• Effectiveness

  Slight (for Other)
• Side effects

  Moderate (for Overall)
• Adherence

  Usually
• Burden

  Somewhat hard to take

Dosage: One time

Advice & Tips: This evaluation is for this particular hospitalization. After several attempts I was sent to a very special psychiatric clinic in Houston called The Menninger Clinic which is associated with the main teaching hospital for mental health in Houston. Many of the Doctors teach there and work with and teach the patients at Menninger. I spent nine weeks there and I am a very lucky person that my family paid for this therapy as it is a very expensive place but entirely worth it. Last year, an acquaintance of mine called me and asked if I would talk to her niece in the midwest who was having a very hard time, in her thirties and knew going to the local psychiatric hospital was not going to help her this time but she had been told about Menninger. She was afraid to let her family pay for it if it wasn't going to do any good. I talked with her and just told her about my experience. She went, I hear. That was two years ago and just a month ago I also heard from my friend that she is doing very well and is very grateful that I had called and talked to her and that it had saved and changed her life like it had done mine. Please don't attempt suicide. I was very, very sick for several years and had no idea how sick because of inadequate therapy, psychiatry and my own inability to really open up and try to put into words just how desperate I really was. Well, I did a few times with my therapist and she would ask me if she could trust me to agree to make a "pact" that I would not harm myself after I left the office. I always agreed. After a while I would just say yes automatically and only remember the pact while I was there. As soon as I left, I was as despondent as before I came in. That's when I descended into a blackness I wouldn't wish on anyone. The worst side effects that just now, years later, I am truly able to start to understand is the terrible pain, unbearable, unspeakable pain this has had on my husband and two grown sons. For I didn't just try once, I tried several although they only know about three of them. Only. Talk to people who have know a personal friend or loved one commit suicide and be open to hear their experience and pain it caused them if they will tell you. Only this year, last month did one of my closest friends that I have known for 35 years told me how difficult it was on her. Partly because she would have been devastated (her words) if I had succeeded but because she has know four other friends and family members succeed in her 65 years. Even now, the very first one, her aunt, who died when she was just a teenager, the memory and loss still makes her cry. I am glad to say that I am really better. I have a great therapist and marriage counselor and psychiatrist. My meds finally got straightened out last May (after ten years) which is not unusual if you spend any time reading on PLM. Hang in there. And feel free to PM me if you need to "talk" to someone.

Cost: < $25 monthly