If you have a mental illness, imagine this scenario:
You're being rushed into the emergency room for a medical crisis unrelated to your illness. Perhaps you've just been involved in an automobile accident, or suffered a heat stroke. Due to the stress of the situation, you become symptomatic. Perhaps you appear incoherent or even hostile. The emergency room staff, unaware of your mental condition, treat you like a drug addict or assume you have a traumatic brain injury, and begin testing for these while missing the actual problem at hand. Perhaps they even give you drugs that interact with your psychiatric medicines in an effort to find out what is the matter. If you suffer from Schizophrenia, you may also have the common side effect of reduced pain sensitivity, which could lead emergency responders to fail to treat your internal injuries. Worst of all, if you are not directly related to the persons who care for you at home, they will not be notified if you are not in the right mind to help the emergency staff contact them.
The simple solution for this terrifying scenario is for you to wear a MedicAlert emblem on a chain around your wrist or neck. A confidential, 24-hour, emergency response centre will be able to immediately inform emergency room staff about your mental illness, medications, allergies, implanted devices, emergency contacts, insurance information and more.
Service costs $35 a year, but if you can't afford it, they offer offer free memberships for those that are unable to pay the enrollment fee. For more information on sponsored memberships, please contact their Director of Contributions at 800-228-6222 ext. 2466 or email arobinson@medicalert.org. This service is offered in many countries.
http://www.medicalert.org What do you think about this program? Would you enroll? Why or why not?
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