Life In The Mental Health System

Hello I am Heather McLaughlin. I have been dealing with the mental health system for 19 years. Every medicine that was ever given to me, in fact hurt me. After trying Zyprexa, I developed weight gain, facial hair and hypothyroidism. So many more medications were tried on me. I have tried Risperdal, Geodon, Depakote, Haloperidol, Latuda, Trileptal, Invega, Loxapine, Prolixin, Abilify, Wellbutrin, Lithium, Zoloft, Cogentin, Saphris, Lexapro. There may still be more, but those are the ones I remember.

After a while of trial and error, I received a problem with my eyes in 2016 called Eye Distortion, as diagnosed by the Optometrist. Now, my eyes have progressively worsened. the way I perceive things in my vision…it looks like a delayed reaction in my vision. It also looks like jumbled words that pop out in 3D if I decide to read a lot and if my eyes get tired. It does seem like my vision is wavy and looks like I am looking into a fish eye lens.

I have seen a lot of crazy things with different people causing fights, to people that have diseases dying around me. Most recently, about a month and a half ago, one of my friends inside a hospital died. She came to me the night before her passing, and she said to me that she wanted me to pray for her because the medicine she was on was giving her really bad heart problems. I said you can get through it, and she said, “No. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get through this one. It’s really bad”, she said. She was forced to take Haloperidol.

I have been threatened and beaten by many women and a man beat me almost to a bloody pulp. I was in a hospital for being delusional due to my PTSD, and Post Concussion Syndrome. However, I am misdiagnosed. I do not have paranoid schizophrenia, and the health professionals have not regarded me with respect and consideration. So, that’s neglect. I have had about 6 head injuries in my life, at least 4 of them were concussions. I developed a problem with my vision after I got hit in the head with a hard baseball on September 29, 2005 at a church event.

I do not know what is in the chemicals of these medicines that I am taking. I think they fail to give us adequate information about where the meds actually come from, and the health professionals stick to their studies, regardless of what kind of adverse reactions a person has during their treatment.

It has been a nightmare living on only a small portion of monies per month, not being able to really enjoy any kind of luxury in life, being lucky if we ever took a trip to see something good. I am not being ungrateful for the food, but I think I deserve something better than the life I am living, because I am beautiful and talented, and totally worthwhile. It’s like, you’re not necessarily boasting if you have a great talent, using it improves the likelihood that one would have a healthier, happier life.

If you put it all together, the medicines are given to treat the person. But, the side effects sometimes are way too unbearable, and the patient has to be off the med for medical reasons if the side effects are causing other underlying problems, like heart problems, for example.

I have been a heart patient since I was born. I have pulmonary stenosis. I was 4, when I had to undertake open heart surgery.

I do not think it wise for a health professional to put heart patients, and patients that have had any head injury on any type of psychological additive chemicals, because it can cause balance problems, other problems like tinnitus, and vertigo to name a few for the article.

The main point I am trying to illustrate, is that the central nervous system can really shut down, moment, by moment, and once it is the end of someone’s life, there is no final opportunity to stop the medications that were harming the individual, and the phrase “the benefits of the medicines, outweigh the side effects, is a highly overused cliche that presents a big problem with stigma, which can relate to not being accepted in social groups, and is a part of torture.

My final point is that people who show a mental disability should be allowed to take a written psychological evaluation to voice to the provider about what they are currently going through, and to note that if someone is experiencing any kind of side effects, that that is a physical element that should not be ignored. Thank you.

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