Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 History of Psychotic Depression
- Chapter 3 Diagnosis in Psychotic Depression
- Chapter 4 Patients' Experience of Illness
- Chapter 5 Treatment in Historical Perspective
- Chapter 6 Treatment: Pitfalls and Pathways
- Chapter 7 Treatment: ECT, Medications, and More
- Chapter 8 Treatment by Type of Psychotic Depression
- Appendix 1 Summary Guide to Psychiatric Concepts
- Appendix 2 Summary Guide to Psychotropic Medication and Treatment
- References
- Index
Chapter 4 - Patients' Experience of Illness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 History of Psychotic Depression
- Chapter 3 Diagnosis in Psychotic Depression
- Chapter 4 Patients' Experience of Illness
- Chapter 5 Treatment in Historical Perspective
- Chapter 6 Treatment: Pitfalls and Pathways
- Chapter 7 Treatment: ECT, Medications, and More
- Chapter 8 Treatment by Type of Psychotic Depression
- Appendix 1 Summary Guide to Psychiatric Concepts
- Appendix 2 Summary Guide to Psychotropic Medication and Treatment
- References
- Index
Summary
According to his journals, as an adolescent Scott Kiser had experienced a bout of depression. When around his twenty-second birthday he underwent a second attack, he had an inkling of what was coming. “This second episode of severe depression, which rapidly progressed to psychosis, was for me all the more terrifying precisely because I recognized exactly what was happening when I began to go mad.” Again, he felt “the crushing sense of panic.” Yet he was paralyzed: “When the wasteland of nothingness came to claim me yet again, I was utterly helpless and undone in any attempt to free myself from its grasp.”
He was an undergraduate in the first semester at a college far away from home. As his symptoms submerged him he tried to reach out to his few new friends, who were clueless. He talked to a school counselor. “I'm not sure what sort of counselor he was; he said that in counseling more than 700 students in his career, he had never seen anyone in my condition. Upon hearing that, my panic increased, and I sank deeper into hopelessness.” The director of the counseling center asked him if he had ever been a victim of satanic ritual abuse? Or perhaps Scott was having a stress reaction to having seen a murder? “In response to this, I was completely exasperated and nearly hysterical. What was wrong with these professionals?”
Scott locked himself into his dorm room for hours, fantasizing about ways of killing himself.
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- Information
- Psychotic Depression , pp. 128 - 143Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007