<p>Who is Sonny Corinthos?</p>
<p>Mobster on general hospital, sorry, I forget not everybody shares my penchant for daytime television. :P</p>
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<p>Well, essentially I do, unless perhaps it’s the person’s first deterioration into a manic state and he has remained undiagnosed up until this point. I believe after diagnosis, and once a person has regained some stability, then he becomes accountable to himself, his family, particularly his children, and his employers to get treatment and stay the course.</p>
<p>I understand very well that staying on meds can be difficult. I have a relative with this disorder, and have seen the various stages of extreme mania with psychosis, the stability that comes with taking the meds, the problems with those meds, the getting off the meds and doing something horrible as a result. My relative went off her meds, went into a spiral, and greeted her daughter at the door after school, panting, covered with blood and scratches, holding her daughter’s beloved dead cat that she had killed in her mania. She claimed at the time that it was self defense after the cat had dared to scratch her hand while licking it with her rough tongue. It took a decade for her daughter to get over that one. That could have been prevented had she not gotten off her meds.</p>
<p>I understand it’s hard to stay on meds, especially when they make you feel flat or “less yourself.” A lot of things in life are hard, VERY hard, but the alternative is things like the above, and some concessions must be made. They cannot be constantly excused from their actions-they must take their meds and certainly work with the physicians to get the proper dose/drug/combination whatever. They are not the only ones on the planet who are forced to endure difficult circumstances-that just happens to be their particular cross to bear. Everyone looks at this in a different way; my relative’s situation has shaped my outlook. Especially given that this family member is a health care worker with MUCH responsibility, it’s imperative to take the meds and just accept some of the downsides to those meds just as anyone who takes chronic medications must accept the downsides. She’s been compliant for over a decade now, and her life is far better now, even with the negatives the meds bring, than it was when she was refusing them.</p>
<p>^^^^ Yowie. Scary.</p>
<p>Nrdsb4–Thank you for that explanation. I learned something.</p>
<p>I want to expand on that medical care is more of an art than a science, figuring out & successfully treat conditions which you can’t simply x-ray and say " yup, you have a fracture of your distal radius- let’s slap a cast on it."</p>
<p>Medications that may successfully treat : depression, anxiety, psychosis- etc, may work for a while even if the patient is coping with the side effects- & even if exercise level. stress level, diet and health remain constant otherwise after a period of say two years, the medication can stop working.</p>
<p>Finding something else that works is a long arduous process. Being weaned off the meds can be very difficult, & it is hard to recognize what are residual affects from meds, and what is a symptom of the illness. ( if they even received an accurate diagnosis in the first place- it is subjective)</p>
<p>Trying another med can take weeks if not months to find if the symptom relief is worth the side effects & it can take longer to find the right dose.</p>
<p>It isn’t surprising that some people just say the hell with it, especially when those who are close to them regard mental illness as a defect & something that is controllable by will.</p>
<p>My father died ( IMO- no cause of death was found) from an overdose of tranquilizers & anti-depressants, that had been prescribed for him in large quantities ( to save money ).</p>
<p>My mother was prescribed medications which cause nervous system damage that was irreversible & the side effects made her already existing physical health problems worse.</p>
<p>When it comes to psychiatric care, the protocol seems to be giving even more drugs to combat the side effects-
a * There was an old woman who swallowed a fly* approach.
Really negatively impacts quality of life for many people.</p>
<p>I’m going to look for this book
[Daniel</a> Carlat, M.D., Author of Unhinged](<a href=“http://www.danielcarlat.com/index.htm]Daniel”>Daniel Carlat, M.D., Author of Unhinged)</p>
<p>That looks like an interesting book - I’m going to get it as well.</p>
<p>Have you seen some of his latest videos?—he calls his video “show” Sheen’s Korner?</p>
<p>The guy is an actor. How much of this mess is due to a possible mental disorder and how much is due to him trying to play to an audience? Could he be trying to pull off another Joaquin Phoenix (spelling?), but on a much larger scale?</p>
<p>No matter about Sheen, since he was fired from the show Monday [Charlie</a> Sheen Fired From ‘Two And A Half Men’ : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/2011/03/08/134342626/charlie-sheen-fired-from-two-and-a-half-men]Charlie”>http://www.npr.org/2011/03/08/134342626/charlie-sheen-fired-from-two-and-a-half-men)</p>
<p>I heard that his latest rants and ramblings were at times incoherent, and that he was asked to pay in part for the lost wages of his coworkers. Sad guy. Many are growing weary of his behavior.</p>
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<p>I just watched half of his latest webcast and all I can say is I wish he was acting.</p>
<p>I’m starting to understand the point of view of the posters who said this shouldn’t be broadcast.</p>
<p>I was disappointed his name made the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal and the top article on the Marketplace page was on him. </p>
<p>I’ve had enough of him…he’s done - put a fork in him!</p>
<p>I have a question for the mental health professionals that posted here (except for Mr. “Wacko”). Is it possible to diagnose a mental illness when a person is on drugs? Would not drugs mask and/or exacerbate certain illnesses to the point of making them look like something else?</p>
<p>I have seen 2 1/2 M twice and that was years ago and it was so incredibly boring, and we do not watch TV but incredibly I heard about this on NPR. (Seriously, NPR?!? I wrote them and complained about the use of my donation.) I just don’t see how, considering the fact that he freely admits to being on coke, he could be diagnosed from afar–especially considering that while many mentally ill people self-medicate with coke etc. they do not by any means comprise 100% of the cocaine-addicted “community”.</p>
<p>How many addicts could have a mental illness brought on by their addiction? I’m thinking in particular of narcissistic personality disorder, which I think it could be argued nearly every drug addict seems to exhibit, to some extent. Well… okay. I don’t know that many addicts, but I know a few, and they’re all narcissists. At least one was not a narcissist before the drugs. :(</p>
<p>I am not a professional by any stretch of the imagination, but I have read the DSM and most everything says in the diagnostic criterion that the symptoms must not be able to be explained away by drugs in order to diagnose. Not sure how that translates into actual practice.</p>
<p>Finding a good psychiatrist is very, very difficult. Often they will prescribe something and then it doesn’t quite work or has a side effect, so they add something else, and then something else. People end up on a crazy cocktail of meds that anyone else is afraid to touch because maybe the person will get worse. And all meds have side effects so the patient is often resistent to take them because of the side effects. Sometimes they stop the craziness, but they also take away the personality. A lot of artists, writers, etc… were crazy. And for a lot of manic patients, the hypo-manic stage is kind of fun. They have a lot of energy, they are the life of the party, it is just when it gets to a full-blown manic phase where they are very agitated, can’t function and do extremely crazy things. I am not sure if he is manic, or a drug-addict or all of the above, but treatment for any of it is definitely not easy.</p>
<p>Two and a Half Men can be cancelled (sadly), but it NEEDS a finale! I will be really disappointed if it doesn’t have one… maybe Charlie can die in the show or get kidnapped, hence having the last episode without him.</p>
<p>Re question in post 172 about the difficulty of diagnosing a person’s mental condition while he is on drugs. I went to a psychiatrist to discuss my stepson, who was abusing prescription drugs. She had been practicing for many years. She told me that she can almost always diagnose someone in the first five minutes of an appointment. She had seen it all, for many years, and there are definite signs and patterns, even with the drugs.</p>
<p>Bookiemom… I thought of your post when I heard about this on Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me:</p>
<p>[L</a> STUDIO - Web Therapy](<a href=“Lexus | Experience Amazing”>Lexus | Experience Amazing)</p>
<p>I believe she may be good and could narrow it down quickly, but five minutes? Sounds like her technique is working for you, though, and I wish you the best. It must be so hard to have a child, step or otherwise, abusing drugs. :(</p>
<p>I was doubtful about this 5-minute approach too, but she was very certain about her ability. This was a long time ago now; my stepson was 20 and he will be 30 this month. And here’s a ray of hope in this rather depressing thread–he has turned out great! He is married to a lovely woman, is successful in the military (promoted several times) and does well living in another country, and is a runner and does triathlons. I never would have believed it 10 years ago! So there is hope for anyone to change…but I doubt it with Sheen.</p>
<p>Well that is truly great news about your stepson, anyway! 
He was lucky to have such caring and involved parents to get him the services he needed at the time.</p>
<p>Sheen is quite a bit older, but hey. He’s already accomplished a lot. So maybe there is some hope, after all.</p>
<p>I wonder if Sheen’s addiction problems are quite a bit worse than other addicts or if his are just quite a bit more public than other addicts. I can think of a few reformed addicts who have turned out to be very successful once they managed to get clean, people we never thought would get there.</p>