in for a big surprise, none of this has or will turn out to be a reality. My mind played tricks on me; the truth was that I was going through an episode, and episodes pass. The life and happiness that felt so out of reach was, in reality, waiting for me just the other side of a hospital spell.

I am fortunate to have been free of psychotic episodes since 2014. But for many people these episodes come and go frequently. The misuse of the word is everywhere, and the associations it carries as a result will only help to escalate people’s symptoms. So please remember: psychotic does not mean psychopathic, violent or dangerous: it is about perceiving things differently to everyone else around you. With the help of the media, and the general public, we could all have a positive change in perception.

• Read about psychosis on the Mind website. The NHS explains many aspects on this page

Comments on this article will be premoderated

A moment that changed me: when the doctor told me I was psychotic | Anonymous

I have vulvodynia – but countless gynaecologists dismissed my agony | Anonymous

[unable to retrieve full-text content]

Statistics say that one in six women will contract this painful condition. So why did it take years and endless misdiagnoses before I was properly treated?

It was after a spate of kidney infections that I started experiencing intimate pain, including a burning and stinging sensation on the skin around my vulva whenever I attempted to sleep with my partner or insert a tampon. I was a student at the time and the first move of the campus GP was to test me for chlamydia. Although this came back negative, I was tested for the same infection a further three times over the following months. Then I was sent to a sexual health clinic, despite the fact I had one long-term partner and my situation had not changed. Assumptions were being made about me, I felt, because I was a student, and I was embarrassed that neither my GP nor the clinic staff would believe I was having safe sex.

Related: What are your experiences of getting help for gynaecological problems? | Sarah Marsh

Related: 10 things you need to know about vaginas

Continue reading…

I have vulvodynia – but countless gynaecologists dismissed my agony | Anonymous

The secret life of an oncologist: witnessing the most painful and intimate moments of life | Anonymous

People assume that oncology is all doom, gloom and death. To be honest it can be, but thankfully not all of the time, or else nobody could cope with doing it.

Cancer can be a disease of dreadful retrospectives – that lump that was looked at but not biopsied; that mole that was judged to be OK. These patients and their families are justifiably angry. Others have refused to see what was plainly staring them in the face.

For most of our patients the actual diagnosis of cancer has been given to them in another ward, and when they come to us they are pleased there are still options that can prolong their lives even if we cannot cure their illness. Surgery is usually restricted to relieving obstructions or draining fluids that cause discomfort. What is most commonly used is chemotherapy in different forms, and radiation. The treatment that is chosen is the result of many tests and a lot of accumulated experience. Oncology is very much a team effort, with everybody working together.

Most people have little idea about the kind of discomfort that chemotherapy entails.Vomiting, endless nausea and a totally washed-out feeling associated with a really bad stomach bug is usually experienced during most chemotherapies. Depending on the type, it can also knock your immune system badly leading to life-threatening infections if you are unlucky.If there is hope for recovery at the end of treatment, it is easy to support the decision to go through with it. But it might only be possible to prolong life for a few months and if that entails such sickness and other side-effects the choice of what is the right thing to do is not so clear.

A big part of life on the oncology ward is pain relief. Sometimes people are admitted almost howling in pain. They have stayed at home, without much more than paracetamol, and at some point it becomes too much for both them and their family to handle. To be able to help them get control of their pain and regain their dignity is a very satisfying part of the job. People are worried about opioids and dependency, but what we usually see is that people take too little and too seldom.

Talking to patients and their relatives when there is bad news is definitely the worst part of the job

Alternative therapies come and go: last year’s noni juice is replaced by this year’s crystal water. Usually these therapies are expensive and harmless, but sometimes people make choices that make you wonder. There was one patient on the ward who surrounded herself in crystals and was advised not to take painkillers as apparently they would be harmful for her. Naturally, as the disease progressed she was in agony, but she did not want to show she had no faith in the crystals her family spent huge sums of money to purchase. Her last few weeks were hell for both herself, the staff and those close to her.

I really despair whenever people come in to the ward and say: “I’ve done some research on this and this and this medication seems to be the best.” They have no idea of the amount of effort and hours involved in keeping up with what is the most cutting edge and promising treatment. People would not dream of showing YouTube videos to the garage when they take their car in for repairs, but have no qualms about presenting their doctor with articles printed off the internet. It can take a very long time to try to explain that something that worked on one person and two sets of mice might not help their loved one. It would be good if people could trust the people who have devoted their lives to knowing what might work best.

At the end of life we lose our sense of hunger and thirst, and this usually sends visiting relatives into a total frenzy. They see the patient getting thinner and thinner, and believe they are starving to death. To try to explain that it is the cancer that is eating away at them and force feeding is not helpful can be very hard. This is especially trying when relatives have not been part of the process but come in at a late stage. Sometimes I believe that all of the stubbornness from childhood returns as they brazenly declare what mother would and would not like to do. It does not matter if all natural functions have shut down, as long as there is a bag of saline they feel that something is being done.

Despite all the negative aspects of the job, some people come in at death’s door and walk out with the possibility of living to 100. The advances in treatments have given more years to many, but to some there is possibility of life where there would be no hope just a few years ago. This is what creates optimism on the ward, the balance that is necessary to keep on working here.

‘The best part of the job is when things go well and the treatment is working.’ Photograph: Alamy

Sometime miracles happen. I remember one guy who came in, full of cancer and with metastasis everywhere, and we assumed he’d be dead in a week or two. Then one of the doctors started wondering about the pattern in which the diseases had spread. It did not seem to fit entirely with the diagnosis given, and he ordered a second opinion of the histology. The pathology department were asked to reconsider, and they changed the diagnosis to a testicular cancer. The patient’s chemotherapy was changed, and in four weeks he was a healthy man again. It gives me faith, that the lab workers were not so stubborn that they let their pride stop them from rethinking given the input from an experienced clinician.

I try not to take the job home with me, but sometimes it can be hard not to. Especially at times when we have had many deaths, and the local paper is filled with notices naming people I spoke to only recently. Talking to patients and their relatives when there is bad news is definitely the worst part of the job. You cannot comfort people like you would a friend, and it can be really hard to know what to say.

That said, talking about death has become more acceptable over the years, and I think it helps to put what everybody is feeling into words. Some patients share their worries about the actual process of dying: nobody wants to be in unbearable pain. We try to reassure people that usually things are quiet and peaceful, and that we’ll do everything possible to relieve any discomfort.

The best part of the job is when things go well and the treatment is working. To see a tumour shrink away, and disappear, then meet a patient five years later who is healthy, and getting on with their life is a wonderful feeling. We follow people through some of the most painful and intimate moments of their lives. The losses casts a shadow on our days, but the wins give the entire ward a sense of pride and joy.

• Are you a prison warden, a decorator or a librarian? We want to hear your candid accounts of what work is really like. Find full details on submitting your story anonymously here

The secret life of an oncologist: witnessing the most painful and intimate moments of life | Anonymous

The secret life of a GP: a family doctor is there for everyone else’s before their own | Anonymous

There are several qualities you need to have in your doctor’s bag to survive as a GP. Professionalism is of the utmost importance. As is keeping your cool even when you are being shouted at by someone who is intoxicated or under the influence, as happens every few weeks; or being threatened, or put in a position where the patient is trying to make you complicit in their fraud. The doctor’s surgery is similar to the confessional. Only if it leads to a safeguarding issue can you break the confidential code.

Resilience is invaluable. No matter what happened in that last appointment, it cannot affect those still to come. Empathy is vital. People come to see you terrified: that their headache is a brain tumour; that they are going to lose a loved one; that you are going to judge them.

These aside, the quality that you really need is a sense of humour. Without it, the job would be simply impossible. And frankly it’s difficult to keep a straight face when you ask a patient for a urine sample, hand them the small white-topped tube and they start undoing their trousers in front of you, until you politely point out that there is a loo around the corner.

On a typical day, 30 appointments are offered to my patients and I am fully booked for the day by the end of morning surgery – and that’s without any urgent walk-ins that are spontaneously thrown into the mix. That means at least 30 10-minute sessions; 10 minutes to welcome, introduce, glean, triage, diagnose, reassure, comfort, investigate, refer, treat, prescribe and follow up.

No two 10-minute slots are the same. You never know what will be coming up in the next appointment. Is it a quick case of tonsillitis in someone who’s not too poorly? Or is it someone who takes 10 minutes of going on about their bunions and general gripes before revealing that they had an episode of crippling chest pain last night, by the way?

A patient goes on about their ‘terrible tittyness’ (tinnitus) while I try not to smile

Is it a new psychiatric patient? I’ll never forget the consultation in which a patient asked me how many doctors it took to tile a bathroom – apparently it depends how thinly you slice them (this is the sort of moment when you quickly check access to the door).

Is it someone who will test my professionalism by going on about their “terrible tittyness” (tinnitus) while I try not to smile? Or someone who tells you their symptoms and by the end of the consultation you are 95% sure that they have cancer? Or a grieving widow who discloses that she and her late husband never consummated their marriage and that she is, in fact, an 80-year-old virgin?

Then there are the phone calls. An average day probably involves 10 or so calls to patients who are invariably not at the phone when you find the time to ring them. So ensues a telephone ping-pong match until you’re both in the right place at the right time. Meanwhile there’s all the paperwork to get through, including reports and results. There are so many of the latter that I am constantly terrified of actioning an abnormal result as normal. Over-investigating is on the rise in this age of increased litigation.

Working in an elderly-dense population, home visits are required daily and can range from two (quiet) to eight (hideous).These can be a real eye-opener: from palatial splendour to sticky and stained carpets. In between dashing here and there, I will try to catch a colleague to mull over a blood result I’ve kept on the back burner, not knowing quite what to do with it.

The best thing by far about the job is the patients. The privilege you feel to have them trust in you and respect your decision-making (albeit not 100% of the time) is immense and hugely rewarding. Being able to fix their problems and make them feel better, control their pain and provide some comfort is extremely gratifying. As is being allowed into people’s homes to relieve suffering in a dying patient. And making sure that when the time comes, they can die where they want, before supporting and guiding the whole family through this painful but inevitable time. At moments like these it is the best job in the world.

And the worst things about it? The passive privatisation of general practice. The daily doctor-bashing in the press. The promises from government that you will be able to see your family doctor from 8am until 8pm, seven days a week. As you can see from the plight and strikes of the junior doctors, we do not have government support right now. Instead, we are vilified and made out to be money-grubbing if we complain about our working conditions. We have all gone through years of training as junior doctors to become GPs in the first place and urgently need the next generation to stay in the health service. It is getting increasingly difficult to recruit and our roles are continually changing, which is deeply sad because it is without a doubt a vocation: you simply wouldn’t do it otherwise.

It is hard missing out on your own family milestones – first days at school or the nativity play – because surgery can start at 7am and go on until 7.30pm, when your children are already in bed, where they were when you left for work that morning. Ironically, being a family doctor means you are there for everyone else’s before your own. You know all of your patients’ family members by name, often their extended family too. You are there at their sides to help them through some of the most momentous events in their lives, whether that is bringing new life in to the world or easing the pain as another life leaves it.

It is an honour and a privilege to be a GP. We can’t let the government destroy that.

• Are you a mayor, a stylist or a window cleaner? We want to hear your candid accounts of what work is really like. Find full details on submitting your story anonymously here

The secret life of a GP: a family doctor is there for everyone else’s before their own | Anonymous

Disabled people are being wrongly denied benefits. I help get them back | Anonymous

“Do you ever hang on to the sink to help you get up off the toilet?” Not necessarily a conventional conversation piece, but occasionally a question I ask in a personal independence payment (PIP) appeal tribunal.

I’m one of a three-person tribunal that hears appeals from disabled people who have been refused either PIP, disability living allowance or attendance allowance; three benefits that are designed to help meet the extra costs of living with a disability or long-term condition.

I sit on tribunals an average of two to three times a month, and am the so-called disability-qualified panel member. The other two are a lawyer and doctor, and between us we decide whether someone meets the criteria for a benefit award and will have their appeal upheld.

When deliberating the case above (let’s be original and call him Mr Smith, a middle-aged man with a musculoskeletal disorder), the doctor mildly chided me for asking such a direct question, suggesting that I had perhaps led the claimant to a “yes” answer, and pointing out that the claimant had said nothing on his form about needing help to get off the toilet.

As panel members, we have to be impartial. I reminded him that many people don’t understand how they should fill in the form and struggle to follow the logic of how the decisions are made about who gets benefit. Many people who come before us haven’t even thought about, let alone got, advice from a benefits expert (which they should always do, if they possibly can). Any half-decent adviser would have found Mr Smith needed help getting off the loo.

It’s part of my job to look at a claim from a disabled person’s perspective. I can ask questions about how someone has filled in the form and get an understanding of the implications of what they have (or haven’t) said.

My personal experience of disability gives me some insight into the kinds of questions to ask to get relevant information about people’s conditions that make their day-to-day life difficult.

Most appellants who come to the tribunal are nervous. Tears and distress are common, even though tribunals are pretty informal. Having someone on the panel who isn’t a doctor or a lawyer does make things easier for many claimants and they are more likely to open up.

I help increase the general knowledge base of a tribunal. It’s not a “jury of their peers”, because there are not 12 of us, but it does at least nod to that principle by having a disability expert on the panel.

Although the vast majority of panel members I’ve sat with over the years are good people, everyone can have bad days, doctors and lawyers included. Three-person tribunals add checks and balances to the benefit appeal process, with room to challenge and probe decision-making and reasoning.

Sometimes we can’t give an award because the rules don’t let us, and that can be frustrating. Often we are genuinely shocked because the quality of assessments are so incredibly bad that we can’t believe that someone has been forced to appeal to get a benefit they clearly qualify for. Some assessments would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so serious.

Mr Smith got his benefit, unanimously agreed by the panel, because of my question. Was the decision the right one? Yes, of course. Would he have got it if I hadn’t been there? I don’t think so.

Disabled people are being wrongly denied benefits. I help get them back | Anonymous

Dont inquire victims of sexual abuse to communicate up till you can support them | Anonymous

As a victim of historical sexual abuse, at the moment beneath investigation, I view the every day news coverage with interest. Unquestionably, police inquiries and prosecutions are welcomed, as is greater exposure of the problem in a “post-Savile” era.

However, each and every headline and breaking news story, such as Wednesday’s arrest of 660 suspected paedophiles, is accompanied by a mixture of conflicting emotions. Each shocking new revelation brings a individual delight that this filth is getting uncovered at long final, but with it comes harm as it has been hidden for so lengthy – the two by society and within me. Extremely previous scars are opened, and considered patterns turn out to be an electrical storm – overloaded by adrenalin, cortisol and a malfunctioning hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which governs the fight or flight response. It is known as complex PTSD for a explanation.

But alongside the emotional exhaustion of the nervous program, I am reminded that other individuals cannot recognize the depth of ache that I feel. Pals are unable to give much meaningful help – the hole in which I locate myself is too deep and too dark – and sooner or later they end calling out.

And so with every phone for victims to come forward, I want to scream: “Do not inquire them to come forward if you are not going to assist them.” The trauma suffered is this kind of that victims need to have aid, nursing and wrapping in cotton wool. They want compassion, knowing and to be in a position to believe in – some thing that they have not been ready to do for so prolonged. Even so, what takes place is that police refer victims into the voluntary sector, the place agencies offer some immediate “first aid” and variety words – but tiny else. There is no funding to arrive at a suitable diagnosis of what psychological issues might exist – and the prospect of meaningful long-term treatment at no value is unrealistic. These organisations are so starved of funding, that often significantly much more than a helpline is impossible.

So, what of the NHS? My 1st physician stated “you seem OK”. The 2nd mentioned “the NHS are really bad at this kind of point – if I had been you I’d pay for it myself”. Eventually right after a yr I received to see a psychotherapist, who assessed that I would require limitless support. However, as they have been only ready to aid for two many years on the NHS, they explained that they had been ethically unable to begin any therapy as I may finish up in a worse state than when they started out. They agreed that I necessary support but the impending court situation meant that they did not “want to open my can of worms”. This only serves to compound my lack of trust for authority figures.

So, I am left delighting in the exposure of decades of abuse, but screaming for a wise victim help response – the absence of which traumatises me, and will traumatise other folks. I know my daily life will by no means be the same again. I have a criminal situation to endure, followed by inquiries into institutional abuse followed by inquiries into the failings of the criminal justice method – but the question I request myself is “after all of this … will there be enough of me left to enjoy the days I have remaining?”

All I can do is attempt to aid create change for the children I will never ever have.

Dont inquire victims of sexual abuse to communicate up till you can support them | Anonymous

Daily life with out intercourse it"s better than you consider | Anonymous

Medieval monks took vows of celibacy – but it is uncommon for any individual to do the very same right now for non-religious causes. Photograph: Archivo Iconografico, S.A./COR

I am celibate. I am a single, heterosexual, early-middle-aged male. I have all the appendages that nature meant and, though modesty forbids that I class myself as great-seeking, eye-catching ladies nonetheless make me interesting provides of intimate entanglements – and, yes, some of them are even sober at the time. (Of program, currently being a Guardian reader also assists to make a single irresistibly appealing to the opposite sex.)

So why am I celibate? Far more than a decade in the past I was in a romantic relationship when I discovered that I had a neurological situation that is likely, in time (I know not when), to deteriorate. That was the end of the partnership – a decision that my partner produced and which, though I took it badly at the time, I now enjoy a good deal far better. Soon after all, it is one particular issue to feel that sickness or death might take place to 1 or other of you half a century consequently, another altogether when it may possibly be only 5 years down the road.

Regardless of this, if you met me in the street you almost certainly wouldn’t even know that there was anything at all incorrect with me. Certainly nothing off-placing to any possible mate. So why celibacy? At first, soon after the break-up, I could have gone 1 of two ways. I could have dived head-1st into a flurry of empty, hedonistic sex in a quest for revenge against all ladies for my ex-partner’s abandonment of me. I didn’t although it crossed my mind. Alternatively, at first, I took some time out to grieve for the loss of a romantic relationship that had meant a lot to me and, to be honest, to really feel bloody sorry for myself.

But what to do right after that? Right after I had invested some time in believed, each consciously and sub-consciously, I gradually came to the conclusion that celibacy was the way forward. I know within that I could dwell a life of long term isolation like an anchorite, yet I know also that I would not want to. Frankly, I really like ladies. I really like their business, the sound of their voices, the way that though they occupy the very same physical area as us blokes however they seem to inhabit it so totally in a different way. The imagined of not sharing their firm was, and is, unthinkable to me. I have often preferred sex inside of a relationship to one particular-night stands. I am not a puritan, but I prefer the higher intimacy that you can attain through a shared exploration of each other’s body and desires. But I could not, in conscience, enter into a partnership bringing the baggage of my illness it would not be honest to do so. Neither to a companion or, conceivably, any potential young children who may well inherit my sickness. (Prior to anyone suggests searching for “relief” with a prostitute – I am a Guardian reader, we don’t do that sort of point). This kind of was my ultimate decision, and it is 1 that I have stuck to.

Do I miss sex? Yes, but not as a lot as I thought that I would. Arguably, intercourse is an addiction. Break the cycle and, over time, the physical and psychological “require” for sex lessens – you can do with no it, challenging as that might be to believe. Yes, you still believe about it, but in excess of time those thoughts drop their energy. I have read through assiduously about the a variety of tactics employed by monks and other religious adherents of various faiths, and the supposed benefits that they derive from abstinence. I have, even so, yet to be convinced that there is any spiritual or bodily obtain to be had.

Nonetheless, getting celibate has really enhanced my relationships with females – at least individuals that I currently know (obtaining to know new people of the opposite intercourse is nonetheless no simpler, even though you can be noticed as a “challenge” by some, which can be … fascinating). After you remove the possible for sex from the partnership, and each parties are mindful of that, it changes the dynamic of the friendship. You can each be relaxed in every single other’s firm in a way that is not possible otherwise. Daft, but seemingly accurate. Search, for instance, at the similarly near relationships that some girls have with gay guys.

So would I advise celibacy to my fellow males? I enjoy that my circumstances are not typical – and anyone discovering themselves in my position would have to make up their very own thoughts on the matter. Even so, men and women think about celibacy for many and varied reasons so if you are contemplating it, I would say that it is not something to worry and can certainly be a optimistic decision (and, let’s face it, if you consider it and will not like it then you can always change your thoughts). Even taking a break from sex, or at least taking a break from the obsessional quest for it, can often be incredibly rewarding.

Daily life with out intercourse it"s better than you consider | Anonymous