tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502332727845937105.post3003394451141810912..comments2024-03-05T00:35:33.495+01:00Comments on Different Thoughts: Open Dialogue - A critique in reply to Will HallMarianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16273435151682585281noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502332727845937105.post-66552989192267312942012-08-21T13:04:07.985+02:002012-08-21T13:04:07.985+02:00Hi Buteyko_Man, thank you for your comment!
Jus...Hi Buteyko_Man, thank you for your comment! <br /><br />Just a few years ago, it was rather difficult to find more detailed information about Open Dialogue on the net or elsewhere, except for the books (that I hadn't read) written or co-authored by Jaakko Seikkula. That has since changed, thanks to the growing international interest in the approach, so I got many of the questions I had about it answered -- not least by Daniel Mackler's film, and by talking to him and others who have a more profound knowledge of Open Dialogue -- and I'm a lot less critical toward it today than I was two years ago.<br /><br />I learned for instance that Open Dialogue, too, arranges for separate meetings, if there's a family member who acts abusive toward the others, and is unwilling to end the abuse immediately, and also that, if ever there's any doubt, any conflict, they usually side with the person in crisis.<br /><br />My only criticism today would be that they still make use of the term "psychiatry", and that they, although on very rare occasion, send people into a <i>hospital</i>, instead of to some kind of crisis respite house. But those are basically formalities, and more important, I'd like to see them make even less use of psych drugs, preferably none at all. Especially when you can make contact with people as early as they do it in Western Lapland, I think it is absolutely possible to avoid drugs entirely.<br /><br />However, I am and will always be highly critical of "certain elements implemented" in a conventional context, and then renaming this still fundamentally pretty much bio-medical oriented approach "Open Dialogue", just because both the "patient" and their entire network is invited to join the "experts" in their discussion of the "illness" and "treatment". Open Dialogue without a radical change away from a bio-medical view of crisis, and toward a psycho-social one is not Open Dialogue. Unfortunately, it is what Open Dialogue, or "certain elements implemented", looks like in the conventional Danish system.Marianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16273435151682585281noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502332727845937105.post-12644041416451744252012-08-21T06:35:27.997+02:002012-08-21T06:35:27.997+02:00IN the 60s and forward, M. Scott Peck, M.D. was ab...IN the 60s and forward, M. Scott Peck, M.D. was able to keep many persons from having to go into the hospital by getting the family to gather around 40 people in a space and then Peck and his assistant would come in and do his community building sessions. They came together because of the breakdown of the person and in the process, there was a transformation of the entire community around this person. You can still see some of this in the films of Bob Roberts who created the program in Prison called Project Return. An amazingly humanizing program. It is possible to work with the toxic community around the person, however safety is essential and so if the community cannot protect members from some abuser who tends to split the community, that person is worked with outside of the community until such time as they can be integrated in some way. That can only happen when they too are assisted in their healing as their wounding of others comes always and I mean always from their having been previously wounded. In psychodrama of the reject, this also occurs as it does in the work of Systemic Constellation work begun by Hellinger and perfected by many others and still growing. Buteyko_Manhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12782324596137286775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502332727845937105.post-76560791276021860852010-08-30T01:03:24.783+02:002010-08-30T01:03:24.783+02:00MFV: I agree. All this "mental health care/tr...MFV: I agree. All this "mental health care/treatment"-stuff talk that in fact, let's face it, more often than not is talk about nothing else than illness, illness, and even more illness, sickens(!) me too, and I certainly don't want ever more of it. Ultimately, I'd love to see the entire mental health - or rather <i>illness</i> - industry, mainstream <i>and</i> alternative, vanish from the surface of the planet, and be replaced by an understanding of crises as a natural part of being human, not an illness needing treatment. I think, Open Dialog has a potential here, because even if people don't need <i>treatment</i>, all human beings need the possibility to communicate in order to come to an understanding of themselves and the world - and mostly crisis is a question of being able to make sense of the world, and oneself in it - and what Open Dialog offers is primarily communication. Unfortunately, it's still offered as <i>treatment</i>, not as a possibility to have one's basic human need for communication met. Much would be won if we could get entirely rid of pathologizing professionalism, if Open Dialog cut all ties to psychiatry, employed peers instead of professionals, and freed itself entirely from any medical terminology and thinking. If we were to do without any kind of organized help for people in emotional crises, though, we would have to bring about radical change in society first.Marianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16273435151682585281noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502332727845937105.post-70807382647235762672010-08-29T02:29:39.334+02:002010-08-29T02:29:39.334+02:00Good points, Marian.
Seems like I was rash in men...Good points, Marian.<br /><br />Seems like I was rash in mentioning Open Dialogue in my response to your comment on my blog. You apparently have had some experience with this approach to "treatment".<br /><br />1. The experts made the need for alternatives in the first place with the horrible sort of disservice they established. Imprisonment and torture are not the way to treat people you care about. These experts won't even hold themselves accountable for their own failures, instead they are going to blame the victim patient.<br /><br />2. Abusive situations exist, and excusing the abusers, or drawing them into the treatment process can definitely exasperate the situation, and can't be assumed to be the right course of action to take.<br /><br />I don't like "mental health" treatment. I'm not looking for holistic alternatives or eastern religion. I'm perfectly content not to have all that "mental health treatment" baggage to haul around with me everywhere I go. I have no regrets about leaving it behind me, in the past, where it belongs. I often wonder about the reasoning of those people who find it so difficult to do the same sort of thing. <br /><br />I do feel nobody should be mistreated the way so many people have been mistreated in the name of "mental health care". This is why alternatives need to be developed to the "treatment" that the state provides, to the "treatment" so many people find themselves stuck with.<br /><br />Nuff said.MindFreedom Virginiahttp://lunatickfringe.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502332727845937105.post-965462515874581002010-01-07T12:48:55.838+01:002010-01-07T12:48:55.838+01:00Thanks Mark. I must admit though, that Rossa has a...Thanks Mark. I must admit though, that Rossa has a point when she <a href="http://holisticschizophrenia.blogspot.com/2010/01/its-attitude-adjustment-time.html" rel="nofollow">writes</a> that to label family members "abusers" can make it difficult to engage them in a dialog, and thus to change attitude. Probably it would be better to talk about responsibility, and not to label the person as such, but focus on her actions instead. A person's actions can be abusive. That doesn't make the whole person an abuser.Marianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16273435151682585281noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502332727845937105.post-65318924126073972402010-01-07T01:24:50.265+01:002010-01-07T01:24:50.265+01:00Great post!Great post!Mark p.s.2https://www.blogger.com/profile/10529811159862096782noreply@blogger.com