I've only had a short glimpse at Rufus May's preface so far, but the book certainly looks like great reading. Here's the description from Peter Lehmann's website:
"Tamasin Knight's first book Beyond Belief explores ways of helping people who have unusual beliefs. These are beliefs that may be called delusions, obsessions, or another kind of psychopathology.
• Psychiatric treatment attempts to remove these beliefs by medication and other methods. The new approach described in Beyond Belief is different. It is about accepting the individual's own reality and assisting them to cope and live with their beliefs.
• Beyond Belief explains the new approach in a very readable format.
• Many psychological techniques to cope with unusual beliefs are described. These include strategies to reduce fear, strategies to increase coping and problem solving techniques.
• Ideal for mental health professionals, service users/survivors and carers.
"Beyond Belief offers us a ground-breaking way of helping people deal with unusual beliefs. In Bradford we have found this publication it to be extremely helpful to service users, workers and as the inspiration for a new self help group. I am sure that this publication will enable more people to benefit from this knowledge and approach and help us change the way we as a society approach beliefs we find unusual." (Rufus May; Clinical Psychologist, Centre for Citizenship and Community Mental Health, Bradford University, England)"
4 comments:
Hello Marion,
I don't believe we've met before although I recently came across a post of yours at schizophrenia.com
http://www.schizophrenia.com:8080/jiveforums/thread.jspa?messageID=127200#127200
I thought I would share this blog entry with you for your own interest.
http://spiritualrecoveries.blogspot.com/2009/08/in-search-of-true-healing.html
~ Namaste
Hi spiritual_emergency,
and welcome! We must have cross-posted, as I'd just replied to your post at sz.com, when i found your comment here. I wonder, if they'll let my reply to you be up as it, indirectly but nevertheless, implies the biological model to do the very same as Freudian analysis: it blames the victim.
I certainly recognize what you write in your post. I joined sz.com back in 2005 (I think it was), looking for people to share my experience with and hear about theirs. I didn't last very long as a member. Pretty soon I picked up the atmosphere of, well, "Don't", or, in plain English, of violence, denial, dysfunctionality, abusiveness... (mostly on the admins' part) Very non-healing, and not at all what I needed. Especially not at a time where I'd only just started on my own healing-journey. So I changed all my profile information to "xy" something (after I'd in vain tried to delete my profile...), and promised myself to never go back. A promise I simply couldn't keep when i came across the thread about Take These Broken Wings.
Your post hits the nail on the head. Just as the first one you wrote on sz.com. Sad.
People who take medication faithfully and continually for mental illness can feel threatened by the idea of recovery.
The first rule in giving advice is that you don't give it to people who are not asking.
The schizophrenia.com comment board is a club-group-clik like all social communites in physical life are.
Mark: "The schizophrenia.com comment board is a club-group-clik..."
Spot on. And to be more precise: it's a Fuller-Torrey club-group-clik. At least, and that's the insidious thing about it, as the admins are concerned. For, some community members are both open to and grateful for advice that goes beyond "Take your meds!" Some people there are asking for advice. Like this guy for instance.
It isn't likely that I will hang out there a lot. Simply can't do with the level of toxicity (and probably get banned anyway, sooner or later, if I'm not banned already, haven't tried to log in recently). On the other hand I can't stand to watch him get floored immediately, and just because they don't like people taking control of their life, and try something different from what's on the Fullofit-fan-club's agenda.
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