New revelations Gordon Brown's mental health

PM'S HEALTH: THE STRANGE TALE CONTINUES

The vast majority of nby reader professional opinion seems to be behind the allegation that Gordon Brown is on heavy MAOI doses to control his personality problems. Several senior medics wrote to me after the story broke last Friday to say the food-restrictions could only apply to MAOI usage. The one exception wrote 'cheese and red wine are also denied to those who get migraines'. But the initial piece I wrote specified Chianti, which appears in all lists of MAOI contraindication - along with ripe avcados, which has nothing to do with migraine. Finally, Gordon Brown is nowhere recorded as suffering from severe headaches. (However,having read this, doubtless Mandy will jump down that escape route).

What Gordon IS widely known to suffer from, however, is clenching of the jaw and the oddly protuding tongue tic that often accompanies it. The Times, Telegraph and numerous blogspots have all written about the clenching in particular. Read in particular these extracts from Matthew Parris's piece in Timesonline in May 2008:

'Study his phraseology as a psychotherapist rather than a student of policy might, and this leaps out at you: what Brown really, really, won’t say is that he has been pressured by anyone else into doing anything he did not want to do in the first place; or that on any central question it is his own judgment that has been wrong....I’ll tell you what scares me, and scares (I believe) a wider public who may not always be consciously aware why. It’s not the thought that the Prime Minister may be lying. It’s a more disturbing thought: that he may not....a cold, angry repudiation of the evidence itself, a look that suggests a different prism, a different picture; a strange, knotted, jaw-clenching, fact-defying, interview-wrecking rejection of what the rest of us see plain as daylight . . . this disturbs more deeply than everyday mendacity ever can.'

As is usual with Parris, these observations are offering a broad and chilling insight into a seemingly sick man's psyche rather than just a clenching jaw: he does have the knack of seeing past symptoms to causes, but the fact remains that the features he describes are common among people taking large doses of antidepressant. The irony is that those with denial personalities can have their compulsions and insecurities hugely reduced by rising confidence; but it can render the underlying denial/rigidity condition worse still.

Let's stick with the physical clenching symptom on its own for the time being. Google 'side effects of antidepressants', and you'll rapidly note that jaw-clenching is pretty much ever-present. Google 'jaw clenching with MAOIs' and there will be 6130 entries. The connection is undeniable.

There are 3,700 sites discussing Gordon's jaw-clenching thing. It's medical name is bruxism, although it might from here on quickly re-emerge as Brownism. As I wrote last week, I was first tipped off about Brown's alleged antidepressant usage in 2006. The first recorded mention of his bruxism becoming a problem that I can find is in the Daily Telegraph on 6th January 2007.

His tongue-tic may or may not be part of the clues leading to a resolution of the story. This from a professional site about the MAOI Phenelzine:

'Extrapyramidal effects include acute dystonic reactions such as protuding tongue, muscular contractions and clenched jaw'. (Bourke & Castle - Psychiatry)

Phenelzine is the laboratory term for the branded leader in this drug class, Nardil. It was shortlisted with two others in the last nby subscribers' eletter as one of the most likely drugs for Brown to take, were he to have the condition he seems to have. (To subscribe, go to JOIN)

In closing, I must stress two things. I am NOT in the business of suggesting that there is something 'wrong' with people who have mental and serious physical defects: rather that such people should neither seek nor get the Office of Prime Minister. Second, I am NOT saying I KNOW Gordon Brown is definitely taking Nardil or any other antidepressant: I am merely reporting the existence and widespread confirmation among the UK's informed elite that the PM does so....and that the smoke signals leading to this conclusion are now very thick indeed.

If there is a smoking gun, we haven't found it yet. We continue to seek it out. Any help we can get from you the readership would be helpful, perhaps even conclusive.

(The smears have already started, by the way. So for the record, I am NOT the neo-Nazi Tory John Ward suspended by the Conservative Party recently. I am the fed up with all the lies from British political Parties who wants an Establishment we can look up to....rather than one which looks down on us John Ward.)

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