Drugs often do more harm than good for those suffering from mental illnesses

THE causes of deep-seated, that is, clinical, depression and the remedies for such depression are troubling matters for us all.

Hence, I welcome the debate on mental illness that was provoked by the comments of junior minister Tim O’Malley. But if it is to have any value it must be, as far as possible, a disinterested and informed debate.

However, beyond that must be the appropriate action and this is a point well made by Amnesty’s Fiona Crowley (Irish Examiner, November 28).

Certainly, our politicians have a grave responsibility to discharge in respect of the nation’s mental health and, more especially, of the care of those who suffer mental breakdown of one kind or another.

I have seen many mental institutions from the inside. From 1985-1990 I suffered from clinical depression. I have been in mental hospitals in England and in Ireland and I have witnessed the suffering of those in these institutions.

Who can say for certain what the causes of their suffering may have been? What is certain is that all the people I met had good reason to be sad, whether by way of bereavement, loss or of abuse of one kind or another.

I was administered lithium from 1987-1996 on the mistaken diagnosis that I was a manic depressive. It took me a long time to persuade my medical advisers to take me off it, and when I came off it in 1996 (via tegretol and the offer of a similar drug, epilim, that I rejected) I was assured I would have a mental breakdown within six months.

I had been greatly helped by a pharmacist in Dublin who explained in detail the noxious side-effects of all the drugs to which I had been subjected.

I was very wretched from 1985-1990 and in that period I just about managed to cling on, largely due to support given to me at the student health centre in Trinity College. I never thought that the cloud of depression would be lifted.

One of the factors that held back my recovery was the lack of understanding on many sides of the causes of my illness. I contribute this in the hope others will benefit from my experience because it is vital we change our attitudes about mental illness. None of us is immune to it.

But we need love and understanding and care and attention rather than drugs which often do more harm than good.

Gerald Morgan

School of English

Trinity College

Dublin 2