How Agatha Christie Perpetuated a Disgusting Mental Illness ‘Cure’

It is a dangerous, ignorant, reckless practice, one whose real-life repercussions I have been witness to first-hand

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Note: This article contains vivid, potentially upsetting descriptions of panic attacks, hyperventilation, and physical violence. Please read with caution.

I was 15 when I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and panic disorder. Clinical depression I had been diagnosed with the previous year. I was in unimaginable anguish, thrust into battle with three invisible illnesses of which I had not the faintest prior conception or knowledge.

The first time I had a panic attack, weeks before the diagnoses, I thought I was having a heart attack. The sudden chest pain, the racing, hammering heart, the tingling extremities, the violent headache, the shortness of breath, the sweating palms… that had to be a heart attack, right?

Wrong. That was the night I learned of my family history of panic attacks. And, sometime in the next few months, I hyperventilated for the first time.

Per longtime practising certified respiratory therapist MaryAnn De Pietro, CRT, hyperventilation is when our breathing becomes too rapid, making us exhale more air…