Different Thoughts

Kære Louise - Dorrit Cato - SIND - 8 nov 2011

2012-01-20T15:18:00.000+01:00

Robert Whitaker at Gothenburg

2011-12-29T15:33:00.001+01:00

So, I went to Gothenburg, Sweden, last month where Robert Whitaker was giving a talk about his latest book Anatomy of an Epidemic, a lecture arranged by the Family Care Foundation.

The point of departure in his book is Whitaker's puzzlement about, that despite the claim that pharmacological treatments have improved treatment options within psychiatry, and therefore the lives of “mentally ill” people, an increasing number of these “mentally ill” people become chronic, on disability pay, suffering through more and more serious “side”-effects, and exposed to a greater and greater risk of early death.

To find answers to his questions, Whitaker conducts a thorough review of the research in the field of psychopharmacology in its entirety, and concludes that the picture painted by this research is somewhat different than the one psychiatry has delivered to the general public.

Whitaker's book, like its predecessor Mad in America , is a disturbing read. One thing is to see how the actual science in the field clearly and unmistakably proves psychiatry's storytelling about biological brain diseases and the superiority of psych drugs in their "treatment" to the public over the past decades to be just that: storytelling, with no basis whatsoever in any scientific evidence. This is what everyone familiar with the scientific research has known for a long time. Another thing still is to see the suspicion, which even many critics will not dare to covet: that psychiatry – almost from the outset – has understood that its own tales of the wonders of psychopharmacology are lies equal to the stories of biological brain illnesses, so unmistakably confirmed in Whitaker's book by quote after quote of “expert” statements about the matter.

Like most other critics, Whitaker ended his lecture with the inevitable, politically correct: "I do know, that many people feel they are being helped by psychiatric medications, so there is a place for these drugs in treatment."

In the discussion that followed, I asked him why, after just presenting the scientific data - which all state one thing: that if people feel helped by psych drugs, then this must be attributed to either a placebo effect, and/or simply the fact that their judgment is impaired due to the drugs' influence, so in actual fact, there is no place for the drugs in "treatment", in as far as this "treatment" is meant to truly help people in crisis - he still decided to end his presentation with what could be described as an apology for said presentation.

In the last chapter of Anatomy of an Epidemic, Whitaker takes a thorough look at the Finnish Open Dialogue approach, which, with its well-documented effecacy, is an alternative to the current biomedical approach to emotional crisis. Yet even Open Dialogue uses psych drugs -- in a very limited capacity, especially when it comes to "anti"-psychotics, and only as a "last resort". In answer to my question, Whitaker said he would like to see projects like Open Dialogue initiated, but with just one difference: no use of psych drugs at all. I would really like to see that, too! Like Whitaker says, mankind has survived for thousands of years on this planet, without these drugs, so…

The slides for Whitaker's presentation are here.

Thanks to Paul Englar for his huge help with the translation of this blog post.

Bruce E. Levine - My Story

2011-08-06T12:37:00.000+02:00

Healing Homes. A new film by Daniel Mackler

2011-02-21T02:39:00.000+01:00

Yesterday morning, Daniel Mackler's new film Healing Homes. An Alternative, Swedish Model for Healing Psychosis was in my mailbox. I've watched it four times since then.

If you know Daniel's previous film, Take These Broken Wings, this one is different. Healing Homes is an informal, often contemplative, and also raw, and at the same time very intimate and personal film.

Instead of the carefully staged interviews we saw in Take These Broken Wings, in Healing Homes Daniel Mackler takes a step back as a director, and leaves the scene almost entirely to the participants in the film, joining them only as just one more participant himself. This allows him to capture the essence of what Familjevårdsstiftelsen, the Family Care Foundation, in Gothenburg, Sweden, is all about: fearless openness and authenticity. Take These Broken Wings showed us, in a very professional way, how full recovery from "psychosis"/"schizophrenia" without drugs is possible, even likely, with the help of a professional therapist. Healing Homes goes further, not only explicitly revealing a truth about the human being Carina Håkansson, founder of the Family Care Foundation, but indeed revealing the truth about crisis to be a state of being human to an extreme extent that can be understood and overcome with the help of other human beings who are not afraid to be extremely human themselves. This is what this film is about. The healing power of being oneself, genuinely, uncompromizingly. And not just behind the closed door of a therapist's office, but in all life situations, which is what the family home, "det utvidgade terapirummet", the extended therapy room, invites to.

Just like Daniel Mackler himself, I'm quite suspicious of professionalism in the field. As the Norwegian psychologist Christian Moltu wrote in his article "Det konkrete, mellommenneskelige" (The actual, interpersonal) in 2009, all too often therapists make use of therapy techniques, of their professionalism, as a kind of shield they can hide behind whenever they don't manage to stay present, and truly meet their clients where these are at. Healing Homes nevertheless has convinced me that professionalism can be of great value if it is used as a means to prevent exactly this distancing, alienating, the other dehumanizing use of itself, if it is used to help the therapist, and whoever else interacts with a person in crisis, stay present with the person in any given situation by being "professionally" human, conscious about and self-aware of one's own as well as the person in crisis' humanness.

"It's about people, and... people. Giving love to people", Therése says in the film about the Family Care Foundation. And it is what the film not only is about, but what it actually does, fearlessly and uncompromizingly with great respect and love allowing people to be who they are. I've watched Healing Homes four times now, each time discovering new, fascinating details. It's a film I'll watch again and again. For the details, but first and foremost for its love for people that is the magic behind the success of the Family Care Foundation as well as the magic of this film.

Order the film here: http://www.iraresoul.com/dvd2.html, and watch it, again and again.

Emotional disturbances vs. "psychosis" - A valid distinction?

2011-02-02T15:54:00.000+01:00

Yeah, I'm still alive. Just had to find a new place to stay for myself, Calvin the cat, and my two horses, and, while one has to make major changes in one area of life, why not take the plunge, and make them in others too, and find a new job as well? Especially when you can't help but sense that your current boss doesn't really need you to work for her full-time anymore, and you've thought of trying something completely different anyway? As of today, I've found a new place to stay, and a new, completely different job.

Anyhow, the reason why I thought I'd write a new post is this post on Rossa Forbes' blog Holistic Recovery from Schizophrenia about the latest of Mark Foster's letters to Robert Whitaker, that had me remember another of his letters, this one, and my comment to it, originally posted at a Facebook thread. Since not everybody is on Facebook, and can go and read it there, here it is:

A very insightful piece, yes. Anyhow, some critical thoughts:

- "Some of my patients are very complicated with severe emotional or even psychotic disturbances, but those are rare."

What I read between the lines here is that emotional "disturbances" are different from "psychotic" ones. In how far? I went to a talk about "psychosis", given by a psychiatrist, back in November last year. According to this psychiatrist, and also according to what I've been reading virtually everywhere where "psychosis" is defined, fear is one of the main "symptoms" of "psychosis". Fear, and anger (with anger being the emotional response to fear). Fear and anger are emotions. Now, the list of "symptoms" for "psychosis" also includes so-called "thought disorders", "hallucinations", "delusions", etc., so you might say, there are other than emotional "disturbances" involved in "psychosis". However, my personal experience is that at the core of all these other "disturbances" are fear and anger. These emotions are what creates all other "disturbances". Just like sadness, grieving a loss, usually creates other than emotional "disturbances" ( inability to concentrate, withdrawal from social contexts, etc.). So, my take on this is that "psychotic disturbances", too, are emotional "disturbances".

- "What I mean is that most patients do not show signs of a pathological disturbance in their mental functioning. Rather, they are sad, lonely, anxious, frustrated, disillusioned, confused, scared--all in all, they seem very human, suffering from some of the mood changes that are endemic to the human experience. In the vast majority of these cases, major social and environmental factors are the clear precipitants of their symptoms: death in the family, job loss, marital struggles, substance abuse."

Basically, the same applies to this quote, and my question here would be, exactly where do we draw the line between what Mark Foster calls a "pathological disturbance" on the one hand, and existential, to human nature very natural, emotional suffering, "endemic to the human experience", as Mark Foster says? Or, to maybe push it to extremes, but nevertheless, where do we draw the line between naturally suffering human being, and sick-in-the-head lesser-than--human being? And who has the power to draw this line, on what basis? Towards the end of the article Mark Foster writes: "Some diseases, some mental illnesses, are severe, debilitating, life-threatening." He doesn't name which diseases he refers to, but when "mental illness" is talked about there's always one specific label that, if no other of all the labels in the DSM, seems to simply have to be a true disease: schizophrenia. Because if a reaction to life as extreme as what is labelled "schizophrenia" is just that, a reaction to life, and not a true disease, then no label in the DSM is a true disease. Psychiatry as a medical speciality stands and falls with "schizophrenia", and how we define the experience labelled as "schizophrenia". Or "psychosis".

Even among the people, who have successfully overcome what psychiatry calls "schizophrenia", there are many who would agree with Mark Foster. Joanne Greenberg and Norwegian Arnhild Lauveng are just a couple of them, referring to themselves as having been sick, having suffered from "schizophrenia". Anyhow, there are also quite a few people, and I am one of them, who do not define themselves as having been sick, as having suffered from this "severe mental illness" called "schizophrenia", although they've perfectly fitted the criteria for the label. Because they don't agree that it is sick to react to life. And here Mark Foster omits to mention an important item on his list about adverse life events: childhood trauma (that comes in all imaginable shapes, not just as physical, or sexual abuse). Only if this item is omitted, "schizophrenia" (and other "severe mental illness" such as "bipolar disorder", or "major depressive disorder", for that sake) can be explained away as being true illnesses, the manifestation of an individual flaw, be it genetic, biological (biological psychiatry), or developmental (Freud), and not understood as an actually life-saving (sic) response to life-threatening circumstances. And this leads me to Mark Foster calling these responses "debilitating" and "life-threatening". I know a lot of people, and as mentioed I am one of them myself, who would answer him to this statement that they developed "symptoms" because they had no other choice if they wanted to survive in a for them life-threatening situation, that their ability to develop "symptoms", to react in the life-threatening situation they found themselves in, actually saved their life, and that therefor they don't see this ability as "debilitating", a weakness, an illness, or anything along those lines, but actually as a strength. And indeed, life that doesn't react to its environment isn't fit to survive in it. If we're talking a single cell, or a complex organism such as a human being. Fact is, people do not die from "mental illness". They survive thanks to it, and if they die, they do so because their experience, their life story, they themselves, are explained away as "diseased", and not understood. It is not "mental illness" itself that is life-threatening. It is the fear and lack of understanding that people who react in an extreme way to extreme circumstances are met with.

Given these very different definitions of "severe mental illness", and given the fact that we do not have scientific evidence to prove one definition more true than the other, while we do have "anecdotal" evidence that may well be interpreted to support a view of the latter definition as more true than the illness-definition (cf. that most people do not refer to themselves as "diseased" but after they've been in contact with psychiatry, and that they actually often resist being defined as "diseased", and need a whole lot of "treatment" before they're ready to submit to this definition), I wonder how Mark Foster justifies his statement.

This is a complex matter, and there would be a lot more to say to it, too much for a comment on facebook...

One last thing: Mark Foster writes that the motivation to become a medical professional for most people is that they want to help others. I don't doubt that. But what I find a far more interesting question is what is the motivation behind wanting to help others? Is it imaginable that it, at least in some cases, is a profound feeling of being helpless oneself?...

Oh and, why I mention the talk by the psychiatrist: the way fear was presented by her, not fear of something, but simply fear, a meaningless symptom of a meaningless illness, turned fear, almost magically you might say, from being a natural human emotion into something completely alien (as in alienation... ) to human nature. Fear was no longer an emotion. It was a symptom, and as such it had to be feared... This is how we alienate people from the labelled, and the labelled from themselves. This is what the "stigma", the discrimination and prejudice is made of. Us and them. Human beings and "psychotics"/"schizophrenics". Sad.

David M. Allen - Making fun of child abuse

2010-12-19T13:47:00.000+01:00

Back in April this year, I wrote in a post on this blog: "Visiting David M. Allan, M.D.'s blog, your first impression might be a rather positive one. He seems to have got at least something. And yes, he has got something." Today, reading this entry on his blog, I take back my words from April. David M. Allen hasn't got anything. Not a thing. Or he wouldn't make fun of child abuse.

Robert Whitaker, Keynote at Alternatives 2010

2010-10-08T13:43:00.000+02:00

Robert Whitaker - Alternatives Keynote from National Empowerment Center on Vimeo.

The NEC apologizes to Will Hall

2010-09-27T23:06:00.001+02:00

For whatever reason -- could it be the massive protest on Facebook?... -- the organizers of Alternatives 2010, the NEC, apologized to Will Hall, and restored his workshop in its original form. Will Hall has agreed to withdraw his cancellation, and to do the workshop as planned. Yay! Have a great conference, everybody!

http://www.madnessradio.net/update-coming-off-medication-workshop-restored

Alternatives 2010 censors Will Hall

2010-09-26T10:47:00.005+02:00

Yup, first they try to keep Bob Whitaker from talking, and now they've decided that Will Hall may not include coming off drugs at his workshop. A workshop about choice in regard to drugs, where you may not talk about coming off?? Sounds sort of meaningless, I'd say. "Alternatives" my ass!

Here's the press release:

MENTAL HEALTH CONFERENCE CENSORSHIP

Coming Off Medications Workshop Censored at 'Alternatives 2010' Mental Health Conference

Alternatives, the mental health consumer/survivor conference with more than 1,000 participants annually, has withdrawn its previous approval for a workshop on coming off psychiatric medications.

The workshop, based in a pro-treatment choice, harm-reduction philosophy, was to share information about continuing, reducing, or coming off medications. After approving the workshop in June, the National Empowerment Center, which organizes the conference to be held in Anaheim California, made a last-minute decision to change the title and description to remove any reference to coming off medications. Will Hall, an internationally-recognized schizophrenia survivor and radio host who was set to lead the workshop, decided that he could not go along with the decision and will not be attending the conference. "Coming off medications is a topic vital to wellness and recovery, and should not be censored," he said.

The controversial move by the National Empowerment Center comes in the wake of a recent similar decision to bar Robert Whitaker, a Pulitzer finalist investigative journalist whose work spotlights medication dangers and growing evidence that non-drug alternatives work better for some patients. Whitaker was restored as a conference keynote speaker only after mental health advocates mobilized quickly on the internet to challenge the decision.

The annual Alternatives conference is organized by consumer/survivor groups and federally funded. With workshops ranging from wellness, youth, housing, employment, advocacy and diversity issues, Alternatives is the country's most prominent gathering for mental health consumers, who attend from all US states and as far away as Guam. Medication issues, however, have consistently been excluded from the program.

Hall, who works as a therapist, says he is not anti-medication and does not give medical advice, but instead educates individuals, families, and health care providers to make more informed choices. "People are caught between pro-drug marketing by pharmaceutical companies and the anti-drug message of some activists. We need honest and unbiased information about psychiatric medications, including assessing drug risks and discussing how to come off drugs safely when they aren't right for you. Many people find medications helpful, but there are huge dangers involved, and sometimes it's better to reduce medication or slowly go off."

After several hospitalizations and a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder schizophrenia, Hall has been medication-free for more than 17 years. He says a combination of holistic health, support groups, and spiritual practice nurtured his recovery from mental illness, but believes that "each person's path to recovery is different. My work fills a great need for information, and it's a shame this topic is censored at a national conference that claims to be dedicated to
wellness and calls itself 'Alternatives.'"

Hall is the author of the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Medications, published by mental health peer groups The Icarus Project and Freedom Center. The guide, available freely on the internet, has been distributed to more than 15,000 people and is available in Spanish and German translations.

http://theicarusproject.net/HarmReductionGuideComingOffPsychDrugs

--
http://www.willhall.net

http://www.madnessradio.net/coming-off-medications-workshop-censored

The perfect parent

2010-09-18T03:07:00.007+02:00

If everything else doesn't pan out, there's one thing you can do to achieve god-like status, perfection, in life: become a parent. At least to judge from the reaction of lots of parents to the least suggestion that maybe, just maybe, they didn't only have an influence on any success achieved by their offspring, but maybe, just maybe, also on one or the other failure, suffering, in their kids' lives, these parents seem to think they don't have to take the least responsibility for their parenting as being a parent in their opinion obviously equals to being the perfect parent. Being a parent seems to, automatically, turn you into some kind of supernatural being, infallible, and beyond any criticism. By definition there's no such thing as "bad parenting", there's no such thing as child abuse, neglect, or any kind of dysfunctional communication patterns acted out by parents towards their children. Parents don't make mistakes. To insinuate that they maybe, just maybe, are no less imperfect, fallible, and human as everybody else, and to ask them to take responsibility for their imperfection, their fallibility, and their humanity, borders to a cardinal sin.

Lola's is a quite interesting comment in this regard. Her daughter's upbringing was nothing less than perfect. No one, least of all Lola herself, made as much as one single mistake raising her daughter. It was all beer and skittles. Well, until "mental illness" struck, like a bolt from the blue. Never mind that alone reading about a "mentally ill" mother (Lola), that is a mother with major "issues", which, since she herself ascribes them to "mental illness", hardly can be anything but unresolved -- and as we all know, unresolved trauma inevitably gets acted out and thus passed on to any children, if there are any --, and about an "ex", into the bargain also this "ex" with "mental health issues", which means divorce, would, and should!, have everybody with just a minimum of insight into the human psyche shudder, and wonder how the kids cope in such a dysfunctional environment. Never mind that reading about all this obvious dysfunctionality wouldn't, and shouldn't!, have anyone with just a minimum of insight into the human psyche be the least surprised when they hear that a kid raised in this dysfunctionality reacts to it developing coping strategies that then, ignoring any insight into the human psyche, and maintaining the delusion of the perfect parent, conveniently can be labelled "mental illness".

There they are, the kids. Initially wanted, not for their own sake, but as an extension of their parents (' egos), whose only purpose in life it is to confirm their parents' infallibility, their god-like perfection as persons. But God help the kids, if they can't or won't fulfil this purpose, if they have the rudeness, selfishness, and ungratefulness to protest and thus expose their parents' violence towards them! Since the violence can't and must not be, in their parents' minds, since acknowledging to it would equal to having to give up on their "God delusion", it has to be the child who's imperfect, indeed defective, diseased.

So, please! psychiatry, step in and silence these rude, selfish, and ungrateful brats' completely unfounded accusations against us with your (pseudo-)scientific, medical authority! Once and for all. Please, label these rude, selfish, and ungrateful brats insane, that is whatever they say or do a symptom of "mental illness", and thereby invalid, not worth being listened to, and please, if ever you can, shut them up, free us from having to hear them scream out in pain over the violence we've inflicted on them!!!

Which also is quite interesting, is to watch some of these perfect parents go even further, not settling for having the rude, selfish, and ungrateful brat silenced, but additionally, in both hugging themselves, and fishing for the sympathy of people with just a minimum of insight into the human psyche, washing their hands of this dirty job of silencing the brat, and accusing psychiatry of being violent. These are the parents who complain about "misdiagnoses", side effects, lack of "treatment" efficacy, lack of services, and so on, and so on.

Sorry people, you have nothing to complain about. You asked for their help, and you got it. At least, they do whatever is in their power to meet your expectations. There's no way how psychiatry, or any other institution, ever could silence your children, and at the same time make them the successes, you initially wanted them to be. Success in life presupposes a language of one's own, through which the self can express itself. No language, no success. You asked for it yourselves. You asked for your children to be turned into non-persons, into a "mental illness", a failure.

You have no right whatsoever to judge and condemn people like Joseph Biederman or the Schofields. What these people do is nothing else but what you asked them to do, respectively what you do yourselves. You have no right to blame the pharmaceutical companies for pushing drugs with debilitating, and partly fatal "side" effects, and covering these "side" effects up. You asked for your children to be debilitated, and rendered lifeless. That you asked for this to happen in a metaphorical way, debilitating and killing your childrens' protesting self, doesn't make a difference. And you also asked for the cover-up. Since no perfect parent would ask for their child to be denied a self.

Psychiatry didn't establish itself, out of the blue. Just like your children didn't become "mentally ill" out of the blue. You asked for psychiatry to be established, in exactly the way it appears today, just like your behavior had your children react to it, and become "mentally ill".

Lastly, there's the returning "walk a mile in my shoes!"-thing. Well, I have. I've been about just as unconscious, unaware, and irresponsible, as these perfect parents are, or choose to be. Because, as mentioned before, the moment you know more than one side of the story, you're not innocent anymore. You stand with a choice, and with the entire responsibility for whatever choice you decide to make. And no, you don't even need to hear another side of the story from some critical professional or survivors, or whoever. You just need to listen to your children's side of the story. You just need to set yourself aside for once, and really listen to them. Not to whatever comes out of their mouth after they were "brought back" to seeing the world through your eyes, while they're drugged up over their own eyeballs, but while they're the most themselves, in "psychosis". You just have to try and walk a mile in your children's shoes.

Apart from all this, I can only wonder why someone, who thinks psych drugs, especially neuroleptics, are not designed for someone like her daughter, read between the lines: while they sure as hell are designed for the "real loonies", those not "misdiagnosed" -- and the concept of "misdiagnosis" always implies that there would be such a thing as correct diagnosis -- kept visiting and commenting on a blog authored by such a "real loony", playing up to this "real loony", who, into the bargain, isn't on any drugs, and, what more is, is a pronounced opponent to psych drugs and labels, and the institution of psychiatry as such. I can only wonder why someone who obviously firmly believes in biologically based brain diseases, at the same time, and repeatedly, joins in whenever there's a call for Soteria Houses. Soteria wasn't created to treat biologically based brain diseases. It was created out of the belief that the alleged biologically based brain diseases indeed were personal, existential crises. -- And the outcomes Soteria produced confirmed this belief to be true, btw. -- So, what's the big idea behind this sailing under false colors, behind this hypocrisy? Why not simply stand by one's convictions? Looking for sympathy? Seeking absolution for one's discriminatory us-and-them-thinking, even from the "real loonies" themselves? I have to disappoint you, X. No sympathy nor absolution for violence available here.
_______________

Since somebody pointed out to me that, especially for people who haven't been following X's blog and/or her comments, here or elsewhere, for some time, it might look like I condemn X on the basis of one single remark about psych drugs on her blog: No, I don't. This is what I wrote in reply to this somebody, and I hope, it contributes to a better understanding of what I react to. -- Also I decided to anonymize. As the above mentioned somebody also points out to me, X is by far not the only one to engage in this kind of behavior, so, it's probably a little unfair to mention only her by name:

X has puzzled me for the entire about 2 years I've been following her blog. Lots of critical comments, asking for Soteria Houses, when everybody else was, slamming the Schofields, when everybody else did, or Joseph Biederman, when everybody else did, criticizing one or the other pharmaceutical company, when everybody else did, etc. etc. (and "everybody else" of course means a certain clique in the blogosphere). Still, at the same time there also always were these small inconsistencies. "Misdiagnosis", over and over again, and as if there was such a thing as a correct diagnosis, mentioning "psychosis" and "schizophrenia" as if they were valid labels, just not for her daughter, and also that over and over again. Not just once. But she also successfully avoided to ever take a clear stand, whether she does believe in the labels, in the drugs, in biopsychiatry, or not. So, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. And, frankly, I didn't believe my own eyes when I read her comments at "Lola's story", that quite clearly, and clearer than ever, state that she does believe in the righteousness of for instance a "bipolar"-label for, and the drugging for it of, kids. I mean, read the comments at Fid's blog. Lola writes about 6-year-olds who get labelled and drugged, and are helped by it, and no objection from X. She agrees. Lola's her friend, she admires Lola, Lola's right when she says, kids are helped by psychiatry, its labels, its drugs. I can only conclude that this does not add up with slamming the Schofields for having their 6-year-old daughter labelled and drugged. Not at all. She did it, because everybody else did it. The same applies to her slamming Biederman on her blog. One minute she condemns the man, also joins in whenever people voice ethical concerns about the labelling and drugging of children, the next she agrees that "bipolar" in kids is real. I ask her, at Fid's blog, if this really is what she believes. Yes, it is.

One thing is that I, under these circumstances, couldn't disagree more with her. And I think, I myself don't make a secret of my points of view on my blog. It's pretty clear where I stand. [So, it should have been clear to X, too.] Another is that I a) really don't understand why on earth she doesn't simply say so, when she disagrees, but keeps giving the impression that she would agree with people, when obviously she doesn't, and b) can't do with hypocrites. I actually have more sympathy with someone like Lola than with X. Lola never came to my blog, or made a comment elsewhere, pretending to agree when in truth she didn't.

Additionally, I want to emphasize -- if anybody is in doubt -- that a disagreeing opinion alone, brought forward in a factual manner, has my full respect. What I have no respect for whatsoever is hypocrisy.

The saddest thing

2010-09-13T04:01:00.001+02:00

Reading "Lola's story", in fact more like her daughter's story, on Bob Fiddaman's blog yesterday really saddened me.

I came to think of the comment by "CJ" on the NYT-piece "Child's Ordeal Shows Risks of Psychosis Drugs for Young", quoted by Rossa Forbes in her critique on the piece:

"It appears today's parents don't want to take time to examine themselves, their lifestyles, their parenting skills (or lack thereof) to see what might be affecting their child/ren. In addition, they might look to the schools, who have in many instances effectively taken away all outlets for normal childhood rambunctiousness by eliminating recess and phys ed, and requiring these little ones stay at their desks most of the day.

As for parents and physicians 'drugging' infants and preschoolers, well, as they say, you can't cure dumb.

As a nation, we are doing our youngsters a great disservice, substituting drugs for parenting, and placing the blame on others. Parents, take control. Do this by first taking control of yourselves."

Control, or responsibility. It hurts to face one's own inadequacies, mistakes, and dysfunctionality as a parent reflected in one's child reactions to them. And the more extreme the child's reactions, the more it hurts, because the more extreme the dysfunctionality they reflect. So, no doubt that it is a lot more comfortable to believe the misery isn't one's own responsibility, that you're not responsible for neither your own nor your "loved one's" pain. That it is all caused by fate, faulty genes, an imbalanced brain chemistry, nothing you could have done or can do anything about.

Related to this is the belief that the people who hold fate, faulty genes, and an imbalanced brain chemistry responsible are "just misguided", as a friend of mine keeps on telling me whenever I mention this dirty word: responsibility. And I mention it a lot, as the reader of this blog might have noticed. "Have compassion. It is no one's fault. They're just misguided." No one's fault. As in "it's a brain disease, bad genes, it's no one's fault". Or "no one's responsibility".

I recently complained to a friend about somebody's behavior really annoying me, draining me of energy. Like you'd complain to a shrink about your brain diseased child's behavior ruining your delusion of being the perfect parent. "You know," my friend said, "it's actually not that this person is annoying you, draining you of energy. You let her annoy you, and drain you of energy." Touché. Just as people, unless they are completely innocent, and don't know but one single version of a story, aren't misguided, but let themselves be misguided. With pleasure. For their own convenience.

This I wrote in a comment on another post at Rossa's blog:

"Everybody makes mistakes. Many people don't have the guts to admit their mistakes, to neither others, nor, and even less, to themselves. So they blame the suffering their mistakes causes not least themselves on others: "mental illness", and miss out on the opportunity to create transformation and growth for both themselves and their 'loved ones'. "

That's the price you have to pay for running from responsibility. You lose freedom. Also that from suffering. It's like peeing your pants, in the sense the Danes use the expression: at first, it feels nice and warm, but after a short while it gets really, really cold. But, no, you can't cure dumb. And the saddest thing is, when children have to pay for their parents' dumbness.

Calvin

2010-08-22T01:29:00.001+02:00

Don't be fooled!

2010-08-15T19:06:00.000+02:00

He ain't no Loren Mosher, he neither. Allen Frances, who has an op-ed in yesterday's NYT about the removal of the "bereavement exclusion" proposed for the DSM-V, and who writes critically about other proposed changes for the DSM-V on his blog DSM5 in Distress.

Let's have a look at the NYT-piece.

- "If this suggestion is adopted, many people who experience completely normal grief could be mislabeled as having a psychiatric problem," Frances writes. And, a little farther down: "This would be a wholesale medicalization of normal emotion, and it would result in the overdiagnosis and overtreatment of people who would do just fine if left alone to grieve with family and friends, as people always have."

First of all, any emotion that is labelled psychiatrically is in fact mislabelled. It is a completely natural thing for human beings to have emotions, also extreme emotions. So, any kind of diagnosis and treatment of these emotions as representing symptoms of a disease is overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Thus, there is no overdiagnosis or overtreatment in psychiatry, only diagnosis and treatment, and it is all "over-" and "mis-", in the sense that it all medicalizes, pathologizes, completely natural, even healthy, phenomena. Second, if it isn't always one's biological family, it more often than not is one's friends, one's network, that has one do "just fine", no matter what the problem. Psychiatry hasn't cured one single "patient" yet. Lots of "patients" have cured themselves, supported by friends, by their network, and sometimes by family.

- "It is not that psychiatrists are in bed with the drug companies, as is often alleged. The proposed change actually grows out of the best of intentions," Frances claims after having mentioned the drug companies' obvious greed, and what it probably will lead to in case the "bereavement exclusion" is removed from DSM-V.

Ah, a do-gooder passing the buck. All Frances himself and the whole bunch of his shrink-colleagues, at least according to himself, have in mind is helping their "patients". At any cost. Even if it means they're rewarded millions of drug company-dollars for their unselfish efforts...

- "To slap on a diagnosis and prescribe a pill would be to reduce the dignity of the life lost and the broken heart left behind. Psychiatry should instead tread lightly and only when it is on solid footing."

Unfortunately (for Frances and his colleagues), there still is no such thing as "solid footing" anywhere in psychiatry, no matter what the diagnosis someone gets, indeed, slapped with, not only reducing but often enough destroying the dignity of the person who gets slapped with it. So, psychiatry shouldn't tread lightly, it shouldn't tread at all - on those who already lie down, with broken hearts. "[L]et us experience the grief [and all other natural human emotion] we need to feel without being called sick," yes, please, Allen Frances and colleagues!

It will seem to me, that Allen Frances is among the growing number of professionals, that includes names like Daniel Carlat and David M. Allen, who are about to become aware - unfortunately not of the fact that his profession isn't helping people in emotional distress, but rather oppressing and harming them, but both of the publicity it can earn you to be critical towards the DSM-V - you may even be able to make friends with a handful of survivors, and as the survivor movement is growing, that certainly wouldn't be a bad thing to happen -, and of the alleviation of feelings of guilt that comes along with being a little, but not too!, critical. A kind of "meta-do-gooderism", and indeed, also this a "no-fault insurance against personal responsibility" ("Didn't I say so? Didn't I warn you?")

Grieving human nature

2010-08-02T22:02:00.001+02:00

Gianna posted a piece about the NPR-article "Is Emotional Pain Necessary?"

"They might as well ask do we care to continue being human. This trend of pathologizing pain and making it wrong will be the end of us if we don’t do something to stop it."

I couldn't have written a better comment on the article. I'd just say that running from emotional pain doesn't only limit growth and healing, but in fact does prevent true growth and healing from happening at all, and even makes things worse. We're destroying human nature (= ourselves), and we're not even realizing it, because we're too doped up to feel that we're about to commit emotional suicide.

A couple of thoughts I had, reading the article:

"Kendler points to research showing that people who are doing well two weeks after a loss also seem to be doing well one year later."

What Kenneth Kendler doesn't tell us is whether these people who did well after only two weeks of grieving, got "over it" popping pills, or whether, and more likely, they really got over it, all by themselves. If the latter is true, and I suppose it is, what the studies show is that it actually is healthy to go through intense emotional pain, and process one's loss, and that this process shouldn't be interrupted and suppressed by any kind of - aggressive - "treatment".

" 'I mean, [pain] is a normal consequence of breaking a bone. But that doesn't mean that we don't treat the pain. We treat the pain vigorously,' Zisook says."

The comparison is ridiculous. No one would ask someone who's broken a bone to pop a pain killer, and get on with what they were doing. It would be regarded irresponsible, and in a medical context malpractice, if you didn't do anything, but gave the person who broke their bone a pain killer for it. Nevertheless, this is what psychiatry does, giving people with broken bones a pain killer, and expecting them to get on with what they were doing. Malpractice, indeed.

On another note, the bereavement exclusion, too, IMO is completely ridiculous. "Depression" is mourning and grieving a loss. It is being stuck in mourning and grieving, because you can't name the loss. Just because someone can't instantly name their loss, doesn't mean they haven't lost anything. It means they ought to be helped name their loss.

Get rid of yourself!

2010-07-28T10:15:00.000+02:00

I just read the NYTimes-article "Following a Script to Escape a Nightmare" that Gianna links to today:

"Dr. Barrett supports the use of Dr. Krakow’s technique, although she said that ideally the nightmare work should be integrated with psychiatry and behavioral therapies to treat the underlying condition."

For a second I thought: 'Since when does psychiatry or behavioral therapies treat underlying conditions??' before I realized: it says conditions, not problems, or traumas...

Great! Pop some prazosin on top of your psych drug cocktail, Big pHARMa will love you for that, and ask your rat trainer (aka "therapist") to extend the rat training to include your dreams as well. Hopefully it won't take long then, before the true you, your true self, succumbs definitively, and doesn't even bug you in your sleep anymore.

Accutane vs. Geodon. More on double standards

2010-07-17T15:22:00.002+02:00

I watched this vid the other day, 1:43 into it. That was all I needed to see, or hear: "None of us would like it , if one of our children were to die at a young age, especially if it was for taking a medication that was for the treatment of pimples." -Doug Bremner.

Right. Certainly, none of us would like that. And sure as hell it was about time, and the only right thing to happen, when Accutane was pulled from the market last year. And although Hoffmann - LaRoche claimed other reasons to have prompted the decision to pull Accutane, concerns about the safety of the drug, also, and not least, voiced by Doug Bremner, without doubt were crucial to this decision. So, hats off to Doug Bremner's courage!

Anyhow, here's what I simply can't get my head around: if it is so outrageous as, among others, Doug Bremner thinks it is, and as it, indeed, is, that a drug that potentially causes depression and suicidal ideation/behavior as a side effect is used to treat acne, how come it is fully acceptable that drugs, medical treatments, with the side effect profile of Geodon are used to treat what isn't even scientifically proven to be an illness, a medical condition, at all? How come it isn't only acceptable, but apparently even desirable, if I understand Doug Bremner correctly - and it seems I do, since he didn't protest my comparison of his Mark Becker post to Fuller Torrey/TAC propaganda - to be able to force people to take these drugs?

So far, in Denmark there has been filed one complaint about Zyprexa causing diabetes. The complaint was dismissed. Explanation: "schizophrenia" is a far more severe disease than diabetes. So, if you suffer from "schizophrenia", you'll have to live with a side effect of the severity of diabetes. In fact, "schizophrenia", according to the "experts", such as Doug Bremner, must be worse than death. Because, unless you get run over by a bus and killed, or something along those lines, you, eventually, will die from taking drugs like Geodon or Zyprexa. On average, about 25 years earlier than you would have died not taking these drugs. So did the person who filed the complaint here in Denmark, who died from complications related to diabetes, which he had developed thanks to taking Zyprexa.

So, what we've got are drugs for the treatment of something that is not scientifically proven to be a disease, that actually, according to the scientific, psychiatric (!), research that has shown non-medical approaches like Soteria or Open Dialog to produce recovery rates of about 85%, vs. the drugs' 0%, with much greater probability is an emotional, existential problem, than that it is a medical one, that do not only have death as a possible, but, if taken long-term, as advocated by Doug Bremner and most of his colleagues, certain side effect. That is, looking at the scientific facts, any risk-benefit analysis of these drugs clearly tells us that the risks are way out of proportion compared to the benefits. Far more out of proportion than for a drug like Accutane.

Still, there is a public outcry, not least from Doug Bremner himself, for a ban of a drug like Accutane, while there, at the same time, is a just as loud, if not louder, public outcry, not least from Doug Bremner himself, in favor of forced "treatment" with a drug like Geodon.

If it was for Big pHARMa's profit to be at stake alone, I bet, someone like Doug Bremner would be one of the first to go for a ban of neuroleptics. But there is more, much more, at stake than Big pHARMa's profit when it comes to psych drugs. Pimples, acne, don't challenge society's status quo, they don't challenge the collective mass-psychosis that is called modern western civilization to the same extent as existential crises do. Indeed, society, Doug Bremner included, doesn't fear anything, not even death, and not even "if one of our children were to die at a young age", as much as it fears "schizophrenia", that is the confrontation with its own dysfunctionality. "Schizophrenia" begins where the courage to face oneself ends.

Free John Hunt! Sign the petition!

2010-06-25T11:55:00.003+02:00

If you haven't yet, go sign the petition to free John Hunt, trauma survivor and psychiatric prisoner, here.

John Hunt is a trauma survivor with a diagnosis of 'paranoid schizophrenia'. He has spent over four years locked up in Carraig Mor psychiatric treatment centre in Cork city, Ireland.

He has been over-medicated on an array of psychotropic medications with dangerous adverse effects. He has had tardive dyskinesia, akathasia and has developed incontinence. His physical/ mental/ emotional/ spiritual health has been severely neglected and has deteriorated since being in Carraig Mor.

He has had no access to a rehabilitation team or psychotherapist and no day release in two years. There are no plans to rehabilitate John and return him to the community where he belongs. He is merely maintained and contained. John and his family have no voice in relation to his future. We are afraid that John's physical health is being damaged considerably. We cannot stand by and watch this happen any longer.

Read more on John's partner Grainne Humphrys' blog The Incarceration of John, and on Beyond Meds

And this is for Susan

2010-06-23T17:40:00.000+02:00

Mestizo (left), Quarter Horse x Andalusian, and Barbiche (right), Quarter Horse

Drama

2010-06-23T00:22:00.001+02:00

First of all, thank you to everybody, Stephany, Rossa, and, well, you know who you are, for your understanding, support, and your critique, and not least for the "reminder" to keep my cool another time. No, my approach wasn't exactly buddhist.

I saw the picture of Mark Becker, and read the post, and what both immediately turned into in my mind was a mug shot of me, and a call to have me locked up and thrown away the key (= feed me Geodon, if necessary -- and I can assure everybody that it would be necessary -- forcibly). I actually went right into the trap of ego-identification, and my ego, feeling deeply insulted, threw the insult back at Doug Bremner, supplying him with the ammunition to fire back at me with. And so he did. I asked for it, I got it.

This is what The Drama is made of: get at people, and make them react. Add to that the ingredient of denying that you were getting at them ("We're only trying to help you!"), and what you get is madness. Because unless they've seen through these dynamics, people will inevitably start and yell louder and louder in their desperate attempt to make the other recognize and admit to that what they're doing isn't helpful in any way, but actually harmful, and stop it. And if you just yell loud enough, all of a sudden you fit the criteria for a psych label, all of a sudden your protesting becomes symptoms of an illness. What up to then was "You must be crazy to imagine this" or "You're not quite right in the head to think that" something along those lines, suddenly becomes "295.(pick a number)". And if that doesn't has you see through the dynamics, and for most people it won't, you, of course, start to yell as loud as you possibly could. Which is what everybody has been waiting for, as it allows them to lock you up, and shut you up with Geodon. Ah, peace and quiet, finally! They don't do it consciously, but still, it is what they're doing: getting at you, harassing, bullying you, ever more violently, in order to have you react ever more violently. So that, eventually, they can shut you up, without ever having to admit to, neither to you nor, and maybe even more important, to themselves, that what they call "help", "care" and "love", indeed is abuse, violence.

Doug Bremner writes that he isn't responsible for whatever happened to me, and certainly, in as far as he never harassed, bullied, abused me directly -- at least not until his response to my criticism --, he isn't. But from a broader perspective, in supporting, working for a system that more often than not denies respectively covers up the violence in our society, laundering it, so that it appears to be help, he so is.

Of course, Doug Bremner is far from alone in this. We all do it/have done it, at one time or the other. But that's no excuse for not taking responsibility. And it certainly is no excuse, if you have chosen help and care for people in crisis as your profession. If no one else, as the expert he claims to be, Doug Bremner should be capable of recognizing the dynamics of violence in society, and what they do to people. It isn't impossible. There have been, and there are others who did/do recognize it. R.D. Laing, Silvano Arieti, Richard Bentall, John Read, are just a few of them. Instead, he choses to dismiss both people's personal experiences, calling them for a "symptom" of "schizophrenia", a "delusion", establishing a razor sharp distinction between PTSD and "schizophrenia" -- in lack of biomarkers using terminology: flash backs become "hallucinations", hypervigilance becomes "paranoia", avoidance becomes "withdrawal", "mutism", "catatonia", etc. etc. --, as well as any research that takes people's personal experiences seriously as the "return of the theory of the schizophrenogenic mother", thus issuing a carte blanche for the violence to be continued.

I've seen it being done innumerable times before. Which had me go through the roof this time, are the particular circumstances that made it particularly insidious. The fact that somebody, who, allegedly, is an expert in trauma -- not only professionally, but also and even personally -- denies trauma, and in doing so, adds considerably to it, made the dehumanization I witnessed on his blog, and that I, as someone who got an "sz" label thrown at herself, very non-buddhist, took very personally, so much more appalling in my eyes. So, off I went, right through the roof, and my ego told me exactly how to get at Doug Bremner, and return the insult most efficiently. It is not that I mention his mother, his own history of trauma, but that I do it sarcastically, setting up a trap for him -- which he, or his ego, walked right into -- in not pointing out the fact that I for one, who didn't experience anything but pure emotional abuse/neglect, the most invisible, and hardest to trace and prove kind of abuse/neglect, certainly not am in a position to play down anyone else's trauma. "If he can't figure that out, too bad for him, ha!" That was mean, yes. And I should have taken a step back from my ego, before I wrote my first post about this matter. I'm guilty of not having done that. That I didn't do it consciously, on purpose, doesn't free me from having to take responsibility for it, and I'm sorry.

What I'm not sorry about is that I brought up the matter of discrimination against and dehumanization of labelled people for discussion. An important and necessary discussion to take, I think.

Note that Doug Bremner refers to me as "they", anonymizing me, which could be said to be fine if it wasn't that I was out here, with my full name. Doug Bremner has several times been attacked -- indeed, attacked -- by his own in the past. I've read most of these attacks, and they weren't exactly edifying reading. Some of it was, IMO, clearly below the belt. Nevertheless, and as far as I remember, in his replies to these attacks, Doug Bremner never once anonymized his opponents. So, where is the difference between these people and me? Well, these people, in Doug Bremner's eyes, aren't "mental patients", but people, human beings, persons, with names. No matter how "mean" their attacks, they thus still deserve the respect to not be called "they", as if they were some sort of nonperson. As the "schizophrenic" (=nonperson) I am in his eyes, I don't deserve this respect.

That I have a background in academia, probably broader than Doug Bremner's, and in, among other disciplines, philosophy, according to Wikipedia (yeah, I know... - but it actually sums it up quite well) "the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language", (my italics) while there so far exists no scientific evidence that definitely proves crisis to be a medical, and not an existential problem, is of no importance the moment, I also am the identified "mental patient". Neither is the fact that I am crisis experienced, that I can draw knowledge about crisis not only from observations from the outside, but also from experience from the inside. This is the difference between somatic illness and "mental illness". "Mental illness" isn't and will never be the same as somatic illness, it will never be "like diabetes". Someone suffering from diabetes who says: "This intervention/these pills make/-s me feel sicker," is listened to and taken seriously. The identified "mental patient" who says: "The Geodon makes me feel lousy," is, at best, ignored, if s/he keeps on "complaining", "looking for attention", not to mention if s/he tosses out the Geodon, that makes him/her feel lousy, if s/he rejects psychiatry's "help", and says: "This is not the help I feel, I'm in need of," it qualifies him/her to be forcibly subjected to this very same "help". Any expression of not feeling helped by psychiatry is explained away by defining it as just another "symptom" of the "illness". It is not ever taken seriously, not taken as a sign that maybe the "help" isn't help, that maybe the helpers have overlooked something, that maybe a different approach is needed. It can't be, because the present approach is carefully thought out to do exactly what it does: silencing any protest, any resistance, any dissent, in relation to both psychiatry itself as well as in relation to society in general. As the institution of psychiatry represents the very essence of societal, cultural norms and values, and is designed to protect these against any protest, resistance, and dissent.

Now, it's not that I think that my educational background would make me in any way more respectable, more "worthy", than anybody else. Anybody, disregarded their social, educational, cultural, etc. background and status, deserves to be respected equally, not discriminated against. All life forms actually deserve to be respected. But this isn't how our civilization works. We've established an artificial pecking order where things like education, material wealth, race, gender, and the power they provide, are a lot more important than life itself. We all know that psychiatry promotes this pecking order big time. But since Doug Bremner can't really dismiss my criticism arguing that i would lack education and knowledge -- he tried that, it didn't work out too well -- he resorts to the ultimate dismissal, pathologizing my criticism, and declaring me a nonperson, defining me. That is the power he and his colleagues have been assigned by society, and that I do not have. The power to define others.

The following is taken from an article in a Norwegian journal, Magasinet Selvsagt!, about ableism:

"To deprive people of the power to define themselves is at the core of discrimination, says Salman Rushdie. This is language of power, you are in control of the person in question. The first step on the way to respect people, or groups of people as equal, is to listen to them when they define themselves. The greatest victory for the other discriminated against groups [the article refers to women, gay people, and black people] has probably been that they won the power to define themselves. They have decided on their own who and what they are. They have defined their own group's problems, and they've acted out of this definition. We disabled people haven't managed to do this. We've left it to medical and other professionals, to politicians and the media to define us. We've left it to them to describe us in their language, out of their understanding of us. And we have adopted this understanding, and made it our own." (My translation)

I wouldn't even adopt the term "disability" as the prefix "dis-" usually implies something that is perceived as negative. Anyhow, my mistake was that I actually did it, that I adopted others' definition of myself. I identified with Mark Becker, and Doug Bremner's definition of him as the "schizophrenic", the pickaxe killer, the nonperson, so I confirmed Doug Bremner's power to define me. Instead of taking it from him. It may well be that psychiatrists have the power to define people, but they only have this power to the extent that we react to their provocations, playing the part they've assigned us in their drama.

"My pain is worse than yours!" Some reflections on PTSD vs. "schizophrenia", on the trivialization of trauma, and on responsibility

2010-06-20T12:25:00.001+02:00

A commenter, Stephany, at Doug Bremner's blog seems to think that I engage in what she calls the " 'my pain is worse than yours' BS". In my previous post I pointed out that what I did, when I wrote about his loss, was that I looked at his experience from the perspective that most of his colleagues, and obviously, when it comes to others than himself, also Doug Bremner himself, employ. I looked at it from Doug Bremner's own, biopsychiatric perspective.

If you have listened to the Madness Radio interview with Jacqui Dillon, you may have noticed that she mentions having been denied the possibility to talk about her life experiences not only in her assessment interview, but also throughout her entire stay in the psychiatric system. Whenever she tried to bring up the matter, her "care"givers in the system told her to focus on the present and future, not on the past. I myself hear it again and again, that people are told "You must forgive!" -- Forgive what, by the way?? If there's no trauma, and this is what these people also are told, over and over again, and at the very same time, that whatever pain they are experiencing it certainly isn't caused by any trauma, but by this mysterious, biological brain disease called "schizophrenia", I'd think, there can be nothing to forgive. Hm, strange. But well, logic and psychiatry - they don't really go that well together. -- So, the biopsychiatric approach obviously implies that, no matter what you have experienced in your life, it can impossibly have been worse than to have caused you to react to it with what then earns you a label of PTSD. As soon as your reaction exceeds just slightly whatever standards "experts" like Doug Bremner -- on the basis of their personal, on the at any time prevailing cultural norms and values, not on that of any scientific evidence , founded, convictions -- have put down for a label of PTSD, the label you receive from these "experts" will likely be that of "schizophrenia". And as soon as you have received that label, instead of the PTSD-one, poof!, all the trauma you ever might have experienced didn't happen but inside your own, diseased mind, it's all in your head. And even if any of it happened, it wasn't worse than that you just should forgive and forget all about it.

While, as we all know, telling your story, talking about what happened to you, making sense of it -- which is what Doug Bremner for instance tries to do in writing about his mother's death -- is an essential step on the road to recovery for someone who suffers from PTSD, telling what the "experts" choose to believe must be a mere fantasy, talking about what they choose to believe never happened to you, isn't allowed, as it only would upset ~~them~~ you, make you ~~a threat to their scheme of things~~ "worse", in case they have chosen that you suffer from "schizophrenia".

So, how convenient that there are no biological tests for neither PTSD nor any other "mental illness", that it is more or less entirely up to the personal preferences of your shrink, mainly depending on how much pain s/he is able to recognize and validate without terror taking over, and having him/her turn blind and deaf, and only looking to shut you up, now!, which label you'll receive from him/her. And, pop!, before you know where you are, you're no longer a traumatized human being, but a brain diseased freak, who risks to have his/her mug shot appear on Doug Bremner's blog, accompanied by a Fuller Torrey-TAC-worthy call for you to be stripped of whatever, if any, human rights you might have left. What a truly sensitive, the human being and his/her pain respecting and validating approach!

Trauma, pain, suffering cannot be measured and weighed in the same way as blood pressure or, well, insulin. An experience is just as traumatic as the person, who experiences it, experiences it to be traumatic. Indeed, it's all in your head. And no matter whether it's called PTSD or "schizophrenia", or whatever else.

So, while I, in applying the biopsychiatric perspective, could claim that there are innumerable four and a half-year-olds in this world, who experience the death of their mother without being traumatized by it (another one of biopsychiatry's favorites: "Other people have experienced the same you have without becoming psychotic/schizophrenic. So, stop whining about your past, and get on with your life [as the chronically brain diseased freak we reserve for ourselves the right to define you to be]!"), thus trivializing Doug Bremner's pain, I for one prefer to see him, his reaction, and to draw my conclusions about the "size" of his pain, the extent of trauma he has experienced from what I see there. The in my opinion only valid "measurement" for trauma, pain and suffering: the individual's individual experience of and reaction to it.

Personally, I didn't lose neither my mother nor my father as a four and a half-year-old, I wasn't sexually abused like Jacqui Dillon, I wasn't battered, screamed and shouted at, or physically neglected in any way. My parents had no financial problems, and there was no fighting, or drinking, or anything like that going on at our house. We were the perfect upper middle class family. Nothing "dramatic" ever happened before I was about 13 years old, and what happened from then on until my father's death four years later happens in the best of families, it happens all the time, and most of the children who experience it do not end up "psychotic"/"schizophrenic". "So, where's the trauma?" I can hear the Doug Bremners of this world ask. And, until 6 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to answer him other than with what he would have interpreted to be the "delusions" and "hallucinations" of a chronically brain diseased, genetically defective freak, because he's too afraid to see anything, but what our culture has decided simply is too obvious to be covered up, because all he would have been able to see was the perfect upper middle class family, in whose bosom I'd experienced the perfectly happy, safe and protected upper middle class childhood that clearly didn't involve any trauma at all.

So, why would I, who cannot even play the "I lost my mother when I was only four and a half years old"-card, want to trivialize Doug Bremner's grief, and why on earth would I, who hasn't experienced anything of what our culture recognizes as "trauma", want to engage in the "my pain is worse than yours" BS -- and it is BS, yes -- Stephany?? In fact, I'm the first to stand up and speak out against the ongoing trivialization of people's pain and suffering, that biopsychiatry so happily engages in -- that is what I do in criticizing Doug Bremner's post about Mark Becker -- as well as against the "my pain is worse than yours" BS that I witness everywhere among consumers, where it, characteristically enough, finds its most pronounced expression in the discrimination against, and demonization of "the schizophrenics", and not least in the invalidation of these people's trauma and pain as "delusions", perpetrated by people with all kinds of other psych labels, not least those who claim to have been misdiagnozed as "schizophrenic" when in reality they were traumatized. As if "schizophrenia" and having been traumatized were opposites. Well well, also the discriminated against need their scapegoats to pass the discrimination, the violence, on to. And of course it is the most natural and safe thing to pass it on to those, who are assigned the place at the bottom of the pecking order by the almighty authority of biopsychiatry: "the schizophrenics". Of whom I am one of, traumatized, recovered, but still, never misdiagnozed.

I recommend a look at my own story, before anyone next time jumps to conclusions, and insinuates that I would trivialize anyone's trauma, and/or engage in the "my pain is worse than yours" BS.

As for the at Doug Bremner's blog's comment section also present accusation against me that I would engage in a simplistic "blame the parents" approach: if you call holding the people, who according to their own perception of themselves (!) are responsible, grown-up human beings, responsible is a simplistic "blame the parents" approach, then, yes, then I do engage in it. However, the accusation itself is a simplistic, cheap (!) attempt to escape having to take responsibility, and I think, everybody who makes use of it knows this very well. If you don't know it, I recommend reading Laing again (I suppose, you have read him before you went on to dismiss of his ideas?!), as you obviously got him all wrong.

"With rare exceptions, I think parents do their best. They try. But there are a lot of ways in which they can go astray." -Loren Mosher

Is it really so much more painful and terrifying for you to face your own imperfection as parents, your own humanity, than to witness your children lose their mind over your inability to face it?

Kafka, The Trial. An additional remark to Doug Bremner's attempt to defend himself against my criticism

2010-06-19T17:19:00.001+02:00

Note that Doug Bremner writes in his post that he has no idea whether Mark Becker was traumatized by his family, since he "never interviewed them"(my emphasis). In my first post on this matter, I asked Doug Bremner, if he'd ever listened, without prejudice, to Mark Becker himself.

I encourage everybody to listen to, if nothing else from about 00:16:00 to about 00:21:00, this Madness Radio interview with Jacqui Dillon.

What is going on during this kind of "investigations" is that everybody else but the identified mental patient is listened to and taken seriously. Of course, the, in advance, identified mental patient can't be listened to, not to mention be taken seriously. It goes without saying that you can't take a disease, an imbalanced brain chemistry, defective genes, seriously. So, what immediately may look like an investigation, looking to reveal the truth, in fact is a charade, set up to, with professional authority once and for all, conceal the truth, and confirm what never was intended to be questioned anyway: that any accusations against the family (or whoever else) clearly were nothing else but the figments of a diseased mind, pure inventions.

Dear Doug Bremner,

2010-06-19T14:44:00.009+02:00

in your response to my criticism of your blog post about Mark Becker you write:

"What gets me is that these posters feel like that since I am a psychiatrist they can throw whatever rocks they feel like. I mean, just because you are suffering from mental distress, or a mental disorder, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t mean that you can act like a troll. This isn’t the first time this has happened, so I am calling them out. This is no excuse to act like a mean person."

I want to put straight, that I.am.not.suffering.from.any."mental distress, or a mental disorder" more than you do. I take the full responsibility for every word I wrote in my previous post, as well as I take it for whatever I say or do in general. It will seem to me, that the fact that you're a shrink (= God?), and I am not, has you imagine you can "throw whatever rocks [you] feel like" at people, you've never met, hardly ever exchanged one word with. You did this in your post about Mark Becker, and you do it now again. "Psychiatry, a closed system, has the unique power to proclaim anyone who complains about it, or it's members, to be crazy for doing so." -Monophrenia

You also write: "Whether or not he was traumatized by his family, I have no idea, since I never interviewed them, but to assume that he was is my opinion fairly lame."

Well well, but hypotheses about broken brains and defective genes, the blame the victim-approach, aren't lame, or are they?! How would you like it, Doug, if you were convicted of a crime only and solely on the basis of someone believing you've committed that crime, and without any chance to defend yourself?! Because, Doug, you see, this.is.what.you.do.to.people.: "I don't believe you were traumatized, so, you weren't, period. Take your meds!"

What "trivializing" your trauma concerns: No, I don't trivialize your trauma. I read your blog posts about your mother, back then, and I saw the four and a half-year-old. I saw his pain, and it was heart-breaking. You and your PTSD had my entire compassion and sympathy. What I did in my previous post, was showing you, how you trivialize other people's trauma. How you don't see these people and their pain. How you, in other words, apply double standards.

May I ask, who or what it is that gives you the right to deny others what you claim for yourself?! And don't start about your "professional training". You have no science to back your opinions up with. On the contrary.

So, you think, I acted like "a mean person"? Take a thorough look in the mirror, Doug! You don't only act like "a mean person". You stab people in their back.

PTSD-"expert" Doug Bremner can't see PTSD when it's staring him right into his face

2010-06-17T21:17:00.009+02:00

"Later" - yeah well, one and a half months later I just want to add to my post about Alice Miller's death that I was appalled by most of the press reactions. One of the few obituaries to pay Alice Miller the respect she deserves is Sue Cowan Jenssen's. Read it here. (Via Beyond Meds.)

Talking about Alice Miller, I today did some more clearing up in my sidebar, as well as on Facebook and on Twitter. Life is simply too short to surround yourself with abusers, who, although they allegedly are "experts" on PTSD, can't recognize it when its staring them right into their face, who don't have anything else to offer victims of abuse than drugs, drugs, and even more drugs, to shut these victims up, so that they, the abusers, don't need to listen to them, but undisturbed may continue with their abuser business, for instance that of labelling people with "schizophrenia", who happily join in on the omnipresent demonization of "the schizophrenics", those lesser-than-humans, and on the just as omnipresent fear mongering that wants everybody to believe that going off the neuro-toxins that are called "medicine" immediately will turn you into a pickaxe killer.

And all this while what they demand and expect for themselves is pure compassion and understanding for the traumatized four and a half-year-old, who lost his mother, and therefor suffers from PTSD. - Are you sure Doug, that your problems were caused by trauma? That you're not a little brain diseased, genetically defective, a little lesser-than-human yourself?? I mean, compared to the abuse most of the people you fancy to label "schizophrenics" have experienced, the death of your mother is a mere trifle, and if what these people have gone through can't be recognized and acknowledged as deeply traumatizing, which is what I understand you believe, then how come you think, you can demand compassion and understanding for such an, in comparison, insignificant event as your mother's death to have caused you the least emotional suffering?!

Well, I'm done with this kind of unscientific, prejudiced and discriminating crap. Have a nice life, Doug! Oh, and don't read this! It might shake your belief system. (Although, can anything at all shake a sectarian belief system like the Inquisition's - er, I mean like biological psychiatry's? Hardly I guess.)
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And right now, as I look at this post LinkWithin thinks that readers of this post "might also like" this one. Thank you, LinkWithin! :D

Alice Miller 1923 - 2010

2010-04-30T02:39:00.005+02:00

Just in case you haven't heard it yet: Alice Miller died on April 14th at her home in Provence, France, 87 years old. For now, I want to quote from a Swedish blog: "Thank you Alice Miller for all you have done and everything you have written!" More later.

Via Holistic Recovery from Schizophrenia

"Went off medication - and did not ask for permission before afterwards" - A note to consumers

2010-04-15T12:53:00.007+02:00

As mentioned in my post about why the latest Danish research showing "schizophrenics" to do better off drugs won't change a bit about treatment the title of the article caused some indignation among consumers and survivors, and had somebody start a discussion at a Danish mainstream forum:

"What do you think about this title?
As a mentally ill person, don't you have any right to control your own body?
Comments, anyone?"

Well, of course you don't have any right to control your own body - or anything else - as a mentally ill person.

According to mainstream psychiatry "mentally ill" means brain diseased. Now ask yourself which part of your body, which organ, do you make use of as a tool when you have to estimate a situation, and decide how to react to it? Your shin bone? Your pancreas ("It's like diabetes, you know.")? I suppose not. Probably you'll make use of your brain.

I recently watched an interesting documentary about the Mary Celeste , the "archetypal ghost ship", according to Wikipedia. Which the Wikipedia entry, as far as I can see, doesn't tell is that it recently has become known that the Mary Celeste left New York for Genoa, Italy, with only one single chronometer on board. Usually an ocean-going ship of her size would not go anywhere without several, at least three or four, chronometers on board. Turns out, the one single chronometer on board of the Mary Celeste is defective, which of course renders it impossible for her captain, Benjamin Briggs, to calculate the position of the ship accurately. This, in addition to the Mary Celeste taking in water after having been through some rough weather, probably has led to his decision to abandon the ship. A very bad, in fact for him, his family and the rest of the crew fatal, decision made on the basis of inaccurate measurements (make that an inaccurate estimation) of the ship's position (make that any given situation), carried out with a defective chronometer (make that a diseased brain).

The situation would have been different had Briggs known that the chronometer was defective, in which way, and to which extent. He then could have taken the margin of error into account, and calculated the ship's position more accurately - and he maybe wouldn't have panicked and abandoned the ship, as she, although she was taking in some water, easily could have made it to her destination from where she was abandoned.

However, in the latter situation, the only correction tool at Briggs' disposal would have been his brain. And if it is your brain that is the defective chronometer, it is self-evident that you can't use it as a tool to correct itself, and expect accurate calculations. So, to the extent someone accepts the biological model and identifies as "mentally ill" they accept their tool for decision making to be defective, and will consequently have to accept that their estimation of any given situation may be inaccurate rendering their decisions potentially disastrous, maybe even fatal. They will have to accept being defined as incapacitated in regard to everything that requires brain activity. You can't have your cake and eat it. This is either-or, not both-and. Either you identify as "mentally ill", and you will have to give up on your freedoms and rights as a human being, or you don't, and you will have to take responsibility for yourself. For all that you do.

You can't righteously claim control of your body, for instance in regard to whether you want to reduce the dosage and number of psych drugs you're on, or maybe even whether to go entirely off of them, you can't righteously claim control of anything in your life, and at the same time whenever it suits you hold on to the idea that you can't be held responsible for any of your decisions that turn out bad, because you're "mentally ill". You can't even righteously feel offended by a title like the quoted one. It is only logic that you will have to leave all decision making to others, and ask for permission, no matter what you'd like to do if all you've got is a defective chronometer, a broken brain.

This by the way also applies to those who do not necessarily identify as suffering from a biological brain disease, but still think of their mind as being ill, as that which constitutes your mind are your thoughts and feelings, and as it is these you make use of in your decision making.

So, you may want to make up your mind. Do you want freedom, or do you want to be "mentally ill"?

How to make a shrink shit his pants

2010-04-13T01:41:00.010+02:00

Visiting David M. Allan, M.D.'s blog, your first impression might be a rather positive one. He seems to have got at least something. And yes, he has got something. But, alas!, when it comes to so-called "schizophrenia" the guy hasn't got a clue. No more than any other of the drug-pushers in the business. Watch this - the comments. Watch him get increasingly insecure, defensive, and eventually almost hostile *), although I'm really gentle with him, if I may say so myself.

Isn't it just mind-boggling? I mean, wouldn't you expect someone who has dedicated his professional life to helping people to be curious about different perspectives and opinions, instead of being this dismissive of them, and unwilling to give them a thought? Where's the problem, Dr Allen? Oh. I see, two main problems: 1. If I'm right, it means there would basically be no need for you as a shrink anymore. There would be no need for any shrink anymore. You would have to find yourself another job, maybe even give up on the "M.D." as other medical specialities have certain standards... And if you want to stay in the business, you'd have to start from scratch, as all you've been taught so far is how to help society - get rid of people in emotional distress, as discrete, fast and efficient as possible. You haven't been taught how to help people in emotional crises themselves. 2. If I'm right, and you want to stay in the business, you'd have to do something radical about your fear of yourself, your own "issues", or dysfunctionality... Ugh, yeah, that's tough! Especially the latter is a really nasty one. For any narcissist.
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*) Any resemblance with adjectives you might catch Dr Allen scribble down in his "patients'" charts is intentional. :D
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Oh and, note that in his last comment Dr Allen writes "True psychosis is never a normal variant of anything." This statement doesn't really make much sense, unless you take Dr Allan's at this point presumably rather "disturbed" state of mind ("disturbed" as in "psychosis", yup) into consideration. What he seems to try to say is that true "psychosis", that is being truly disturbed (by/about something)..., has got nothing to do with being human. So, when someone is "psychotic" (disturbed, by/about something, my or Dr Allan's statements for instance...) s/he is not really human. Aha. So much for seeing the person, and not the diagnosis. Thank you for clarifying this for us, Dr Allan!

"Are you riding yet, or are you still rolling?"

2010-04-11T16:55:00.007+02:00

I found this at Wu Wei Verlag's website, a German publisher specializing in, among other things, publications critical of our culture's increasing violence and abusiveness in the field of equitation, which especially the "Rollkur" *) - which means forcing the horse to bend his neck to a point where his nose almost touches his chest, an unnatural position and extremely damaging especially to the horse's upper vertebrae (though in a broader sense damaging to his entire body and soul) - is an expression of.

The text says: "Are you riding yet, or are you still rolling?" It reminded me of what one of my trainers used to say, that the motto of dressage competitions should be "Look what I'm NOT able of!"

Any parallels to the mh system? Well, if you ask me, the whole mh system is an expression of what its professionals are NOT able of, and one could ask them: "Are you helping people yet, or are you still oppressing them?"

Via Camera-Obscura
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*)The English term is hyperflexion.

The OPUS Trials - comparing drug "treatment" to drug "treatment"

2010-04-10T13:50:00.011+02:00

Here you can find an overview in English over the research I referred to in both yesterday's post and this one from March 16.

While you scroll down to the "Funding" section at the bottom - and I'll get back to why you might want to have a look at this section -, don't be fooled by the charts. It's the figures that count, not the bars or lines. And the figures tell us that OPUS indeed works significantly better than "treatment" as usual. Well, at least in regard to "treatment adherence", "compliance" that is, and in regard to indoctrinating parents/family - which, on its part, certainly contributes to the higher "treatment adherence" achieved in an OPUS-setting compared to "treatment" as usual. Otherwise, thus also in regard to outcomes, differences are rather insignificant.

As I suspected in my previous post, the research was only and solely designed to compare OPUS to "treatment" as usual, and thus did not follow up on people who decided to take another, potentially more promising, route to recovery, than OPUS or "treatment" as usual. While these people seem to make up a considerable amount in both groups. Almost half of the initial participants in the study did not respond to the five-year-follow-up interview. Some of them certainly because they've become wiser than to remain uncritically cheerful about the received "treatment" in the meantime.

Of course, it is very nice that the dosage of neuroleptics in an OPUS setting, presumably thanks to the massive indoctrination and rat training offered by OPUS, is kept about 20% lower than in a "treatment" as usual setting. Nevertheless, this still is no reason to get over-the-top enthusiastic about OPUS as people in "treatment" as usual settings often are senselessly overdrugged, meaning that people in OPUS settings are just a little less overdrugged, and, well, as there still is a looong way from a little less overdrugged to the barely drugged at all of alternatives like Soteria or Open Dialog.

Did you scroll down to the "Funding" section? If so, you'll maybe remember that I referred to Merete Nordentoft as the Danish Fuller Torrey. Yup, also The Stanley Medical Research Institute funded this research project. Is it any wonder that drug-free, non-medical alternatives were of no interest to the researchers, and that learning to live with a chronic illness through OPUS is hailed to be as good as it can get?...

Best buddies
(How I wish I had Photoshop!)

Why Merete Nordentoft's recent research showing "schizophrenics" to do better without drugs won't change a thing about treatment

2010-04-09T22:10:00.006+02:00

Well, in short, because the 19% of study participants reported to be "fully recovered" aren't really fully recovered, but rehabilitated.

A follow-up article in the Danish journal Dagens Medicin portrays Mai Pedersen, a 30-year-old with a high school exam (it's the smart ones who do best, remember?), and with some of the most loving and supportive parents imaginable (it's the ones with a truly idyllic family background who do best, remember?), who was labelled "schizophrenic" seven years ago, put into OPUS (Merete Nordentoft's early intervention program) and on drugs, of course, both neuroleptics and "anti-depressants", and who decided to go off the drugs some time ago. The latter actually, and this is the really disturbing part as the article's title, which translates into "Went off medication - and didn't ask for permission before afterwards", indicates, without asking permission from her shrink. Imagine! She didn't ask her shrink before tapering off the drugs!! How incredibly cheeky!*)

Although Mai Pedersen doesn't take any drugs today, she is "symptom-free". So, according to the article, Mai Pedersen is "fully recovered". But is she really? Mai Pedersen has an enemy. The enemy is stress. And it still has that much power over her as to have her weigh everything she does in regard to how the enemy "stress" probably will react to it. Mai Pedersen has, certainly thanks to CBT-rat training (and yes, it may well make training progress come more swiftly and be more lasting if the rat has some brains), and thanks to her wonderfully supportive parents (yes, relatives can play a decisive role when it comes to "insight" and "compliance", the better they manage to hide their own dysfunctionality behind a facade of pure family idyl, the more of a "support" - for biopsychiatric "treatment" - they will be) learned to live as a victim of "schizophrenia", a slave of a chronic brain disease. She has accepted that nothing ever will come as easy to her as it does to her "normal" friends and acquaintances, that she will have to make sacrifices to the "illness" for the rest of her life, that the "illness" dictates what she can and can't do, and that she maybe even will end up in hospital again, and again, and again... - And btw, take a look at the photograph at the top of the article, and note how beautifully it communicates the heavy burden of suffering from "schizophrenia".

Mai Pedersen succeeded in becoming a licensed psychomotrician, and is a member of the OPUS-panel, which "tries to spread information in the community about the many success stories that show also patients with schizophrenia to be able to live rewarding lives." A real success story. Or, as Mai Pedersen puts it herself, "a lousy Danielle Steele novel". Indeed!

Well well, here it is that I ask, how about a panel to try and spread some information in the community about the many real success stories that show labelled people to be able to overcome their crisis, and live a life without "schizophrenia", without constantly having to be on their guard against an enemy called "stress", without massive limitations and sacrifices, and without having the spectre of returning "psychosis" and re-hospitalization hanging over their heads?? How about a panel to try and spread some information in the community about real recovery, real freedom, to be possible??

But alas, such a panel would probably not consist of a bunch of happy and grateful OPUS-patients (and Mai Pedersen is still a patient today, she still sees her shrink on a regular basis, apropos of "fully recovered"...), a bunch of Elyn Sakses, who identify as being "mentally ill", as suffering from a chronic brain disease by the name of "schizophrenia". So, it is rather unlikely that we will see such a panel initiated by the establishment anytime in the foreseeable future. Just as a paradigm shift in the definition and treatment of crisis is unlikely to happen as long as the Mai Pedersens and Elyn Sakses of this world aren't only made slaves of an alleged illness, but also, and even more important, of a system, that (ab-)uses them big time to sell its hopeless messages and harmful "treatment" to the community.

To get back to Merete Nordentoft's research, the rate of 19% "fully recovered" participants is obviously an error, resulting from an erroneous concept of "full recovery". The true figure probably is closer to 0%, as the study apparently was not designed to include participants, who dropped out of "treatment", but seems to exclusively have concentrated on individuals, who stayed in contact with the mh system throughout the entire five years during which they were monitored. If this is the case, and I have a very strong hunch that it is, not least because the article in Dagens Medicin otherwise probably would have portrayed someone else instead of Mai Pedersen, real full recovery of course is excluded in advance from figuring in the results as a possible outcome. I suppose, this is what is called "biased" then.

A high school exam, the ability to think clearly, and a supportive network, family or other, are without doubt useful in the recovery process. But there is one more important thing , maybe the most important of them all, in terms of recovery that isn't mentioned anywhere in context with Merete Nordentoft's research, and that thing is what Al Siebert termed "resilience". The ability to "resile", or resist (without breaking your neck over it), for instance the massive indoctrination labelled people usually face in the mh system. The ability to preserve one's integrity in an environment designed to strip you entirely of it. Mai Pedersen had the high school exam, but unfortunately she didn't have the amount of resilience necessary to achieve real full recovery, and I also wonder if she would have had her family's support in case she had had the necessary amount of resilience, and had chosen to opt for freedom, instead of for slavery.
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*) The title of the article caused some indignation among consumers/survivors, and gave rise to an interesting discussion at a Danish mainstream forum. - Of course I simply had to set the cat among the pigeons... :D - I will write about my thoughts on the matter in a future post here.

The latest in psych ward design from the Architectural Digest

2010-04-07T01:12:00.005+02:00

Need new furniture for your bedroom? This bed isn't only maintenance-free, but, according to the manufacturer, also a real delight to the eye, or, well, "visually appealing" at least. Watch the straight lines and clearly defined colors. Indeed, neo-minimalistic aesthetics at its best!

Via Liz Spikol.

...and for some reason the Comfy Chair comes to mind:

Mental Helse Akershus (Norway) is mocking survivors

2010-04-02T16:11:00.010+02:00

A regional branch of the Norwegian organization Mental Helse, Mental Helse Akershus (Akershus is Norway's most populated region after Oslo), plans to have a public arrangement in support of Norwegian psychiatry on the 8th of May 2010. The 8th of May 1945 is the day the German troop's occupation of Norway ended with Germany having surrendered unconditionally. The day is officially celebrated in Norway as "Frigjøringsdagen", liberation day.

Considered that it is no longer a secret that innumerable people experience psychiatric "help" in every regard as an assault on their fundamental rights and freedoms as human beings, considered that psychiatric "help" indeed more often than not comes along in the shape of incarceration, humiliation, and oppression, an official arrangement in support of a system that systematically does these things to people, and, metaphorically speaking, systematically occupies its victims, their bodies, their minds and their souls, held on a day that celebrates liberation from oppression is a slap in the face of each of these victims, and an outright statement of disrespect towards not just the Norwegian, but the international survivor movement.

E-mail Mental Helse Norge at post@mentalhelse.no and/or Mental Helse Akershus at akershus@mentalhelse.no, and elinor.flo@mentalhelse.no, and ask them, politely but firmly, to show some respect, and move the arrangement to another date.

Via Jan Olaf

Involuntary "treatment" to reduce the use of involuntary "treatment"

2010-03-24T01:08:00.004+01:00

It's enough to drive you to despair, but nevertheless I was laughing my ass off when I read this article yesterday.

So-called "assisted outpatient treatment", make that involuntary or forced outpatient "treatment", has been discussed a lot again in Denmark lately. Both shrinks and relatives think that it is simply too bad that the current Danish legislation doesn't allow for forced "treatment" after someone is released from a psych prison, which according to the article results in some severely ill people throwing out their, as the article has it, "necessary" dope again and again at the first occasion, and becoming "psychotic" once again.

The article quotes the former Danish Health Minister, Jakob Axel Nielsen, who was preparing a bill that, if followed up by his successor, Bertel Haarder, and passed by the Folketinget, will come into force in October this year, allowing for involuntary outpatient "treatment" for people who've been re-incarcerated three times, and at least one of these times because they stopped taking their "medication":

"I simply hope that involuntary outpatient treatment will reduce the use of involuntary treatment as far as these patients are concerned."

With such an outstanding ability to reason logically, it is no wonder that politicians are so easily deceived by the shrinks' and NAMI-relatives' "logic".

Bye bye, Merete! - Some final thoughts about Merete Nordentoft's study on "schizophrenia" outcomes

2010-03-17T02:13:00.007+01:00

Bottom line: if people weren't doped up over their eye balls with consciousness reducing, brain damaging drugs, if they weren't told depressing, demoralizing and pacifying lies about a chronic, biological brain disease, but encouraged to look for the existential, spiritual meaning of their personal crisis, there'd be a lot more than 19% who'd recover fully. It's still a long way from these 19% to the 85% of alternatives like Soteria.

Merete Nordentoft wants the period people are "treated" under the OPUS project to be extended from two to five years. Half of the participants in the study were "treated" under OPUS during the first couple of years. The article doesn't say anything about these participants doing better than the other half, on the contrary: "We don't know to what extent the prognosis depends on the treatment, even if some individuals certainly have improved thanks to the treatment." -Merete Nordentoft, in perfect self-contradiction, as well as in perfect contradiction to her own research results.

I'd say, what we'd really need isn't more OPUS, but to have the Danish Fuller Torreys (yes, Merete Nordentoft really believes there's something to Fuller Torrey's cat poop nonsense... ) replaced by Loren Moshers. The whole incompetent (they can't even interpret their own research results) bunch of them. Merete first.
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Related: "New Danish research shows that 'schizophrenics' do better off drugs"

"More about Merete Nordentoft's surprising (NOT!) research results on 'schizophrenia'"

More about Merete Nordentoft's surprising (NOT!) research results on "schizophrenia"

2010-03-16T22:36:00.009+01:00

The main emphasis of the article, whose title translates into: "High school certificate a good weapon against schizophrenia", is on the role of education in terms of recovery from so-called "schizophrenia".

The researchers followed 547 people labelled with "schizophrenia" over a 5-year-period.

Results: 19% achieved full recovery, most of them, as mentioned in my previous post, were not "treatment compliant", respectively didn't use psych drugs at all. 15% achieved significant improvement. 53% didn't achieve lasting improvement, but are able to live independently, and without longer hospitalizations. 13% are dependent on assisted housing, or need long-term hospitalization.

Among those who achieved full recovery or significant improvement, a higher education is prevalent, most of them are women, and most of them come from a family background with both parents living together. On the other hand, "negative symptoms" like social withdrawal and passivity indicate a less favorable outcome.

Education: the so far only comment on the article at Dagens Medicin (the journal only allows professionals to comment... ) concludes that a higher education equals to a higher IQ which equals to more benefit from CBT - "something we've known for a long time".

In my opinion, a higher education equals to the ability to search for information on one's own, if necessary - and when it comes to "mental illness" it is necessary, since true information in Danish is thin, to put it mildly - also information in foreign languages like English. Information that may have the individual choose to, by and large, do without neuroleptics, that may have him/her question the (Danish) mh system's messages about a chronic, biological brain disease, and that may have him/her investigate into alternative views of the experience. A higher education often equals to a stronger belief in one's own intellectual capacities, "intellectual self-reliance", so to speak, and thus to less blind confidence in others' - the "experts' - authority.

A higher education often provides tools to think analytically, critically and independently. Invaluable tools when it comes to finding meaning with one's experience, and become an expert on one's own behalf: "I know what's good for me." It's called empowerment, and it's decisive in the recovery process.

Drugs: well, I'd say, it's self-evident that substances which interfere with and reduce cognition, memory, self-/consciousness, etc., which in fact often render researching, googling, reading and understanding unsurmountable challenges, are not helpful in the process of resolving crisis.

Women: in general, women are more socializing than men, and don't have the same reservations against opening up and talking about personal problems. And if people who experience crisis need anything, it is the possibility to communicate their experience to someone they can trust unconditionally.

Family: a somewhat well-functioning family can be a valuable resource of support. Especially if family members are minded to resolve problems rather than to just brush them under the carpet, or run from them.

It doesn't look like the researchers have done much else than gathered statistics about "symptoms" experienced, hospitalizations, education, family background, and whatever else can be observed from the outside. Also this study seems to be a shining example of the lack of empiricism in psychiatric "research" in general. Participants obviously were not asked what in detail was helpful for their individual recovery. As a result, the researchers stand with a bunch of data they, due to their preconceived idea of the nature of "schizophrenia" - it's still referred to as an "illness", of course -, and the resulting preconceived idea of what kind of treatment is indicated, don't really know what to make of.

Probably, their reasoning will not go beyond conclusions like the one mentioned above, that CBT is the decisive factor, while they just as probably will be unlikely to admit the quite logic causality between "treatment" with consciousness reducing, and in the long run brain damaging substances and long-term outcomes. Actually, the article explicitly states, that "antipsychotics" are effective treatment for "psychosis": "Don't draw the 'wrong' conclusions from the research results! Take your meds!" Also, an undertone can be traced in the article that clearly emphasizes that "full recovery" doesn't mean "cured". "Schizophrenia" still is a chronic brain disease: "You're still ill! Don't you dare to believe anything else! You're only as lucky as to be in remission!" So, it is unlikely that this study will change anything about how "schizophrenia" is perceived by the "experts", or how it is being treated. Concerning the fact that most of the fully recovered participants either went off neuroleptics, or never used them, this is probably not interpreted as a precondition for their recovery ("remission"), but rather as a result of it. Just as the article doesn't mention the connection between "negative symptoms" like social withdrawal and passivity on the one hand, and the these "negative symptoms" increasing effects of neuroleptic drugs on the other, with one word.

If at all this study makes it to one of the major journals in the field, I suspect it will suffer the same fate as other long-term outcome studies, and soon be buried in the archives, under a load of crap like Thomas Werge's eugenic "research", that allegedly found the genetic cause of "schizophrenia" to be chromosome mutations which are found in 60 - 90% of the general population... (Can't recall whether I wrote about it here, but well, now you know: 60 - 90% of the general population are genetically predisposed to develop "schizophrenia". In other words: to be a human being predisposes you for "schizophrenia". LMAO.)

BTW: the article calls OPUS a "psycho-social" project. Not by any stretch of imagination can I find much "psycho-social" about a project that explicitly promotes " - psycho education with weight on a biological model (guilt reducing)", and "antipsychotic medical treatment" as "indicated" for "most of the patients".

New Danish research shows that "schizophrenics" do better off drugs

2010-03-16T03:32:00.002+01:00

Oh really?! You don't say! Yup. And Merete Nordentoft who led the research, is dumbfounded with this result: "Most of the participants who achieved full recovery, didn't take medication after five years. Some of them actually managed entirely without medication. I didn't expect this."

Well well, what did you expect, Merete?? Merete Nordentoft is the Danish "expert" when it comes to "schizophrenia". How is it that the Danish "expert" on "schizophrenia" seems to never have heard of any long-term outcome studies like Harding, et al., 1987, or Harrow, Jobe, 2007, of the WHO-studies, of Soteria, Open Dialog, and and and?! Maybe she doesn't speak English? I mean, we all know that shrinks usually are not the sharpest tools in the shed among medical professionals... Which leads me to another interesting result of the study. But since it's really late: more on it, link and so on, tomorrow.

"Here's to double-sided instead of one-sided brain damage" ???

2010-03-13T10:57:00.005+01:00

I never thought I'd consider to defriend anyone on Facebook, but when I yesterday learned through my home page there that a Facebook friend of mine obviously is a proponent of ECT (and in addition also a friend of a certain Ronald Pies, MD ...), I suddenly found myself seriously considering to defriend. Is it me who's judgemental? I can't help it, it feels a little in conflict with my integrity to be as much as Facebook friends with someone who's a proponent of something I regard torture, and that in my opinion ought to be banned entirely. - No, I'm not "pro choice" when it comes to ECT.

On another note, the person in question states on her blog that "most sources [concerning the difference between unilateral and bilateral ECT] were dated in the last century and not very reliable". So, Harold Sackeim's study, though not "dated in the last century" (makes it sound like "dated in the Middle Ages", doesn't it? And guess if that's not what is intended... ), obviously is "not very reliable". Prejudice, anyone?

Pot8os

2010-03-03T14:54:00.008+01:00

I've always been convinced that using figures instead of words must have been invented at about the same time as text messaging became popular. Until I saw the pedigree of my thoroughbred mare: Pot8os. He lived from 1773 to 1800. A son of famous Eclipse.

Let's have it anyway, shall we: Some bipolar-Stan-Grof-Ken-Wilber-élitism with Sean Blackwell from Bipolar Or Waking Up?

2010-02-24T19:46:00.011+01:00

I wrote a post about the matter back in January. I took it down because Sean contacted me, and said I'd got it all wrong. Since then, a few e-mails have been sent to and fro, in order to, hopefully, get it all right.

It all started when I came across the comments at Sean's vid about "hallucinations", and got, frankly, pissed off about a reply by Sean to a comment by someone, "abbeyism", who's more or less completely bought into the mainstream "the crazy pick axe killer"-fear mongering: "Oh my God, I hope no seriously ill people hear this, go off their much needed medication for glossier grandiose religious awakenings and become dangerous...again," "abbeyism" wrote.

Well well, we all know that this kind of reasoning, unfortunately, is wide-spread among people, who have no clue what crisis is about but what they've been told by mainstream psychiatry through the mainstream media. So, what I reacted to wasn't that much this comment, although I also left a reply to "abbeyism" at the thread, but, as mentioned, Sean's reply to "abbeyism": "(...) On my previous video on paranoia, I said that in many cases, paranoid people will be better off medicated. (...)" - Btw, I also questioned his viewpoint in the comment thread to his vid on "paranoia".

This is what I wrote in reply to Sean:

An outstanding example of what I call the bipolar-Stan-Grof-Ken-Wilber-élitism. Us and them. The real loonies, and us, the chosen ones.

I think a quite realistic estimation is that about 70 - 80 % (if not more) of ppl labelled "sz" experiences "paranoia". If it were true, that most of them are better off medicated, widely drug-free alternatives like Soteria or Finnish Open Dialog wouldn't have the success they DO have.

Neither would long-term outcome studies time and again suggest, that recovery from "sz" off drugs is far more likely than on them. The truth is, hardly anyone on drugs ever fully recovers. The majority of ppl OFF them does.

John Nash didn't recover and return to Princeton bc he popped the poison, A Beautiful Mind wants us to believe, he popped. He recovered bc he tossed the poison out, and never touched it after 1970. If anyone, HE was "paranoid".

I really love your vids, Sean, but do me a favor, and read up on the science!

In contrast to my reply to "abbeyism", it took some time before this comment was approved of. Maybe Sean wanted to put together an answer to my comment before he put it out there. Fair enough.

Now, in our e-mail exchange Sean said he didn't regard neither himself nor Grof nor Wilber "enlightened", and that it certainly wasn't his intention to discriminate against anyone. I told him, I'd edit my post, and probably also change its title. I won't do the latter though, because élitism is, unfortunately, still what I see is going on here. Pure New Age élitism. As in, for instance, if you suffer from "paranoia" and other distressing experiences during crisis, that may well be a manifestation of the negative, "dark" energies, you're born with. Bad karma, exactly as in bad, "faulty", genes. In other words, if you've suffered severe abuse and neglect during childhood, it's probably because you've been an asshole in a past life. Your own fault, and now you pay for it. Oh, really?? The New Age way of letting the abusers off the hook, and maintain the status quo. Sorry, I don't buy it. And I'd like to see Sean tell this all those many kids who are abused and neglected by their parents and/or other people in their lives to their face: "You know, according to our philosophy, you only get what you deserve. Probably it's because you're a little stupid, spiritually slightly retarded, that you need to go through this. So, stop whining, and get on with your life." Well well well, if this is regarded "awakened", I certainly can do without any awakening.

Anyhow, still in a conciliatory mood, I yesterday ventured to watch Sean's latest vids, "Spiritual Awakening vs. Bipolar Disorder" Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. If nothing else, watch the third part, and pay attention to what Sean says from 09.33 in the vid on, which, as I let Sean know, in my interpretation translates into: "schizophrenics" are less likely to recover than people labelled "bipolar" by psychiatry. Sean did not object to my interpretation.

IMHO, it is utterly snobbish and, indeed, discriminating to tell people, well in fact that they're too stupid, too spiritually retarded to recover, and maybe even turn their experience of profound suffering into personal growth and development, and that they therefor are better off drugged into a stupor. Not to mention that it is plain nonsense, both in the light of the scientific literature, and in that of innumerable personal accounts. As a matter of fact, the more suffering, the more likely recovery becomes. Since suffering acts as an incentive for transformation. It may very well be that, as I wrote to Sean, "[p]eople who've experienced a lot of trauma in their lives from a very early age on probably need more time to work it all out. Indeed, "mania" usually lasts for about a fortnight, on average, doesn't it, "psychosis" for about five to six weeks, which could be seen as correlating with the amount and intensity of trauma the person has experienced. But from there to conclude that people who maybe need more intense support for maybe some longer time than others are less likely to recover..." actually strikes me as some of the worst New-Age-us-and-them-élitism I've ever witnessed, and certainly not as awakened.

Bottom line: Sean's vids are absolutely worth watching. They definitely contributed to my own understanding of my experience. But beware of their dividing holier-than-thou-attitude towards "the schizophrenics", especially those labelled "paranoid".

If you read this, Sean, you'll probably feel deeply injured. You're welcome to comment and tell me that you didn't intend to say that "the schizophrenics", no matter how "paranoid" btw, are less likely to recover than those who received a fancy "bipolar" label from their shrink.
_______________

P.S.: If you remember the original post: the person who got turned down by Grof because of his/her label, that wasn't Sean, no. My mistake. Anyhow, it happened, and it tells something about the great guru's attitude towards people who carry the "wrong" label. The person in question was labelled "schizophrenic"...
_______________

For comments on the original post see here

Enjoy some bipolar-Stan-Grof-Ken-Wilber-élitism with Sean Blackwell from Bipolar Or Waking Up? - comments

2010-02-24T19:45:00.004+01:00

I reposted an edited version of this piece here. Since the comments on the original piece are still relevant, here they are.

Download and donate to Haiti

2010-02-08T11:00:00.003+01:00

Download "Flume" for free here.

Download the album and donate to Haiti earthquake victims here.

Don Weitz, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post on Judi Chamberlin

2010-01-23T13:00:00.001+01:00

If you missed out on Don Weitz reading his tribute to Judi Chamberlin, yesterday on CKLN.fm, here it is:

A TRIBUTE TO JUDI CHAMBERLIN

The death of Judi Chamberlin is a huge loss to the psychiatric survivor, Mad Pride, and disability rights movements. She was 65 and died at home on September 16, 2010.

Together with her family, thousands of friends, activists and survivors are mourning her death and celebrating her life.

Judi was an immensely talented and dedicated activist, a fearless and courageous advocate for the civil rights and human rights of people labeled and stigmatized as "mentally ill".

Her 1978 book On Our Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System was and still is a movement classic, it demystifies "mental illness", validates the growing self-help movement based on independence and self-empowerment, and continues to inspire thousands of psychiatric survivors and activists around the world.

In her book and at public lectures, Judi spoke out against "sane chauvinism" or "mentalism" - the common public myth and stereotype that "mentally ill" people are incompetent, incapable of making decisions for themselves, unpredictable, and violent. At the same time, she strongly urged survivors to take control of their own lives and organize. On Our Own, the first self-help group of psychiatric survivors in Ontario, adopted her book title as its name. Judi first came to Toronto in the early 1980s to offer valuable support to On Our Own members, she gave an immensely empowering and inspiring talk in its drop-in. In the early 1970s, she supported the establishment of Vancouver's Emotional Emergency Centre for assaulted women survivors, and the Mental Patients Association - the first self-help group of psychiatric survivors in Canada. With several of us survivor-activists, she proudly and fearlessly participated in a number of nonviolent civil disobedience actions, including anti-shock protests in New York City, Syracuse, and Burlington, Vermont in the 1980s, and demonstrations against forced drugging and Big Pharma in Boston and Philadelphia.

As a leader in the psychiatric survivor liberation movement, Judi was a keynote speaker and resource person during several annual Conferences for Human Rights and Against Psychiatric Oppression, including the 10th conference held in Toronto in May 1982. Judi was also Director of Education at the National Empowerment Center in Massachusetts; she helped establish the Ruby Rogers Dropin Center in Boston; was a consultant on Survivor Perspectives at Boston's Center of Psychiatric Rehabilitation, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA). She gave inspiring public lectures in Toronto in the mid-1990s and 2002, and was a featured speaker in national and international conferences in several European countries, During the last 10 years of her life, Judi was particularly active in trying to unite the psychiatric survivor and disability rights movements that share several basic issues and principles; she authored the groundbreaking and empowering report "From Privileges to Rights: People With Psychiatric Disabilities Speak For Themselves" for the U.S. government's National Council on Disability.

For her outstanding work, Judi won several awards:
• 1992: Distinguished Service Award of the President of the United States, National Council on Disability
• 1992: David J. Vail National Advocacy Award, Mental Health Association of Minnesota
• 1995: N. Neal Pike Prize for Services to People with Disabilities, Boston University School of Law
Judy Chamberlin spoke truth to power. She left us a rich legacy of advocacy, resistance and pride. Her spirit lives. http://www.narpa.org/chamberlin.htm

Don Weitz
co-founder, Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault
Toronto

Here's The Boston Globe's obituary, and here The Washington Post's.

National Public Radio on Judi Chamberlin, Mad Pride Activist

2010-01-19T21:50:00.004+01:00

MindFreedom International News - http://www.mindfreedom.org
United Independent Activism in Mental Health - please forward

19 January 2009

USA National Public Radio (NPR) Covers Death of Judi Chamberlin

Mad Pride Activist Remembered

NPR aired a remembrance this morning of mad movement activist and
psychiatric survivor Judi Chamberlin, who died on 16 January 2010 at
the age of 65.

BELOW is the text from the NPR web site story, which is a little
longer than the one that aired. At BOTTOM are updates and actions you
can take.

You may listen to and comment on the NPR radio story here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122706192

~~~~~~~~~~~~

National Public Radio

January 19, 2010

Advocate For People With Mental Illnesses Dies

by JOSEPH SHAPIRO

Judi Chamberlin, who died this weekend at age 65, was a civil rights
hero from a civil rights movement you may have never heard of. She
took her inspiration from the heroes of other civil rights movements
to start something she liked to call Mad Pride — a movement for the
rights and dignity of people with mental illness.

It started in 1966, when Chamberlin was 21 years old and seeing her
doctor because she was dealing with a deep depression. "After a while,
he suggested I sign myself into a hospital because I was just not
functioning, I was so depressed. And I just thought, 'Oh a hospital's
a place where you get help.' And you know, I'd been in hospitals for
surgery and things like that, and didn't think of it as having
anything to do with your fundamental rights. So I just said, 'OK, I'll
try it.' "

Chamberlin told her story in a 2006 interview with Will Hall, host of
Madness Radio, a program by people like Chamberlin who call themselves
"psychiatric survivors."

"And very quickly, [I] found out that once you sign papers to go in on
a voluntary basis, but then you can't leave when you want to leave,
which was absolutely shocking to me," she said.
She got out of that state hospital and moved to Vancouver, British
Columbia, where she lived with other people who'd been diagnosed with
mental illness but who'd then gotten government money to develop their
own treatments. She recovered and eventually moved to Boston, where
she started working with other former American patients who wanted to
change the system. They called themselves the Mental Patients
Liberation Front.

"When I arrived at this storefront in Cambridge, Mass., I was a senior
Harvard student, had been locked up five times, so I was referred by
Harvard to volunteer there," recalls David Oaks, who came to the group
in 1976. "And I walked in, and it was a little radical ragtag group,
Mental Patients Liberation Front. And Judi was right in the thick of
folks, just really warm, community organizer."

Oaks now runs his own advocacy group, MindFreedom International.
Chamberlin was a mentor. "One thing she immediately helped teach a lot
of people was basic 101 about mental health liberation: That we're
equal; that we have rights."

Chamberlin put that basic thinking into a book called On Our Own,
which published in 1978. In it, she argued that, as she'd experienced
in Canada, just the ability to have some say in your own treatment was
a key part of making that treatment work.

Chamberlin's book became a manifesto for other patients. But it
influenced lots of people in the mental health establishment, too.
Today, notes Oaks, it's common for people with mental illness to have
a say. "Most U.S. states now have an office of mental health consumer
affairs or something to hear the voice of mental health clients," says
Oaks. "And it certainly is people like Judi that did that."

Robert Whitaker, the author of Mad in America, a history of the
treatment of people with mental illness in America, says Chamberlin
was "a seminal figure in the rise of the consumer movement." She was
able to get across the patient's point of view in a way that was
strong, but also clear. And that appealed to people in the mental
health field who were often the target of her criticism.
"Judi was fierce, incredibly fierce," says Whitaker. "And by that I
mean she knew her mind, she spoke her mind, and she didn't worry if
she offended people who were listening."

Chamberlin, he says, was irreverent, "brilliant" and "a joy to be
around." He also says she was "incredibly brave," because "it
obviously takes a lot of bravery to confront a society that's had a
different belief before."

Chamberlin told people with mental illness that they were, like
everyone else, people with quirks and differences, but with strengths
and abilities, too. She wanted people to reclaim the description "mad"
as something that was OK.

"She changed it from a word that was a pejorative word," says
Whitaker. "That was saying to the world at large: We are worthy
individuals, and our minds our worthy, and they're to be respected."
Chamberlin even used "mad pride" as her e-mail address. "And you can
see the historical echoes with 'black pride' as well," says Whitaker.
"It absolutely followed in the footsteps of the civil rights movement."

Chamberlin traveled the world as an advocate, even in the months
before her death. She worked at Boston University on mental health
issues and started a center with federal funding to support other
psychiatric survivors.

More recently, Chamberlin faced another illness: lung disease. And
last year, when her insurance company told her she'd exhausted her
hospice benefit, she faced going into a nursing home. She started a
blog she called Life as a Hospice Patient about her fight to die at
home.

Late Saturday night, she died as she wished: at home, in her favorite
chair, surrounded by friends and family.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

*** ACTION *** ACTION *** ACTION ***

*** Please forward this NPR news story to interested people on and off
the Internet.

*** You may listen to and comment on this story on the NPR web site
here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122706192

*** Judi's friends and relatives have posted updates on Judi's hospice
blog, where you may also post remembrances and tributes:

http://judi-lifeasahospicepatient.blogspot.com

*** You may listen to the Will Hall interview in 2006 with Judi on
Madness Radio here:

http://bit.ly/madness-judi

*** Statement by MindFreedom's director David Oaks about Judi's death
is here:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/about-us/mfi-board/judi-chamberlin

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"LEAD ON" IN THE FIGHT FOR MAD PRIDE!

When Judi was told that her lung illness would probably end her life,
Judi asked to distribute the below statement of support she created
for MindFreedom International:

"Today, it is perfectly okay to lock us up, to drug us and to shock
us against our will just because we have a label.

"That doesn’t happen to anyone else.

"MindFreedom International is critically important because it is one
of the few organizations that is upholding the principle upon which
our movement was founded:

"The need to fight for our rights!

"Many activists who were formerly involved in our movement have moved
into providing direct services. But we have to remember that, as long
as we don’t have the rights that other people have, we have to keep
fighting for them.

"We know that alternatives are important and MindFreedom works for
alternatives as well. But MindFreedom does this work with a focus on
the fact that this is fundamentally a civil rights issue.

"This is a civil rights movement!

"MindFreedom knows that, until we have equality, we cannot rest.
Please join or renew your membership today!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~

TRY OUT MINDFREEDOM INTERNATIONAL, FREE!

Not yet a member of MindFreedom International?

Get a FREE info packet with sample copy of the new MindFreedom Journal
#50 plus a "Truth Brochure"!

Just fill out this web form for free, no registration required. This
is a limited time offer.

Your packet will be postal mailed to you free, no obligation (allow 2
to 6 weeks for delivery).

For your free packet click here:

http://my-mfi.org/node/115

~~~~~~~~~~~~

MindFreedom International:

Twenty-four years of unity, independence and activism for real change
in the mental health system.

To donate now, join, and get your new member packet with MindFreedom
Journal #50 and Truth Brochure by air mail.

To join now click here:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/join-donate

There you can give online securely via PayPal. Or there's info about
how to join via phone, postal mail or fax.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you did NOT receive this public news alert directly from the
mindfreedom-news public e-mail alert system, please add your e-mail
address to this free no-spam service, which does not require membership:

http://www.intenex.net/lists/listinfo/mindfreedom-news
_______________

I want to add to this Darby Penney's comment on NPR's article and radio story:

"Thank you, NPR, for this tribute to the life and work of Judi Chamberlin, who inspired thousands of people with psychiatric labels worldwide to demand their rights and to demand recognition of their humanity. She was a brilliant advocate and a thoughtful writer and strategist. But Judi would have cringed at your title and your use of the term "people with mental illness." She didn't believe people who experienced extreme mental and meotional states were "mentally ill," and she thought the medical model, and especially forced treatment, was a root cause of our oppression. To her, we were survivors of psychiatry, but never "the mentally ill." Still, thank you for recognizing the importance of Jud's life and work."

Open Dialogue - A critique in reply to Will Hall

2010-01-04T19:29:00.011+01:00

Will Hall posted a piece on Open Dialogue - or Dialog as it spells in American English - at Beyond Meds today.

He writes that "[i]n discussions about open dialog, some have objected to inclusion of family members in the dialog process." One of these "some" am I. A couple of months ago, I posted my part of an extensive e-mail exchange with a friend here in Denmark who's made a couple of videos about the implementation of Open Dialogue elements some places in Danish psychiatry, on Facebook. So, if you're a Facebook-friend of mine, you can find it there in my notes. For everybody else, I will repost here in a slightly edited (I've no intentions to feed the Fullofits out there any arguments in favor of their agenda) version.

Will writes in his piece at Beyond Meds that he is "leaning towards championing open dialog alongside soteria as a viable model we all should learn from." Here is, in short, why I for one lean towards championing Soteria above Open Dialogue (for those of you who want the long and detailed version of my criticism, see my part of the e-mail correspondence below):

1. One of the "golden rules" of Open Dialogue is that there is no talking about anyone who isn't present. As far as the person in crisis is concerned, I regard this a matter of course. When it comes to others, like family members, I find it problematic. Especially people in a more or less emotionally vulnerable state of mind may find it difficult to talk about abuses they've experienced, and that probably lead to them being in crisis, with their abuser(s) present. The presence of the abuser(s) may very well make the environment where the dialogue takes place a lot less safe than it could and should be. Trying to persuade - or even coerce - a person in crisis into tolerating the presence of their abuser(s) while the pain the abuser(s) has caused is talked about by making the presence of the abuser(s) a precondition to any talk about them, seems almost abusive to me in itself.

2. In my opinion, a safe place for the person in crisis to stay at is one of the most important ingredients for healing to occur. Open Dialogue does not offer the person in crisis a truly safe place to retreat to, like Soteria does. Open Dialogue's aim is to preferably leave the person in crisis in her environment - which may for instance mean staying under the same roof as her abuser(s) - and doesn't offer anything but hospitalization as an "alternative". Hospitals are not safe places for people in crisis. They are no alternative. Even without medical "treatment" implemented, staying at a hospital makes the person who stays there a patient, pathologizes her. Open Dialogue here contradicts itself, when it is stated that "[w]hat we avoid: Diagnostic procedures; Medication; Control; The language of pathology;..."

3. Last but not least, Open Dialogue defines itself as a different kind of psychiatry, not an alternative to psychiatry. Psychiatry per se is a medical speciality. It is not a branch of sociology, psychology, philosophy, or whatever else along those lines. In the videos my friend has made, one of the "experts" working with Open Dialogue elements explicitly states that the "experts" still would be needed. Open Dialogue or not. My question in this regard is what the "experts" are needed for if not for "Diagnostic procedures; Medication; Control; The language of pathology"?? As far as I know, this is what the "experts'" training is all about. It is not about the sociology of interpersonal relationships, spiritual issues, trauma-related distress, or any of the other components of crisis.

Soteria has shown that there is one qualification that is more important than any ever so advanced, professional training or theoretical "knowledge" - actually, I don't think, there can be any such thing as true knowledge of crisis other than from first hand experience, or, at least, unreserved acceptance of the person in crisis - when it comes to the "staff": the ability to "be with" someone without reservations, without any fear, and no matter where this someone is at in terms of his/her state of mind. Professionalism in the field usually is (ab)used to create a safety distance, a power imbalance, between the person in crisis and the "staff", the support team. (Thus, the Norwegian psychologist Christian Moltu states that therapists have a tendency to hold up therapy techniques as a kind of "shield" between their clients and themselves whenever the client, respectively his/her experience, becomes too threatening to them.) Terms like "patient" and "staff" alone are enough to create this distance, or imbalance. Open Dialogue, at least partly in contrast to Soteria, and contradicting its own above-quoted statement, does make use of this professionalizing, pathologizing and alienating terminology.

Concerning medications, that may be a short-term solution in some cases, it doesn't need an "expert" to prescribe them. Any GP can do the job.

Bottom line: Open Dialogue in my opinion has the potential to become an alternative alongside Soteria. Without doubt. As long as it involves "experts", hospitalization, the language of pathology, as long as it involves, instead of excludes, psychiatry, and as long as it does not offer really safe places for people in crisis to go, though, it is not nearly as acceptable to me as Soteria is.
_______________

Read Will Hall's comment on my reply, "More on Open Dialog", here.
_______________

These are my e-mails ("Vestlaplandsmodellen" is an alternative and widely used in Scandinavia term for Open Dialogue):

1. e-mail: Thanks for the links! I watched both programs - the first though had only about 15 minutes of the program - and they gave me an idea of the situation here in DK, which I'm - as I guess you know - not uncritical of.

[These are the links: TVGaderummet 23.sept.2009 (Danish)

1. http://tvgaderummet.info/Links%20til%20tvg-film/tvg214-abendialog-23sept09-laplandsmodelen-paul36.mpg.avi.wmv.html (60 minutes)

2. http://tvgaderummet.info/Links%20til%20tvg-film/tvg215-81paneldiskusion-23sept09-paul37.wmv.html (60 minutes)]

I'm actually not that much acquainted with the Vestlaplandsmodellen as I am with Soteria. I only know about the former what is available on the net, and that's not a lot. Well, of course it's great that some of the elements of the Vestlaplandsmodellen are employed at least in some few places in DK. Nevertheless, what strikes me watching the vids is, that, Vestlaplandsmodellen or not, people in crisis are still referred to as "patients" - I'm not very patient, and I never was :D - and the self-appointed "experts" are still referred to as experts. I'm a lot more radical than that. At one point there's someone who asks when there will be a shift in the power imbalance between "patient" and staff in the mh system. IMO it won't happen as long as "patients" are "patients", and "experts" are "experts". Open dialogue or not. The "experts" need to go. That is, the medical profession needs to go. In spite of a whole lot of talk about humility - very nice, indeed! - the "experts" still don't admit, that their "expertise" as members of the medical profession isn't of much use to people in crisis. Actually, at one point one of them explicitly states, that they are still needed. They are not. Unless of course, we keep on employing the medical model to one or another extent, and I don't know where the Vestlaplandsmodellen stands in that regard.

I had a quick look at Region Syddanmark's site: http://www.regionsyddanmark.dk/wm232390, and alone the "Ikke et enten-eller - men et både-og" (not an either-or but a both-and; meaning treatment options) somehow gives me the creeps. Another thing that gives me the creeps, time and again, and thus in the vids too, is the incessant yattering about how important it is to involve the relatives. Network yes, relatives rarely. Usually the person in crisis' relatives are their primary traumatizers - does the Vestlaplandsmodellen acknowledge this? Does it acknowledge the trauma-model at all? And if so, in how far? -, and I agree wholeheartedly with those, who rather want people in crisis to realize this, and distance themselves, actually break away, from their toxic relatives, than to try and "salvage" family ties at any cost. IMO acknowledging the trauma is extremely important, not only in an mh-context, but in regard to our culture on the whole.

What also strikes me, once again, is the politicians' ability to talk at length without saying much substantial. An awful lot of hot air... Well, and I wonder how anyone still can be the least in doubt about the efficiency of non-medical approaches to crisis. After I don't know how many years of success with alternatives, be it the Vestlaplandsmodellen, Soteria, or whatever of that kind.

2. e-mail: A while ago, I listened to some Norwegian radio broadcast by a psychologist, Grethe Nordhelle, about manipulation. She concluded, that only consciously deceiving people is true manipulation. I sent her an e-mail where I wrote how I'd experienced my mother to have been extremely manipulative, but nevertheless not in a fully conscious fashion. She replied, that there was a grey zone of helplessness, where the deceiver/manipulator is conscious about what s/he is doing, but since his/her ego's survival depends on doing it, s/he suppresses the awareness of his/her actions hurting others. It's the narcissist's way of surviving. And they haven't got any other way. - And I use the term "narcissist" acknowledging that we're all more or less "narcissists" in as far as we (almost) all have an ego that likes to take control. Which, if allowed, results in us needing and (ab-)using others for our own ego's benefit. What I mean by the term in this context is people, who are more or less completely identified with their ego, and thus unaware that they are not their ego. So, whatever these people do comes from the place of their ego. And the ego doesn't love or care for anything but itself.

The majority of society's helpers, especially in the mh system, are such narcissists. They're attracted to the helping professions because these are the professions where one can feel most needed, and successful at the same time, compared to the patient's/client's misery - as long as the patient/client remains miserable... The mh system is every narcissist's paradise, because it's about the only among the helping professions where one can get away with actively preventing people from recovering and becoming independent of the narcissist's help. In addition, no human being is as helpless and dependent as someone whom you can declare " insane" whenever you, the "expert", like, someone who, due to a brain disease, is not able to make any decisions on their own, and thus need the "expert" to run their life.

The point is, they know what they're doing. They know, they're deceiving, exploiting, manipulating, and actually harming others for their own benefit, but they suppress this knowledge, and make an effort to convince both themselves and everybody else of their actions to be necessary and even beneficial for their victims, because they're nothing, absolutely nothing, without or beyond their ego. That they act out of fear and helplessness doesn't excuse their actions. They're fully responsible. Just as a psychopath is fully responsible if s/he commits a crime. Or just like the oil industry is fully responsible for the environmental damage it causes, although it needs to cause this damage in order to survive.

You would have to enlighten these people to make them stop constantly looking for new objects ("patients") they can project their own profound insecurity and helplessness into. But enlightenment doesn't happen from without. It can only happen from within the person herself. And it only happens when there's enough suffering, which in the case of the narcissist means, that they can't find an object to satisfy their insatiable (!) need to be needed with.

The "revolution" has to start with the "patients" shedding the label of "patient", the identification as the helpless victim. Difficult. Very difficult. Especially when it comes to people in emotional distress, that more often than not is the result of never having been anything else but helpless victims. People who've been traumatized tend to repeat the trauma. Over and over again. Being the victim is the only way they know to survive. A perfect match for the narcissist. And gene-theories, biological determinism, if it's in regard to "mental illness", criminal, or whatever else kind of "abnormal" behavior, is the ultimate victimization. Designed by a thoroughly narcissistic culture to serve its narcissist-members' needs.

IMO, no one, neither the victim nor the perpetrator, is served by excusing the abuse, saying the perpetrator-abuser didn't know what s/he was doing. As long as we keep on and are afraid of blaming - i.e. holding accountable - the perpetrators, they will keep on abusing us. Nothing much will change. Anger can also be a good thing. I've tried not to be angry. I've tried to make myself believe the "they don't know what they do"-thing. Something inside me gets very very angry each time I try. Because it just isn't true, that they don't know, and therefor should be forgiven. I want to hold them fully accountable. That is what I can do by now without anger. It's not about revenge. I don't care if they pay for what they've done. The past doesn't interest me. It's about the truth to be said, and stop the abuse from continuing forever.

Long rant, one more thing: How does the Vestlaplandsmodellen handle situations where the abuser/relative is either dead or doesn't want to participate? The latter is a problem that I know both Bateson, Arbours Crisis Centre and similar approaches more often than not had/have. Even people, who initially agreed to participate, left offended and under protest at the slightest suggestion that they maybe were just a little responsible. Narcissists don't make mistakes. It's always everyone else's fault but theirs if anything goes wrong. Suggesting something else usually sends them right through the roof. Exactly because they know, they're to blame. And they rarely at all agree to participate in anything where they risk to be blamed. So, what does the Vestlaplandsmodellen do about that? Forgiveness? No blame?

I see some good things happening, me too. Things like the hearing voices network getting more and more attention, or like Daniel Mackler's film. I'm still a bit suspicious toward the Vestlaplandsmodellen. IMO, it's not both-and. It definitely is either-or. Whatever biological/genetic differences, they are symptoms - of abuse -, not causes.

Hope, I don't come off too harsh. It's just that it really gets me to watch these people get away with their actions again and again and again, because we can't let go of being the victim and feeling guilty about speaking the truth.

3. e-mail: Another rant:

We're all responsible. For ourselves as well as for the community. Not ever holding anyone accountable for their actions equals to telling them it's ok to act irresponsible. If no one ever is going to be held accountable, nothing will change. The world, humanity, is in the mess it is today, because no one is willing to take responsibility, and because no one is willing to ask others to take responsibility, because that then would mean they'd have to take it themselves.

I'm sorry, my parents were responsible. They screwed up. They did as good as they could, but that doesn't change the fact, that it wasn't good enough. Taking responsibility means accepting that fact. Without acceptance no change. BUT: my parents' responsibility also ends where my own starts. "Mental illness" is not being given the opportunity to know. Today I know. So, I can't be "mentally ill" anymore without being responsible for it myself. It's my own choice, and so it will be my own fault, if ever I suffer in the irresponsible way of "mental illness" again.

I'm an existentialist, yup.

"It's ok to make mistakes. But it's unforgivable to make a mistake, and then claim it to have been the right thing to do, while you know, it was a mistake." (Ewa Jälmbrant)

Something else: Hammersley and Read: about 70 % of all people labelled "sz" have been abused physically and/or sexually during childhood. Add to that psychological/emotional abuse/neglect and get 100 %. I think it is obscene to expect a 17-year-old to sit in the same room with her father and talk about having been repeatedly raped by him from an age of, let's say, five or six years old, while the fact that she was so, and that she can't talk about it, rendered her "psychotic". What do we do? Forgive and forget without ever really talking about it? Won't work, I fear. Not in the long run.

In this context: shame - people feel shame because they were/are victims of abuse and are asked to keep silent about it: "It's your fault. You made me do this to you. So, don't blame me." And so they continue their business, the abusers.

If they just do what they're trained to do, unconsciously, irresponsibly, how come there are quite a lot who leave the system, disgusted by it, because they, in spite of all training, are able to see its harmfulness? How come, Loren Mosher was able to see, but not Merete Nordentoft? The scientific evidence is there, for all to see. They know it. They CHOOSE to ignore it.

4. e-mail: I don't want to fight them. I know, that it only would/will make them strike back even harder. - And that's actually what I see also is going on today, as alternatives, like for instance the hearing voices network, get more and more attention, and as there are more and more research findings that question the biological model. They feel threatened and strike back harder: assisted outpatient treatment, Thomas Werge's eugenic "research", re-establishment of padded "quiet rooms", i.e. isolation, etc. - And I absolutely agree to your point concerning primal therapy and the like.

But, on the other hand, when I have a problem, and ignoring, suppressing it makes me sick, I need to come to terms with it. Consciously. Even if that means, that I have to blame someone. - And although the term "blame" has a somewhat negative connotation, it only means "holding accountable". It doesn't mean "attack", "fight". Why does our culture regard holding someone accountable as a negative thing?... - So, basically, what it means is that I express what someone else's actions do or have done to me. Then, it is up to that someone whether they want to take my words as a personal attack - and a narcissist will do so - or whether they take them simply as feedback, allowing them to reflect their actions - which is what a responsible person does.

My responsibility is to separate my emotions from my words, and not to call someone names, for instance. Which IS a personal attack. Of course. That doesn't mean that I may not tell someone, that their actions made or make me feel angry. Or sad, or confused, "psychotic", "schizophrenic", "manic", "depressed", or whatever. If I'm not allowed to tell them, they'll carry on with their destructiveness, their abuse, and nothing is ever going to challenge the delusion of their own infallibility they've constructed for themselves and everybody else. If I'm not allowed to tell them, what we've got is exactly Laing's "Don't" again. Back to square one. The elephant in the living room, no one is allowed to see. And then my unconscious, seeing the elephant, doesn't leave me any other option than to resort to its own language: "insanity". The way to enlightenment goes through suffering - feeling and acknowledging, accepting, the emotions that were suppressed or denied. If I don't allow myself to experience that step, I won't get to the next.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KorhMAsE3nU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwCUzV3izAI

And, btw, that's exactly what psych drugs are designed to do. Preventing people from recognizing the truth by throwing them back into a state of dissociation. It's not a historical mistake. From the ego's point of view it's the only right thing to do. If the self becomes conscious, the ego is no longer in control. Our culture is a culture of the ego. It's not a mistake. It's premeditated, and it serves a purpose.

I doubt, they feel compassion. Maybe they tell themselves, and everybody else, that it's compassion, but narcissists don't feel compassion, or have empathy. What they feel writing prescriptions is a momentary satisfaction of their ego's need to be needed.

5. e-mail: I see one advantage in having family involved to the extent that they need to be present when they're talked about: I would have loooved to tell my dear mother in detail, without her interrupting me a dozen times, telling me how terribly wrong I am to feel that way, and completely matter-of-fact, no emotions taking over, how her actions had influenced me, i.e. had messed me up. BUT: 1. I wouldn't have been able to stand as much as the sight of her during the first three or four months (at least). (...) Alone mentioning her made "symptoms" intensify remarkably. My no.1 trigger. (...) IMO, it was crucial, that I had the opportunity to talk about my relationship with her without her being present. 2. It would have taken me one single session to tell her the above mentioned stuff. I dare say, I know what her reaction would have been... And no matter how gentle, calm, reasonable, whatever, I'd worded it. With the best will of the world I can't see why anyone would want to, at any cost, salvage a "relationship" like the one I had with my mother. One thing's for sure: I would have been the one, who'd paid for that.

Of course everybody, even someone like my mother, deserves a chance. However, my mother would have blown that chance, no doubt. And then? Then I wouldn't have been given the opportunity to talk about my no.1 trigger? That really pisses me off. Who's side are these guys on? (side: Yes, our "relationship" basically was that of enemies. It was war. But it wasn't me, who'd made her my enemy.)

More bitching: Somehow this no talking about anyone who isn't present to me smells a bit of blackmail. Quite similar to "Take your meds, or we won't pay for therapy (or even worse: we'll withdraw your SSI)." - It's illegal, nevertheless it happens. And often enough they get away with it, because people don't know their rights. The no meds no therapy-thing for instance, my therapist told me about a client of hers who'd been threatened with it. - Make that: "If you don't agree to meet your family/parents, we can't help you." And then what? The back ward? I see why they focus on young people, first "episode" - BTW: http://www.miwatch.org/2009/10/upcoming_conference_focuses_on.html#comments. People in their late teens or early twenties usually are somewhat more easy to "influence", oh well, threaten, than a thirty- or forty-year-old. Drugs or not, if it really is categorically enFORCEd (like in "coercion", yup) that you have to communicate with your abuser(s), or you won't get help, these people aren't much better than the abuser(s) themselves. What people in crisis need is UNconditional support and accept. Not more and even more of the emotional blackmail, that got them into crisis in the first place.

Geez, I would like a word with this Jaakko! :D

Ask people what was helpful during crisis and recovery. More often than not they'll mention time away from their family/parents, among the most important things.

It's really nice that they don't use more drugs than they do. Still, Soteria seems a lot more attractive and desirable - and, indeed, the person in crisis respecting - to me.

6. e-mail: "Certainly, when meeting with people who are acutely mentally ill and those who love them, we can feel compassion for their determination to stick to the predictability of monologic positions." (from the article) [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3658/is_200207/ai_n9086188/]

Well, I stick to my positions: 1. I was not "mentally ill", period. (cf. Pernille in the vid stating she was ill. What did she suffer from? The flu?... Sorry for the sarcasm, it just really bugs me.)

2. My mother didn't love me. (As devastating as it was at first, it was one of the most important insights to reach. "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" - the title was chosen for a reason.)

3. No one, not wild horses, and not even Jaakko Seikkula himself, would have been able to make my mother engage in a dialogue, unless she'd been guaranteed in advance, that she wouldn't have to accept any criticism of her person, and that it would be all about me being the one (and only) to blame.

The philosophy I see Open Dialogue employ - and I may be wrong, but so far it's my strong impression - is the usual, so to speak: It's the person in crisis, something's wrong with, she's the "patient", the "mentally ill" individual. Pernille for instance says at one point in the first vid: "...ud fra det, der fejlede mig..." (...on the basis of what was wrong with me...) So, something was wrong with her? I don't agree. At least, nothing more was wrong with her than what was wrong with everybody else... But of course, SHE got singled out, the spotted mental patient, because it was HER behavior that didn't fit the cultural norm... It isn't as pronounced as in conventional settings, still it's there. Why on earth can't we just get rid of this patronizing, devaluing (even if it's to a somewhat lesser extent in Open Dialogue) language entirely?? Makes me feel sick (haha...).

A little more respect for the person in crisis isn't enough. She has to be respected fully. It's not both-and. It's either-or. Or: you can't have your cake and eat it. You can't define someone as "mentally ill" and at the same time claim to respect them. You can't hold on to being the needed "expert", and at the same time claim to see the person, not the diagnosis. It's scary for someone who identifies as "expert", "mentally ill" or just "formerly mentally ill" to imagine having to let go of that identification. But it's the only way. IMHO.

"Psychiatry" by definition is a medical speciality. Open Dialogue defines itself, as far as I have understood, as a slightly different kind of psychiatry. As a medical speciality psychiatry pathologizes people's thought processes, emotions and behavior (if it didn't pathologize it wouldn't be a medical speciality, psychiatrists wouldn't be required to have studied medicine to enter the field; at some point Karen Klindt uses the term "klinisk psykiatri" (clinical psychiatry) in the first vid; "klinisk psykiatri" is a tautology; practised psychiatry is by definition clinical). That is, people in crisis' thought processes, emotions and behavior are not respected fully. Emphasis on "fully". To achieve that people in crisis are respected fully, psychiatry has to vanish from the surface of this planet. Psychiatry is an anti-democratic, totalitarian entity. It is symptomatic of our anti-democratic society (have a look at http://www.dendemokratiskeskole.dk/ or http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/ and compare them to Folkeskolen (the Danish primary school), or any other official school system in any other "democracy"; it's everywhere, in every single one of society's institutions, the totalitarianism, more or less; in psychiatry it is pure). It has always been, it will always be.

And again: why on earth is the idea that there may be parents who do not love their kids sooo unacceptable?? It's a reality, for chrissake! Most people in our culture actually have no clue what love really is. They aren't capable of true love, because they themselves never experienced it. So they don't love their kids, they need them (which is about the opposite of love). Neither do they love themselves, they are in love with themselves. Quite a difference. You can't love anyone else if you don't have selflove. - Well, it's unacceptable because if we accepted it, we'd have to accept the fact, that these people, make that about 90 % of humanity, if not more, altogether are traumatized... by our culture, by modern western civilization. "Don't". Because if we do accept it, it's the end of modern western civilization. And we don't want that, do we??

It was only through the insight that my mother didn't love me, that I came to understand that she couldn't love me - and forgive her. This is different from the usual "forgiveness". It allows the whole process, it allows anger and grief, sorrow,... all that messy stuff, that people are so damn afraid of, they can't for anything in the world accept it in its entirety. Not even Open Dialogue.

Now, I've been highly critical. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the advantages of Open Dialogue for the individual compared to conventional psychiatry very much. However, IMO Open Dialogue is still somehow stuck in certain very conventional thought patterns that I'd like to see abandoned. Because I regard them to be rather destructive on an overall perspective.

I think what we'd need to survive, humanity as a whole I mean, is a far more radical change of our entire culture than what Open Dialogue represents in the mh field, I'm not too optimistic when it comes to our future as a species. I don't see it happen. Partly also because I see people uncritically cheering for "changes" that aren't really changes, on an overall perspective. Open Dialogue - this is probably as good as it gets. It's not good enough, IMO. It's still limited, by it's conditions for instance: you have to interact with your abusers because this is what we do in modern western civilisation. We have such great compassion with the abusers, we can't do without having the abused forgive the abuser. BS, IMHO.

Open Dialogue is a method. methods are always limited. And limiting. There's a lot of room for improvement if you think beyond the limits of methods. Also of this method, as good as it may be compared to conventional "treatment". People just don't realize. So they cheer, uncritically. And history repeats itself...

What we see is people recovering, becoming independent of the system, able to support themselves, working, well-adjusted contributing to society. Great. Really. But they're well-adjusted contributing to a profoundly sick society... These people grow, yes. Great. Really. But they could grow even more. Far beyond the limits of this profoundly sick society. So that they'd never call themselves "mentally ill", "schizophrenic", past or present, anymore, for instance.

7. e-mail: Of course, like every human being, my mother too had the potential to love. She just couldn't make use of it, and although she never talked much about her own childhood/upbringing, I know enough to know why she wasn't able to give love. I do see her, now. And I do love the part of her, that never was allowed to come into being, so to speak. That doesn't mean, that I would have to, at any cost, keep on interacting with her, the person, the individual, she was, for the rest of my life, just because she happened to be my mother.

And: it was crucial, that I was given the opportunity to talk about her and my relationship with her without her being present at the time. "There is no one size fits all" also applies to Open Dialogue. For some it may be ok to have their abusers present from day one. For me it wasn't. I needed physical distance to be able to, at my own pace, have the courage and explore my emotions towards her, and integrate them.

I disagree, that Open Dialogue is the best. It's good, yes. Much better than those crappy pills. Without the least doubt. And it is, also without doubt, wonderful, awesome, absolutely out of this world, that Open Dialogue elements are integrated into the system some places. But why are we, almost exclusively, focussed on Open Dialogue here in DK, when there are more "open", less systematic, rigid, alternatives out there. Soteria, yes. I don't say that Soteria is perfect. But it offers more room for true respect. It works outside of psychiatry, not inside of it. It's (at least) one step ahead of Open Dialogue. Why? Because it demonstrates that "experts" aren't needed. That all that is needed is being consciously in touch with yourself, being a conscious human being. And it demonstrates that crisis is - being human. It existed. It exists, in Alaska, Bern, Munich. The Weglaufhaus in Berlin works according to Soteria principles. There's a Soteria "movement" in the Netherlands. It's not a mere fantasy. Why not broaden the horizon, skip this Open Dialogue is the only alternative-tunnel vision?

I'd just wish there was just a little more focus on the fact, that Open Dialogue is not the one and only solution. (There is no one and only solution...)

But, well, yes, right now, we're light years from acknowledging that crisis is being human. So, of course, Open Dialogue is/would be a huge step in the right direction.

Recovered to death. How the system's distorted recovery concept kills

2010-01-01T13:38:00.007+01:00

Early last month I learned that one of the regular contributers to Outsideren, the user magazine I wrote for in 2007 and 2008, had been found dead in her bed one morning in late November. Dorthe Raffenberg was 41 years old, and in addition to being one of three people forming the group Standup recovery, giving talks about recovery, she also was very much engaged in sports, especially running and skiing. So, you might say, Dorthe was quite fit, physically. But Dorthe was labelled "paranoid schizophrenic", and had been taking drugs for years. Clozaril during the past years. For, you see, Dorthe was a real fighter. She didn't just give up that easily. It took several years in locked wards, uncountable times in restraints, and a considerable dosage of Clozaril to eventually shut her up and break her spirit.

I found a review of one of Standup recovery's talks on the net: "The trio's talk at Skovvænget [assisted housing facility for "the mentally ill"] focussed on that it is possible to recover, but that recovery presupposes acceptance of one's illness", and: "During the talk it became clear that it were several different elements that had been decisive for Dorthe, Christian and Martin each to achieve recovery." The review is dated from May 2006. According to it, Dorthe was recovered in May 2006.

As mentioned, I knew Dorthe in 2007 and 2008, met her regularly at Outsideren's monthly editorial meetings. I remember Dorthe as being clearly sedated. Her thinking and talking (and movements) were remarkably slowed down. And although I've never known her other than under the influence of Clozaril, there was no doubt that what I saw was just the shadow of the Dorthe that could have been, if... If she'd got help instead of Clozaril.

"Dorthe tells a horrible story about abuse, suicide attempts...", the review states. Abuse. I remember, that Dorthe at one editorial meeting spoke about her "delusions". Everybody did. Just for fun. Nothing more funny than to think of just how raving mad one was, in those days, is there? In those days before the Clozaril did it's job, and efficiently ended one's unconscious reactions, to the abuse for instance. Yeah. Everybody was dying laughing at such an amount of incredibly amusing and meaningless madness. Everybody but me. I felt sick, actually. Felt like running away, leaving everybody else to their "insight", the insight that their faulty genes and brain chemistry had been the cause of such an amount of incredibly amusing and meaningless madness. "I acted/thought/felt like this and that because I'm a paranoid schizophrenic, hahaha!" Hilarious, yeah, really. Instead of the "I'm angry, scared, desperate, because I've been abused", that might lead to someone else but one's own genes and neurotransmitters being held responsible. Not quite as amusing, the responsibility-thing, nope.

Probably, the faulty genes and brain chemistry also were to blame for the abuse to have taken place at all: "You (your faulty genes and brain chemistry) made me do this to you." Yeah. Sure.

According to the review it presupposes "acceptance of one's illness" to recover. Dorthe, eventually, gained this acceptance. Acceptingly, she took her daily dose of Clozaril. Dorthe died on November 19th, 2009, 41 years "old", and I'm not a sec in doubt about the cause of death: acceptance of her illness. And the inevitably following, regular ingestion of Clozaril. Dorthe died from having "insight" and being "compliant". She died from having achieved what the mh system has distorted "recovery" to mean.

The last article Dorthe wrote for Outsideren quotes the president of Dansk psykiatrisk selskab, the Danish psychiatric association, Anders Fink-Jensen: "If psychotropic drugs were dangerous that would be very disturbing, and they wouldn't be approved for use,..."
_______________

P.S.: I haven't posted anything lately because I wanted to do this piece before posting anything else, and although I've written about it on my Danish blog several weeks ago, I just couldn't do it here before.

Anyhow, I hope, everybody had great holidays, and a Happy New Year to all of you!

Trauma Survivor

2009-12-13T19:27:00.003+01:00

Description at YouTube:

"Elemental Ireland
Those termed "psychiatric patients" are in fact trauma survivors. Many who find themselves caught in the net of bio-psychiatry are responding to the abnormal circumstances of a traumatic childhood; the hated child, the abandoned child, the neglected child, the exploited child, the defeated child and the silenced child, to name a few.

Exploring 'The Roots of Violence' by Alice Miller. This video contains quotes by Alice Miller and by Elemental Ireland.

'For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society - a fact that we are still forbidden to recognise (a fact that is commonly denied). This knowledge concerns every single one of us and - if disseminated widely enough - should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to a halt in the blind escalation of violence'. Alice Miller

Having recently discovered Alice Miller, as a parent I found her work a welcome challenge. She has made me think deeply both about the way I parent and society's attitudes to children. It is a matter of urgency for me to heal my own wounded inner-child, so I can parent my children in the best possible way. She has tapped into great truths that I knew deep down but was afraid to voice to myself and in public. A good website exploring Alice Miller's work is Daniel Mackler's iraresoul. Daniel has made an excellent film called 'Take These Broken Wings' about recovery from (so-called) schizophrenia without medication.

Many trauma survivors are terrified and find it difficult to trust. They struggle with repressed rage and anger. Many are further punished for being trauma survivors by coercion and forced 'treatment'. They are further battered and broken by bio-psychiatry.

In most cases, the trauma survivor is silenced three times; firstly by their families, then by society and then by bio-psychiatry.

Wouldn't this make you angry?"

Some time ago, I lent Derrick Jensen's A Language Older Than Words to a friend. Earlier this week, I got it back: "I couldn't read past the first pages. Too painful to read about all this violence and abuse." Yeah. It certainly is a lot less painful to close your eyes to reality. It just won't change anything.

"Our society is run by insane people..."

2009-12-10T03:27:00.002+01:00

X-mas greetings from John and Yoko. In honor of the occasion (cough, cough...) a little early.

This week's no.1 top-of-anti-psychiatry songs :)

2009-12-06T02:08:00.004+01:00

From the album Songs From The Locked Ward

Primal therapeutic oppression - Arthur Janov knows what you need!

2009-12-03T15:57:00.011+01:00

Yesterday, my attention was drawn to the comment section of this post on this NYT-article on modern lobotomy at Mr. Arthur Janov's - yup, the Arthur Janov - blog.

My attention was drawn to the blog of the guru of the 1970ies screaming-hype by a comment on a blog post about, and this is somewhat important, Liberation psychology - by the way an awesome piece by Bruce Levine, and if you haven't yet, go read it! - at a Norwegian blog.

In his article about Liberation psychology, Levine states with Jesuit priest, therapist and activist Ignacio Martín-Baró:

"The prevailing psychology, (...), is not politically neutral, but favors maintaining the status quo. Reducing human motivations to the maximization of pleasure fits neatly into the dominant culture. Martin-Baró astutely observed that most prevailing psychology schools of thought—be it psychoanalytic, behavioral, or biochemical—accept the maximization of pleasure as the motivating force for human behavior, ignoring other human motivations, including the need for fairness and social justice. Prevailing psychology’s focus on individualism, he wrote, 'ends up reinforcing the existing structures, because it ignores the reality of social structures and reduces all structural problems to personal problems.' "

So, you might say the prevailing paradigm in today's psychology pathologizes suffering as an individual flaw - and it doesn't matter if this flaw is seen as biological, existential, spiritual or whatever else in nature - rather than viewing it as an expression of a very healthy discontent with and rebellion against a thoroughly oppressive culture.

Bruce Levine writes:

"Aldous Huxley predicted, 'And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude.' Today, increasing numbers of people in the U.S. who do not comply with authority are being diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric drugs that make them care less about their boredom, resentments, and other negative emotions, thus rendering them more compliant and manageable."

Psych labels and the inevitably following "treatment" have indeed become our time's most employed means of oppression. Political, societal, and individual oppression.

Now have a look at this comment by Arthur Janov:

"There are many many reasons why we cannot take some people; those who really need a living arrangement supervised or controlled as is the case with psychotics."

Us and them, yup. The "psychotics", the lesser-than-human beings, who, because they are "psychotic" and thus lesser-than-human, need to be supervised and controlled, i.e. oppressed.

Since I've managed to see through and quite successfully ward off most attempts to oppress, retraumatize, and consequently silence me, that I, too, found myself subjected to in therapy, since I actually beyond the attempts to oppress, retraumatize and silence me also was as lucky as to receive some real help from my therapist, making it possible for me to find my own language and voice my discontent with and rebellion against the ongoing oppression in society, I left the following comment at Janov's blog:

" 'They need a supervised life.'

  Wow wow wow! Mind-boggling to witness therapists know just exactly what it is their clients need!  

As it may be true that, while going through acute crisis, most 'psychotic' (whatever that term means) people need a secure environment where they can be safe from (further) assault and trauma, 'secure' doesn't mean 'secured', as in 'supervised'. Or why not simply 'controlled', as in 'Let's lock 'em up and throw away the key!'??

 How about a little more respect for the person in crisis, and his/her own knowledge of what s/he needs?  

Marian, Denmark, blogger and expert on her own needs" (Janov likes to know about his commenters' location and profession)

Well, what of course I should have written isn't "their clients" but "people". As this is what therapists, Arthur Janov included, usually have the arrogance to assume, that their "expertise" entitles them to know what everybody else, not just their particular clients, needs. - Let's recapitulate here: arrogance is a response to fear.

Arthur Janov, like many other therapists, doesn't take "psychotics". But while he himself prefers to think, that he can't take these lesser-than-human beings because he can't provide the control they, like a ferocious wild animal, in his opinion are so much in need of, in truth he, as it will seem to me, can't take them because he lacks the self-control he'd need in order to be able to provide a safe and spacious enough place for people in extreme states of mind where they can liberate themselves from society's oppression, and fully come into being.

And while I think, it is better for a therapist to admit that s/he doesn't have the amount of self-control, -awareness, and -respect to deal with the whole range of human experiences, the extremes included, than to pretend to be able to deal with the extremes when the contrary is the case - these are the therapists who claim the professional expertise, providing the power to label, drug and, whenever perceived as convenient, commit people, to be more important than true empathy and respect -, which inevitably will lead to the person in crisis being retraumatized, I also think that s/he probably isn't fit to be a therapist at all, when s/he feels frightened by the extremes of the human experience to an extent that makes him/her call for "supervision", control and thus retraumatizing oppression. If you can't deal with the whole range of human experiences, but need to apply "supervising", controlling, and thus oppressing measures to the extremes, that means, you can't deal with anything that isn't "supervised", controlled, and thus oppressed by external powers. And that renders you an oppressor yourself.

In another comment Janov replies to someone who's written a letter to the author of the NYT-article:

"Well Walden good work and now let me know if he ever responds. I seriously doubt it."

Janov published my comment, and that's something I guess. But so far, His Greatness Arthur Janov hasn't had much to say to me so impertinently disturbing the worshipping of him at his blog, and I seriously doubt that he's going to have. But, of course, I'm also one of these lesser-than-human beings, a ferocious wild animal, who, had only a "supervised", controlled life been provided for me, never had had the impertinence to disturb the worshipping of His Greatness in the first place... In case Janov surprises me, I'll let you know...
_______________

Cross-published on Beyond Meds.

John Hunt - punished for being a trauma survivor

2009-11-29T15:09:00.003+01:00

A video by Marion Aslan, co-founder of EleMental for John and his family.

Grainne Humphrys, John's wife, writes that the article Marion used for the vid is from last year. So, John is 28 years old today, and has been incarcerated at Carraig Mor for four years.

Hallucinations

2009-11-27T14:50:00.003+01:00

In a reply to a commenter who says she hasn't been able to see anything "in this life with a painful connection", Sean writes: "Yes, not all trauma is from our childhood. Sometimes its from adulthood or the peri-natal stage, and sometimes it certainly looks like the traumas are more related to karmic issues, past lives, etc..."

I've heard people maintain they weren't traumatized many times before. Most often in order to defend the medical model: "I haven't been traumatized. So, consequently, I must suffer from a chemical imbalance in my brain." In this case, it's not a chemical imbalance, it's karma from some past life. I'm sure, I don't believe in the chemical imbalance bs. I'm not quite sure whether to believe in past lives, karma and stuff. What I'm sure I do believe in is that there's a lot in this life that is traumatizing, while we don't recognize it as traumatizing. Like being human in an inhumane world, for instance. Whether someone is able to cope with that challenge without having to ask for help, or not, depends on a number of often rather subtle, individual distinctions in their life experiences. Distinctions that often are overlooked.

More Saturday fun

2009-11-07T18:48:00.003+01:00

This morning, before I went to work, on a quick tour checking out the blogosphere for new posts, I came across the comment thread at this post at Furious Seasons that had me die laughing. Why? What's so special about it? Nothing. That's the point.

Last month, Philip had a post up telling us it was his 2,500th post. I bet, at least half of them have comment threads completely identical to the one I mention above: "Mental illnesses are biological brain diseases!." - "No, they aren't!" - "Mental illness kills!" - "No, it doesn't!" - "Psych meds help people cope and save lives!" - "No, they don't!" And so on, and so on... Basically the same people, the same arguments, over and over again. At Philip's blog, and I don't know at how many others - also here, btw, from time to time.

This morning, instead of feeling inclined to weigh in, I took a step back, looking at the picture, and, well, I was dying laughing. - No need for me to weigh in, btw. "MsPiggy" already did a great job over there. Factual, intelligent and eloquent. Thanks "MsPiggy"!

Going beyond the limits

2009-11-03T02:33:00.004+01:00

You can sense it coming in the 4th movement of the 9th symphony. It goes to the absolute limits of tonality. And then, eventually, the 1st movement of the 10th... Who needs further movements? It's perfect as it is.

A little Saturday fun

2009-10-31T20:57:00.003+01:00

...and two more pieces of good advice for the person who inspired this post: 1. The comment field of a blog isn't the best place to have private conversations. Maybe you should consider e-mail instead. 2. Since you seem to have such great difficulty understanding English, consider another language!

Hope, I expressed myself clear enough this time, and won't get misunderstood, again again.

Some thoughts about A Beautiful Mind and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

2009-10-30T00:26:00.008+01:00

Usually, I'm not a big fan of filmatizations. Especially when I've read the book before I watch the movie, and when the book's emphasis is about more complex psychological contexts watching the movie often has been a bit of a comedown. An example of such a, in my opinion, somewhat failed adaption is A Beautiful Mind with its rather exaggerated and twisted presentation of "hallucinations", meant to help the audience understand the phenomenon, but actually more fit for obtaining the very opposite effect. And indeed, some stylistic faux pas, one would think directors like Bergman and Tarkovsky for instance had taught the cinema to avoid a long time ago. But, well, on the one hand we have Bergman's and Tarkovsky's feel for subtle nuances, on the other Hollywood's preference for broader strokes of the brush. Like comparing apples and oranges.

Another thing that can give me a kind of comedown experience is when the movie consciously twists the text's "message", exploiting the book's, author's or protagonist's popularity in order to get its own "message" out. This too, A Beautiful Mind is an outstanding example to illustrate, abusing John Nash's celebrity status, letting his character state, that he takes the "newer medications", while we all know that the real John Nash didn't take neuroleptics other than when he was forced to, like during hospitalizations, and never after 1970.

The producers excused their distorting the historical facts, and said they didn't want people to toss out their drugs. In the meantime, the movie doesn't at any point directly state that John Nash didn't take drugs over longer periods. Thus there should be no need to mention the matter at all. Unless the idea was to exploit John Nash's popularity for the benefit of the psych drug industry. On the contrary, I'd say. Given the fact, that Nash did recover, while recovery on neuroleptics virtually never occurs, the truth should have been mentioned.

So, all in all it was with reservations that I ventured into watching the filmatization of Joanne Greenberg's novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden the other day.

Except for in a single sequence, the visualization of Deborah's "hallucinations" is created in a more subtle way than John Nash's in A Beautiful Mind, and thus more endurable and credible. Never mind that it left me with vague associations to Timothy Leary and Woodstock, just as the decorations, costumes and requisits represent a somewhat strange blend of the 1950ies and the late 1970ies.

Although the movie's last sequences seem a bit rash - and it has to be considered that the standard length for movies, that rarely was exceeded, was 90 minutes back in 1977, the movie's production year - and, compared to the novel, a little superficially happy-ending-like, the movie manages to avoid the all too broad strokes of the brush, and, and this is really an achievement the subject taken into account, it avoids to descend into the melodramatic.

Based on a novel as complex as Joanne Greenberg's, a filmatization can hardly be anything but fragmentary. Nevertheless, the movie succeeds to make the best of its 96 almost-standard minutes, both because it focusses on some of the most essential themes of the novel, and not least because of the actors' brilliant performance (Kathleen Quinlan, Bibi Andersson - oh well, a Bergman-trained actress...), and I was positively surprised to see the novel's basic "message" unchanged.

A comment at YouTube says what the novel teaches us is "to have COMPASSION with the mentally ill". I replied: "What both the book and the movie teach us is that so-called "mental illness" is a choice (out of necessity though). Not a chronic brain disease. And they both teach us that we should make it possible for people to choose freedom, like Frieda Fromm-Reichmann made it possible for Joanne Greenberg. Instead of indefinitely locking them up in helplessness and dependency with toxic chemicals and hopeless messages about defective genes and chronic brain disorders."

I was surprised, but I'd also forgotten all about the movie's production year, 1977, that is about the fact that the movie was shot at a time in history when psych drugs didn't yet play the everything else overshadowing role they do play today, and when psychological and psycho-social causes still were considered. Interesting and refreshing in this context is that the dialogue doesn't get stuck in diagnoses and other crudenesses. Although "psychotic" appears from time to time, "schizophrenia" for instance isn't mentioned one single time throughout the entire movie. Probably also this a 1977-phenomenon.

Although it can by no means replace reading the novel itself, a filmatization of Joanne Greenberg's autobiographic novel that is well worth watching.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden at YouTube.

Spirituality

2009-10-29T00:29:00.004+01:00

Probably, posting this vid won't exactly make me more popular. But hey, if I was blogging for the sake of popularity, I'd blog about knitting, cooking or gardening, I suppose.

"... I'd rather have my own suffering than someone else's solution."

2009-10-19T22:34:00.004+02:00

Yesterday, Ron Unger posted a link to an absolutely amazing article by British novelist Jeanette Winterson on his blog.

A few quotes:

"My creativity pulled me out of a hopeless childhood, and gave my life meaning and shape. But I have always had various forms of manic depression, (just can't bring myself to call it "bipolar"— whoever invented that dismal term must have been uni-polar—a condition I define as being permanently tethered to the banal)."

"...I'd rather have my own suffering than someone else's solution."

"Wounding—real or symbolic—is both mark and marker. It is an opening in the self, painful but transformative."

"We know from 100 years of psychoanalytic investigation that an early trauma, often buried or unavailable to consciousness, is the motif that plays through our lives. We meet it again and again in different disguises. We are wounded again in the same place. This doesn't turn us into victims. Rather, we are people in search of a transformation of the real."

Well, I could go on and on... Go read the whole article "In Praise of The Crack-Up" at, and this is amazing, this too, the Wall Street Journal's website.

Open letter to Oprah Winfrey in response to the programme about “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”

2009-10-19T04:00:00.009+02:00

19th October 2009

Open letter to Oprah Winfrey in response to the programme about “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”

This is an open letter addressed to Oprah Winfrey and intended to be seen by the public through newspapers and other media, such as a letter to the editor, or included in websites, blogs, Facebook etc.

This is where you come in, please circulate this letter as widely as you can. It would be helpful if you copied me into any email you send, so I can keep track of where it is being posted. Also if the letter is published anywhere online or elsewhere, please let me know.

If you want to add your support, send me your name and some details about who you are and where you live. The more people who sign up the better.

Best wishes and my heartfelt thanks for the many suggestions and messages of support.

You can see the programme about Jani and the accompanying article here

You can download a copy of the open letter here

Paul Baker

Introduction: This letter has been written in response to the Oprah Winfrey programme about Jani "The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic” broadcast on the 6th November 2009. We want to tell you about an alternative and more empowering approach to the experience of hearing voices. 85 members of the mental health community around the world, including voice hearers, relatives, citizens, academics and educators, therapists, nurses and researchers have been moved to sign this letter. Such is the level of concern we feel about the circumstances that Jani finds herself in.

Dear Oprah

We are writing this letter in response to your programme about “The 7-Year-Old Schizophrenic”. This concerned Jani, a child who hears voices, and was broadcast on the 6th October 2009.

We do so in the hope we can provide a more hopeful and positive alternative to the generally pessimistic picture offered by the members of the mental health community featured in the programme, and in the accompanying article on your website.
What upset us most and moved us to write the letter, is that, as a result of the programme, parents of children who have similar experiences to Jani will be left with the impression that they are powerless and will not be able to do anything constructive to help their children to come to terms with their experience of hearing voices.

For it is simply not true that nothing can be done.

We say this because we have been researching and working with adults and children like Jani and their parents for the last twenty years, and in doing so have reached very different conclusions from the ones reported on your programme.

We write this letter primarily for parents and carer givers, in the hope that it will enable them to develop a new and more empowering way of thinking about their children’s experiences, and that it will help them to find ways to help those children with their emotional development and with recovering from being overwhelmed by hearing voices.

Unfortunately, there is very little practical advice available about children who hear voices which addresses the needs of parents or other members of the family. This is a shame because they are the most important form of support to such children. So, we want you to know that there are some simple commonsense things that parents can do to help children who hear voices - even children in seemingly hopeless situations, like Jani.

We would like to make the following observations:

One of our founding members, Dr. Sandra Escher from the Netherlands, is an expert on the issue of children who hear voices. She has spent the last fifteen years talking to children who hear voices, and to their parents and carer givers. To date, on this issue, Sandra has carried out the most detailed and thorough research in the world. As a result of her work she offers a new perspective on what troubling voices may represent, and how parents can help a child cope if he or she hears voices.

First of all, from the research carried out into the experience of adults and children who hear voices it has become apparent that:

To hear voices in itself is a normal experience. Of course it is unusual, but at some time or another, many people hear a voice when nobody else is actually present.

However, it is possible for people to become ill as a result of hearing voices when they cannot cope with them.

For most children (60%) the voices disappear over time as the child develops and as they learn to cope with life's problems, and with the emotions and feelings involved with those problems, which led to the voices starting in the first place.

 Several large-scale population (epidemiological) studies have shown that about 4 % of the population hear voices. Of this 4%, about 30% seek assistance from mental health services. Amongst children, however, even more hear voices (8%), and as with adults, about 30% are referred to the mental health services.

This means that there are apparently many more people who hear voices who do not require the support of mental health services than those who do. This is because the majority can cope with their voices and function well in everyday life.

Unfortunately, most of the information that we have about the experience of hearing voices comes exclusively from research with patients: people who obviously cannot cope with the voices and needed help. These are people who feel that the voices made them feel powerless and who were overwhelmed by them. This is the case for research about adults and children who are hearing voices.

However, in our research we found that a common theme in both groups (adults and children) is the high percentage of traumatic experiences that have been the trigger for hearing voices. In adults, around 75% began to hear voices in relationship to a trauma or situation that made them feel powerless. Examples of the kinds of traumas that trigger voices include the death of a loved one, divorce, losing a job, failing an exam, but also longer lasting situations like being physically, emotionally or sexually abused.

The percentage of traumatic experience found as the trigger to hearing voices was even higher amongst children. It stood at 85%, with some traumas specifically related to childhood. These traumas might include being bullied by peers or teachers, or being unable to perform at a certain level at school. Another commonly reported traumatic incident related to hearing voices was being admitted to a hospital for a long time due to a physical illness.

Generally, our research indicates that hearing voices is a reaction to a situation or a problem the child or young person cannot cope with. Voices act as messengers and it may well be a mistake to try to kill the messenger - for instance through administering medication.

Another striking finding is that what the voices say often indicates the problem which troubles the child, but in an elliptical manner. Take just one example: The voices told an 8-year-old boy to blind himself. This frightened his mother. But when we discussed whether there was something in the life of the boy he could not face, she understood the voices’ message. The boy could not cope with his parents’ problematic marriage. He did not want to see it.

In Jani's case, has anyone tried to establish why the rat is called "Wednesday", why the girl is called "24 Hours", and why is the cat called "400"? What do these mean for her? Are there reasons behind this? Furthermore, why did she want people to call her "Blue-Eyed Tree Frog" and "Jani Firefly".

Is this something she associated with safety, and if so why?

Our research also revealed that when full attention was given to the problems facing the child, he or she was able to establish a more constructive relationship with the voices. As a result children became less afraid of their voices. When a child is able to consider the problems that are at the root of his or her distress, and with the emotions and feelings involved, the child is no longer preoccupied with the voices.

Recently, Sandra conducted a three-year follow up study on eighty children who heard voices, aged between 8 and 19. Half of this group received mental health care because of their voices. However, the other half were not given any special care at all. She interviewed the children four times, at yearly intervals. By the end of the research period 60% of the children reported that the voices had disappeared.

Of course figures and statistics like this do not directly relate to Jani. But the overall message is that the chance that the voices might disappear are quite high.

We saw that when children have problems which bring on the experience of hearing voices, their ability to learn to cope with their voices is inhibited. However, if the problems were dealt with or the child’s situation changed - for example, because of changing schools - the voices disappeared.

It is important that we appreciate that the desire to make the voices disappear is a goal of the mental health care services and not necessarily that of the children themselves. There are some children who did not want to lose their voices. This is OK, for the most important thing is that the voices no longer remain at the centre of their attention. This is because, as the relationship with the voices change and became more positive, instead of hindering the child the voices start to take on an advisory role. If children find within themselves the resources to cope with their voices, and the emotions involved with hearing them, then they can begin to lead happier and more balanced lives.

The most important element in the process of positively changing a child's relationship with his or her voice is support from the family. Unfortunately, our research has shown that being in the mental health care system had no positive effect on the voices. However, we did find that what had a positive influence on how the child coped with hearing voices was being referred to a psychotherapist who accepted the reality of the voices and was prepared to discuss their meaning with the child.

We also saw that ‘normalising’ the experience can help parents to deal with the voices. Try not to think of it as a terrible disaster but rather as a signal for something that troubles your child and which can be resolved.

On the other hand, if parents cannot accept that hearing voices is fairly normal, but believe only that it is a symptom of an illness, and are afraid of them, then the child naturally picks up this feeling. Imagine for a moment if you were the child and were afraid of the voices, and when you looked for support from your parents you found that they were even more afraid of the voices than you. Obviously, this would put you under great pressure and probably mean that you would become reluctant to talk about your experiences at all.

There is a second problem. If a person is afraid of the voices then he or she can become obsessed simply by the fear of them. If one is distressed and anxious one cannot listen very well to the story a child tells about his or her experiences. This means that a sympathetic other may fail to pick up on the related emotions and problems that the voices represent.

In our experience, what helps children the most is a systematic approach to understanding the voices. So, in order to help we have developed an interview to help map the experience. This can be used as a way to understand the stress the child is under, and then to work together to find solutions for the problems raised by the experience of hearing voices.

We would like to offer this 10-point guide for parents, indicating what they can do if their child tells them that he or she hears voices:

 1. Try not to over react. Although it is understandable that you will be worried, work hard not to communicate your anxiety to your child.  
2. Accept the reality of the voice experience for your child: ask about the voices, how long the child has been hearing them, who or what they are, do they have names, what they say, etc.
 3. Let your child know that lots of children hear voices and that usually they go away after a while.  
4. Even if the voices do not disappear your child might learn to live in harmony with his or her voices  
5. It is important to break down your child's sense of isolation and difference from other children. Your child is special - unusual perhaps, but really not abnormal.
 6. Find out if your child has any difficulties or problems that he or she finds very hard to cope with, and work on trying to fix those problems. Think back to when the voices first started. When did the voices arise for the first time? What was happening to your child when the voices first appeared? Was there anything unusual or stressful that might have occurred?
 7. If you think you need outside help, find a therapist who is prepared to accept your child's experience and work systematically with him or her to understand and cope better with the voices.  
8. Be ready to listen to your child if he or she wants to talk about the voices. Use drawing, painting, acting and other creative ways to help the child to describe what is happening in his or her life.  
9. Get on with your lives and try not to let the experience of hearing voices become the centre of your child's life or your own.  10. Most children who live well with their voices have supportive families around them who accept the experience as part of who their child is. You can do this too!

In conclusion we would like to stress that, in our view, labelling a seven-year-old child as schizophrenic and subjecting her to powerful psychotropic medication and periodic hospitalisation is unlikely to help resolve her problems with voices. Indeed, the opposite is most probable: Jani will simply become more powerless when it comes to finding ways to cope with her voices.

Because your well respected, award winning show reaches out to so many people, we are concerned that ther will be many viewers who will be left with the impression that the kind of treatment Jani receives is the only one available. If this is the case then there will be children who will be subjected to an unnecessary lifetime in psychiatric care because their families believe there are no alternatives. It is very important to recognise that hearing voices, in itself, is not a sign of psychopathology - and - voice hearers who are patients can be helped to recover from their problems by being supported in developing their own ways of coping with their emotions.

We hope you will give consideration to the possibility of making a future programme showing the other side of the story, one of hope, optimism and with a focus on recovery. Perhaps you could make a programme about a child with similar voice experiences to Jani, who has been helped to come to terms with her or his voices and to discuss with the child, parents and therapists how this was acheived? If there is anyway we could help make this happen, please contact us.

We look forward to hearing from you on the issues raised in our letter.

Yours sincerely,
Paul Baker  INTERVOICE coordinator

Signed by 85 people from 14 countries, listed in order of the time they were received.

 Dr. Sandra Escher - Board member of INTERVOICE, The Netherlands
 Professor Marius Romme, psychiatrist, MD, PhD, President of INTERVOICE, The Netherlands  
Dirk Corstens, Social psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Chair of INTERVOICE, The Netherlands  
Paul Baker, coordinator of INTERVOICE, Spain  
Jacqui Dillon, consultant trainer and voice hearer, chair of Hearing Voices Network England, board member of INTERVOICE, UK  
Ron Coleman, consultant trainer and voice hearer, board member of INTERVOICE, UK  
Hywel Davies, chair of Hearing Voices Network Cymru (Wales), honorary board member of INTERVOICE; UK
 Amanda R. E. Aller Lowe, MS, LPC, LCPC, QMRP - Agency Partner, Communities In Schools & Area Representative, The Center for Cultural Interchange, Aurora, Illinois, INTERVOICE supporter, USA
 Adrienne Giacon, Secretary and Hearing Voices Network Support group facilitator Hearing Voices Network Aotearoa, INTERVOICE member, New Zealand  
Dr John Read, Associate Professor, Psychology Department, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand  
Ann-Louise S. Silver, MD, founder and past president, International Society for the Psychological Treatments of Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses (www.isps-us.org), ISPS-US, USA  
Matthew Morrissey, MA, MFT, Board Member, MindFreedom International, Northern California Coordiator, ISPS-US, San Franciso, USA
 Irene van de Giessen, former voice hearer and foster-daughter of Willem van Staalen and Willem van Staalen, voice integrating foster-father of Irene, The Netherlands
 Olga Runciman, consultant trainer and voice hearer (BSc psychiatric nurse and graduate student in psychology), INTERVOICE member, Denmark
 Professor Wilma Boevink, Chair of Stichting Weerklank (Netherlands Hearing Voices Network), Professor of Recovery, Hanze University; Trimbos-Institute (the Dutch Institute of Mental Health and Addiction), Netherlands
 Marian B. Goldstein, voicehearer, (fully recovered thanks to trauma-focussed therapy, the opportunity to make sense of the voices) INTERVOICE supporter, Denmark  
Professor Dr J. van Os, Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, Maastricht University Medical Centre, Maastricht, INTERVOICE supporter, Netherlands  
Virginia Pulker, Mental health Occupational Therapist with young people with psychosis, recovery promoter, HVN Australia, Northern Ireland and England. INTERVOICE supporter, UK/Australia  
Professor Richard Bentall, PhD, Chair Clinical Psychology, University of Bangor, INTERVOICE supporter, Wales, UK  
Alessandra Santoni, professional working in a Mental Health Service of Milan, voice hearer and facilitator of a hearing voices group, INTERVOICE supporter,Italy  
Geraldo Peixoto and Dulce Edie Pedro dos Santos, São Vicente - Est. São Paulo - INTERVOICE supporter, Brasil  Joanna & Andrzej Skulski, INTERVOICE supporters, Polska  
Darby Penney, INTERVOICE supporter and President, The Community Consortium, Inc., Albany, NY, USA  
Jacqueline Hayes, researcher at Manchester University about hearing voices in 'non-patients' and therapist, UK  
Phil Virden, MA, MA, Executive Editor, Asylum Magazine, UK  
Matthew Morris, Mental Health Locality Manager, East Suffolk
Outreach Team, Suffolk Mental Health Partnerships NHS Trust, INTERVOICE supporter, UK  
Ros Thomas, Young Peoples Worker, Gateway Community Heath, Wodonga Victoria, INTERVOICE supporter, Australia  
Dr. Rufus May Dclin/ Consultant Clinical Psychologist, INTERVOICE supporter, UK  
Dr. Simon Jones, INTERVOICE supporter, UK  
Dr. Louis Tinnin, Psychiatrist, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA  
Linda Gantt, PhD, Intensive Trauma Therapy, Inc., USA  
Burton Norman Seitler, Ph.D., New Jersey Institute for training in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Child and Adolescence Psychotherapy Studies  
Ron Bassman, PhD., Founding member of International Network Towards Alternatives for Recovery (INTAR), Past president of The National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy, USA
 Michael O'Loughlin, Adelphi University, NY, USA  
Dorothy Scotten, Ph.D., LCSW, USA  
Marilyn Charles, Ph.D., The Austen Riggs Center, USA
 Bex Shaw, Psychotherapist, London, UK
 Ira Steinman, MD, author of “TREATING the 'UNTREATABLE' : Healing in the Realms of Madness”, USA
 Mike Lawson, Ex Vice Chair National MIND UK 1986-1992, INTERVOICE supporter, UK  
Dr. Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D., B.C.S.A., International Center for Humane Psychiatry, USA  
Ron Unger LCSW, therapist, USA  
Daniel B Fisher (Boston, MA): Person who recovered from what is called schizophrenia, Executive Director National Empowerment Center; National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/survivor Org., member of Interrelate an international coalition of national consumer/user groups, community psychiatrist, Cambridge, Mass., USA  
Mary Madrigal, USA
 Paul Hammersley, University of Manchester, INTERVOICE supporter, UK  
Phil Benjamin, mental health nurse and voices consultant, Australia
 Eleanor Longden, Bradford Early Intervention in Psychosis Sevice, England, UK
 Karen Taylor RMN, director Working to Recovery, Scotland, UK  
Bill George, MA, PGCE, Member of the Anoiksis Think Tank, Netherlands
 Dr Andrew Moskowitz, Senior Lecturer in Mental Health, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
 John Exell, BA(Hons), Dip Arch, voice-hearer, sculptor, artist, writer, poet, UK.  
Tineke Nabben, a voice hearer who has learned to cope with her voices and student, learning to help other children and parents to cope with their voices. Germany  
Marcello Macario, psychiatrist, Community Mental Health Centre of Carcare, Italy, INTERVOICE supporter, Italy
 Ian Parker, Professor of Psychology, co-director of the Discourse Unit, Manchester Metropolitan University, England, UK
 David Harper, PhD, Reader in Clinical Psychology, School of Psychology, University of East London, England, UK
 Wakio Sato:, representative of the Hearing Voices Network - Japan. President of the Japanese Association of Clinical Psychology. The representative of an NPO named "Linden" for community mental health in Konko town, Okayama prefecture, Japan  
Suzette van IJssel, Ph.D., spiritual counsel and voice hearer, Utrecht, The Netherlands  
Jeannette Woolthuis, psycho-social therapist working with children hearing voices, The Netherlands
 Dr. Louise Trygstad, Professor Emerita, University of San Francisco School of Nursing, USA
 Erik Olsen, Board member ENUSP European Network of Users (x)-users and Survivors of Psychiatry and Executive Committee in European Dsability Forum (EDF)
 Astrid Zoetbrood, recovered from psychosis and voices, the Netherlands
 Christine Brown, RMN, Hearing Voices Network Scotland, INTERVOICE supporter, UK  
Rachel Waddingham,- Manager of the London Hearing Voices Project (inc. Voice Collective: Young People's Hearing Voices Project), trainer and voice-hearer, UK
 Joel Waddingham, Husband and supporter of someone who hears voices, sees visions and has other unusual experiences, UK  
Professor Robin Buccheri, RN, MHNP, DNSc, University of San Francisco, CA, USA
 Jørn Eriksen. Board member of INTERVOICE, the Danish Hearing Voices Network and The International Mental Health Collaboration Network, Denmark
 Douglas Holmes, voice hearer working in a Mental Health Service in Darlinghurst, Sydney, and facilitator of a hearing voices group, INTERVOICE supporter, Australia  
Matthew Winter, Student Mental Health Nurse and INTERVOICE supporter
 Anneli Westling, Relative of a voice hearer from Stockholm, Sweden  
Lia Govers, recovered voice hearer, Italy
 Molly Martyn, MA in Clinical Mental Health, Hearing Voices Network of Denver, USA  
Tsuyoshi Matsuo, MD, INTERVOICE supporter, Japan
 Janet M. Patterson RN, BSN, USA
 Odette Nightsky, Sensitive Services International, Australia  
Barbara Belton, M.S., M.S. trauma survivor who has recovered and former behavioral health professional, USA  
Luigi Colaianni, PhD sociologist, researcher, Community Mental Health Centre, Milano, Italy
 Teresa Keedwell, Voice Hearer Support Group, Palmerston North, New Zealand  
Maria Haarmans, MA, Canadian Representative INTERVOICE, Canada
 Ami Rohnitz, Voice hearer, Sweden  
Sharon Jones, University of York, INTERVOICE Supporter, England, UK
 Gail A. Hornstein, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Mount Holyoke College, USA
 Siri Blesvik, INTERVOICE supporter, Norway
 Lynn Seaton, mental health nurse, Scottish Hearing Voices Network and INTERVOICE supporter, UK  
Rozi Pattison, Clinical Psychologist, CAMHS, Kapiti Health Centre, PARAPARAUMU, New Zealand
 Suzanne Engelen, Experience Focussed Counselling Institute (efc) and member of INTERVOICE. She is an expert by experience and also works for Weerklank (Dutch Hearing Voices Network) and the TREE project, The Netherlands

Further information:

INTERVOICE - The international community for hearing voices.
Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices.
We have found there are many people who hear voices, yet are not troubled by them or have found their own ways of coping with them outside of psychiatric care. This is very significant as it shows you can hear voices and remain healthy.
However, there are also significant numbers of voice hearers who are overwhelmed by the negative and disempowering aspects of the experience. Many are diagnosed as having a serious mental health problem such as schizophrenia – a harmful and stigmatizing concept, in our eyes.
The experience of hearing voices prevents some people from living a fulfilled life in society (especially those in psychiatric and social care) and can lead to having a very poor quality of life. We seek to enable voice hearers troubled by their experience to change their relationship and attitude to their voices and to take up their lives again. We also want to ensure that our innovatory approach is better known by professionals, family members and friends.
We have spent the last 20 years trying to better understand why some people can cope with the experience and others can’t. We have discovered that those people who are not able to cope with their voices, on the whole have not been able to cope with the traumatic events that lay at the roots of their voice hearing experience.
Many voices can be unthreatening and even positive. “It’s wrong to turn this into a shameful problem that people either feel they have to deny or to take medication to suppress.” - Professor Marius Romme

See articles about our work with children here:

Silencing unwelcome voices in children, The Guardian, 22/11/2001  A psychosocial therapist in Holland has adapted an innovative approach to voice hearing to help very young children dispel the imaginary friends that become realistic foes. Read article here
'She was like a personal coach': An account of hearing voices as a child, The Guardian, 16/11/2001. Read article here
Most children hearing voices stop within three years, Royal College of Psychiatry, 03/09/2002. Read article here  

Beyond redemption? - Critique of an article by Peter Stastny on treatment for first "psychotic episodes".

2009-10-17T11:54:00.007+02:00

Via Gianna's blog, Beyond Meds, I just came across an interesting article by Peter Stastny on MIWatch.org. Although I widely agree to Peter Stastny's observations, two things bother me about his article. One of them is the misconception I see also Peter Stastny obviously holds, that Scandinavia must be paradise when it comes to services offered by the mh system. This is not so! I left the following comment at the post:

Peter Stastny here makes it sound like living in Scandinavia almost is a guarantee for more humane and recovery-oriented care to be provided when a person goes through a "psychotic" crisis. Nothing could be more wrong. "Need adapted treatment", also called the "Vestlapland's model", is, as the name suggests, restricted to a region in Finland, namely Vestlapland. There have been other recovery-oriented treatment approaches that were inspired by the Vestlapland's model, respectively by Soteria and similar projects. For instance the Swedish Parachute Project. All of them have been geographically restricted to more or less minor areas, and many of them are not employed anymore today.

It is true, that community care widely has replaced especially long-term hospitalizations. However, a closer look at how this community care does - NOT - work, shows that it is in fact nothing but what you might call "hospitalization in the community", or, more precisely, on the margins of community. Today, the biological model and thus the almost exclusive reliance on psychotropic drugs as "treatment" dominates psychiatric "care" in Denmark and Norway entirely. In hospital as well as in the community. People aren't warehoused behind the brick walls of a locked ward. They are chemically restrained warehoused in halfway houses respectively in an assisted living facility - more often than not of poor quality; there have been numerous scandals about gross overmedication as well as intolerably filthy and run-down environments here in Denmark over the past years - or, if they're lucky, in their own apartment and at the nearest drop-in center.

About 90 per cent of those who enter the system and receive a "psychosis" or "schizophrenia" label end up as revolving door patients, and on disability.

De-institutionalization has widely failed in Denmark, because it was (mis-)used in order to save the state money, not in order to provide more recovery-oriented services to people in crisis. In the meantime, the overall failure of community mental health care has Danish politicians ask for the re-establishment of hospital beds on locked and secured wards, for the implementation of AOT-laws, as well as for several other initiatives, such as the re-establishment of seclusion rooms, that inevitably will bomb mental health services in this country back to the good old asylum-days. It doesn't occur to anyone that the problem may not be the form - community instead of hospitalization - but the contents - recovery-oriented services instead of drugs, drugs, and even more drugs.

The situation in Norway, Sweden, and as far as I am informed also in Iceland is that AOT-laws already do exist, and are excessively used, and that at least the mh system in Norway has hospitalization facilities at its disposal so as to be able to incarcerate a vast number of people long-term. Norway also is the European country with most incidents of involuntary hospitalization and "treatment", as far as I know, Denmark holds a sad third or fourth position on this list.

By and large, also the psychiatric establishment in Scandinavia has been successful defending a purely biological, and in addition widely on coercion based, "treatment" model, and preventing alternatives from as much as being publicly discussed, or even becoming known to a broader public. IMHO, our system is anything but a model system. And it looks like it will be even less so in the future.
_______________

The other disagreement I have concerning Peter Stastny's article is that also he, as most professionals, seems to believe that when people first had their second, third, or umpteenth "psychotic break" they're beyond redemption. Why his article entirely focusses on alternative treatment options for first "psychotic episodes". I can't tell you exactly how many times I had a "psychotic break" before I eventually received the guidance that made it possible for me to, I dare say once and for all, resolve crisis, but this last of my crises certainly wasn't my first one.

I have no doubt that crisis is "addictive", and habit-forming. The longer and more often someone employs a certain pattern of behavior, certain coping strategies, the more ingrained, probably also neurologically, it becomes. On the other hand, my compared to a teen or twenty-tear-old relatively more extensive life experience also was a huge advantage to me throughout the process of working things out. I'd say, all in all, my chances to recover were maybe different in kind but no smaller than any "first psychotic break" individual's.

No one should ever be regarded "beyond redemption". Recovery is possible and should be aimed at, no matter how many "psychotic breaks" someone has experienced. The services Peter Stastny, and others, are so eager to make available to people who experience their first crisis ought to be available to everyone, disregarded whether they're going through their first, second, or umpteenth crisis.

"Psykisk sårbar" - "Mentally vulnerable". The new, politically correct term in Denmark

2009-10-12T02:16:00.004+02:00

There's a new trend emerging here in Denmark. The politically correct term for people in emotional distress is no longer "mentally ill" (psykisk syg) or "insane" (sindssyg - yup, both the "experts" and the media have a preference for this truly value neutral term, especially when it comes to "the schizophrenics"), it is "mentally vulnerable". Beautiful, huh? Like renaming the house slave as housekeeper, or lobotomy as psycho-surgery... Everybody of course just loooves this new term. It sounds so empathetic, so loving and caring, doesn't it?

One of those who are at the leading edge concerning this linguistic revolution is former Danish prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, who recently launched one more amazing website (check out the vid - and cry; no need to speak Danish btw, his facial expression says it all) for, yeah, "mentally vulnerable" people and their relatives.

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, whose daughter suffered from "depression", and eventually felt so respectfully listened to, also by her father, that she couldn't bear it anymore - certainly because of the "illness" - and ended her life, now wants to compensate for this tragic loss by publicly pleading the "mentally vulnerables' " cause. As we all know, these, uhm, people don't really have a voice of their own (that's probably why Poul Nyrup didn't hear the least, although his daughter screamed and shouted right into his ears), so they need every NAMI-parent available to speak for them.

"Schizophrenia is a persistent and serious mental illness," it reads on Poul Nyrup's brand new website. Among a whole bunch of other lies. It seems, Poul Nyrup is in dire need of a Truth Injection. Maybe I'll take pity on him and e-mail him one, one of these days. Being no more "mentally vulnerable" than anybody else, and thus able to speak for myself. But frankly I fear, Poul Nyrup's condition is rather persistent and serious, with treatment-resistant denial being one of the core symptoms.

"What a show!" - Oprah is going to feature Jani Schofield

2009-10-06T19:31:00.004+02:00

"An article in the LA-Times, a radio interview (...) a book, hope for a movie contract,..." I forgot to mention something of the most sought-after by every true narcissist: An appearance on The Oprah Show.

Yeah, Michael Schofield made it! Oprah is going to feature Jani's absolutely unique case in her show. Congrats Michael! Here's to you:

(Indeed, the very last words Peter Gabriel sings in this vid are: "Go to hell!"...)

Stephany has written more about the upcoming event here.

Concerning Stephany's doubts whether the show will be one-sided pro-drugs, just watch the Pfizer-ad at the top of this page.

Rosensfole. An ancient Norwegian folk song

2009-09-26T01:21:00.001+02:00

A collaboration between the Jan Garbarek Group and Agnes Buen Garnås, one of Norway's best renowned folk singers.

apples and elderberries

2009-09-24T11:11:00.004+02:00

In Scandinavian and English mythology elders give protection from evil, so they mustn't be cut down without asking for the spirit of the tree, the Elder Mother's, forgiveness first, or she will take revenge.

I always ask for forgiveness. Not only elder trees. Nature isn't a resource. It's there in its own right.

Awesome lecture by Will Hall

2009-09-18T21:20:00.005+02:00

Gianna has posted Will Hall's lecture "Coming off medication; a harm reduction approach" on her blog. Will held the lecture this afternoon at First World Congress Hearing Voices in Maastricht, Netherlands. Click the link at the top of this post to get to Gianna's blog where you can listen to it.

Freudian slip of the month

2009-09-17T18:44:00.004+02:00

The Danish media today reported that the "battle against suicide among the mentally ill has been fruitless". Statistically, once every other week a labelled person commits suicide while incarcerated at a psych prison. In spite of, as the media has it, an increased focus on the problem, various plans of action, increased screening for suicidality, and a lot more controlling measures applied to those, who are assessed to be suicidal, the number of suicides at psych prisons has remained stable. "In spite of"??? Well well...

While surfing the net for blog entries about the matter, I came across a post entitled "Kamp mod psykisk syge slår fejl", which translates into "the battle against the mentally ill has been fruitless".

My comment: "While I suppose the choice of words wasn't a conscious one, the title of the post is right on. It is indeed a "battle against the 'mentally ill'" psychiatry (and society) are conducting. Unfortunately though, there's a limit to how fruitless it has been so far. Psychiatry is actually quite efficient, as the unchanged suicide rates suggest."

Normality

2009-09-17T01:54:00.002+02:00

Who needs shrinks?

2009-09-10T00:49:00.006+02:00

From The Last Psychiatrist's blog: "However, most of these 'patients' do not need these medications, most do not need psychiatry at all. Of course many do, they are truly sick and but for psychiatry their lives would be chaos."

I'd say, the only reason why the lives of those "many" and "truly sick" people he obviously refers to here, and of whom I'd have been one myself, aren't chaos is that psychiatry has, successfully, destroyed these lives. Not perhaps because it has helped the people sort things out.

But well, he's a psychiatrist, right? And he's no Loren Mosher...

BTW: Last time I was "truly sick" was in 1999, when I'd caught the flu.

"Search inside your heart..."

2009-09-06T13:26:00.003+02:00

Facebook group "The incarceration of John"

Conference "Recovery: A Human Right"

My YouTube-comment: "What is traumatizing to human nature? The very normal though also very unnatural circumstances, that alienate it from itself. Unfortunately, violence is just all too normal in our culture. Biopsychiatry being a kind of meta-violence, as it violates those, who react to our culture's violence. (...)"

The end of suffering - genes and schizophrenia

2009-09-03T21:49:00.004+02:00

This is a post I wrote for Gianna Kali's blog Beyond Meds. I publish it here too, as Gianna's blog has no comment function for now. So, feel free to tear me to pieces. Still, it would be nice if you considered this blog's comment politics...

The end of suffering- genes and schizophrenia

"Det är synd om människorna," is an often quoted line from August Strindberg's A Dream Play. Translated into English, the line becomes: "Human beings are to be pitied," which is a correct literal translation. Nevertheless, it fails to capture the very essence of the Swedish original, and often leads to the misunderstanding that Strindberg intended to say, human beings were to be pitied because of the suffering that is - being human. No, human beings are not to be pitied because their suffering in the world is without comparison, inevitable, and sometimes even endless. They're not to be pitied because of the suffering that is both humanity's greatest challenge and its greatest gift at the same time. There's nothing in nature, human or other, that doesn't serve a purpose. And there's only one purpose: life.

Human beings are to be pitied because they fail to recognize and acknowledge this. Because they have made suffering their worst enemy, whom they fight with all their power and strength. Because they have waged war on nature, not least on their own nature, on themselves, on life.

That is what Strindberg's line and A Dream Play, which Strindberg himself said was "the child of my greatest pain", as a whole is all about.

The Danish newspaper B.T., a tabloid, ran an article on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009, under the headline "Skizofrene fostre kan sorteres fra" - "Schizophrenic embryos can be screened out".

According to another article at the website of University of Copenhagen, "Genetic Causes of Schizophrenia", a group of European researchers has found chromosomal changes in individuals labelled with "schizophrenia", that they interpret to be the main cause of the "illness". Their research is now granted a fund of additionally 30 million Danish crowns, in part paid by Lundbeck, a Danish pharmaceutical company, specializing in drugs for the "treatment" of "mental illnesses", Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Cipralex/Lexapro is a Lundbeck-product, as is Serdolect, a lesser known "atypical antipsychotic", in part by the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation, and the Danish Medical Research Council.

The additional funding is granted in order for the researchers to develop diagnostic tools, a new generation of drugs, targeting the mutated, "defect" chromosomes, and tools to screen embryos for the chromosome changes in question, so that parents to be can choose an abortion if the embryo shows these chromosome changes.

The few critical voices that are heard here and there in the media don't go beyond questioning if it is "ethical" to screen out and dispose of embryos, that may or may not actually develop "schizophrenia" later in life, since the researchers admit, that it takes more than the identified mutated chromosomes for the "illness" to manifest. They also have found the specific chromosome changes in individuals who are not labelled, and do not display signs of the "illness", just as they found labelled individuals without the changes. So, basically, the results are not significantly different from what we have seen this kind of research conjure up so many times in the past.

Which obviously is significantly different, increased, once more, is our culture's belief in Social-Darwinism, and eugenic weapons in its war against our existential suffering, against our own nature. Because what the researchers really have found is not the cause of any biological brain disease, but the formal, biological effects of the challenges, humanity faces: social injustice, violence, abuse, exploitation, alienation...

At least since Paul Hammersley and John Read's meta study, we all know, that most people who are labelled with "schizophrenia", are survivors of abuse. And while Hammersley and Read concentrated on physical and sexual abuse, abuse has many faces. Most of what our culture values as "normal" in fact is unnatural, actually alienating us from (our) nature. It is a "toxic mimicry" of nature, to use Derrick Jensen's terminology. To expect our nature to submit to this toxic mimicry without resistance, and deny itself, is a kind of abuse. We're all traumatized by this abuse. It's what the Fall Of Man refers to. No one is innocent.

What we also know by now is that childhood trauma can change both neuronal pathways in the brain and genes. Like all form in this world, also genes react and adapt to the environment they're surrounded and influenced by. The form, our body and also our genes, is always a symbol, a sign, a "symptom", reflecting on a formal level whatever formal, existential, spiritual, psychological, social, etc. challenges we face by reacting to these challenges. A nonreactive entity, if it is a human being, a person, or a single gene, is not fit to survive in this world as it is defenceless exposed to it's destructive abusiveness.

Mutated chromosomes are not the cause of anything. Neither of "schizophrenia". They are a symptom - of the challenges, the social injustice, the abuse, the alienation, the violence and destructiveness we face in this world.

We can try to eliminate our suffering, our reaction to the challenges that surround us, and to gene-manipulate respectively abort humanity into a state of nonreactivity. It will be exactly this, the abortion of humanity. As nonreactive to our environment we will no longer be able to survive. Nonreactivity to the challenges we face will allow this world's destructiveness to unrestrained destroy not only the basis for our biological survival, but, and even worse, since our biological survival depends on it, the basis for our spiritual survival, for the survival of what makes us human: our souls, our suffering souls. We can try. While the researchers, and everybody else, are positive to have found the cause of "schizophrenia", as long as there's one single alive human being left on this earth, they will react to the world. To eliminate existential suffering, we will have to eliminate humanity. Although the Nazis were extremely efficient, murdering people who suffered in the way that is labelled "schizophrenia", although they sterilized everybody whom they did not murder, preventing them from having children, the percentage of people who met the criteria for "schizophrenia" did not decrease in Nazi-Germany. The percentage of Jews did. Remarkably. What does this tell us about the "genetic causes of schizophrenia"?

In the meantime, it nevertheless looks like humanity won't rest until it has not overcome but eliminated suffering by perfectionizing its cultural nightmare's alienation and deadness. It looks like we will eliminate nature, both our own and that around us - and end up perfectly inhumane. The latest research on the "genetic causes of schizophrenia", and the consequences it inevitably will have, is another huge battle won in our war against ourselves, on our way toward a perfectly inhumane world.

So I ask: Is it "ethical" to eliminate life's greatest gift to humanity - humanity itself?

I know, that this is a controversial viewpoint. 'You want people to suffer?!' I hear you, with disbelief. Yes. I want people to suffer. So that they can become aware and conscious. So that they can wake up in the dream, wake up from our cultural nightmare's emotional alienation and deadness. So that they can overcome suffering, realizing that what they thought was their worst enemy in truth is their best friend. So that they can become alive, in the true meaning of the word.

You may accuse me of romanticizing suffering, of being detached from reality, having my head in the clouds. You wouldn't be the first to do so. I'll answer you, that I've suffered myself. Indescribably. And I still do suffer. From being an alive human being. I wouldn't want to trade that for anything in the whole wide world. Suffering isn't a - romantic - accessory to life. It is the incentive necessary to bring about change, to have us keep walking on the road of constant change. And only as long as we keep walking that road are we truly alive. Suffering is not a superfluous accessory to life. There's nothing superfluous, dispensable, in nature. And suffering is natural. It is life.

Wolof - anyone??

2009-08-30T01:46:00.004+02:00

Sunday morning with Youssou N'Dour and a request: anyone out there who can translate what Youssou N'Dour sings in this vid?

BTW: "How come I gotta wake up early to go to work," is something I also often ask myself, me too...

Side effects

2009-08-24T14:33:00.006+02:00

When I was about 17 I came down with an inflammation in my left knee, a reaction to overwork. I wasn't aware of that, so went to see my GP for an explanation of what was going on. As it is GPs - and virtually all other doctors' too - habit, he prescribed one of Big pHARMa's wonder cures. This was a new drug, that still was in the experimental stage, not yet fully approved. So, yeah, I was acting guinea pig for Big pHARMa.

Luckily, I didn't experience as much as one of all the in part rather frightening possible side effects listed for the drug. And it did the trick, rather quickly in addition. I maybe was on that crap for ten days. At the most. I wouldn't even have started to take something with such side effects as those listed, if I'd been told I would have to take it for at least several weeks or months, not to mention for the rest of my life. And the side effects still were somewhat harmless, compared to those of psych drugs.

Anyhow, had I experienced as much as the suspicion of only one single side effect, I can assure everyone, I'd instantly thrown the pills out. That is, I had not waited for my GP to tell me what to do. I'd stopped taking the poison here and now. I've never had excessive trust in the products of the pharmaceutical industry beforehand. Neither in the infallibility of medical expertise. The only reason I gave these pills a try was that I couldn't wait to be able to get back on horseback again, which the inflammation in my knee prevented me from.

Now I wonder how on earth it is, that I hear so many people report all sorts of intolerable side effects of psych drugs, as in this blog entry for instance, while, nevertheless, these people stay on the drugs, waiting for their doctor to decide for them what to do. How come? What keeps all these people from taking control of their life, their well-being, themselves, instead of leaving it with someone, who obviously doesn't care and/or is rather incompetent?? I really don't get it. Is it the spellbinding effect? Can it be the spellbinding effect, when someone realizes they're experiencing side effects, that it is not the "illness" that causes the misery? Is it some sort of half- or unconscious need to repeat the trauma: "I don't deserve to feel good. - But since society doesn't accept a conscious choice of emotional suffering, I choose the suffering the side effects cause"? Or are people really that alienated from themselves that they unconditionally trust in anybody else but themselves to know what's good and right for them, even though their body and soul is screaming at them that this is not so? Anyone?

To prevent misunderstandings: Of course I'm not talking about people who are forced to take psych drugs. That's a different story.

Mari Boine - A voice against oppression

2009-08-19T12:01:00.005+02:00

Mari Boine - Gula Gula

Norwegian-Sami singer Mari Boine on the oppression of the Sami people and their culture, including the Yoik, the traditional Sami chanting:

100% survivor

2009-08-14T11:38:00.002+02:00

Beyond Belief

2009-08-09T18:49:00.006+02:00

Beyond Belief. Alternative Ways of Working with Delusions, Obsessions and Unusual Experiences, by Tamasin Knight, with a preface by Rufus May, is now available as a free download at peter-lehmann-publishing.com.

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)"

Good news about Ray

2009-08-07T00:46:00.002+02:00

MindFreedom International News - 6 August 2009
Win Human Rights in Mental Health
http://www.mindfreedom.org/ray - please forward

Ray Sandford Campaign Victory: New Psychiatrist is Official

Ray Sandford just phoned MindFreedom with some very good news.

As you may know, Ray is a 55-year-old Minnesota resident who has
received more than 40 involuntary electroshocks (also known as
"electroconvulsive therapy" or ECT).

Adding to his horror, Ray received these court-ordered procedures
against his wishes -- and even against his family's wishes -- on an
OUTPATIENT basis. That is, Ray would be woken up early in his group
home, and escorted to a hospital for his forced shock over and over
and over again.

Ray asked for help from MindFreedom, which kicked off a Ray campaign
activating people internationally.

Today, Ray said because of his campaign his new psychiatrist -- who
opposes forced electroshock -- has been officially approved by the
mental health system.

Ray already has a new attorney, who is moving toward changing Ray's
guardianship.

Meanwhile, because of the campaign the Minnesota state legislature has
scheduled a hearing this Monday, 10 August, on the subject of
electroshock of committed Minnesota residents.

For more info about campaign news, see the Ray Gateway at:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/ray

At the start of this Saturday's MindFreedom Mad Pride Free Live Web
Radio show -- which is on the topic of humane alternatives to this
kind of abuse -- you can also hear news updates about the Ray
Campaign, see:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/radio

poppies - and a thought

2009-08-06T14:38:00.007+02:00

The most marvellous monstrosity ever. Not the poppies. Humanity.

The roots of violence

2009-08-03T20:05:00.001+02:00

Need a gift for your shrink?

2009-07-27T03:24:00.005+02:00

Check out chapter three of Greg Craven's book What Is The Worst That Could Happen?, download a preview here. What I like about Greg Craven is that he manages to explain things in a way, that even shrinks have a chance to get it. "Research bias for dummies", something. Or: "Why most psychiatric science is junk". This could be the ultimate hate gift for your shrink. Well, right after Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child, that is, which, as someone recently told me, made her shrink exclaim: "Hell, this is the most awful book I've ever read!" and, subsequently, prescribe huge doses of Trilafon to her.

Psychiatry and politics

2009-07-20T01:37:00.006+02:00

One more reply to Will:

No need to apologize! As mentioned, I'm not an angel, me neither. And I've actually enjoyed this conversation too. I like conversations with people, who are open-minded. BTW, Gianna is right. There is a whole lot of judgement and anger, even hatred, out there. On both sides. I recently read a comment on a Norwegian blog, that stated that about 90 per cent of this world's population were traumatized, in one way or the other. It's certainly just an estimation, but in my opinion a very realistic one. Unfortunately. And if trauma isn't made conscious and worked out it gets acted out. Which means war. Like in the war against terrorism, the war against drugs, the war in Iraq,... you name it.

On juge un société à la manière dont elle traite ses fous. -Lucien Bonnafé

Of course it is society that makes psychiatry possible. And I want to emphasize, that I distinguish between the mental health system and psychiatry. It goes without saying: psychiatry was established in order to pathologize certain, unwanted behaviors and ideas, that couldn't be criminalized. Pathologizing behaviors and ideas means to declare them null and void. This quote from Jani's father's blog is one of the most obvious illustrations of what medically diagnozing behavior and ideas aims at: "With schizophrenics, you always have to try to rationalize with them. You have to try and point out where their thinking is irrational. It doesn’t work right then and there but the hope is that it will sink in over time and that Jani will learn to question her own thoughts." (my italics)

BTW, there lies an interesting contradiction in psychiatry's practice of pathologizing and declaring certain thoughts to be "irrational", while no one ever seems to doubt the report of "symptoms" by the identified "patient" to be other than rational.

Well, the thing is, that "psychosis", "schizophrenia", is a reaction to having one's thoughts and feelings declared null and void (because they're unwanted). I dare say, that every single individual who has experienced "psychosis" as a result of psychological trauma (and usually physical abuse involves psychological trauma as well) - in contrast to those, whose "psychotic" symptoms are a reaction to purely biological stressors, food allergies, adverse reactions to drugs, etc. - has had their own thoughts and feelings invalidated in one or the other way. To an extent, that eventually makes them doubt the value of their own, genuine thoughts and feelings themselves. And the moment one's true self starts to protest this invalidation, psychiatry steps in, and accomplishes what others weren't able to accomplish. Because they couldn't scientifically prove one's thoughts and feelings to be without value. Psychiatry can. Or, it claims to be able to. The invalidation of one's personality is scientifically, and thus, taken the status of science in our society into account, indisputably and irrevocably justified. That's why psychiatry has to be a (medical) science. Religion doesn't have that power anymore in our society today. Although it once had: what psychiatry is to our modern society, the Inquisition was to Pre-Enlightenment society. Notice that psychiatry emerges about at the same time as society enters the age of Enlightenment, and the Inquisition comes to an end.

When more and more people turned away from religion as the truth, and instead enthusiastically embraced science, the Inquisition was no longer an acceptable tool to control and oppress unwanted behavior and ideas. It needed to be replaced by a tool, that at least on the surface gave the impression of being scientific in order to be acceptable to an enlightened society.

Psychiatry is one of society's tools to enforce our culture's ideology on people. Probably the most effective one. Where educational institutions for example have great but nevertheless limited influence on individual perception, psychiatry's influence is virtually unlimited. Any kind of being in this world can be defined a mental illness (cf. homosexuality, or being a runaway slave), and while it wouldn't occur to anyone to remove real illnesses like the flu or cancer from the ICD, or to add any diagnoses that lack scientific proof of being an illness to it, psychiatric diagnoses are added to and removed from the DSM faster than you can say "DSM"... always perfectly in line with current cultural norms and values.

Now you'll maybe object, and say that people do suffer and need help. I agree. But the help people really need, is to have their suffering validated, not invalidated. To blame individual biology for suffering, that is caused by cultural norms and values, is to invalidate the suffering.

The vast majority of people I know, I myself included, know that they suffer and are in need of help. It isn't true that they lack insight by definition. The only idea they lack insight in regard to, is the idea that they would suffer from a brain disease and would need medical treatment. Non-psychiatric alternatives like Soteria don't need to force anybody, or lock as much as one single door. Because, in contrast to psychiatry, they validate people's suffering, so people stay voluntarily. Just as I didn't cancel, was late for, or missed out on one single therapy session. Because I felt that both my suffering and my being in general was validated. Not entirely - for example, I experienced being referred to as a "patient" as an invalidation - but enough to have me stay.

As for psychotherapy in general, and your experience in particular, that I've heard countless parallels to over time, it is dominated by psychiatry's (society's) ideology. That is, it doesn't validate the individual in crisis and his/her (human) experience. It pathologizes both. And once you and your (human) experience are declared pathological, it can't be you, but has to be the therapist, who knows all the answers. It doesn't work out for the individual in crisis, but it does for society. Society prefers to put up with a growing number of people on disability, people who aren't chronically ill, but chronically denied their true answers, their true selves, to being confronted with these true answers.

Something about intellectual property and copyright

2009-07-19T00:06:00.004+02:00

It's not that I don't feel honored, finding out, that someone thinks my latest reply to Will is worth reposting on their blog.

What pisses me off is that, while I wasn't asked whether I'd agree to a reposting, I'm not given any credits, no link, nothing, on the contrary, to make the impudence complete, at the bottom of the blog it says: "Copyright 2008 Seven Human Needs". WTF is the meaning?! Rhetorical question. Just watch the Google ads at the blog...

Of course, I'm not the only one. Robert A. Senser at Human Rights for Workers obviously is a favorite of this spam-blogger.

Another reply to Will

2009-07-18T02:12:00.008+02:00

Here's another reply to Will at WillSpirit:

My way to union with the great consciousness... I'm still on my way, Will. I haven't arrived there yet. Like you, I've had certain experiences, epiphanies, peak experiences... I've even spent longer periods of time in a state of inner peace. But I've not attained that state of mind once and for all. I know, that such a place exists, because I've been there. But if being there was a constant thing, at least my Danish blog would look a lot different from what it does. Probably also this one, although it usually isn't quite as pugnacious as the Danish one.

This is something, I thought I'd write a post on its own about, but I may as well at least mention it here and now. For a long time, I've felt sort of an obligation to frequently comment on news articles and stuff on my Danish blog. There are no other blogs commenting critically on what's going on specifically in the field of psychiatry in Danish. And surprisingly many people have told me, they have difficulty navigating and reading sites in English or American. The mh system in this country hasn't only a monopoly when it comes to treatment, but also in regard to which information gets out, and which doesn't... To a far greater extent than in English -speaking countries. Go figure...

One aspect of this is that I found myself constantly confronted with lies, prejudice, ignorance, cynicism, ... in short: violence, exhibited by the news articles etc. I had to read in order to comment on them. Another is that the same violence regularly tried to make it to my comment field, respectively made it to my mail inbox. It is toxic, and it is extremely contagious. It goes straight for the ego, and if you don't watch out, the ego will take control and start a war. Especially if you've been a victim of violence before. You can observe it all over the mh blogosphere. Egos trying to get at each other, acting out their personal trauma. And repeating it, over and over again. Guess, who gets hurt...

I'm certainly no saint. I've engaged in several wars lately. Increasingly belligerent. Acting out and repeating past trauma. It gives a very short-lived, superficial satisfaction to make someone one's enemy and bash them, with some scathing irony for instance. But when the moment of satisfaction is over, it does nothing but hurt. And then you need another moment of satisfaction. And another one, and another one... I've actually suffered a whole lot, recently. Enough to have me reconsider the future of my blogs, and my engagement in the mh-debate on the internet in general. That's what suffering is good for. To bring about change.

Well, drugs. Drugs certainly can open some doors. Hallucinogens especially. And they don't altogether have the sedating, deadening effect that neuroleptics have. However, they altogether alienate oneself from oneself to a certain extent. Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiRvnfrs8UM - BTW a channel I recommend, SFJane.

As for me, I didn't have to clear my brain of pharmaceuticals. I spent my youth moving in what you might call "alternative" circles, where natural drugs like marijuana etc. weren't regarded a big problem, while everybody was highly suspicious of any kind of chemicals. In addition, psychoanalytical theories were the thing. I didn't even know, that psychiatry - or rather: the pharmaceutical industry - had come up with a concept of emotional distress being brain diseases, before I saw myself confronted with the "news" in context with my last crisis in 2004. It had always been a matter of fact to me, that whatever the problem, it certainly was a reaction to one's environment. The massive propaganda everywhere of course had me doubt this matter of fact for a while. It just didn't add up, it made no sense. What made sense, was reading Laing's The Divided Self, and what I remembered from Joanne Greenberg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, which I'd read as a teen.

Well, and then add to that the controlled and oppressed individual's pronounced desire for freedom and self-determination on the one hand, and her just as pronounced suspiciousness towards any authority that tries to take control and oppress on the other. Of course my reaction was: "I alone know what's best for me. No one and nothing messes with my mind but I myself." Luckily, this was respected. So, the only drugs I still will have to clear my brain of are caffeine and nicotine...

I've tried a benzo, once (apart from a suicide attempt that involved valium, but that's a different story). Nasty. Very very nasty. And it would have been even more nasty to experience that amount of loss of control, if it had happened during crisis. That is, during a period of time, where my true self openly rebelled against being controlled and oppressed. - Does psychiatric "treatment" worsen "symptoms"? It certainly does. Maybe not always, but often enough. Involuntary "treatment" by definition.

Last but not least, I was sort of intuitively convinced, that taking anything to numb out the pain would be extremely counterproductive, as I was determined as hell to find out, what the meaning was. And how were I supposed to figure out the meaning, when the pain was gone?

"A major objection to the use of the anti-psychotic drugs in acute crisis situations is that because they are such powerful central nervous system suppressants they may well have the effect of preventing crisis resolution. They are powerful enough to abort a psychological process, which if supported and understood, would resolve itself in the context of a relationship," Loren Mosher says here.

The "symptoms" I experienced were indeed signposts, that showed me, clearly and unmistakably, whenever I was on the right track, trying to figure out what had caused what was going on. Without having them show me the way, the whole therapeutic process would have been a grope in the dark, unlikely to lead anywhere, since I was the only one who had the answers to all of my questions. In spite of what many people seem to expect, therapists obviously aren't there to know and tell their clients all the answers. Their only task is to suggest different angles from which to look at the questions, so that one of these angles hopefully may reveal the answer.

Numbing "symptoms" with neuroleptics leaves the client dependent on the therapist coming up with the answers, which actually is, what I see happen all over the place. - A Norwegian blog-neighbour of mine once was told by her therapist: "You know, the problem with you is that you resist being formed." Of course, my Norwegian blog-neighbour did the only reasonable thing, and ended the relationship with this "therapist". - Very convenient for society. But it won't do for the client, as it doesn't provide anything but, at best, just another false ego-identification.

So, in fact I embraced my "symptoms", because I knew, they were showing me the way out of my suffering.

I understand, that not everybody at any time has the opportunity to do as I did. The circumstances were without doubt in my favor. I had the space around me, that allowed me to "freak out" whenever I needed to, and I had someone, who supported me (almost) unconditionally. Most people unfortunately don't have that today. But that does far from mean, that they shouldn't have it. If I say, drugs are okay to use, I indirectly approve of the current paradigm of "care". I can't do that.

Basically, what I would like people to realize is that it doesn't matter what kind of label, how "serious" the problem, drugs simply aren't the answer, other than as a very short-term emergency solution, and never against the will of the person in crisis. I'd like to see the very common misconception eradicated, that there would be people, whose suffering is too severe to be met other than by (massive and long-term) drugging. There aren't. Everybody has the potential to recover, and no one should ever be prevented from it. Actually, it is often those, who suffer the most, and who seem to be "lost cases", who make the most remarkable recoveries. Given they get the right support. Because their extreme suffering also means an extreme incentive to change, and extremely clear signposts on the way to change. This is, what I reacted the most to in your initial post. That some people would need to be drugged. They don't. This, and the idea that all someone would be able to achieve, was learning to live with a chronic illness. It is not a chronic illness.

Compared to what is perceived as "normal" - and "normal" does not equal to "natural", "normal", in contrast to "natural", is a cultural construct - I certainly have "issues", still today. I'm still sensitive to noise, "noisy" visual perceptions, I still hear voices, I haven't abandoned but re-interpreted my "delusions". Does that make me an ill person? I don't think so. I think, it actually makes me more natural, so to speak, than I would be if I were perfectly adjusted to our normality. To me it's a strength, not an illness. Although it also is a lot more challenging to live in our "normal" and increasingly alienated from (human) nature world, and be naturally sensitive, than I imagine it to be for someone, who's sufficiently alienated from their own human nature and nature in general to be regarded well-adjusted to society, I wouldn't want to trade off that sensitivity for any amount of well-adjustment. I wouldn't want to trade off my true self, my true nature, for just another false ego-identification, that inevitably would lead to crisis again and again. In the end, if people think, I'm "weird" because I hug a tree, or have conversations with garden spiders, that's their problem, not mine.

I do understand and respect people who choose long-term medication when indeed they don't have a choice. That people aren't given a choice, is what I can't and won't condone.