Tag: suicide

support groups and other things

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, psychache, suicide, suicide attempt

I had emailed my eye doc saying I was having problems with my eyes while reading, especially when I was tired. I just coughed it up to being fatigued but he wanted to see me the next day (today) and did some tests. Apparently my eyes have decided to go in different directions when I am reading so I have to go to visual therapy. It is basically physical therapy for the eye. Oh joy.

I am going to dinner tonight in Stoughton, south of where I live with some friends of mine. We have a good time and because my friend just came back from Germany, I am sure she has some chocolates for me . German chocolate is sooo good. Last time I had it, the damn mice ate it when we had a few. I was so mad. Mice enjoying my chocolate. Damn rodents!

Yesterday I was supposed to have a blog post in the AAS but it got scrapped for another few weeks. The post that got published was a hit. It was about support groups and now everyone wants one for suicide attempt survivors. If I knew the platform, I would do it. I am glad my post got bumped because support groups are important. I know that if I didn’t have my CES group, I would feel alone and probably would have killed myself because of the isolation you feel after something so traumatic happens to you. You are never the same after something like CES affects you. I know with suicide attempt it is similar. People attempt for different reasons but mostly to escape the psychological pain they are feeling.

Speaking of psychological pain. I recent came across another psychological pain scale that has some promise if it ever gets across the board. But the hard part is that most of these scales have to go through rigorous critical review from committees of all sorts before being accepted as an assessment tool used for the emergency rooms and urgent care units. Plus in busy settings, things will get missed and then what are you going to do when the person is positive for psychological pain? You can’t just leave them hanging and say have a nice day or come back when you have more pain. That would be unethical and unprofessional. And most academic psychiatric emergency rooms are almost always filled with “real” psychiatric emergencies such as the actual attempts and psychotic behaviors of drug use or because of schizophrenia/mania. Though each case should be evaluated by a mental health professional before an attempt be made. I suppose if this were to be implemented a special unit would have to be designated for it to speed up the process and long waits avoided. Or if this were implemented in the psych ER it would be more ideal than the general ER (Emergency Room/ward/department).

new journal and Crisis Response Plan

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt, writing

I started a new journal tonight. And like every other journal before it, the first two things that go into it is my crisis response plan and the Holden psychache scale, though lately it just is my response plan.

I tried finding the response plan online but all I found was emergency planning and a very LONG one that the Navy cooked up, most likely from the article I read about military suicide crisis training. I tried to find the article but I am unable to locate it in my files. I haven’t searched my thumb drive because I can’t locate that either. GGGRRRR so I hope I am not plagiarizing when I post this plan here on my blog:

Crisis response plan:
When thinking about suicide, I agree to do the following:

Step 1: Try to identify my thoughts and specifically what’s upsetting me
Step 2: Write out and review more reasonable responses to my suicidal thoughts
Step 3: Do things that help you feel better for at least 30 mins (examples can include, trying to sleep, play internet games, brush hair 100 times, write in a journal, listen to music, etc)
Step 4: Repeat all of the above
Step 5: if thoughts continue, get specific and I find myself preparing to do something, I will call XXX @ 555-555-5555 or suicide hotline
Step 6: if I cannot reach above I will call my therapist or psychiatrist
Step 7: if I am still feeling suicidal and I don’t feel like I can control my behavior, I go to the ER or call 911 (or whatever the local emergency line is for your country)
I have found having this in my journal useful when I have been hospitalized because it provides a plan of something that they need for discharge and I don’t always carry the card or the paper with me but I do carry my journal.

The second thing is Holden’s(Holden, Mehta, Cunningham, & McLeod, 2001) psychache scale and I don’t feel comfortable posting that here but you can look it up in the reference I have posted if you have access to the library.

I tend to hold off on it because I haven’t been using it lately. I know what the scale looks like and after a while you can manipulate it to whatever you want it to be from high to low. Plus when I feel numb or “fine” it’s hard to tell what kind of psychological pain I am in. My therapist and I used to use it to gauge how suicidal I was but then it just got to be like a joke. Or that the tables have turned on me because I was the one that brought in the scales and the response plan. My therapist didn’t have a clue about suicidality, which is typical of most therapists. That is why they like to pawn you off or come up with lame “safety contract” that is really a legal form for THEM not YOU. Least with the Response plan it give you something to take home with and is more detailed than anything I have come across.

Holden, R. R., Mehta, K., Cunningham, E., & McLeod, L. D. (2001). Development and preliminary validation of a scale of psychache. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 33(4), 224-232.

Problems

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, CES, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, mood disorders, physical pain

Problems

I have problems. Quite a few. I have mental illness and chronic physical pain. Both make me want to take my life. I know that you might think that the depression is causing me to think about it but it really isn’t. I am not depressed. I am in pain and when pain levels get beyond a certain point for me, I think about killing myself.

It’s after midnight. My therapist texted me back about how sorry she is that I am in pain. I asked her if I should take my heavy dose of pain meds as the moderate pain meds have not touched my pain and it is too soon to take another dose. Now my toes have been on fire and feel like they are in a vise. I hate feeling this way.

Pain is the main reason most people want to kill themselves. There has been multiple studies about how people in chronic pain want to end their life because it is not a malignant type of pain. Meaning that it is not terminal, you are not going to die from whatever it is causing you this pain. I have what is called complex regional pain syndrome that was caused by cauda equina syndrome. I have been suffering with this CRPS the past year and a half. I was diagnosed finally sometime in November in 2011. Once I was diagnosed, my life began to fall apart. I quit one of my two jobs and then four months later I was out of my second job because they could not accommodate my medical restrictions. I basically can’t walk correctly. I tried to correct it with an AFO but the pain still persists. Like tonight. My leg is swollen and I really want to fillet it open to get the shit out of it. But it will be against medical advice to do so. I don’t know why. My theory is that if the shit was drained it might get better. I don’t have the equipment to really drain it but I can cut it open and squeeze the until the shit comes out. Or maybe I just want to see the blood and see what color it is. You see when the pain gets this bad, I don’t think my leg is mine anymore. I think it belongs to an alien so why not cut it. I might not have a scalpel but I have sharp razors. I have bandages. I have tape. Cutting is something that I am familiar with but I am used to cutting my wrist up. I have the scars to prove it. The only thing that is really stopping me is the sound. A few years ago I cut my leg to see if it would stop the pain. And I didn’t like the sound. It was like cardboard getting cut. My leg was cardboard and there was even little blood. It was like I didn’t cut at all no matter how deep I was cutting.

So what am I to do except to write about how sucky my life is because of these conditions. So I have problems that no one has any answers for. That no one can help me with. It is very frustrating and makes you feel alone. You want to reach out but who do you reach out to at midnight or time after that? It was a fluke that my therapist answered me. She usually doesn’t answer my texts. I could page my psychiatrist but there is nothing she can do except tell me to go to the emergency room. I don’t want to stay there all night for a psych consult that will just end up sending me home anyway. I’m self-injurious but I am not suicidal at the moment. I’ll be able to get out of the hospital admission by saying that I promise not to do it. Which I won’t because I really don’t want to hear that sound.

Music is awesome. On my MP3 player Love Story is playing, it is my favorite time of all time. A song that I can listen to over and over again without getting sick of it. And it relaxes me. So maybe between the two pain killers, and the rest of my meds I can finally go to sleep…

exciting article

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, psychache, psychosis, suicide, suicide attempt

Just read an interesting article about the Collaborating and Management of Suicidality (CAMS). I can’t believe this theory is 25 years old. It is gaining more acceptance as time goes on as more countries are using it as a treatment modality in suicidal people. It is a clinical intervention that is used as a collaboration between client and therapist in the treatment and care of a suicidal person. I find it one of the best out there and it is the best because it can be used across the disciplines in the mental health field.

I will be writing more about this. I write a lot about Jobes, the creator of CAMS and the SSF (suicide status form). He is the most brilliant person I have ever met. The fact that this is going to electronic way I think will be used across mediums and will be easier to deliver. Most clinicians have gone the electronic way but not all. This makes me want to go back to school and get my degree.