Vagus Nerve Stimulator and mental illness

I dont have the type of panic disorder you asked for, but my daughter did have epileptic-like fits for a while which could have been similar. I will look further into it.

I like your distinction between causation and corelation.

I am beginning to believe there is a spectrum (including some epilepsy) to many MH disorders, unless symptoms are due to clear medical issues eg brain injury, or mastoid or encepahalitis infections.

Perhaps @ivana has some ideas ...

In my view,anxiety can present in different ways in different people but most doctors(or psychologists) in Australia only focus on the "type A personality" type of anxiety-ie:the palpitations,hyperventilation,etc that you mentioned.
There are "physical" disorders too (eg:mitral prolapse,Hyperthyroidism) that can present with anxiety and unfortunately many doctors will dismiss these prematurely as not being the cause unless the patient/s demands tests.

Would you mind saying exactly what you feel/experience during your episodes and how they come about,which times of day/night they happen etc?
Have you ever had an EEG or any other testing?

Yes sure. The modality or series of events goes like this. A "zap" on the forehead that radiates out over the scalp first. Catastophic thoughts follow (I have had this problem for 30 years btw). My heart is still not racing. A desire to get out of the situation. I have found that I try and shock myself out of it as I escape the situation. I don't have a social phobia at all. The racing heart starts minutes after the onset and I am left pretty shaken up. I hypotheisis that the primary cause is an imbalance to the autonomic nervous system and the secondary result is a panic attack. I have also teased out a whole range of possible vagal related symptoms from instinctive coping mechanisms I have used in the past. Aside from 15 years of tacycardia episodes and episodes of irregular heart beats, the most obvious being on an occassion when I sat in front of an older style monitor (They flickered a lot back then) for two weeks and had none stop irregular heart beats. I must caution that some of the symptoms can also be attributed to psychological reasons. I also know how it could be researched and verified.

There is a common misperception, bias even, that people with mental illness are not higher functioning or they blame it on a narrcistic personality disorder or some type of dellusionary issue. I have none of these. I do wish to find out how many people have experienced the same modality as I do in their panic attacks. That is my aim. Is there a better place on this forum to find out?

I have sense that you could be on the right track, but a little ahead of the field, and we dont have a large enough pool of posters ... but dont give up ... broaden the scope of discussion.

I have so much accumulated trauma that my panic attacks are hard to distinguish from day to day life and general hypertension.

Thanks for the description.

Personally,i also have autonomic dysfunction but for me it manifests more as Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and cardiac autonomic dysfunction with "chronotropic incompetence" (during exercise) and reduced heartrate variability.

I also have Peripheral neuropathy (tingling,numbness and other more strange sensations in my feet).

I also have had scalp sensations but more tingling then zapping and for me they arn't rythmic/or predictable.

In addition to the Autonomic nervous system dysfunction hypothesis have you also considered the possiblity of them being Complex Partial Seizures affecting autonomic function (ive linked a study below regarding this)?

Have you ever had an EEG done during the episodes and was there any response to the photic stimulation?

(The fact that old flickering monitors were able to trigger these episodes suggests that the possibility of Photosensitive Epilepy should be looked at.)

Whats your experience been like with doctors so far?Ie:have they been helpful and done testing or have they dismissed it all as being anxiety?

It sounds like you already know alot about the body & whats hapening with you (IE: more than some medical doctors).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC531654/

This is a little off topic but I had a really worrying event a few weeks ago that I wonder if either of you have any thoughts about. It regards doing things "on automatic" rather than the autonomic system per se. In the past I have enjoyed driving and people have commented that it is rare for a woman to want to drive a manual ..

I have a newish old manual car and the gear shift pattern for reverse is opposite to what I have driven for 30 years. Anyway mostly it is fine and I have adjusted. However recently when I was a bit distressed and agitated I started popping it into reverse at all the traffic lights on the way home from my consort and it became dangerous as I'd press accelerator and be in reverse instead of first for take off ... I became quite flustered with myself and am really reducing driving since.

Sorry Appleblossom,i dont have a clue about driving manuals (or even really why the brain does "autonomic actions" when distressed,angry,stressed or not thinking straight.

I can understand how it would be distressing but i hope you don't let it deter you.

Hopefully the more you drive it-even if in safer areas- will allow a new pattern to be laid down so your brain wont revert to what it knows/what its used to (the old gear shift pattern) when in a stressful situation.

Do you generally speaking have any cognitive issues,difficuly remembering,difficulties changing between alternating information,repeat things you've already done/said, or difficulties learning new things etc which happen regularly?

If not,then hopefully you wont worry about it and it wouldn't occur again the more you drove your car (and more relaxed you felt) etc.

I dont really know what my cognitive difficulties are .. I was generally good at school but tongue tied socially. However functioned well enough in early work positions which laid down a sense of competence. When reading the type of things younger posters report I may easily have undiagnosed problems.

I am backing away from car driving unless necessary for a while, I had an accident earlier this year which is why I needed to change cars and generally it is much nicer to drive.

Did you generate or persist with testing scenarios with doctors? I am not good at asserting self, had a good GP, but lost him as he is sick himself. I often feel fobbed off a lot as I have also suffered a lot of trauma to head unintentionally re SH it is tricky to open it up in appointment. Need to know how to broach it without triggering self.

I pretty much learnt to pick doctor/s extremely carefully even if it means waiting for an appointment because to try to change the mindsets of the doctors who are arrogant and unwilling to work as a team (often specialists are the worst) rarely works.

Is it G.P's or specialist who are fobbing you off?

What does SH stand for?