Norway Offering Drug Free Treatment to People With Psychosis

[Joey]

How Norway is offering drug-free treatment to people with psychosis - BBC News

People with psychosis are usually given powerful medication - in Norway they can now choose to go drug-free.

www.bbc.co.uk

Most people with psychosis take powerful drugs to keep delusions and hallucinations at bay - but the side-effects can be severe. In Norway, a radical approach is now on offer via the national health system for patients who want to live drug-free.

Although many people with psychosis find anti-psychotic drugs enable them to live a normal life, it is thought around 20% of patients do not respond well. The side effects can be life-changing - extreme fatigue, weight gain, increased cholesterol and diabetes.


In Norway, concerns about the overall benefit of these drugs are compounded by a long-standing problem with forced treatment, which is more common here than in many other countries according to the limited number of international comparisons that exist.


The UN Committee Against Torture has singled out Norway's use of forced isolation in mental health facilities as something that must change.

Critics say the medication-free movement is driven by ideology rather than evidence. Dr Jan Ivar Rossberg, a psychiatrist who lives and works in Oslo, likens it to failed experiments in the 1960s and 70s when patients were given free rein in therapeutic communities, encouraged to take LSD and regress to childhood. This methodology was called "anti-psychiatry".


"History has shown us that this approach doesn't work, so we have stopped using it. We don't have treatment approaches shown to be effective without medication," he says.

Psychiatrists and patients around the world are watching what happens in Norway, where the government has taken decisive action to try and improve the lives of psychotic people by giving them more power over their lives. Globally, there's a reassessment of the way people with mental illness are treated and a will to reduce coercion.


Medication-free treatment could be just another therapeutic fad - or it could have the power to change psychiatry for good.

 

[Burnt Offerings]

Seems like a good thing to me. That impulse, to reduce coercion and give patients control over their own lives and treatment, is quite admirable imo. Maybe it'll work maybe it won't, it can definitely be tough to try and talk sense to someone experiencing a full-fledged psychotic break. Anti-psychotic medication is definitely an imperfect solution (understatement) and it's definitely something with room for improvement/experimentation, imo

 

[Joey]

Its a long read with a lot of information and Im not sure even with 4 quotes was I able to get the picture completey. I suggest reading the whole article to anyone who didnt before replying.

I know where I stand on coercion, but honestly not sure where I stand on the issue of these drugs themselves when its something as serious as psychosis and the drugs DO work for a lot of people. At the same time, the medication regimes people wind up on are often debilitating in their own way and the work they do is limited.

Im prescribed antipsychotics myself, and dont take them often. The affect I get when I take them isnt worth preventing something thats not really my day by day as much as episodic, and often drug induced.

One of the drugs in particular apriprazole absolutely kicks my ass when I take it IM, sick for days. Ive found other ways to cope. Teaching myself to recognize that a psychosis with people talking in my head, that it actually is a psychosis when its happening and knowing the experiences aren’t grounded in reality for instance.. that mental hurdle actually alleviated things 90% for me.

i still keep the drugs around though. Take as needed. I dont think Id want a truly drug free treatment plan. Theres a LOT of value in treatment which addresses the actual thought process towards yourself, your illness, and in learning coping skills, which drug therapy does NOT do. But the drugs do change the biochemical balance to make it easier to cope where you normally wouldn’t be able to...

Theres a piece in the article sort of about starting off with the drugs and tapering off with real mental health treatment. I guess I agree with that.