- Why am I writing this to about 200 of you at Christmas? Because it’s the right time to save a life. There are 2 major spikes in Jamaica – Christmas and birthdays. Since the advent of the Valentine’s rubbish from the USA, we’ve started to acquire this date as another spike.
- The tool below was given to us medics by the psych fraternity to help us care for our clients and their families who frequently have no idea that depression exists and if they do know, have no idea how to talk about and deal with it. This tool makes it much easier. The yes and no answers mean you don’t ‘have to talk’ but breaks the awful ice so somebody can try and do something.
- If any 5 of these exist in the last 2 weeks, the client is clinically depressed and a candidate for the bio-psycho-social approach to treating depression (an appropriate combination of rememdies-counselling-altering of social patterns). Depression is a sickness as any other but often with more illness and lethal results. If No. 9 does not occur, watch for escalating illness and disease of every kind because wherever the mind is, the body surely follows:
1 Depressed mood?
2 Significant diminished interest or pleasure in the things that used to elicit pleasure/interest?
3 Significant weight loss or weight gain
4 Insomnia or too much sleeping/not wanting to leave bed?
5 Jitteriness or going into slow motion/reverse gear?
6 Fatigue or loss of energy?
7 Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt?
8 Diminished ability to concentrate?
9 Recurrent thoughts of death or suicidal ideation? Yes? Have you planned it out? (No. 9 with or without other points puts client in medical emergency category even if in the last year)
Males more likely to kill first time. Females more likely to commit attempts as a cry for help. For God’s sake check a female’s thyroid functions.
Share this with everyone….or keep for further reference or to help yourself….I’ve been in the pen with the Demon…I know him well…escape is an up and down process that requires ‘backative’ either from others or one’s own shored up resources and belief in ‘The Force’. ‘Make it so No 1’.
BEGINNING
Watch this man tell it like it is…..