A Multitude of Recoveries Through Alternative Mental Health Treatments
The following was taken from http://news.independent.co.uk For 10 years Eliza Johnston, 38, has suffered from bipolar affective disorder. For most of that time her mental illness has been so severe that she had no friends, no work little human contact at all, in fact, except with her GP. "My life consisted of 12 hours watching television a day, then 12 hours sleeping," Johnston says. "I was barely able to string two sentences together. My typical year was three months mania, nine months depression. It is an intolerable way to live." Like most people with bipolar affective disorder (a disruptive brain disorder that used to be more commonly known as manic depression), Johnston was prescribed a cocktail of medications to control her depression, mania and anxiety. Some of these had unwelcome side effects. Occasionally, Johnston felt that medication made her condition worse, not better. Sometimes it was hard to tell which symptoms were caused by the illness and which by the medication. Then, 20 months ago, realising that she was getting no better, Johnston decided to come off drugs and persuaded her GP to refer her to a homeopath. Together they set about making some radical changes to her diet, cutting out sugar, dairy and wheat. Today, she is still drug-free and feels she has broken the cycle. She believes that her new diet has helped to bring about this radical change.