“Video Used to Justify Putting my Daughter on Five Different Drugs”

As a concerned parent, I would like to share my story.

Last year my daughter was having a rough time coping–she lost her three-year-old cousin in a house fire on New Year’s Day and her voice listen teacher passed away suddenly one month later. She turned 18 in February and graduated in June. The same week she graduated, she admitted herself to a psych unit at a local hospital while I was out-of-town for a work conference.

As she was 18, I felt completely helpless in her treatment.

A psychiatrist, who certainly did not know my daughter, put her on five different medications–three of which were Depakote, Serzone, and Zoloft. (They would not tell me what all she was on and she hid most of them from me.) The hospital and psychiatrist brainwashed her to believe that she was Manic-Depressive–she may have been depressed, but I have never once seen her in a manic phase in her life. They showed her a video, which was obviously produced by a pharmaceutical company, telling her she would need to live on these drugs for the rest of her life.

As a nutritionist, I turned to the social worker and asked, ” Not once in this video did it say anything about nutrition–the number one reason why so many are depressed–lacking in some very important vitamins and minerals.” My daughter smoked, was on birth control, was a vegetarian, and did not eat right– of which the smoking and birth control deplete the B vitamins and folic acid. I asked the hospital, ” If you are a state-of -the-art facility, why don’t you ultimately order a multivitamin with minerals and teach patients how to improve their diets to reduce depression naturally?” No, their first course of action is all the drugs–my daughter walked around like a zombie. Within two weeks of going home, my daughter tried to commit suicide–so I took her off the Zoloft and called her psychiatrist, who never returned my calls or spoke to me about my daughter because she was 18.

I lived with my daughter for 18 years, I certainly know her better than some psychiatrist who has only dealt with her for maybe 1-2 hours max. I did not care about what my daughter said to her in confidence, but why wouldn’t this psychiatrist at least talk with me to get a whole picture of what was going on to better treat her. The psychiatrist also did not do any follow-ups on my daughter to see how she was doing on all these meds.

My daughter moved out on her own two months later, which really scared me, as she was still on all these medications. She started classes at the local university the end of August and while we were camping Labor Day Weekend, she admitted herself in the psych unit again, as she nearly passed out at work. I was never contacted. On Labor Day, we received a call from her work, “We have not seen your daughter since Thursday evening and she has not called us. Do you know where she is?” Immediately, we went to her apartment fearing for the worst–that perhaps she had committed suicide as she did not answer the phone. The maintenance opened her apartment, she was not there. We found out later that she was taken to the local hospital by a friend. I called the hospital and they stated no such patient is here. I called the psych unit–no such patient here.

Why couldn’t they at least tell a parent that their 18 yr-old child is safe? I paged her psychiatrist, who again never called me back. My daughter finally called me to let me know she was safe. I don’t know why she was admitted to the psych unit when she nearly passed out at work–why wasn’t she put on a general floor for testing–it was found that she was hypoglycemic. Because their was an issue with her health insurance and no further psych treatments would be covered, I told her if she wanted to continue any kind of treatment and she wanted me to pay for it, she would have to change to a psychiatrist that I found who does not believe in medication as a first response. I am happy to say, this new psychiatrist took her off all medications and she is doing better. She is taking multivitamins.

P.S. My husband and I have been doing Young Living oils for the past five years. I would like my daughter to use them, but she believes we are “witch doctors” and very rarely will use them. I would diffuse ‘Joy’ oil in the air when she was a little moody and she would turn happy, but then she caught on to what I was doing.

I strongly believe a parent should have a right to know and have a say in their child’s treatment when they are 21 years-old or less–especially when they are so doped up on all the anti-depressive drugs. They certainly are not in their right mind!

Diane Miller, Michigan
hw4all@buckeye-express.com

12/31/2002

This is Survivor Story number 1.
Total number of stories in current database is 48

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