Last week, I recieved a diagnosis of Thyroid Cancer. After having a preliminary scan which happened around a month ago, the nurse giving me the ultrasound told me that I most likely had cancer before a biopsy was done. She then informed me that I had to wait almost a month to find out the results of the scan. As you can imagine, my mental and emotional state has not exactly been calm and stable, so I have been taking half a tablet of Lorazepam every day to add to my supplement regime.
In the first few days after hearing this bad news, my mental health deteriorated. I was panicking, swinging from intense anxiety and then hit with heaviness, not knowing which I would be feeling one moment to the next. I was unable to just go about my day. It has been contributing toward me having a manageable day where i am relatively unaffected by the torrent of fear and depression , a state that had me in tears and caused me to phone for reassurance from support services and friends many times a day. Thoughts of death were entering my head at will or so it seemed. Being alive at this time was not much fun.
I think that a lot of people would find this diagnosis difficult to deal with, especially if they lived alone, with no person to sit with / reassure / understand / take your mind off it. The half a lorazepam meant that I did not have to put up with this soul destroying mind state, and also meant that I could sleep instead of staying awake with thoughts of funerals going around my head. A peaceful quality of being – one of calm – is priceless to me at the moment. . To not have this tablet could contribute to a mental decline – which is the last thing that me or anyone close to me would want. In my opinion, the benefits should outweigh the risks when making decisions like that and in the case of helping me to be OK through this difficult period of having a cancer diagnosis and treatment – I would say that the benefits outweigh the risks there.
One would assume that a mental health doctor would recognise the seriousness of the situation and would want this calmer state to continue, however, when I had a phone appointment with my psychiatrist to discuss my recent diagnosis and how it was impacting my mental health, she actually told me to stop taking the lorazepam. The reason that she gave for this was that she did not want me to be addicted to it – however, I used it for years to help me with my mental health when i was in hospital with chronic psychosis and successfully stopped using it. Begrudging me a 0.5mg of lorazepam would keep me stuck in a panic loop about the cancer. It would be very detrimental for my mental health to spend my days thinking the worst, unable to get enjoyment from anything because everything reminded me of the diagnosis, meaning that i would not be able to concentrate or focus. Being ‘ok’ or at least being able to return to much ‘ok’ after not being ok, is absolutely fundamental. The lorazepam would prevent me going into crisis – and ultimately stop a downhill decline.
Another thing that made me shocked was that she did this without suggesting any replacement for the Lorazepam. Her role as is of a mental health professional of highest standing – yet she was suggesting taking away the thing that was helping with my mental health and not providing me with anything else to take its place!!!
This reminded me once again of how useless I have found mental health doctors to be, something which was flagged up and rang my alarm bells over the 15 years that I was under their ‘care’ and has once again made me raise the question – What do these doctors actually do?
One thing is for sure – if she was going through what I have been going through, I’m sure she would see the situation differently. I’m sure she would see the importance of having that half a lorazepam tablet every day.
As I mentioned before, this is not an isolated incident. Over the nearly 2 decades of seeking help from NHS for my mental health, I have recognised that this kind of thing is a serious problem with quite a few of the NHS mental health doctors. They seem to have little or almost no empathy with the patients who need their help. They show up for their job with their sound mental health, being able to live without contending with the horrors that their patients have to endure as a result of their clinical decisions. It feels like they flippantly make decisions regarding a persons wellbeing (such as which medication to put them on, or in this case to stop using) without taking into consideration the seriousness of the situation of the person who has to live with their distress 24/7 without a break. They can go home on an evening to their family, secure home with perfect mental health – personally unaffected by any of the life affecting decisions that they make whilst the people on the brunt end of their flippancy (i,e, their patients) have to live with the consequences.
A person cannot run away from their inner experience, it is there all the time.. and you (not the doctors) are left to deal with it (in your burnt out state).
Not only did I find that the doctors made decisions not grounded in empathy or insight, these decisions can also can also be legally binding. For example, they have legal powers to force this medication on you, and if you cant tolerate it and therefore refuse it, then they can use this as evidence that you are unwell. It’s like being a prisoner, only your body is your cell, your punishment is the side effects (or your mental health condition) and your sentence is the amount of time your doctor keeps their signature on a piece of paper.. but unlike a prisoner, you do not know how long it will be until your sentence will end. You can try and appeal against it but a lot of the time, your voice doesn’t carry as much weight behind it las the voice of the person signing that piece of paper.
This is not something that i say lightly and is grounded in experience. For over a year I was forceably injected with Haliperidol, which my brain and body could not tolerate , which led to a mental decline, resulting in a 3 year section.
Many being injected with antipsychotics can tell you the horror stories of their constant restlessness, agitation, and lack of pleasure that can be experienced due to a doctor making a signature on a piece of paper and then leaving the patient to deal with the consequences for sometimes years afterward, regardless of what this person has to say about it.
Not all the NHS doctors, however, are incompetent in this way. When i was chronically psychotic (i.e. didnt experience much other than paranoid thoughts, not knowing which reality I was in, voices, hallucinations etc), the mental health team gave me 1 x PRN lorazepam for times when things got unmanageable and it really helped me to live a better life. It meant I could complete an access course at the other side of town, which led to getting a degree and many knock on effects that created ripples of fortune and success inn my life that i simply wouldn’t of had if i hadn’t of been allowed the lorazepam – because I wouldn’t of left the ward for long periods without it.
The knock on effect of them giving me lorazepam meant that I made a life worth living for myself. The benefits outweighed the risks. It helped me to get to this point. And when I didn’t need it any more, i didn’t take it. I didn’t have any withdrawals, i didn’t feel the need to use it. I believe I didn’t need it any more because I was working on changing my energy.
There are other, more natural ways which a person can be helped apart from medication – for example supplementation – something that I have been doing to help me through this current health challenge.
Doctors usually speak against supplementation but I find that it is a very effective treatment along side pharmacutical medicines and it makes a massive difference to a persons wellbeing. It certainly has for me. .There has been research around since the 60’s about the effectiveness of vitamins in the treatment of Schizophrenia – with an 80% success rate.. why don’t the NHS take this on board? Is it because money speaks louder than success rates?
I am glad to say that I do not need the lorazepam any more because I am using more natural ways to deal with this situation. I am taking my own personal concoction of supplements, tailored to my needs which have made me feel better than i did before I got the cancer diagnosis. I have also been doing a lot of work on my energy with certain kinds of meditation.
The Energy Doctors have been helping me with this much more than the medical doctors!! For more information about how you can get a consultation with the energy doctors- please visit: https://www.energizeyourlife.org/trainings-consultations/life-energy-solutions-existing-client
I have much more to say about these NHS mental health doctors – but that’s for another post,
For more about my journey, please keep posted.
Rose xx
From NHS to Naturally Healthier Solutions 
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