Thursday, July 25, 2019
Anorexia Nervosa:Failure & Enmeshment!
Enmeshment:
This is a transactional style where family members are highly involved with one another. There is excessive togetherness, intrusion on other's thoughts, feelings and actions, lack of privacy, and weak family boundaries. Members often speak for one another, and perception of the self and other family members is poorly differentiated. A child growing up in this type of family learns that family loyalty is of primary importance. This pattern of interaction hinders separation and individuation later in life. Minuchin
©2013Am Ang Zhang
From The Cockroach CatcherChapter 34 Failure?
I
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t is not easy to admit to failures and harder still for doctors to do so especially if they did everything right and according to protocol.
Doing the “right” thing is not an indication of success.
Hardly.
Yes. I am coming back to Anorexia Nervosa again and I do not apologise for it. I am apologising for our failures though.
The British Daily Mail reported in March 2007[1]:
“It is thought there are between 60,000 and 90,000 adults being treated for eating disorders at any one time in the UK. The average age of diagnosis is between 16 and 18between 60,000 and 90,000 adults are estimated to be treated for eating disorders at any one time in the UK.
Over a 13-month period from March 2005, 206 preteenage children across Britain and Ireland were newly diagnosed with serious disorders ranging from bulimia and anorexia to binge eating.
Half were admitted to hospitals for in-patient treatment. Some were showing symptoms of starvation such as a low temperature and a slow heart rate, while 10 per cent had to be fed by tube.”
In the same month, the British Independent[2] reported:
“Anorexia Nervosa has the highest death rate of any psychiatric condition. In ten years 3% of these patients died, and although half were by suicide, the rest were related to the starvation process.
Just this week in Rome a 27-year-old model identified only as Ilaria died of Anorexia after an illness lasting ten years. She weighed 35kg at her death. Luisel Ramos, 22-year-old Uruguayan model died at a fashion show in August, 2006 after suffering a fatal heart attack that was thought to be the result of Anorexia. Ana Carolina Reston Marcan, the Brazilian catwalk queen died only three months later in a Sao Paulo hospital.”
When I took over the adolescent unit as its consultant in charge there were six Anorexia Nervosa patients in varying stages of emaciation or weight gain depending on from which side you want to look at it. It is not always wise to have so many anorectic patients together as they do share tricks with each other and it is often more difficult to customise treatment.
What needed my urgent attention was of course Sammy. Sammy had a very feminine name but preferred the nickname Sammy. Sammy’s Section was due to expire in less than 14 days and I had to compile a report for the Tribunal which would be sitting to decide on her fate.
It was perhaps a sign of our failure as psychiatrists to effectively treat Anorexia Nervosa that eventually case law was established to regard food in Anorexia Nervosa as medicine. Therefore food may be used forcibly to treat Anorexia Nervosa when the condition becomes life threatening.
The usual test of mental capacity no longer applies. Instead the law is used forcibly to feed a generally bright and intelligent person “over-doing” what most consider to be “good”. They try to eat less and eat healthily by avoiding fat and the like and wham we have the law on them.
I have to admit that I have not liked this aspect of Sectioning. Unfortunately it is used often, judging by the high numbers of tube fed patients.
On the other hand not everybody is able to treat Anorexia Nervosa patients or, in reality, do battle with them. It requires experience, energy, time, wit, charisma and often impeccable timing. However, sometimes I do wonder if we are indeed doing a disservice when we take things out of parents’ hands by agreeing to take over.
With hindsight and upon reflecting on a number of cases I have dealt with, I often wonder: if hospitalisation had not been an option at all, would improvement rate and, more importantly, mortality rate have been any different.
We do not section people for smoking, drinking, or doing drugs, which all endanger life. Nor do we stop people running the Marathon or eating raw oysters when these activities regularly lead to mortalities.
Society is coming round to do something about over-eating in children but it will take some time before they apply the Mental Health Acts.
To me, the moment a psychiatrist turns to the law he is admitting that he has failed.
At least that is my view and if I perpetuated the Compulsory Order with Sammy, I too would be part of that failure.
There had been no weight gain in Sammy despite the tube feeding and the debate was: shall we increase the feed or shall we wait? Everybody just assumed that she would stay on as a compulsory patient.
Despite bed rests and even more embarrassingly the use of bedpans, many Anorexia Nervosa patients managed not to gain weight whatever we pumped into them. The balanced feeds were in fact quite expensive. There was no secret that they were aware of the exercises they could perform even on bed rest and the determination not to put on weight had to be seen to be believed. If such determination was applied elsewhere I was sure these young girls could be very successful.
I had to find an answer, an answer for Sammy and an answer for myself.
Being forced to eat by the State remained the treatment of choice for everybody except for one stubborn consultant.
“At least we did all we could,” my staff constantly reminded me.
“And she is the most determined of all the Anorectics we have right now.”
More reason to show the others that this new psychiatrist had some other means than brute force, I thought to myself.
Yes, I could be as determined as they were.
The hours of family therapy only brought about accusations and counter accusations with hardly any resolution. Middle class families have certain ways of dealing with things where some branches of family therapy are not particularly good at all.
The modern trend is certainly moving away from blaming families. Or that is the rhetoric of most who write publicly about it.
Whatever the official line, families cannot help feeling blamed.
“If we are not to blame, why do we need family therapy?”
“There are so many other families like ours. Why do they not have the same problem?”
We may reassure them that there are and that is the truth, but the truth is that there are also Anorexia-free families.
Yes, it might help if they do find a gene like they did with obesity. Yet that cannot explain why there are more extremely obese people in say the U.S. which collects gene pools from across the globe.
So Sammy’s family had the full benefit of eight sessions of family therapy by two very experienced therapists. In the end, there was just a lot of recrimination between all parties including the therapists and all agreed it would not be the way forward. That was when tube-feeding started.
Minuchin[3] dealt with over-involvement, over-protectiveness and conflict avoidance in these families with no special apology on whether he blamed the family or not. He used to start with a meal session with the family. His success, like many such methods, probably had more to do with his charisma than his method and is thus difficult to replicate.
For Sammy and her family the message was simple and clear enough, no matter how hard we lied.
The family had failed and the hospital had to take over.
That was the blunt truth.
But the hospital had failed too and we had to resort to the Mental Health Act on one of society’s most sensible and decent and safest citizens.
I decided enough was enough. I could no longer perpetuate the no-blame approach. I could no longer continue to hide behind the power conferred onto me by the law.
In short, I had to reverse just about everything that had gone on before, and more.
Just two weeks before the tribunal sat we had the big review meeting. To most at the unit, the review was fairly routine as there was hardly any choice – a full Section for Hospital Treatment primarily intended for difficult to treat Schizophrenics and difficult to control Bipolars in the acute manic phase. Sammy would be “detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure”, and classed with the likes of the few psychotics who had committed the most heinous murders. To save Sammy’s life, it would be natural to continue with the Mental Health Act.
Yes there would be weeks of tube feeding and bed rest, but the State had to take over the complete care of this bright young thing for her own sake.
I could not see any other way either.
Unless …….I could reverse everything that had gone on before.
If our work is to be therapeutic then a sort of therapeutic alliance is important, even if tentative. Some people do not realise that you can fight with your patient and still have a sort of therapeutic alliance.
I had a plan.
These meetings were attended by just about everybody who had anything to do with the patient. They were held at school times so that most of the teaching staff could be present as well. These meetings also had a tendency to drag on as everybody seemed to have a lot to say about very little, a trait not just limited to psychiatrists but also seen in social workers, therapists, nurses, junior grade doctors, teachers and visiting professionals. People always seemed to have a lot to say on cases where there was the least progress.
My personal view is that this was a sure sign of anarchy which had unfortunately drifted into our Health Service, encouraged in part by the numerous re-organisations that had gradually eroded the authority of the doctor.
Saul Wurman[4], an architect by training but also an author of business and tour books, famously wrote that meetings really do not always need to be an hour long. Why can it not be ten or twenty minutes?
Could I achieve that?
After briefly explaining to all the purpose of the meeting, I turned to Sammy, who still had the nasal feeding tube “Micropore’d[5]” securely and said, “What do you think?”
“It is so unfair. Now I shall not be able to go to Harvard.”
It is generally perceived as a given that a U.K. citizen who has been Sectioned will not be able to use the Visa Waiver to visit the U.S. If that person then has to apply for a Visa, having been detained under the Mental Health Act must be a major hindrance, although I have never seen this applied in practice. One of my patients did have to cancel a horse trial trip to Kentucky because she was sectioned at the height of a manic episode.
I did not know she had aspirations to get to Harvard but I was not surprised given what I already knew about mother.
“Before I say anything else, can I ask you a few things?”
“What? Sure!”
“Do you smoke, drink, take Ecstasy or go out clubbing?”
“No. Why?”
“Do you have piercings and tattoos on you?”
“Tattoos—yuk! Yes, I having my ears pierced. That is all.”
“Do you like Pop music?”
“No way. I play the violin and I like Bach and Bartok!”
Everybody was attentive now.
“Do you shoot heroin or smoke Cannabis?”
“No way!”
She was getting annoyed.
“What about boys and sex?” I felt bad even to ask especially in front of her mother, who I thought would faint if we knew something she did not.
“How can you even ask and in front of my parents? You know I don’t do things like that!”
I can remember my own adolescence. I did not do any of those things either and I did not even have pierced ears.
I then turned to the parents. Mother was a history teacher at a famous private school in one of England’s most middle class town. She also spent a year at Harvard, hence Sammy’s ambition to follow her. Father was a prominent city lawyer.
“You have always provided well for her, a good education, European and U.S. holidays, a comfortable home and expensive music lessons.”
“We are fortunate enough to be able to do that. She is our only child.” Mother replied in a tone implying, “what’s wrong with that?”
“And she has always been a bright child, strong willed and single minded. She passed her Grade 8 violin with distinction at 14 and could have become a musician. But she wanted to do International Studies.” Mother added.
“So she always had her way.”
“She has always got on with everything, studying and practising the violin. And she keeps a tidy bedroom!”
A tidy bedroom! My goodness, everything was falling into place.
“Sammy……”
“Yes……”
“You know what? You are the first adolescent I know that keeps a tidy bedroom, do not do drugs, do not drink, do not smoke and you do not do a load of other things I asked you about. You are by modern standards a FAILED adolescent!”
Then I turned to the parents.
“And you, FAILED parents!”
“And we FAILED you. We failed you because we had to hide behind the law and force feed you.”
Sammy said, “I can’t do all those things even if you make me.”
Ah, the turning point.
“No, don’t get me wrong. I don’t want you to either.”
I then told her that I would like to take the tube off her despite lack of progress, or because of it.
It simply had not worked.
I wanted her to take over, do what she needed to do and I would decide in about ten days if I had to extend the Treatment Order.
Forty five minutes. The meeting took forty five minutes as people had to present summaries of different reports, the details of which were irrelevant here.
The battle was over. Sammy looked relaxed. Nobody was fighting her now. She was back in control.
I took her off the Section as she started to put on weight and before long she was discharged.
We forget how easy it is to entrench. To entrench is a sure way to perpetuate a problem.
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Email: cockroachcatcher (at) gmail (dot) com.
[1] Daily Mail report on 26th March 2007 – Children as young as six suffering from aneroxia.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=444646&in_page_id=1774
[2] Independent report on 29th March 2007: The Versace family: Allegra and the curse of anorexia
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/the-versace-family-allegra-and-the-curse-of-anorexia-442347.html
[3] Salvador Minuchin: (born 1921 in Argentina), in 1965 became the director of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, which eventually became the world's leading center for family therapy and training. He is author of a number of books including Families and Family Therapy and Family Kaleidoscope and coauthor of Psychosomatic Families: Anorexia Nervosa in Context and Mastering Family Therapy.
[4] Richard Saul Wurman: (born 1936) an architect by training, published over 81 books including his best-selling book Information Anxiety and his award winning ACCESS Travel Guides. His latest books are UNDERSTANDING Children and UNDERSTANDING Healthcare (January 2004). http://www.wurman.com/rsw/
[5] Micropore™: Micropore consists of a conformable, non-extensible non-woven fabric manufactured by 3M from 100% viscose, coated with a layer of an acrylic adhesive.
Thursday, July 18, 2019
NHS & ADHD: Ban the diagnosis & Save!
©2016 Am Ang Zhang
As I drove into work this morning the radio was playing Green Green Grass of Home. Must have
been years since I heard it. Tom Jones!
been years since I heard it. Tom Jones!
As soon as I stepped into the clinic, my trusted secretary asked: Have you heard, the new Health Secretary is banning ADHD and its benefits!
“Wow! Genius?”
“That’s it. He is banning the diagnosis made by private clinics. Diagnosis can only be made by NHS Child Psychiatrists and those on medication would not get benefits. Only those not on medication might be considered for some benefits. And only for school holiday time!”
“So the Daily Mail can no longer rant and rave about it!”
“Parents are up in arms because of the benefit thing. But you have always said that a third of our patients are fakes!”
“Don’t quote me or I will get the sack”
Then I heard Tom Jones again! Strange! We do not have a radio at the clinic!
“Then I awake and look around me, at four grey wall surround me
and I realize that I was only dreaming.”
Yes, I have retired!
And it is TEA, not GRASS. BOH Tea in Malaysia.
Then I read in The Guardian
“According to data obtained exclusively by Education Guardian under Freedom of Information legislation, there has been a 65% increase in spending on drugs to treat ADHD over the last four years. Such treatments now cost the taxpayer over £31m a year.” More>>>>
Neurologist Richard Saul
“ADHD Does Not Exist: The Truth About Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder” (HarperWave)
After a long career treating patients complaining of such problems as short attention spans and an inability to focus, Saul is convinced that ADHD is a collection of symptoms, not a disease, and shouldn’t be listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
Ritalin: no long term benefits
Related:
ADHD, Heart Risks, Kinko and Jetblue
ADHD: Posts.
©2012 Am Ang Zhang
Feb 19, 2013
Adult A.D.H.D. is open to faking and more so by medical students. In children, it was my experience that often parents would report symptoms in order to secure disability benefits.
Aug 14, 2012
Over the last ten years or so, I kept meeting friends in the U.S. whose children seemed to progress from one psychiatric diagnosis to another with frightening regularity, the most common being from ADHD to Bipolar.
Aug 03, 2012
It has long been held that there is no alternative treatment to ADHD! Stimulant in its various forms is the answer. In life nothing is easy or indeed straightforward.
Sep 18, 2011
“According to data obtained exclusively by Education Guardian under Freedom of Information legislation, there has been a 65% increase in spending on drugs to treat ADHD over the last four years.
Sep 23, 2011
First came ADHD. The use of stimulants benefits mainly teachers during school hours. Parents and doctors soon find a quick fix in antipsychotics, and for good measure the newer ones, believing that they have fewer side ...
Sep 20, 2011
Is the piano China
Oct 21, 2008
Results: Children with ADHD concentrated better after the walk in the park than after the downtown walk or the neighborhood walk. Effect sizes were substantial and comparable to those reported for recent formulations of ...
May 15, 2008
On April 21, 2008 A News Release came through: “Children with ADHD should get heart tests before treatment with stimulant drugs”
Jul 28, 2008
I have in my travels met other psychiatrists who often ask why there is such a discrepancy in the diagnosis of ADHD in the US
Sep 26, 2011
Has everything got to be ADHD, Bipolar or psychosis. Especially ADHD for a 39 year old?! In this week's ... But why should the patient not have pheochromocytoma and ADHD and paranoid psychosis and a touch of bipolar.
Aug 31, 2012
Over the last ten years or so, I kept meeting friends in the U.S. whose children seemed to progress from one psychiatric diagnosis to another with frightening regularity, the most common being from ADHD to Bipolar.
Jul 24, 2008
So Sharon Sharon
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Real Street Art & Faked ADHD: Real Psychosis & Suicide.
Street Art is now gaining a good reputation and these are the ones I picked up in Cuenca Ecuador.
Adult A.D.H.D. is open to faking and more so by medical students. In children, it was my experience that often parents would report symptoms in order to secure disability benefits. In the case of young adults, it was more an attempt to secure medication that they believe will help them with their studies.
New York Times
Richard, visited a doctor and received prescriptions for Adderall, an amphetamine-based medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. His mother insisted to Richard that he did not have A.D.H.D., not as a child and not now as a 24-year-old college graduate, and that he was getting dangerously addicted to the medication. It was inside the building that her husband, Rick, implored Richard’s doctor to stop prescribing him Adderall, warning:
“You’re going to kill him.”
After becoming violently delusional and spending a week in a psychiatric hospital in 2011, Richard met with his doctor and received prescriptions for 90 more days of Adderall.
He hanged himself in his bedroom closet two weeks after they expired.
The story of Richard Fee, an athletic, personable college class president and aspiring medical student, highlights widespread failings in the system through which five million Americans take medication for A.D.H.D., doctors and other experts said.
Medications like Adderall can markedly improve the lives of children and others with the disorder. But the tunnel-like focus the medicines provide has led growing numbers of teenagers and young adults to fake symptoms to obtain steady prescriptions for highly addictive medications that carry serious psychological dangers. These efforts are facilitated by a segment of doctors who skip established diagnostic procedures, renew prescriptions reflexively and spend too little time with patients to accurately monitor side effects.
Richard Fee’s experience included it all. Conversations with friends and family members and a review of detailed medical records depict an intelligent and articulate young man lying to doctor after doctor, physicians issuing hasty diagnoses, and psychiatrists continuing to prescribe medication — even increasing dosages — despite evidence of his growing addiction and psychiatric breakdown.
“There’s a sense that greater powers, profit-driven and amoral, are pulling the strings in our children’s lives. There’s a sense that those who should best protect us — our government and our doctors — are so corrupted that they can no longer do the job. There’s a sense that childhood has, in many ways, been denatured, that youth has been stolen, that the range of human acceptability has been narrowed for our kids to a point that it has become soul-crushingly inhuman.”
Judith Warner New York Times
In my book The Cockroach Catcher, I told the story about this boy with hydrocephalous who was referred to me. He had just started school and his teacher considered him hyperactive and wondered if he had this new disease called ADD/ADHD and should he be on Ritalin. This is what I wrote about the ADHD phenomenon in that chapter:
The drug concerned is still hardly prescribed in France China China China
Most research showed that Ritalin would eventually lead to addiction; but there are some who prefer to insist there is no truth in that. The U.S.
Why then is there such a renewed demand and interest in diagnosis and drug treatment of ADHD.
It is a sad reflection of our times that we demand fast responses. Being patient is no longer seen as a virtue. Have you not noticed that with faster and faster computers we still consider them slow and therefore manufacturers can continue to sell us “faster” ones? TV and computer games have conditioned kids so that they can rarely hold their concentration for more than three seconds. Even the term “three minute culture” is now out of date – no modern day television or film scene must last longer than ten seconds. How many children nowadays can withstand five hours of waiting at the fishing rod without catching anything? How many mothers have to cope with lines like: I am thirsty, mummy, I want my juice now, please. Are they really going to die of dehydration if mother makes them wait a bit?
Concentration like most other things in our modern society is no longer something that is packaged by our Maker. People need to acquire it and one way is by taking a stimulant such as Ritalin.
Ritalin has also become popular because it takes the blame away from those responsible for the child – the parents and often the teachers as well. Some parents who do not wish for their child to go on Ritalin are often put under tremendous pressure by the teachers. Very few have even bothered to find out if there is any non drug related method at all.”
“According to data obtained exclusively by Education Guardian under Freedom of Information legislation, there has been a 65% increase in spending on drugs to treat ADHD over the last four years. Such treatments now cost the taxpayer over £31m a year.” More>>>>
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