Michele Gyselinck

I am a Disability advocate, and I have been living with schizophrenia since the age of 28, my dominant symptom being depression.  I have been blogging about mental health issues since 2014 on the Disability Concerns website. The Health and Wealth Gospel is a load of BS.  I’m glad that you are still alive and taking medication.  Hang in there, and read my posts. Michèle Gyselinck 

Dear Mrs Wesselius,

I hope your granddaughter is doing better today than when you wrote this comment.  Unfortunately, there aren’t many options when it comes to psychiatric medications, and pharmaceutical companies these days are more interested in buying back shares to make the wallets of their CEOs thicker than in investing in research to create new products.  
I’m glad that she found creative ways of coping with her illness.  It’s necessary because medication doesn’t replace being healthy.  I’m also glad that you encourage her to do that.

Thank you. 

 Good article Terry.  I'll post it on my Facebook page.

 Belated congratulations Terry.

 I've seen seen see-through masks advertized, but I haven't seen anyone wearing one yet.  

Yes, unfortunately, black people have found another wall to bump into.  When prejudice alters the way you look at certain groups of people all your assumptions about them are tainted with it, and it seems that whatever they do, they just can't win.  It's the, "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" conundrum.  I wish I could say it's better for black people in Canada, but I don't know.  Maybe not quite as bad as in the States, because here at least they have access to free healthcare like everybody else, but a couple of years ago I read about a black man who had parked his car somewhere to read a book, and somebody sent the police to check him out.  They thought he was acting suspisciously.  That was in one of the Maritime provinces.  When the police arrived he told them he was reading and showed the officers his book, and they left him alone.  Here we don't have the cultural habit of lynching black men, which is a good thing, but since I'm not black, I can't say what they have to deal with that "white" people don't.  There is a racial bias, but it doesn't affect only black people.  Natives and other groups suffer from it too.

 One song that means a lot to me is Blessed Be your Name.  I'm not sure I'd say it comforts me, because there are still times when I sing it with tears in my eyes, but it speaks to my experience with schizophrenia.  Like Lamentations it's a song that I can relate to.  I also like Ancient Words, Sing, Choirs of New Jerusalem ( grey hymnal) and other songs that don't come to mind right now.

 Thank you for sharing this.  I have both schizophrenia and diabetes Type 2, and because of the side effects from my meds I often struggle with diarrhea.  If I can't get to sleep at a certain time at night, the sedative in my antipsychotic carries over the next day, and I never know at what time I'll wake up when I go to bed at night. Sometimes I wake up REALLY EARLY like this morning (6:40), and other days I'll get up at noon and still be drowsy, but now that my mom knows that it's because of the sedatives that pharmaceuticals put in psychiatric meds to make people sleep, she has stopped assuming I was indulging myself.

 So, who won?

 When my mom had a crack in a vertebra some years ago she was in so much pain the doctor noticed and prescribed morphine.  It alleviated the pain and she returned the pills she didn’t need back to the drugstore.  I totally understand that you don’t want to become an addict, but stopping medication before that pain is over could have undesirable consequences.

 We don't have one.  Our congregation is small and several members already juggle with more than one commitment, so we avoid piling on the ministries whenever possible.