Drawings of the Mad

B12 and mental health Many symptoms of B12 deficiency are debilitating but I have been stunned by the incredible lack of knowledge of this condition within the mental health community. Sadly our health professionals are simply not taught enough, or at all, about the impact low B12 can have on mental health. Depression can be one of the first presenting symptoms of this condition. Many health care professionals would be shocked to learn that B12 deficiency can also cause psychosis.  The Neuropsychiatric symptoms of B12 deficiency can precede the development of anaemia . Having a diagnosis of bipolar or Alzheimer's means that patients may be firmly pigeon-holed and very rarely assessed again. B12 deficiency is commonly misdiagnosed as various mental and physical health conditions due to the lack of education on this subject.

In 1425, English and Burgundian forces drove off all of Domremy's cattle and burned the town. The same year of this trauma, when Joan was 13, she started hearing "voices." The first of these voices spoke to her from her father's garden, and was accompanied by a blinding white light. Joan claimed that the voices were angels and saints, through whom God was addressing her. She identified the saints as Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, all crucial French saints of whom Joan had learned through statuary in the church she attended and through her mother's careful religious instruction. Although she was initially afraid to speak to other people about them–she never mentioned them to the Domremy priests even though she was constantly at confessional–she would claim to talk to these saints and hear their voices regularly. Joan said they always spoke in French. Although frightened of them at first, eventually she came to terms with the vo...

Stimulant psychosis is a psychosis symptom which typically occurs following an overdose on psychostimulants, but it also occurs in approximately 0.1% of individuals within the first several weeks after starting amphetamine or methylphenidate therapy. The most common causative agents are substituted amphetamines and cocaine .

The other day, in looking through a psychiatrist's report on the supposed connection between manic-depressive mood swings and musical creativity, I was brought up short. These words about Robert Schumann's lifelong history of depression leaped out at me: ''Starting in adolescence he was troubled by repeated attacks of melancholy which can be traced in his and his wife's letters as well as in their joint diary, later kept by Clara alone. For example, in May, 1831, it takes him three weeks to finish a letter . . .'