Medical Assistance in Dying for the Mentally Ill.

There is an article up on the Toronto Star right now about MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) and whether it's appropriate for the mentally ill.

From the introduction:

Dr. Ellen Wiebe, one of the country’s most experienced MAID providers, argues it’s about equality and autonomy: that people with psychiatric illness deserve the same right to choose as anyone else. Dr. John Maher, a psychiatrist and ethicist, calls it a moral failure: a system offering death instead of care. Both see Canada’s underfunded mental-health system as the real crisis. Wiebe hopes MAID will force politicians to finally fix it; Maher fears it lets them off the hook. What divides them is whether compassion means giving people control over how they die — or fighting harder to help them live.

 This is something I've been thinking about since MAiD was announced years ago. 

As someone who is mentally ill, I've often felt that being able to plan your death, would be less traumatizing for the people around you. You could plan your affairs, and be open and honest about wanting to end your suffering. 

I understand both sides of the argument here, but ultimately I believe someone has the ultimate right to their body and life, and that they have a right to suicide. MAiD would allow for that suicide to be planned and painless, as opposed to frightening and potentially violent or horrifying

Dr Mayer's point that "we have a system that doesn’t provide adequate care," is correct. He goes on to say:

Many people suffering from mental illness are pushed to the fringes of society, facing both stigma and poverty. Many people I work with survive on food banks and live in bedbug- and cockroach-infested rooms. You walk into these places and think, this cannot be Canada. To then offer them death deepens their vulnerability.

Though I understand the pull to call out the vulnerability faced by many here, that ciriticism should be of the state, and not of the mentally ill. Ultimately that vulnerability, that poverty and lack of access is part of the condition. Not of the condition of being mentally ill itself, but the condition of being mentally ill, in Canada, in 2025. In this economy. With this access. With no resources, what do we actually have access to? Waitlists? 

I have a decent job. I have healthcare coverage. I still live paycheque to paycheque. I don't have an easy access to doctor's. I don't have a therapist or counselor. I can't afford bi-weekly appointments. It is a struggle, every day. I try and make the time to go to the gym 2-3 times a week, for my mental health and to prep for surgery, but I go to a community gym because I can't afford otherwise. I can't afford my life right now, I buy groceries on a credit card. I feel like every day is a struggle. And that's mental ilness with the "new" addition of physical disability since 2022. 

I can say with absolute certainty that if I were to live with the amount of pain I had when I was hosopitalized with necrotic pancreatitis, gastroperesis and the other compounding pains and illnesses (surgery pain, being bed ridden, pneomonia) I would opt for MAiD. It wasn't living a life. It was variations of discomfort to extreme pain over extended periods of time. 

I hope this piece and articles like it make their way into the public sphere so we can keep discussing MAiD. I want it to be destgimatized, and I want our relationship to our inevitable death to be something we can have more control over, especially when in unbelieveable pain. 

When it's just easier to die.

Article on CTV online about those suffering from long-Covid, and chronic mental illness seeking medical assistance in dying.

The government as a body is telling people that they're willing to assist them to death because they don't have enough money to live with dignity. That is a pretty clear signal to me that, unless you are able-bodied enough or able-minded enough to work to produce profit, then you don't have any place here.

This really hits home, this is something I've thought about often. If my health keeps going, and it's just too much of a struggle, I'd liquidate my life and just end it as painlessly as possible. 

Being hospitalized was so difficult, and I had my mother to help me. Alone, I don't know if I could do it. The financial strain. The stress. The loneliness. The support systems are just not in place. You need money. 

 I saw some tweets pass about folks being denied help from disability programs, but being approved for medically assisted suicide. What message does that send? 

People with Disabilities are choosing to die through Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) because they can't access the money they need to live.

Does that sound like a society that is fair to you?

— Naheed Dosani (@NaheedD) July 12, 2022

right now in canada there are human beings having to choose medical assistance in dying because they cannot afford to live. they cannot afford rent. they cannot afford medications. they cannot afford food. the pathologies of poverty are killing people. what about this is just?

— Andrew Baback Boozary MD (@drandrewb) July 12, 2022

A relapse in time.

 It is now Tuesday.

Thursday, we had an emergency plumbing situation at the duplex. It involved opening walls at my mom’s place, and water accumulation in the crawl space. What we thought had been resolved, had not been. The emergency plumber mentioned all the corrective work that would be needed, and I spiralled.

I went upstairs, to bed, and did not sleep. My heart raced. I was ill all night, running to the toilet, I tried to stick to the edge of the bed as not to disturb my dog. He kept trying to sleep between my legs or in the nook behind my knees. He became hostile and irritated. He would stand on my legs and stomp. He is not a dog who is sensitive to when I am ill or in pain. When I had bronchitis and would have coughing fits and have to shoot up to cough and breathe, he would refuse to get up from between my legs, half asleep and adamant I go around him. 

My chest was so hot, I couldn’t put my head down to the pillow, not fully, because all I heard was my heart racing. All I was hearing was how hard my heart was working, how close it was to exploding.

When I say my heart raced and my thoughts spiralled, I don’t think that does the experience justice. 

My chest was hot, as if I’d swallowed too-hot coffee that then seeped through my throat and lungs, spreading throughout my ribcage. But it never cooled, and there was no relief.

My mind was barraged with incessant thoughts. This place is a money-pitt, I cannot afford it, what have I committed my mother to, I am unable to take care of myself, I will lose my job, we should sell the duplex, what if we do not recoup our money, all of it can go to my mom, where will I live, how will I take care of myself, I can’t move, that takes money and energy, I am alone, how can I do this, if my mom dies, I have nothing. 

There was a lot of focusing on losing my mother, and what that would do to me. How that would feel. In earnest, it felt like she was dying, like I was losing her. That I was actively grieving and losing her. How alone I would be. How nobody will ever love me like my mother loves me. There is no love so unconditional, not that I have experienced. 

Thursday was sleepless. I e-mailed in sick Friday around 5 am, and when my mother came upstairs to check on me, I was still spiralling. I would have bits of sobbing, and was also trying to figure out emergency cleaning services for our crawl space. 

I reached out to some friends, and those who live with anxiety shared breathing exercises and some prompts. I tried to breathe it away. Sometimes it would mellow things, sometimes it was like throwing an ice cube onto a bonfire. 

I have not had a panic attack, or suffered acute anxiety in years. Not since school. I naively, thought those times were behind me. 

I had been off of Effexor for months, and even through the pandemic and quarantine, I thought my depression was level, and relatively good, considering. But I was clearly wrong.

Over the course of Friday I also asked around if people knew of any emergency services. I called a help line or two, 

“Are you suicidal?”

“No.”

That’s the extent mental illness emergency care.

I called 8-1-1, the social side first, who of course confirmed that CLSC wait lists are months if not years long. I remember asking about services in English and they said that list was over 5 years long.

I called the EAP line at work, and they said it would take 3-5 days for someone to get back to me, and that the services were only short term, 3-4 sessions. So again, nothing long term, and nothing in the realm of emergency help. 

I called my family doctor office for an emergency appointment, I would get one for Tuesday. 

I was unable to eat, I was so anxious and nauseous and panicked. I managed 4 triscuit. I drank water. 

Saturday morning things were not getting better, and I asked a friend if she would be willing to drive me to the hospital. She was pro-active and said to keep her on stand by if I wanted to go. I took a shower, and put on clean clothes and asked her to bring me to the emergency room. I ate a banana before leaving, I drank water. I brought myself a bottle. I tried to wear clothes I would be comfortable in if hospitalized. Layers. 

The drive was more pleasant than I would have expected, since my friend E is a trained interventionist and just a really good person to have in your corner when things aren’t going well. Her tone was even and calm and she made me feel calm. Even when she drive the wrong way up an emergency bridge meant only for ambulances. The signage was shit.

She dropped me off and I cried thanking her. I made my way to the emergency ward, through taped off areas and security stations asking us to change masks and sanitize our hands. 

Once in the ER, I told the nurse I was having heart palpitations and trouble breathing and that I was having a panic attack that would not end. 

I sat until the triage nurse could see me. Maybe 30 minutes. Once seen, I was given a yellow bracelet. 

Yellow is potentially covid-related, green is not. 

They called me in for a quick ECG, in one of the ER consult rooms. I went back to wait. They called me in to give me an Ativan. I went back to wait. The took my blood pressure. I went back to wait. Eventually I saw a doctor, and he said they would do a blood test, but that things looked good. I went back to wait. I was called for the blood test. The doctor told me things looked good, that I would get some emergency meds (clonazepam) for a week, until I could see my family doctor.

He said I could go home, I asked how I would get through the night (since it was now past 10pm, and he said he would give me a pill, something in the Ativan family). 

I got to the hospital around 12:30 pm, and left around 10:30. I took a cab home. 

I got home and took the pill, and slept for a few hours, but woke up often.

Sunday was a hard day, I still felt like I was in crisis and I did not know what to do. My mother came upstairs and stayed with me. I cried. I rested. I hugged her.  I still did not want to eat, but for some reasons bananas were it. And remain it. I had a banana. Then 1/4 of a bagel.  My mother spent the night, I cried myself to sleep. I was afraid. I was fragile. I felt like nobody could help me. I felt impaired. I felt disabled. I felt like I would never be able to take care of myself properly. I was afraid that the comfort I had then and there with my mother, in her arms, was the only comfort I would ever feel, and that it was all I had, and that it would soon be gone, because one of us will outlive the other, and I very selfishly hope it’s her.

My friend E dropped off food, frozen dishes and fruit and things to get me through. An additional kindness.

Monday was more of the same. Less painful physically.  Uneasy. Fragile. I felt like I was a wee bird. 

My friend checked in, but I didn’t know how else to tell them I wasn’t doing well.

I was able to have some soup. Small portions of food.

Today is Tuesday. I was feeling low-level anxiety about the phone call with  my family doctor at 3pm this afternoon, and I was not incorrect in my intuition. 

My doctor sounded tired and uninterested. It felt like I had to tell him what I needed, he made no suggestions. He said he would prescribe a low-level Effexor again, for 2 weeks and then check in. I said I needed therapy, and he said everything is full. He offered no suggestions. He said he could send me a referral for the CLSC wait lists. When we hung up, I did not feel seen, or helped. 

I cried. 

I told me mom I guess I would be going back to work tomorrow, to which she replied I should call him back and ask for an extension. So I did. His secretary was irritated and said he would call me back at the end of the day.

He called me around 5:30, and I asked for a referral to a therapist, and he said it would come with the CLSC referral, that they were one in the same. i asked about going back to work, and he said he’d give me a note to be off until Monday. He did not offer it. I asked for it. 

He sounded tired and uninterested, so I tell myself he is also burnt out. He is also going through a lot.

But as someone who still feels a hair away from a crisis, I am devastated  by the emergency services I was unable to find. I feel abandoned and completely disillusioned by the mental health marketing of every goddamn thing. 

It’s all bullshit hash-tagging and sales speak, the bare minimum. Add the terms mental health, diversity and if you’re dangerous, social justice to your buzz words and then leave us all to rot. 

I have never felt so fragile. 

I feel like I have been snapped in a way that’s never happened before. I feel like I am walking on eggshells, but I am the eggshells. 

How to Help Someone With Depression - a guide.

The Cut published How to Help Someone With Depression and it has some helpful, broad guidelines for someone who would like to know what it is that they can offer friends and family who are suffering. 

What's Your Ailment with Maria Bamford.

I haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but I adore Maria Bamford.

Check out her talk show, What's Your Ailment?

Maria Bamford on Three Questions with Andy Richter.

Mental illness, violent crime and the media.

Today I learned something new! Only 4% of violent crimes are linked to mental illness, but news reports discuss mental illness in relationship to violence 55% of the time. FUN FACT.

— Ashley Nicole Black Panther (@ashleyn1cole) 2 March 2018

It's a bad time for me.

Well, fuck me! It's been a rough week.

First, let me share this excerpt from a social media post on Friday evening that'll really help set the tone:

I’ve had a terrible last 48 hours. I’m not feeling that much better, but I thought I’d reach out to those struggling and just say I’m sorry we’re all on this shitty boat together. 

An ongoing sore spot for me is my ability to take care of myself financially. If I let myself focus too intensely on losing an income and my ability to find and keep stable work - I have a panic attack. A bad week at work triggers many things in me. These days though it’s just deep dread and self-loathing. It’s shame and it’s guilt and it’s a weight in my chest. I’m still alive, and I know that’s something, but these days it’s painful. I feel limited and broken and incapable of functioning. I’m not the architect of depression, nothing I feel is original, but I feel so firmly inhabited by it. Usually haunted but these days possessed. 

It is such an awful thing. It’s very nature made to make you feel weak, whiny and spoiled for even naming it. What a luxury to have such a convenient, invisible disease. One that robs you of ambition. One that keeps your decisions safe and your hopes for yourself soft and low. I’m sure it’s the depression, and the exhaustion that marries it that keeps you in a lacklustre suit and not your utter lack of discipline or work ethic. And when you try, and things get bad again you’ll remember why you try and keep your life small. You’ll be reminded by everything in your life. Because everything you love and celebrate on a good day screams your incompetence back at you on a bad one. They’re all things you need to take care of - but can’t. 

Your dog thinks you’re a downer. Your life is too big, you can’t take care of it. This space you occupy is filled with things you now want to sell - to save yourself from becoming the wretch you feel you’re destined to become. 

This is only some of it. Last night was worse. My heart is racing and my mind with it. I am so sick of this invisible disease and I’m furious and uncontrollably discouraged about living where any and all care I could possibly access takes money, leisure time and a tremendous amount of energy. 

I hope pain is a limited resource and when mine is great it’s lessened for somebody else.

Things aren't going well with my new job. Initially, I thought it was friction with my manager that would pass, but it turns out I was incredibly naive about that. My manager's boss met with me this week in a meeting I'm still unclear on. She said they were wondering if they should re-sign my contract when it terminates, or if they should even fulfill my current contract, because of a list of points.

The main point being I had a huge problem with my manager and sick-days. I had 5-day a week medical treatments at a hospital, and it meant going over my allotted sick-day credits. I took some in vacation time, and it just caused a huge problem.

Then there's an appointment I took my mother to, that was in my name, not hers, that I marked as a family day, and should not have. Having apologized for the misunderstanding (my misunderstanding of what constituted a family day) the issue was constantly brought back up as if I was attempting some kind of serious fraud. Which I don't get. My manager was so aggressive and odd about the whole thing when I asked questions because I didn't understand it was like she was trying to trap me in a lie. It was so hostile.

She then went on about second chances and her experiences in the department, and if I had anything to say, but all I did was cry. She told me I could feel safe and tell my side of things but I couldn't. I told her I felt it was more than professional (my manager does not like me) and that I was upset because she was telling me I might lose my job.

There are a lot of examples of my manager not liking me, and why I have the feeling it's personal. I even spoke to someone in HR about it months ago. I've spoken to colleagues about it, and they've noticed it as well. If we all went out to lunch together and came back 15 minutes late, I would be the only one who would get an e-mail about it. Once, while "standing guard" at a door, she saw me on my work cell phone and told me to put my personal cell phone away. I corrected her, and said it was my work phone, and she got irritated and snapped that it didn't look good and started getting mad at me so I stopped trying to talk to her about it, even though my colleague openly admitted to being on his personal phone the entire time, and got no comments from her. It's a ton of little things like that. If the team needed something, there was a time we tested what would happen if I asked versus someone else asking. And, in group meetings, I would often say things that were dismissed, or I was responded to as if I was lying, so one of my colleagues would have to agree with me, and repeat what I was saying or else what I was saying would not be heard.

The main thing that upset me the most was early on when I told her we needed professional movers to move boxes because two of my colleagues were going to burn out, doing physical labor that should not be part of their job. She rejected the comment and was very snide with me, saying it's what we're paid to do. When I went back to my colleagues and told them that, one broke-down. She ended up giving her notice the next week. As a reaction to the near burn-out and notice, my manager hired some part-time movers to help us. But it took someone quitting. When she wrote out to the manager her notice, she never got an actual response, and it was an ongoing issue of not feeling heard for most of us. So I did not trust her from the get-go, which she no doubt must have realized.

I was also reprimanded because there was a day when we were all making boxes and we had no black permanent markers left. I asked to order some, and was met with hostility and suspicion, did we really need them? It might take a while, could we get by without them? We're a team of 4-6 making hundreds of boxes a day - the reaction was nonsensical. So I went to the office supply store and got markers. And I said if I'm reimbursed fine if not, that's okay too. That did not go well.

A lot of the friction has been around me taking liberties I shouldn't be taking anymore now that my employer is the federal government. Apparently, all those bureaucratic jokes about it taking 4-6 weeks before your pencil order comes in isn't a joke. It's something I have a lot of trouble with. Clearly.

During the meeting with my manager's boss I mentioned that when I heard she was leaving I was hoping to benefit from a fresh start with the new manager, who I already prefer. Having said that, the department clearly has a laundry list of issues with me, which isn't something I can easily get over or look past.

She said we'd meet again in a few weeks with my new manager. That didn't leave me feeling great. For now I'm going to just keep going to work and doing the best I can, while also spending as little money as possible since it feels like I'm going to lose my job.

Sure, maybe part of that meeting was to get me to smarten up and move forward, but I felt it was more in line with her doing her due-diligence before firing me to keep the union happy. A union I've never seen or heard from by the way.

If this happened on Thursday, I got home in a panic. I cried the entire bus ride home and most of the night. I have cried more in the last 6 months, at work, than I have in the last decade of my life. I asked a friend if I could text her to "let things out" in order to attempt to decompress a little. I know what happens when you call suicide hotlines. They tell you to call a friend if you can. I guess it's an attempt to get you back in your "real life" with people who actually know you, but what it feels like is a dodge. It all feels like a dodge.

I went to work Friday, kept busy with the job, and came home Friday night quite well rooted in a mix of situational sadness and deep depression.

1. I am not capable of having a decent job because I'm a piece of shit.
2. I am unable to take care of myself.
3. I am 34 and dependent on my mother.
4. If my mother passes before me, I'm fucked.
5. I shouldn't have adopted my dog, I'm a fuck-up. 
6. I don't deserve a job with actual reasonable working conditions.
7. I have an undeserved ego/pride.
8. I am incapable of holding down a job.
9. I need to get "worse" jobs that I deserve.
10. I will never be able to afford care (therapy, classes, yoga, self-care). 
11. My inability to understand the complexities of all the interactions with my manager over the last few months clearly shows I have a diminishing mental capacity. 
12. I am a drain on my mother.
13. I am a drain on my friends and family.
14. I am a disappointment to my friends and family.
15. This was my one chance to get into the public sector and I fucked it up. 
16. I would need to live in affordable housing, but my mental illness is borderline severe so I will never be helped by any official social services.
17. Any care I could access would have to be paid out of pocket, which I will never be able to afford, so I will never access it. 
18. All of this was avoidable, but I was too nonchalant because I'm dissociative. 

It goes on and on.

At this point, 2-3 days after the shock of it all I'm calmer, so maybe this makes a little more sense than the sheer panic of Thursday and Friday. It's quieter now.

Yesterday I went to the dog park, ran some simple errands and watched documentaries all day. I watched I Am Not Your Negro and I Am Another You, which hit close to home since it was about being homeless due (in large part) to mental illness. Great timing on that one.

Today I went to the dog park, did some laundry and might watch another movie or cook something.

Sometimes I fall into this crevasse of thinking about losing my job and my heart starts to race.

Other times a feeling of uselessness just slowly covers me up.

It's not a great time. It's not a good time. It's a bad time for me.

Jenifer Lewis on bipolar disorder, and being the Mother of Black Hollywood.

Saw some videos pass through on my feed featuring Jennifer Lewis talking about bipolar disorder, and taking care of yourself. I thought her advice was on-point.

I got no problem talking about bipolar disorder or anything that I went through, or am going through. It doesn't go away. Mania is exhausting. It can ruin your entire life, and your families life - and those who love you. You gotta look in the mirror. You got to see that something is wrong. You then have to make a choice whether you want to live or die. It took my therapist 5 years to convince me to go on medication... You then have to be patient for your level of medication... 

Nobody is going to save you. Nobody is going to  rescue you. Nobody can wear your shoes. You have to make your own bed and build your own house. Do your best and leave the rest. Can't handle every fucking thing. Love yourself, so love will not be a stranger when it comes. And it will come, if you take care of yourself. 

For some reason I can only find the video on Facebook - which fucking irritates me to no end.

Also, this interaction with Josh Gad is pretty good. 

After a quick google search I see she was also on Oprah talking about being bipolar. 

She's indeed fabulous. There's also a wee bit on mental health on another piece on her on The Root's website, where she also talks about her work and playing "the mother" for many black-Hollywood productions. I think the first thing I saw her in was Fresh Prince.

Chris Cornell.

Woke up to the news today that Chris Cornell died at the age of 52.

Hours later, it's now come to light that he committed suicide by hanging himself in a hotel room.

When someone dies by suicide, I always get a chill of recognition. As if we're known to one another, not through life, but through the method of death.

I'm sorry Chris. It's over.

Old Baby.

I watched Old Baby this weekend. I love Maria Bamford so much. 

It's like her comedy exists just for me.

The Admission by Stacy Torres.

Longreads has a great piece up by Stacy Torres called The Admission. Torres recounts her admission to a psych department at the age of 20. 

The section on how she needs to "perform" her illness in order to be taken seriously was especially poignant to me:

“We’re looking for psychiatric emergency,” Jeanne said. 

“Outpatient services are down the block.” 

“What about inpatient services?” she asked. 

“Well, that’s in here,” he motioned to the door behind him. 

Well, then what are you waiting for? Let us in. I didn’t understand the confusion. Why the hesitation? Then a thought occurred. The week before Jeanne had half-joked about how one of her colleagues suggested they might not admit me unless I slit my wrists in front of them. I clenched my teeth and slowly inhaled before getting down to business. If they wanted a wreck, I’d show them one. In seconds, liquid was spilling down the side of my face. I didn’t bother wiping the fat telenovela tears that pooled on my cheeks. The man looked embarrassed, tugging on his eyebrow, and hustled us into the room from where he first came.

This has always been difficult for me since I'm so despondent when really depressed. A friend of mine cries incessantly when suffering, and I told her once that in a way it's a blessing because it's physical "proof" of how you're feeling, whereas I just look like I'm a sleepy bitch.

Read the essay here.

Chris Gethard: Career Suicide.

The links seem to only link to the American version of HBO - so I don't know if this will be available in Canada. Womp womp.

Charlotte's Web and CBD.

Charlotte's Web has been consistently name-checked on You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes. Charlotte's Web is a CBD oil that is family business run, sold out of Colorado right now.

Pete has been open about how it's helped with his anxiety and general mood.

Pete's just featured the Stanley Brothers on his podcast:
   

CBD is shown to be a powerful anti-inflammatory and to have just a litany of uses in feeling better. The namesake of the oil is a young girl with severe epilepsy whose mother contacted the brothers in search of someone to help with accessing CBD for her daughter.

According to the interview above, CBD has been classed by the US government as being a neuroprotectant.

They also touch on microdosing, sustainable capitalist business practices, addiction, PTSD, and all sorts of wellness related stuff and the judgements that have suppressed their research and progress in CBD research.

Prohibition also means prohibiting research - which might open up if it's legalised in Canada.

A friend of mine with severe pain has been taking CBD oil for a few months and swears by it. Hers is through a green doctor here in Montreal. It does have THC in it, just a lower dose.

Hopefully, I'll be able to order something comparable through a local doctor, something that's covered by insurance - ideally.

Also I just really like stories of people doing drugs and freaking out/having profound experiences.

Neal Brennan on mental illness, the brain and TMS.

Starting around the 01:01:00 mark, Neal Brennan and Joe Rogan start talking about mental health, research on the brain and all sorts of offshoots of brain health and mental health. Brennan discusses his history with antidepressants and the constant work of seeking treatment.

It's a solid conversation. Rogan is interested and Brennan is an active participant in seeking treatment. You have to be when you're depressed - as is pointed out many times in this interview - very little is actually known about mental illness and the brain in general.

In his stand-up special, 3 Mics, he also talks about his experiences with ketamine (in the above podcast he's still in the process of that treatment) and his experience with TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation). 

I'm going to ask Dr. Rishi about TMS, because Brennan says it helped him a great deal. It's covered by medicare in Canada, and it seems to be available at the MUHC.

I'd suck on a magnet if it alleviates some of my fucking pain. I've sucked on worse.

Update (2016-04-20) - Jenny over at The Bloggess posted about TMS, asking her (extensive) readership about experiences with it. Check out the comments section for more.

Neal Brennan: 3 Mics.

I watched 3 Mics last night and it was very good.

It's part stand-up and part one-man show. The premise is excellent (3 mics, one for one-liners, one for "emotional stuff" and one for stand-up), and it's poignant and funny. Brennan goes in deep and honest on his depression and the darker bits of his life, it's just real honest and unflinchingly straight.

I highly recommend it.

Thank you for being honest Neal. Depression is the fucking worst.

The Violence in our Heads.

Illustration by Keith Negley, featured in The Violence in our Heads.

Outrunning depression.

Great piece by Kim McLarin on depression, race and all manner of interconnection.

OUTRUNNING ESHU: ON FINALLY SEEKING TREATMENT FOR DEPRESSION

Some highlights for me:

On "mental illness" as a white category which alienates communities of colour:

Mental illness, mental disorder of any possible stripe, was definitely white folks’ mess. White people had nervous breakdowns; black folks just got tired of shit. White people had anxiety, black folks had nerves. Black folks got the blues sometimes, but only white people got clinically depressed. White people listened to Prozac. Black folks listened to their mother, their pastor, and God.

Some stats:

In 2014, an estimated 15.7 million adults (6.7 percent of the adult population) experienced at least one major depressive episode, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. A major depressive episode is defined as a period of two weeks or longer during which a person experiences depression, loss of interest or pleasure in everyday life, and at least four other symptoms that reflect a change in functioning: sleeplessness or excessive sleeping, loss of appetite, or problems with energy, concentration or self-image. (An important note: the NIMH did not make exclusions for depression caused by bereavement, substance abuse, or medical illness.) 

Women are 70 percent more likely than men to experience depression in their lifetime, says the CDC. On the bright side, depression among women improves after age 60, which is not true of men. 

Not surprisingly, people living below the poverty level are more than twice as likely to experience depression as those living at or above the poverty line.
An estimated 92 percent of African-American men with depression do not seek help, according to the CDC. Which makes it reasonable to consider the statistics off.

On what we know and highlighting how much we don't know:

I try to meditate. Psychological research, including a 2014 JAMA Internal Medicine analysis of forty-seven studies, suggests that meditation and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy can be moderately effective in treating depression and perhaps more so at preventing relapse. Then again, psychological research (a 2015 meta-analysis published in the journal Science) suggests that 60 percent of psychological research is, essentially, crap.

On the fear of sad people, and the reminders present in the melancholia of others:

The deep American suspicion of melancholy and its contents is connected to the deep American suspicion of intellect, of complexity of thought and perspective, of wakefulness.

On writers, creatives and depression:

Not all writers are tortured geniuses. I know many stable writers, levelheaded and content, writers who don’t drink or take drugs or require antidepressants, writers who use, without irony, words like “optimist.”

Still, there’s no denying some subtle connection between creativity and mental anguish. Several studies have confirmed the link (Andresen, 1987; Jamison, 1989; Ludwig, 1995) even if they fail to explain it. The largest study to date to examine the connection was conducted by researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. That study found that creative types, writers in particular, were overrepresented among people with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety syndrome, and substance abuse problems. Writers were also almost twice as likely to commit suicide as the general population.

Are we sensitive, thus we need to express creatively or is our need to look at things and think deeply, responsible for our melancholia?

The great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa famously said, “To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.” How much toll does it take to not look away? Ecclesiastes says: “And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.”

On "molecular residue":

But there’s even more than that. I am fascinated by (what I can understand of) the exploding field of behavioral epigenetics, which posits that the experiences of our recent ancestors leave molecular residue which adheres to their DNA— and therefore to ours. In other words, not just physical but psychological and even behavioral tendencies really can be inherited. If your grandmother or even your great-grandmother struggled with depression because she escaped from the Holocaust, or narrowly avoided a massacre in My Lai, or was enslaved and raped repeatedly or watched her father being lynched—or was simply neglected and unloved during childhood—it matters to you and in you. Whether you know it or not.

I gotta admit, when I was in my late teens and early 20's I  had this foreboding reoccurring thought that my sadness was karma. I must have been a terrible, monstrous shit in another life. Like researching philosophy and religion, it was an attempt at explaining why I felt the way I felt.

Read the entirety of McLarin's piece of you can.

Can psychedelic drugs work magic on depression?

CBC Radio has a piece up right now on using psychedelic drugs in the treatment of depression. 

Some excerpts:

The pharmaceutical industry has developed the preparation of ketamine called esketamine which, instead of having to inject intravenously, can be inhaled under medical surveillance, of course. 

And there are at least three trials ongoing in different countries, in different centres. We are one of the centers and if everything goes well we're talking probably about commercialization in late 2019.

 ...

It could have a major impact because, for example, it could be given to people who have had treatment resistance. And then we would have the capacity to get them well very fast. And then more research will have to be carried out to see if it could be used earlier in the sequence of treatment. And like I mentioned before almost everybody experiences a decrease in suicidal ideation. And that's the major impact because there are 4,000 Canadians dying from suicide in Canada every year, 11 a day.

Check out the aricle, or the radio episode.

I'm willing to try anything to feel better - I don't care of it's horse tranquilizer.

Sarah Silverman and Pete Holmes.

Great interview/conversation between between Sarah Silverman and Pete Holmes on You Made It Weird (one of my favourite podcasts).

Silverman discusses her recent hospital scare, and her mourning for the deaths of three people close to her (Harris Wittels, Garry Shandling and her mother). They talk about life, religion and some pretty existential stuff.

Sarah has also been open about her living with depression and needing medication to function.

From this podcast:

Depression - there's a certain aspect of it that's self-obsession. As soon as you decide to focus away from yourself and have empathy and understanding of others, that's when it can go away. It's not a selfless endeavor, it's self-obsessed. Sometimes I forget that others exist. If I can throw myself into others ... you don't become as obsessed with your downward spiral.

Myu desire to get me "outside of myself" is part of why I started volunteering with the dog shelter and the prisoner correspondence project. I needed to get the fuck out of my head, and feel useful. In my case, it has helped.

Depression is ironic in that way, that you're so overly sensitive and feeling of everything, but at the same time, all of that attention is so internalized that you end up being self-obsessed.

Don't ever call a depressed person self-obsessed though - it doesn't come from a place of self-congratulation. It's more about being unable to look away from what you think is an oncoming train wreck you'll be the victim of but you're also responsible for.