So, you are sitting in a large lecture hall and your professor suddenly goes off on a tangent and you sit there wondering why you decided to get out of bed for this class. The coffee you have isn’t nearly hot or large enough to follow this man’s thoughts and so you let your own thoughts wander. I used to be annoyed when my teachers would do this to me, but I recently experienced a tangent of my own that I am still following and researching. It began when I was researching the homeless situation in Columbus. I started looking up how we as a society have attempted to house people with severe mental illnesses. Yet, somehow from there I ended up looking up how antipsychotic drugs work. I found books on the topic that I checked out of the library and scholarly articles online. I may sound like a bit of a nerd here (read: I am a pretty big nerd) but I started to realize that maybe tangents aren’t as bad as I once thought. I am not sure if the information I learned will ever be directly applicable to my life, but I know it will come in handy with my research into the homeless population. I have come around to the opinion that tangents are especially important in classrooms and in life. A tangent may very well be the place you find what you are most passionate about or even just spur you to learn about a challenging new topic that you were clueless about before. So, my advice is to embrace the tangent and to go wherever it may lead you.

PS- if you happen to be interested in learning more about how we treat severe mental disabilities and how antipsychotic drugs work, here is a list of books/articles I would recommend.

“The Essential Guide to Psychiatric Drugs” by Jack M. Gorman – This book will give you a basic guide to how psychiatric drugs work and list basically every drug on the market used, what they are used for, side effects, etc.

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/treatmentswellbeing/antipsychoticmedication.aspx – This is a link to a website which gives a basic overview of antipsychotic drugs, who should use them, how they work, differences between old and newer drugs, etc. This is a good info packet.

“The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs” by Joanna Moncrieff – This is a book that I plan on reading but I have not been able to find it at my local libraries so I am off to try and find it at Ohio State.