Okay, do you experience any side effects from the medication at all?

Yeah dry mouth and the shakes.

And how is that?

It’s alright, I just drink a lot and try and not hold hot drinks.

Okay but it doesn’t ever make you want to not take the medication?

No.

No?

No because I stop taking my medication and I know I become unwell really quick so [Laughs a little] I don’t want to go back to being unwell so I try and not stop taking me medication.

How, how quickly does that happen?

Six weeks’

You see those four, I used to take 40mg depression tablet when I cut down I talked to my doctor, he said, ‘Alright try. Because I take half, I, I cut it down half in a straight away, three weeks is so much problem in the head, it’s sometime I feel somebody hitting the head, although there is nobody in here. Just jumping [jumps] on top, pushing, [gestures with hand] somebody pushing through the head like this. And I said, ‘What happened?’ [Looks around, rubs head and laughs]. So I, so now is okay, the doctor said two weeks it disturb you a little bit. Because the reaction from your blood have to be resettled, it will take three weeks, it’s okay now. When I going to cut it down another 10mg it will be doing the same thing so now I’m, I’m used to it, I’ve got the experience so I won’t be worrying. Before I was worried [Pause] So this is, this is the way I’m running my life, and I’m over 60, I’m okay, I’m happy now. But from, but I have to take the tablets. I think the tablet is controlling me. I rely on the tablet and very much I wanted to give up the tablet but [shakes head] I’ll get ill if I do. I’ll start crying, it’s happened many times, I get nervous and worried, worried, worried, for nothing! I know it’s for nothing but it’s come to me, what can I do? Sometimes I get angry as well but I hold it back.

I mean, there are kind of a couple of times I have wanted to stop taking medication, because even though it helped with the kind of negative symptoms, you know, I was just going to bed at a silly time, like 8 pm and waking up like 8 or 9 and it just felt I didn’t have the energy to do stuff I wanted. And also kind of, the kind of political aspects, you know, of how the pharmaceutical companies have some much power within the mental health system. And that I didn’t want to be part of it and also knowing that a lot of the pharmaceutical companies test on animals which I’m not comfortable with. So for those reasons I have tried to stop taking it before, but it usually just ends up me becoming very ill very quickly.

Hopefully in the future I would like to be off my medication but I realise what my mistake was before. It wasn’t having a kind of strong supportive structure that was there if I did become unwell, and how I would kind of deal with stressful, stressful situations. But that’s, I think something for the future, not right now. Because I’m kind of starting university as a mature student in September. You know, I don’t want to get ill, so I’m going to stay with it, at least through my kind of university time, and maybe after that, kind of try and find a way of coming off it.

So just to make sure that I understand because earlier you were talking about medication not being like a cure as such.

Yes
And so when you are talking about may be in the future being able to come off your medication is that because you see yourself recovering or is that because you see yourself finding a way to manage without medication?
Yes, just to manage without medication, you know. I have come to the point I don’t think I am every going to be rid of these symptoms, because I’ve just had them so long. So it’s finding like other ways to manage the symptoms, that’s, you know, what I’m kind of investigating and kind of slowly building up a supportive structure around me really. So, you know, when I do hopefully come off them, I’ve got something that will, you know, will keep me standing really.

I think because of the language barrier, communication was nearly impossible. My experience of Chinese medicine/treatment, doctors would examine carefully through sight, odour, question and autopsy. But during my treatment here, the doctors just tell me to do counting exercises, which at the time my mind could not mentally manage. The doctors then prescribed medication for me straight after. I wondered how the doctors could prescribe drugs at such an early stage. Shouldn’t you ask me about my history and situation, before giving medication? I constantly worried about my medication; what type of drugs are these? Why won’t the doctors tell me? Because I don’t understand English and because the doctor told me that I have to take medication, adding with the strange environment, I felt a bit worried and scared. I did not want to take the medication. I tried my best to communicate that I would like to have interpretation. They didn’t understand very well, but brought along a nurse who knew a bit Chinese. She asked me to open my mouth and swallow the medication. I felt like I was forced to do something I didn’t want to. She then asked me to open my mouth to check whether I swallowed the pill or not. I did not approve of this method, but there was nothing I could do, so I had no choice but I take the pills. I later realized thought that it could have been a tranquilizer or sleeping pills that I had been given, although I didn’t sleep at all that night.

Well, I’ve been on, yeah I’ve been on Depixol, I’ve been on risperidone, I’ve been on Sulpiride, I’ve been on oh what’s the other one, Depixol, Sulpiride, risperidone, clorpromazine I think, I think chlorpromazine, I’ve been on quite a few. injections and I mean ’cause I was always non-compliant because you know, I was convinced I could get by without the medication they called me non-compliant because I used to stop taking it. So at first they insisted that I had the injection, I had to come in for the injection but then I’d promised them that I would take it you know, because the injection, I find injections so undignified you’ve got to go in and take down your pants or you know, and everybody seeing your privates and you know, not everybody but even just the one nurse is too much for me you know, and all that kind of thing. And sit there like a, a, a, a, a passive, a passive animal and just you know, have somebody, somebody inject you like an orange and I just, I really felt very upset with the injections, very undignified and belittled that I felt with the injections so I promised them I’d take the medication, you know, the oral medication. [Rubbing hands together] So that, that’s , that, you know, they, you know they, eventually they agreed that you know, that you know, to give it to me. And you know, I’ve been on that for a while now, for a good few years, a good few years.

and I’ve also had a stable mental health team, you know, I’ve only just lost my CPN, I think it’s been, how long has it been now? It’s been about three or four years that I haven’t had a CPN but my social worker and psychiatrist, my shrink have been with me coming up to ten years so they know me now you know. And if I say to them well I don’t feel like taking the medication you know, they’ll say well you know, you should, you really should but you know, you know, you know, we can’t force you but you know, you could get ill or you’ll go into hospital, you know, you will go into hospital. But I mean they don’t sort of insist you know, it’s, it’s, it’s you know, they don’t, they, I mean now they don’t call me non-compliant, they just understand, they just, they understand that I’ve been trying, you know, because for me to get back to normal, to really get back to normal, because what used to sort of upset me was that people would say you were well you know, but you’d still be taking these, these drugs, these drugs, these tablets or you these, or having this injection and people who are well don’t take tablets and drugs so I’d say well how well am I? So what I tried to do was to get by without the medication’ [Begins to cry] So because that would signify that I was properly well, so I think they understood after a while that I was just trying to get a bit better [Crying].

And yes, something I did want to say was that, I like, have looked on the website and I have seen some people saying that they felt relieved to take medication because it felt like someone was saying it’s not your fault, and you have got a chemical imbalance and for me, I actually think, if someone said that to me it would negate all my experiences that led to me becoming so depressed, if they just said, ‘Oh well you well you’ve just got a chemical imbalance in your brain and”

I mean I can see the point why people might think that, you know, if they’re told they have got a chemical imbalance that makes them feel it’s not their fault and it is a real illness. But for me for somebody to tell me that and say, ‘Oh just take an antidepressant. I feel quite angry about that, because I think that, in a way I think I’m justified in being depressed I suppose. I think well, and I know that there’s a lot of people who do have terrible lives and they don’t get depressed and maybe I am not, I don’t know, maybe there is some brain chemical imbalance but I just think. And I’m not really very good at explaining my experiences in a way that could make people understand why I would be so depressed. I think it’s like only if you have lived through it, that you might understand. But I sort of think well, no wonder I’m depressed.

So nothing came out of them, and then one of the psychiatrists sort of said to me. ‘Look, well you don’t seem to respond to medicine. So therefore we can’t do much about it. And therefore, as far as we’re concerned we have given up. You will just have to grin and bear it.

Now me being me, I never take no for an answer. My being an auditor when the company has problems, well I want to solve it and come up with something. And if I didn’t I would go and ask somebody. So, so I said, ‘I want to see some other consultants.

So went and saw another, one of their consultants, and the consultant first he treated me nicely. He didn’t prescribe any medicine. I am a member of the Depression Alliance and Manic Depression Fellowship. I get their monthly magazine, and various information.

When some new treatment came up. I used to go and say, ‘Doctor, there is a new thing. Well let’s try this. Then he said to me, ‘Well look, we have discussed all these things before. Medicines don’t work for you. And then he said, ‘Oh I know about all that. You know, I’m a consultant. You know, you’re just wasting our time. And that is our business.

You said that they had given up on you.

Oh they’ve given up even when I go and show the latest research or pill, or development, they say, ‘Oh we have discussed all that. Well then they quote statistics. There are 20% of the depressed, people suffering from depression, medication doesn’t work. Then I said, ‘Well I could, this may work, one in a million chance. But they just wouldn’t.

How does that make you feel?

Oh I feel very bad, though. Because they, I am not asking them for something, for, I am suffering, when you’re suffering, even if they tell me, gulp that stone which I will do it. You know, when you’re suffering, somebody is suffering, why don’t they do it? All they do is write another prescription and say, ‘How are you getting on, you know.