The Anxious Physicist

Personal blog of Dr Alex Mendelsohn

Tag: mental health

The pharmaceutical industry just stopped producing the only antidepressant that has worked for me

February 28, 2023 /

The blog post discusses the recent stoppage of the production of Bupropion (Zyban) and Varenicline (Champix) due to the detection of impurities that could increase the risk of cancer. Alex, who suffers from chronic depression, argues that the benefits of the antidepressant outweigh the minimal risk of cancer. Alex also criticizes the lack of availability of alternative treatments for depression and smoking cessation, particularly MAOIs and the lack of supply of smoking cessation drugs in the UK. Alex questions the logic of discontinuing acute treatments for smoking cessation due to a small risk of cancer over a few months.

Imagine the scenario. Potential impurities are found in some HIV retroviral drugs that produce a small increase in the probability of contracting cancer over their lifetime. I think the last thing you would expect would be the immediate stoppage of the production of the antiretroviral drugs in question. Leaving a patient vulnerable to imminent death as HIV progresses to AIDS is of greater importance than a tiny increase in lifetime cancer risk.

Yet, in the world of mental health treatment, this type of scenario has recently unfolded with the stoppage of the supply of Bupropion (Zyban) in the UK, leaving me and many others without the drug keeping them out of depression.

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I don’t like calorie tracker apps

January 31, 2023 /

Alex discusses his negative experience with calorie tracking apps. He attempted to use several apps to track his calorie intake but found that they all had fixed daily calorie targets, which he believes are not helpful for most people. He also found that the apps did not track calories accurately and only focused on how many calories were left to consume. Alex believes that these types of apps can contribute to mental health problems and eating disorders. He argues that apps need to be regulated to prevent coercing healthy and vulnerable people into obsessive behaviour. In the end, Alex decides to go the old-fashioned way and simply remember his calorie intake, believing that as long as he keeps his average calorie intake just below his calorie deficit and exercises regularly, he will lose weight.

I went into the Christmas period with the goal of not putting on weight. Long story short, I failed. In the past, I have been very fortunate to have a metabolism quick enough to remove the excess fat from my waist. It only required a slight modification in diet. In the last few years I have made the definitely new discovery, that, erm, metabolism slows with age.

No matter, I thought. I shall jump on the bandwagon with all the other health-focused people in January – hoping I don’t fall off before February. First stop, counting calories.

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Why I am using a pen name (for now)

December 31, 2022 /

Alex has had negative experiences with clinicians in the past and has struggled to find a psychiatrist they trust. After finding a psychiatrist and a combination of medications that have helped ease their symptoms, they plan to share their experiences through various platforms. However, they wish to remain anonymous for now as they criticize aspects of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and neuroscience and do not want their current psychiatrist to discontinue their service. Once their symptoms have improved and they feel safe enough, they plan to reveal their true identity while keeping the pen name Alex Mendelsohn. They hope to use their unique perspective to help others and prevent similar negative experiences from happening to others.

In the past, I have been refused treatments that eventually worked, and had interactions with past clinicians that unintentionally drove me towards suicide, rather than away from it.

It took me a very long time to find a psychiatrist I trust. Once I did, we landed on a combination of medications that have progressively eased my symptoms over the last couple of years. I take one of these medications off-label (this means that the medication is licensed for another condition, not the one I am taking it for). My current psychiatrist is the first I have met willing to prescribe this medication.

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The story of how my Physics World article came to be

August 31, 2022 /

Referring to the article: A physicist’s experience of the mental-health system

and podcast: Start-up simulates quantum photonics devices, a physicist’s experience of the mental-health system

Alex wrote a manuscript about their experiences with mental illness that they shared with a psychiatric researcher, but received no response. Undeterred, they cold-emailed psychiatric researchers and scientific magazines but only received rejections. Eventually, the editor of Physics World magazine reached out and expressed interest in publishing the manuscript. Despite being surprised and skeptical at first, Alex’s article was eventually published after six months. Alex thanks the editor for being courageous enough to publish something not typically seen in a physics magazine and wonders if there are more people out there willing to act and care about mental health issues.

A while ago, my counsellor asked me to write something to give to a psychiatric researcher she knew from her work at a mental health hospital. She felt strongly that the things I was talking about in our sessions needed to be heard.

I obliged. I wrote a sort of manuscript looking thing. At that time I didn’t have the energy to write it in any sort of structure to help the reader. All I could do was splurge what was in my head onto paper. I cleaned it up as much as I could, then sent it off to her.

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Imposter syndrome – part 2

July 31, 2022 /

Starting a PhD is daunting to say the least. The gap in knowledge between research and undergraduate study is a rather large one. Therefore many students, like myself, have experienced ‘imposter syndrome’ – the feeling that it was a mistake on the academics to choose you for the PhD project but they do not know yet. Here, I suggest perspectives that might help deal with this phenomenon. Part 2 of 2

Alex writes about his experiences with mental health and how talking about it has led to fruitful conversations with others. During one such conversation, he realized that seeing imposter syndrome from the PhD supervisor’s point of view may help those who are afraid to ask for help. Alex explains that the fear of being kicked off the PhD is a primary symptom of imposter syndrome and that seeing the situation from the supervisor’s perspective can counteract this fear. He notes that a PhD student is at the beginning of their career, while the supervisor is likely closer to retirement, and choosing a PhD student is a major commitment. Alex emphasizes that a supervisor invests in a PhD student and it is within their interest to help with any problems or feelings the student has. He encourages students who feel like they are struggling to reach out to their supervisor and colleagues and that imposter syndrome does not have to last any longer than they decide. Alex concludes by saying that his PhD experience taught him that it is rather overrated and that he was no different the day after his viva than the day before.

Opening up about my own experiences of mental health through talks had a surprising side effect. People started to message me about their experiences and problems, some I go on to meet. I have found these conversations fertile ground for new ideas involving mental health. An important one of the many reasons why discussing mental health is beneficial. In one such conversation, an individual came to me about imposter syndrome. During our conversation, I realised that seeing imposter syndrome from the point of view of the PhD supervisor may help those feeling afraid of asking for help.

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Imposter syndrome – part 1

June 30, 2022 /

Starting a PhD is daunting to say the least. The gap in knowledge between research and undergraduate study is a rather large one. Therefore many students, like myself, have experienced ‘imposter syndrome’ – the feeling that it was a mistake on the academics to choose you for the PhD project but they do not know yet. Here, I suggest perspectives that might help deal with this phenomenon. Part 1 of 2

This blog post discusses imposter syndrome, the feeling of inadequacy despite having achieved success. Alex suggests that understanding and knowledge are two different concepts and that a researcher’s job is to extend their understanding to gain new knowledge. He argues that while it is normal for new researchers to feel like imposters when they are surrounded by people with more knowledge than them, they should focus on their ability to draw new lines of understanding. Alex believes that vivas test understanding, not knowledge, and that one’s ability to derive new understandings from previously known concepts is what defines a good researcher.

My PhD supervisor and I were standing in the lab preparing a sample for the electron microscope. It is a semi-dull activity, rich in opportunity for conversations about the minutia of life. I mentioned to him I was worried about the viva. I have always struggled with thinking on my feet. When my mind is stressed in such a way it takes the option of shutting down completely, leaving the occupier (i.e. me) to stare blankly at the wall. After some much-needed reassurance and useful advice, he says something which piques my interest. He mentions the viva is a “test of your knowledge”. Curious, I respond “I thought it was a test of my understanding?”. “Well”, he says in a semi-throwaway manner, “what really is the difference between understanding and knowledge.”

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Physics World article context #3 – the problem with rating scales

March 31, 2022 / / 0 Comments

This is the third of a series of blog posts on the context behind my Physics World article: A physicist’s experience of the mental-health system. There is a lot of backstory. So during the editing process, I sent documents to the editor to help explain some of the views I express in the article. I have decided to add them as blog posts.

Alex discusses the use of rating scales in the mental health system, which he encountered during his rTMS treatment. Alex provides an analogy of how rating scales can be problematic by comparing them to rating the weather over a two-week period. He explains that symptoms of mental illness are complex and unpredictable, and that they fluctuate and change over time, making it difficult to provide accurate ratings. Alex attended a support group meeting with other patients receiving treatment and found that none of them knew how to answer the rating scale questions. The author concludes that rating scales are not very good at capturing the complexities of mental illness.

It was during my rTMS treatment that I first encountered the rating scales. And, had I been completely honest, I would have said that I could not answer the questions. That I could not give a rating at all. Especially as every scale asked for an average over the last 2 weeks. I have thought of an analogy that I hope might get across the reason why I felt it was pretty much impossible to give a rating.

Say you have lived in Southern California USA for your entire life. You are used to warm, dry and sunny weather year-round. In the previous two weeks however, the weather has been very unCalifornian. On the first day it was foggy and a bit chilly out, the next few days were pretty warm for this time of year (winter) temps going up to 24 Celsius, with a lot of Sun. On the weekend though it rained persistently. Last week however started extraordinarily with snow, possibly the first time you had seen it in your life. The rest of the week then stayed pretty chilly, five or six degrees Celsius, before returning to warm and cloudy.

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Physics World article context #2 – BRAIN and the future direction of neurological measuring devices

February 28, 2022 / / 1 Comment

This is the second of a series of blog posts on the context behind my Physics World article: A physicist’s experience of the mental-health system. There is a lot of backstory. So during the editing process, I sent documents to the editor to help explain some of the views I express in the article. I have decided to add them as blog posts.

The author, Alex, discusses their frustration with the lack of advanced brain measurement machines available for use in their treatment. They searched for non-invasive and direct methods to record action potentials in the brain, but the techniques they found were either poorly funded, invasive, or indirect. The BRAIN initiative was also found to be lacking in progress. Alex quotes a 2015 paper by a working group on the analysis of circuits of interacting neurons, which highlights the need for development in this area and the potential for revolutionary advances. As someone who is mentally ill, Alex was disappointed that progress had been slow and felt that a lot of hope had been taken away.

When things were pretty bad and no treatment had had a significant effect, I could not understand why no one was looking at my head. Where were all these magnificent brain measurement machines I had seen in the news and media growing up? My condition was so severe I was certain something would show up. I even asked one of the clinicians this (they did research as well as treatment and had an MRI machine on site), they replied: “we wouldn’t be able to interpret the images”. Which infuriated me as an experimentalist. Non-interpretable data is literally the start of any experimental investigation!

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Physics World article context #1 – the benefits of therapy

February 14, 2022 /

This is the first of a series of blog posts on the context behind my Physics World article: A physicist’s experience of the mental-health system. There is a lot of backstory. So during the editing process, I sent documents to the editor to help explain some of the views I express in the article. I have decided to add them as blog posts.

This blog post discusses the benefits of therapy and the Alex’s views on it. The post is part of a series of articles on the context behind the Physics World article, “A physicist’s experience of the mental-health system.” Alex begins by noting that therapy helped them become a confident, emotionally aware individual. However, they felt that during the process, they were not receiving treatment, but rather an education to learn a skillset. They believe that listening is not a passive activity, but an active one, and that counsellors are trained to be the best listeners on the planet. The safe environment provided by therapy allows individuals to process their emotions and understand how they build and lead to the person they are. Alex believes that therapy is not a treatment but an education, and that it helps a large proportion of people with mental health problems. The post ends with the Alex’s view that an education can still work as a treatment, but it is much easier to do when used as a preventative measure.

The Physics World article is focused almost entirely on the psychiatric system. In the original draft, I sent two articles – the second was focused more on the psychotherapeutic system, but was only loosely tied to physics. This blog post summarises my views of psychotherapy.

I don’t think therapy was bad at all. Through it, I became a confident, emotionally aware individual. The problem was that during the process it was abundantly obvious that I was not receiving treatment. I was receiving an education (as someone who has been in education my entire life).

In my view, treatments require the person receiving it to do very little work (usually to lift their arm from the pill box to their mouth), whereas education requires the person receiving it to do a lot of work, in order to learn a skillset.

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Welcome

January 6, 2022 /

Hello to everyone who happened upon this blog. My name is Alex Mendelsohn*. There isn’t much here in the form of sunshine and flowers (unfortunately, I couldn’t find those emoji’s – all I could find were these red flags: 🚩🚩🚩). Instead, you are free to feast on a collection of thoughts from a physicist going through severe mental illness. Yippee!**

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