I Don’t Believe in Mental Illness, Do You?

Michael Cornwall, Ph.D.

March 19, 2012

In November 2000, I anxiously stood before the gathered four hundred and fifty mental health professionals, administrators, peers and academicians and said, “Hi, I’m Michael Cornwall and I don’t believe in mental illness!”

I was the first plenary panel speaker at a big conference held in San Francisco. I didn’t believe in mental illness then or when I was in my own madness 46 years ago, or for the past 30 years serving people in madness. Jay Mahler was the only person who came to me and thanked me for saying I didn’t believe in mental illness. A great many people responded to me as if I was radioactive that day.

I’m prompted to write this blog because I just read an article by Marianne Farkas published by the The Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University entitled,  ”The Vision of Recovery Today: what is it and what it means for services.” She refers to people who need those services as having “Serious mental illness.” The article was written in 2007 but is still being recommended by leaders at the Center for its in-depth analysis of the recovery movement based on the vision that people have serious mental illnesses.

What we believe motivates much of what we do with our lives. Because I didn’t believe in mental illness, I spent my life since I was a young person that went through madness without medication or treatment asking, “If madness isn’t what bio-psychiatry says it is, then what is it?” I came up with my own definition of madness based on my personal experience, therapist work experience and study as a doctoral level researcher. I shared that in previous blogs.

If I had believed that madness was a genetic based brain disorder I may have become a bio-psychiatrist or welcomed taking medication for my madness.

Because mental illness is how bio-psychiatry refers to madness and every diagnostic formulation in their DSM, I never tell the people I serve that they have a mental illness. I don’t see them through that lens of the DSM.

I see them as I see myself,  a person who may have various experiences of human emotional suffering which sometimes takes the form of madness.

I was recently chastised by a national peer recovery leader for describing myself and others as able to experience human emotional suffering. He said suffering is the wrong word — distress is more accurate. I don’t believe so, because it doesn’t reflect my own experience or how I would describe others’ pain when in terror, despair or  madness. Distress is a mild form of suffering in my understanding. Kind of like indigestion that maybe a couple of Tums will relieve. But that’s just me, what I believe.

Our culture and world is rife with polarizing beliefs — political, religious etc. In a meeting, I heard someone publicly call a national leader of the peer recovery movement a Nazi because that peer leader had said that full recovery was possible. The person who called him a Nazi feared that if mad people believed him and didn’t take medication, there would be a holocaust of death and it would be on his hands. I have heard peers call bio-psychiatrists Nazis.

How far can we go in respecting and opposing each others’ extremely different belief systems before we lapse into name calling and seeing the other as evil?

I imagine some people believed Bob Whitaker had crossed the line when he wrote his blog, “The Taint Of Eugenics In NIMH-Funded Research.” Because of my beliefs I don’t believe he crossed the line.

I believe some practices — such as forced medication, seclusion in restraints, ECT for toddlers and children and teens and forced ECT for adults, prescribing psych drugs for children — are all human rights abuses. Do you think I have crossed the line by saying so?

Is there common ground we can stand on even with our polarized beliefs? That piece of common ground varies in size. Sometimes it doesn’t exist.

I don’t believe in mental illness. I believe we are sovereign souls that should not be imprisoned or be given forced treatments or offered any treatments that do us ANY harm when we are suffering human emotional suffering and madness. I believe we should be given respect, love and compassion.

What do you believe?

Michael Cornwall, Ph.D.

An Alternative Understanding of The Nature of Madness: I want this blog and the discussion it generates to help deepen our understanding of the mystery of madness and to help us learn ways to lovingly do self care when we are mad, and how to lovingly respond to others when they are mad.

Related Posts:

I Don’t Believe in Mental Illness, Do You? Comments RSS

80 thoughts on “I Don’t Believe in Mental Illness, Do You?”

      • Only because I have lived with mental illness do I believe it does exsist. I did not always have menatl illness, then in teens those brain chemicals or “imbalnce” resulted in a crzy life. When I was 25yrs old i got dignosis bipolar. Lithium brought a sanity back to my life! Sure I have tried to go off meds but each time the quality of life is severely disabled. I am coming to grips that my longevity is comprimised;howevr,
        for me, quality of life is much more precious. That’s my take on things! Be well, Cameron

        Report comment

    • I was trying to Google search the change in the way we perceive mental disorders, or the abandonment of such classifications. Rather than a Borderline View of disorders, one that is black and white, I’ve noticed I really have all disorders depending on the circumstances of life and experiences. When unable to be open-minded, these “disorders” come to light. The inability to be open-minded though, is confined in what was taught to me. As a child with less experiences, I was much more open-minded and capable of learning. The interference of certain peoples own perceptions that challenged my perceptions, created conflicts and increased Avoidance Personality Disorder. Physically abused people have always been significant burdens in challenging my perceptions. The most important thing to all of us is really being recognized. Those who currently have a lack of recognition, or those who received too much of it at a younger age, seek more recognition in erratic ways… I think the need for Recognition is equivalent to the need for Food. I think the DSM already understands this, but is incorrectly defining this idea in the replacement of SEX. Sex=Intimacy=Recognition = Purpose of Existance.

      Report comment

  2. What is astounding to me is people in general have come to accept that lying to people who are in distress, who have a psychiatric diagnosis is part of ‘medical treatment.’ Further, many believe that the misery and the real physical and emotional damage caused by the deleterious negative effects of drugs are simply, ‘tolerable side effects’ and claims/protestations of patients that the effects are not tolerable, but harmful are dismissed out of hand as a matter of course. So culturally what it means to me is biopsychiatry has operated by discrediting people with a diagnosis utterly and completely. Truly ironic all things considered—this is a premise which is contradictory to the core. With little to no understanding of the causes, or the conditions themselves, these professionals sure seem to be claiming they have a great deal of insight into their patients.

    Report comment

  3. Many people have swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the idea of “serious mental illness.” In other words, people with less “serious mental illness” may get well, but people with “serious mental illnesses” as in schizophrenia, obviously need their drugs. The intent of this label is to not question “serious mental illness” or even attempt to make it less serious, by seeing the value of the experience, and maybe even exercising a little humor. Certain professions and certain companies (I refuse to divulge which ones!) make their living off “serious mental illness” and encourage people to think of their condition in these terms.

    Report comment

  4. I know from personal experience that what you are saying is true. When I went through a breakdown in 1960, my parents helped my recovery with love and tender care. When my son collapsed in 2008, he was sectioned, forcibly medicated and nearly died from the antipsychotic side effects which doctors ignored. What’s more he was diagnosed mentally ill and this diagnosis is overshadowing his life and stopping him moving on with his life although he took himself off the drugs and has been perfectly well since.

    Report comment

    • Thank you for your comment Alix. I’m glad you got what you needed in the 1960′s and that your son survived his ordeal in the mental health system. Like many people, it sounds like he is trying to recover from that negative experience. It’s really sad that medical care that is supposed to help us can set us back in our lives.

      Report comment

  5. While I share most of the beliefs you expressed in this blog, I believe your terminology and title are counter-productive and polarizing. Maybe the most obvious common ground between anybody involved in mental health care is that emotional suffering and/or distress does exists (it is not faked). The debate/differences over how to address this suffering is not helped by wasting time and generating misunderstandings because of terminology, and the use of the two words “mental illness”. Some people not familiar with your thinking (isn’t that the ones you want the most to connect to?) will first understand your title as “I believe emotional suffering is faked”. I think you would engage more people with “I believe people can fully recover from mental illness without medications”. Nothing would be more sad than two opposite camps respectively saying “I don’t believe in madness” and “I don’t believe in mental illness” while for most purposes, the two terms are used interchangeably. I do believe that being provocative, should be reserved (as a last resort) to challenging beliefs, never naming or vocabulary.
    Anyway, I am a big fan and supporter of your blog.

    Report comment

    • Thank you Stanley. I hadn’t thought of the concern you raise. I hope anyone misunderstanding the title of the blog to mean I don’t believe in human emotional suffering will read to where I talk about the human emotional suffering of terror, despair and madness as more than emotional distress- and see that for me the term mental illness is a generic, innacurate bio-psychiatry label that memorializes the DSM, medical model paradigm which I don’t support. That is the reason why I don’t believe in mental illness.

      Report comment

    • I disagree with you totally. It is not an illness, no matter what the psychiatrists say or the drug companies, or anyone else. It is an anguish produced by a psychspiritual breakdown. It only becomes an illness when people are put on those toxic drugs that are supposed to “help.” We must be specific in what we say. Too bad if people do not like the terminology I use or Duane uses. We must be allowed to say what we mean and feel, whether others agree with us or not.

      Report comment

  7. There is an elephant in the room. It’s painted with a lurid Joker’s face. It is gigantic and covered with neon dollar signs and pictures of the grim reaper depicting various types of death and disease stemming from the use of psychiatric drugs. There is one for suicide, homicide, one for mass murder, one for an epidemic of soldiers killing themselves and others, one for neuroleptic malignant syndrome, one for tardive dyskinisia…others for despair, anxiety, and hopelessness. There are banners hanging from its neck with the names of various pharmaceutical companies and their specialized billion dollar brain disabling poisons. It is surrounded by a crowd of cheering ignorant. There are flags—hundreds with the names and faces of researchers and psychiatrists and not a few pastors. Right down the middle of the elephant’s head are the letters “FDA” and spilling from its rectum are the fetid wasted lives of hundreds of thousands!

    Report comment

    • Thank you David for sharing that incredibly vivid image description. For me it has archetypal power because I have witnessed it myself in the countless broken,lost and wasted lives that could have been healed, saved and renewed- but were not.

      Report comment

  8. I think a mental health diagnosis is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I agree with your headline, but I never try to say this because often when you say, “I don’t believe in mental illness,” people hear, “I don’t think you’re really in distress.” So I always challenge labels and diagnoses and partial recovery sold as all that is possible. I know that my suffering and distress and extreme emotional states were hard to go through, so I tell people, “I don’t believe that medications and labels are the best solutions for distress.”

    Report comment

    • Thanks Corinna, part of what I hope this blog will do is help us see that “mental illness” is the generic proprietary label that goes along with a DSM diagnosis and the treatments that are dictated by that diagnosis. By renouncing being mentally ill we are shaking off the bonds of that bio-medical brain disease definition of ourselves and repudiating the treatments it dictates. Of course another way of describing what we are experiencing must be available- hence my frequent question- “If madness isn’t what bio-psychiatry says it is, then what is it?” Human emotional suffering in all it’s painful ways of being experienced is not mental illness. Madness is not mental illness either.

      Report comment

  9. It is absolutely refreshing to hear your comment and your view onto the “madness” of psychiatry and also now should be labeled as a quack science .. The biggest error in the western world and about Western values by my observation, is that most of us have been emotional handicapped — by not being able to activate the other psychological ambiance , or so called the wisdom or the affective domain of our fellow men — We have been obsessed with human cognition and thus,with it, the human intelligence… and we praise intelligence, and yet from this mental faculty of intelligence, it also comes with some of the most “destructive” side — as in the case of the use of gunpowder, once used by the Chinese for festivities had deteriorated into bombs and now nuclear arsenals. This is not to say, we are wrong to have this marvelous cognitive/intelligence in our mental wholeness.. But it is the neglect and the total denial of the other humane side, the affective domain of our mental faculty — where yes, wisdom, heart, souls and all of the real Homosapien attributes of giving, of altruism, of caring have all been denied .

    I have found this absence or the total ignorance of the Affective Domain of men have been totally neglected by the psychological society and more so by the world psychiatric associations , why ? Too much of the free human influence by our hearts and souls (remember, not a religious soul) have been deliberately ignored — and denied.

    For the most part, only using this to illustrate of the many linguistic groups , by way of Latin and the Greek world — I dare say, Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish — and let me only use my second and third language who shared a great deal of the common romance/Latin heritage — we have to mental and psychological channels to reach human knowledge (I am also an avid cross cultural psychologist, by way of education, thus, I am proud to say, I am an educational psychology with multiple cultural backgrounds :) .. In our Spanish/Portuguese heritage, we have the verb to learn in two forms. First, to know, or CONHECER in Portuguese, and CONOCER in Spanish — is all about to seek knowledge — yes, thus far, I will credit into the mental chamber of Cognition.

    And we have also the verb “to know” as to saber .. in both Spanish and Portuguese ..and the3 word for Wisdom for both Spanish and Portuguese is SABEDORIA ….

    I am making a very strong hypothesis — that I doubt that this double channel of access to our human knowledge , of this duo tracks are less aware or even existing in the linguistic groups of Anglo/Germanic, Hebrew, Slavic, Scandinavian ..and many more …

    One more note — we are still evolving as human beings .. We have come from reptilian past to become HOMOERECTUS, yes, erected man, HOMEINTELLIGENS, intelligent human beings and we are still in process to become a real HOMOSAPIEN, and just to remind us all — In Italian, a much closer linguistic group to Latin — Wisdom is Sapienzia — thus, HOMO SAPIENs, has to be human who is capable to embrace the wisdom side of our mental faculty to become a full being — with both .

    Even the word PSYCHE, if one dare to remembering back, psyche was a Greek nymph who saw her image from the water — It meant, reflection … and in my teaching of cross cultural communication — The very important steps is all about thinking — We
    Think
    Think Again
    Introspection, or introspective thinking )of one self)
    Reflection or, reflective thinking ….

    I have two major men who had influenced me into becoming a better teacher/educator, then psychologist — and never a psychiatry – Carl Rogers who basically by me, was and is one hidden Zen man in the West — By using “unconditional positive regards”, basically he had ignored or denying all the scripts put forth by the world of psychiatry and psychology .. he stressed the ideas in being Congruent, and authentic — to be genuine and his work can not be taught, but yes emulated..

    Second, by way of Paulo Freire, another thinker , philosopher, educator who wrote “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and his key word — Conscientization .. yes, to put conscience into an organic, dynamic action —

    More so in this context, the deceptive practice of most psychological service and psychiatry – basically are “oppressing” those many suffering anxiety and discomfort ..

    More damaging results carried on by Sigmund Freud’s own American Nephew – Edward Bernays .. go to google or to your tube as all of you will find out the crimes committed by this one deception artist and his manipulation of the libidinal side of men , by way of Freud .. and Anna Freud also, have done psychology huge damage — I do admire Freud in being the pioneer in dealing with non medical human anxiety — where also by experiment, Freud had also discovered the wrongful use of cocaine as a tranquilizer and Hypnosis had resulted not into any cure — but a short term memory block — No wonde3r Gustavo Jung had to be departing from the commercialization of Freudian Psychoanalysis and his own nephew, Edward Bernays had it totally perverse where the entire war propaganda have been made to have “lied” to the US and had the US invading Guatemala and the destruction of the first democracy created in Latin America — Edward Bernays had also in the use of cigarette smoking , manipulating the women smokers into the use of cigarette as it becomes the control over the male “genitalia”… and after the war, by my measure, the Bernays use of psychoanalysis had almost using the same strategies as did in Nazi Germany — and the most deceptive element was his ideas to create desire and consumption to fuel a false democracy …

    Please feel free to find in youtube of “The Generation of the self ” — or just search for Edward Barnays ..

    The damage by way of psychoanalysis was tremendous, to even to these days and age — of the military industrial complex and the mass influences onto the psyche of the people.

    I urge the return and better analysis of the human Affective Domain, more than ever, we will not be efficient when we are less collaborative and self serving — Wisdom, soul, heart and many other good sides of our mental faculty from the deposits of AFFECTIVE DOMAIN, like our use of computer cells or spreadsheet — have to be activated — this perverse consumer culture of the perversion of psychology and the misuse by Freud’s own relatives have done enough damage to the world — which including of the pharmaceutical practice of the more perverse psychiatry ..

    March on — we have to be brave enough to foster change and into making us to become better man – in order to take that title of HOMOSAPIEN with wisdom and not intelligence alone.

    Report comment

  10. Très interessant.

    I don’t really know what I think on an in-depth level such as this.

    But on a surface, general, overall level I think it’s interesting to reflect
    on the terminology in question and realise that words have personal energy.
    They can mean different things to different people.

    In this context, my own personal reaction to this assumes that we’re
    reacting here against labels, boxes and types of medical treatment.

    That’s how I’m interpreting this anyway.

    I do feel that the word ‘illness’ can imply ‘cure’.
    It can carry the connotation for some of ‘incurable’.
    Of course this doesn’t have to be the case.

    I believe that all illnesses are theoretically curable,
    once we discover the cure.

    I believe that with mental health issues, some of the
    most useful things are:

    -To believe in a cure – to believe in a release from
    suffering (although not always total, could be zig zag progress)

    -To work to a ‘holistic’ model – heal mental illness on the mental
    level yes, eg. through psychoanalysis , CBT and more new age things,
    but also emotional (eg. love as you say is very helpful), physical (eg. exercise,
    a job, etc).

    There are probably more things I can think of!

    Natalie

    Report comment

    • Thank you for your comment Natalie. I believe more holistic, heart centered approaches and responses
      to human emotional suffering will emerge as the favored choice for people in need.

      Report comment

  11. i totally agree with your article: there is no such thing as “mental illness”. my only comment is that i don’t believe in suffering either. From a buddhist perspective “pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. i am not negating the fact that “we” have all experienced deep emotional pain, but suffering comes from not letting go of that pain. Attachment to our pain (attachment to anything) is what causes suffering. everything is impermanent, look @ our thoughts (even when we are in pain) they jump around everywhere so knowing that one does not have to suffer. For Buddha, all attachments (good and bad) ultimately cause suffering.

    so i do agree with all of your basic ideas, but i also don’t like the use of the term “suffering”

    Report comment

    • Thank you Danni. I’m not a Buddhist but I do understand that emotional suffering can be relieved. I see the path to the full liberation you describe for the people I have served for 30 years as requiring allot of heart centered care before such detachment is possible for most. Suffering is a universal subjective experience as you say, but the intensity of the trauma that has caused the suffering determines whether one may ever be able to exercise the Buddhist option of letting go of the inner emotional pain. I have worked with victims of every kind of abuse and trauma from ages 3 to 80. Some were victims of extreme physical and psychological torture. Suffering at the hands of their abusers and torturers was not optional, especiiallly for the innocent children.. The concept of mental illness as a theoretical construct aimed at describing such human emotional suffering makes a mockery of the terror and unbearable pain so many have suffered.

      Report comment

    • Good point, Danni. My understanding of the Four Noble Truths is that the world is indeed full of suffering, that most minds are unliberated and ego attached. Gautama had to walk through his own existential crises and dark nights of the soul before he saw a path to the liberation of letting go, of accepting that pain (and joy, boredom, etc.) are all inevitable, but suffering (what we add to our experience) is optional.

      So, if we look at intense suffering as an overwhelming of current capacities (as Dan Fisher’s emotional CPR defines it), we can acknowledge suffering is real for those experiencing it (the acknowledgement of which is important to healing). We can also hold the light of liberation, the promise that there can be an end of suffering, without getting tied up in words, which always fail to accuratelyncapturebmoment-to-moment experience anyway.

      One thing I like about reframing mental illness is that it takes a term that for many has an artificial (but self-perpetuating) solidity to it. Mindfulness practice, when supported for those in the midst of intense suffering, reveals that even intense emotional states are constantly changing, there are moments of ever-changing constriction, opening, ease, fear, discomfort, etc. The possibility for Liberation, or relief, is always but a breath away.

      I’d like to suggest another way to frame or describe emotional suffering, anguish, etc. Rather than trying to come up with a blanket term, we acknowledge that we can all be overwhelmed at times, and we seek and provide support for those in overwhelm as an opportunity to practice compassion, empathy, loving kindness. In the end, does it really matter what we call it?

      Report comment

      • I believe having empathy does mean we name human emotional suffering by it’s name. Sitting face to face with trauma abuse and torture victims for over thirty years has shown me that when a little girl shows me dozens of puckered scars on her back and asks me ‘Why did my mama put her cigarettes out on my back mr. Michael?” that my visceral response to her anguished and heart breaking question better be real. The litttle girl wasn’t in distress or overwhelm when the searing paint and terror was inflicted on her, she like so many others was suffering the living torments of hell. If you read my first blog on initiatory madness you will see that I suffered there too.

        Report comment

  12. I wouldn’t be concerned about those who, inevitably, yes, will call you a “denier”. I’ve been called one innumerable times, and, without exception, it has been by people who wouldn’t accept anything but the medical model. When it comes down to it, it is, in fact, these people, who are the true “deniers”, since by labelling it “mental illness” they deny the nature of emotional suffering (suffering is optional, yes danni, but isn’t it the suffering, not the pain, that actually gets labelled “mental illness”?), and thus they deny human nature.

    Somebody who is just the least open-minded and curious, if they’re in doubt, will not immediately call you a “denier”, but ask you what you mean when you say you don’t believe in “mental illness”. Those who will, well, you can try and explain to them till the cows come home, they will not listen to you anyway, no matter how you word your statement.

    Report comment

    • Thanks, I hear you Marian and always get allot from your great comments on facebook! I am not trying to change anyone’s mind who is a true believer in the medical model- been there, done that, will leave that to younger, wonderful souls like Bob Whitaker. I guess i am partly on a mission born of frustration to prompt the consumer survivor peer movement to realize what seems like a very obvious fact to me. As long as we let bio-psychiatry define what we experience subjectively when we are suffering emotionally and/or are mad with their proprietary generic label of ‘mental illness’, and since they have the legal power to inflict their treatments on us and have the power to have every single mental health services dollar be tied to a DSM diagnosis- then for a start, so as not to be at their mercy for another 50 years- we better come up with a first principle definition and viable explanation of what lands us in psych emergency that is different than theirs. I have attempted to share such an alternative causation theory of human emotional suffering and madness here on the several blogs I have written, along with a way of lovingly responding that naturally flows from such a formulation..

      Report comment

  13. It would seem, Dr. Cornwall, that what you DO believe is in the innate dignity, wisdom, strength and resilience of the human spirit which, when held in a loving and safe space, has the capacity to find meaning, healing and a deeper connection to life that can tranform the soul.

    Very powerful medicine!

    Report comment

      • It’s Alix again! After being traumatised by the care inflicted on him by the mental health services, my son would like to heal and move on but the mental health services will not allow him to do it. They are “lovingly watching over him”. He moved away and they found his mobile number and tracked him down. He is no danger to anyone. He has never been a danger to anyone.His “mental illness” was due to a bad infection and a bad reaction to antipsychotics which the psychiatrists failed to diagnose.He cannot heal while the mental health people insist on watching him. He doesn’t feel a free man. It makes my heart bleed

        Report comment

  14. There is another piece of this, Michael, and it is endocrine.

    My experience with psychosis is that blood sugar fluctuations and hormones (PMS and peri-menopause) can create havoc in the mind. For those of us very sensitive types who are also anxious, lack of sleep can also be triggering. For this reason, I call my “mental illness” an emotional/endocrine vulnerability. I also tell folks that I have an extreme sensitivity to lack of sleep.

    There may also be emotions or childhood trauma at the base of it, but my experience tells mental illness is a whole-body crisis.

    Report comment

  15. Victoria I have some holitic therapy friends in Ashville N. Carolina I’ll contact to see if they know of someone good near Memphis. If you check back here tomorrow I should know by then.

    Report comment

  16. “I Don’t Believe in Mental Illness, Do You?”

    I certainly DO NOT!

    However I do know that psychotropic drugs and electroshock cause brain damage even severe brain damage! I know that the so called ‘cure’ can kill the spirit and cause Parkinson’s, tardive dyskinesia, akathisia, dystonia to name some real effects.
    I also know that the diagnoses of so called ‘mental illness’ can deny those afflicted to loose their human rights. They are then considered less than human and can be forced to receive brain damage legally without having committed any crime. This for me is outrageous! It is the reason I will continue to expose this cruelty while I am able to do so!
    Thanks for continuing to ask this important question Michael!

    Report comment

  17. Thank you Mary for your tirelss and brave work fighting against the tragic destruction done by bio-psychiatry that you list in your comment above. I hope everyone clicks on your name above to see the Mind Freedom Ireland website that shows how you and your comrades are a huge force for change in this humnan rights struggle.

    Report comment

    • Thank you Tammy. I hope everyone will click on your name as I did and learn about your great mental health wellness work at the Hogg Foundation in Texas. What a rich history of social reform and advocacy you are part of there!

      Report comment

  19. But there’s a huge difference in not believing in mental illness and believing people shouldn’t be forced in to treatments. I have mental illness and want the anti-depressant and my counselor. I know I can function better and do better in counseling if I have both. I willing go and I willing tell my counselor and PCP if something is off or not working. While I’ve had experience with being forced as a kid and adult, I want help to overcome the abuse and neglect I suffered as an adolescent. But to say there’s no such thing takes away from those wanting and seeking help. If I say I don’t believe you are a male, does mean you aren’t? If 12 of us say we don’t believe you are of male gender, does that make us right? For those people who are so far gone in there mental problems that the only real fix is to force them isn’t a good thing to do, but what if we could get them into a state of awareness that these folks can function and find jobs/homes/a real life? I don’t know. Forcing someone against their will really shouldn’t be done. What if it’s a psycho who hurts people? Someone who hurts children and if forced to live in a halfway house and made to take meds that would prevent him/her from harming others, do we owe society safety? I do think if we start taking human rights away and medicating them just because someone says it’s a good idea will start the bandwagon down a dangerous road. Like sterilizing people who show they can’t make good parenting or personal choice to prevent more unwanted/abused children who grow up to perpetuate the problem, where do we draw the line? What constitutes the rules of this? What about when it gets out of hand another ‘purification’ begins like Hitler? Back to the beginning, there’s a huge difference between saying this doesn’t exist to saying people should be free to choose or not choose treatment.

    Report comment

  20. Thank you Daphne. I believe we should have access to counseling and meds if we chose them but don’t need to accept psychiatric brain disease model that defines our human emotional suffering as mental illness unless we chose to do that. Freedom to chose is our right.

    Report comment

  21. There might be such a thing called “mental illness” due to brain disease, the trouble is that a lot of other problems having simmilar symptoms due to other causes like stress,sleep deprivation, infection and physical break down get all lumped together under the same umbrella and treated in a similar way with antipsychotic medication. The people having a genetic brain disease might need the medication but the others don’t.Indeed the medication makes them worse and the hartless treatement they get in their hour of need traumatises them for years. When talking to several psychiatrists, I realised that they didn’t know/ weren’t taught that you could get psychosis from infection and sleep deprivation. Being diagnosed “severly mentally ill” when you are not ruins lives and can lead to suicide

    Report comment

  22. I don’t believe in Mental Illness as a disease process which is analogous to diseases like cancer or diabetes.

    I believe in emotional dis-ease, affected by developmental issues of social attachment bonds, which are at the very core of our human experience. I also believe in poorly understood traumatic disruptions to our secure sense of self, which is rooted in the unconscious physiological aspects of our core affect/emotions.

    Sadly we remain innately tribal in our view of life, with active distrust and suspicion of other groups, on other turf, defeating societal harmony and our developmental progress. It is depressing to say the least that this unconscious reactivity applies as much to the highly educated as it does to those of us less fortunate.

    In the field of mental health it is even more depressing that professional disciplines seem more interested in protecting their “turf” and securing their own survival than cooperation and knowledge sharing, in honor of their Hippocratic oath. As such I am astounded by the continuing denial of the “body” in relation to so-called “mental illness,” the myopic focus on the brain alone, now stands in contradiction to human development research, which implicates the nervous system and its “feedback signals” as key elements in the generation and regulation of brain altering emotional states.

    In an effort to go beyond my subjective awareness of bipolar disorder, research led me to developmental neuroscience, where I expected to learn more about my brain chemistry. Reading people like Allan N Schore, who calls for an “interdisciplinary” approach to the problems of emotional disorders, led me back into the survival mechanisms of my body, and the energy mobilizing or immobilizing capacities of my nervous systems.

    Emotion, as metabolic energy, is key to the functioning of our brain and our subjective experience of being human. Learning how I “unconsciously” organize my emotional energy has been the key to my own ongoing recovery, (although recovery is a paradoxical term when applied to what is essentially the human condition) and developing a felt sense of core emotions, has had its healing effect.

    These days I don’t believe in mental illness, I do believe in thwarted emotional development and traumatic emotional disruptions, which are slowly yielding their hidden mechanisms to the spotlight of rigorous, “untainted,” scientific enquiry. Let me share some of my reading from one the leading minds in human development research, and the book which finally gave me a light to shine on my own experience of the nonlinear discontinuous development patterns, psychiatry labels bipolar disorder.

    “Studies that ignore organism state are analogous to experiments of psychics which ignore time, and that the ubiquity of state-dependant organism changes reminds us that biological systems are highly dynamic and notoriously nonlinear.

    The concept of psychobiological state lies at the common boundary of the psychological and biological sciences, and as such it can go far to overcome the myopia of “Descartes’ Error,” “the separation of the most refined operations of mind from the structure and operation of a biological organism” _Damasio.
    At all points of human development, and especially in infancy, the continuously developing mind cannot be understood without reference to the continually maturing body, and their ongoing interactions become an important interface for the organizing self.

    Homeostatic structures which maintain stability are primarily lateralized in the right brain, which is, more so than the left, well connected into the limbic system and the mechanisms of autonomic and behavioral arousal, and their maturation is experience-dependant. This organization, like all aspects of human brain maturation, is nonlinear and shows discontinuous development patterns.

    The organization of brain systems does not involve a simple pattern of increments, but rather changes in organization. Development, the process of self assembly, thus involves both progressive and regressive phenomena, and is best characterized as a sequence of organization, disorganization, and reorganization.

    Damasio asserts that emotions are highest order direct expression of bio-regulation in complex organisms, and that primordial representations of body states are the building blocks and scaffolding of development. Emotion occurs in the context of evolved systems for the mutual regulation of behavior, often involving bodily changes that act as signals. Emotions and their regulation are thus essential to the adaptive function of the brain.” Excerpts from;

    “Affect Dysregulation & Disorders of the Self” Allan N Schore, 2003, Norton & Company, USA .

    Please keep up your great work Michael, in honoring the essential nature of the human experience, by living an authentic adult life which is not governed by the average “cover my arse in public, conceptual spin.”

    Report comment

    • Thank you again David for another illuminating comment and references.. I hope everyone clicks on your name above to take advantage of seeing more of your writing and resources that are very valuable.
      Decartes- ” I think therefore I am” error, is the hallmark for our modern over determined belief that our cognitive function or mind is the high priest of the total human being. So why wouldn’t visceral, glandular, heart and soul based emotion filled experience be reduced to faulty brain functioning and-’thought disorder’?

      Report comment

  23. Thanks for an inspiring and refreshingly honest post.

    One of the hardest parts of my journey as a care person for my relative who was receiveng mental healthcare services in ‘the system’ was when the best team of providers in the area continued telling me that I would have to go against my heart, my gut, and my natural Motherly instincts to get my son the treatement they claimed was the only way to help a person with his diagnosis.

    Now, I believe they may have been/are wrong. I believe my heart is a pretty good guide. I’ve been a “FenceSitter” for years in regard to what I believe about mental illness, but times are changing.

    I can finally explore what I believe, without fear and guilt being put upon me for not supporting forced medication, for being concerned about liver tests and for inviting my son home for a meal, the latter of which was said by professinals to be aiding in his continued high functioning, which made it impossible to “treat” him.

    Your story and willingness to say what you believe, the other inspirational stories I’ve read lately, along with exciting new research have helped me get off that fence.

    Report comment

    • Thank you Rosa Michelle for your comment. I encourage everyone to click on your name above to see your wondeful blog site that shows about green healing and horticulture therapy, as well as other interesting things. I’m glad you are feeling supported by those of us who have another, alterntive health oriented story to tell about our own experiences and healing.

      Report comment

      • Thank you Dr. Cornwall. I appreciate your kind note. I wish I could spend my day reading this blog and the comments. That’s how exciting all this is to me. I never thought I’d get to see this day. Only months ago there was a psychiatrist telling me that it would be okay for my son to get diabetes, and not long after, one told me “that everyone has to die from something sometimes,” regarding abnormal liver tests. So, you can imagine how happy I am that there is a new era! I am amazed and truly grateful, not to mention hopeful for my son’s future :)

        Good day to you,
        Michelle.

        PS As I write, my son’s labs are normal because he came off the drug they had him on, and finally has private healthcare too.

        Report comment

  24. There is no such thing as intrinsic mental illness. All challenges of the psyche are due to energies that are external to it…chemical, emotional, psychic and spiritual energies. I spell it out on my site http://www.thespiritualkey.com.

    The best bipolar website on the internet is http://www.bipolarORwakingUP.com, owned by Sean Blackwell. It’s a must read, with lots of great videos. His site, and a conversations with him, inspired my page on bipolar.

    Report comment

    • Yes, I agree Dr. Cornwall. They really shouldn’t be able to practice medicine with those attitudes, but I think the entire institution would have to close down if they couldn’t. And, it cost about a hundred thousand dollars for him to get their “treatment” –I sometimes think of all we could do with that much money. We could build a residential healing community, or at least have a good go at it.

      Have a blessed day.
      (Rosa Michelle)

      Report comment

      • “. . . with that much money. We could build a residential healing community . . .”
        Brilliant! I LOVE the way you think, Rosa Michelle. That is EXACTLY what is needed – healing communities.

        Report comment

  26. This is a complex question. Having been symptomatic in my life, I do believe that illness can compromise the mind, but I don’t think that any diagnosis should limit anyone. We are not our diagnoses. We are leap years ahead of that. At the same time, I am uncomfortable with the pigeonholing of any human being with a label. It took me over 40 years to discard the prognosis slapped on me at age fifteen. It felt like an albatross hindering my growth. Let’s think beyond those labels and treat each other with love and respect.

    Report comment

    • Thank you Barbara. How we view each other and ourselves when we are suffering emotionally can be dramatically impacted if DSM diagnoses are applied. When they are based on the physicians firm belief that the person has a life long brain disorder, and delivered by one’s trusted personal physician, I have seen people lose hope in their future.

      Report comment

  27. hi Michael your articles are good to read, a refreshing take, and i believe you’re probably a very capable and warmhearted therapist, that your work in this style is valuable and that you have a great deal to contribute to human wellbeing.

    yet, you push the “mad” label very heavily. that’s unusual. “mad pride” is great, but just like the word “queer” in the old days, which has since gained some measure of acceptance in the GLBT community, the word “mad” involves a significant cultural baggage, and has been through a lot of usage phases many of which are anything but acceptable-by-appeal-to-ancientness or connoting the “divine madness” that you talk of elsewhere regarding your own journey. it’s still offensive to many people, and isn’t that much different from modern terms used in separating people based upon characteristics which are seen as somehow defining a person as “less than” another (usually by people with position and authority).

    you seem to be casting a potentially stigmatising term of identity onto people… isn’t each person experiencing a unique set of phenomena, that deserve to be described based upon the qualities of the particular case? ie. Person X has been seeing the movement of walls, and shadows flitting across her periphery, also hearing a disembodied voice perceived to emanate from approximately 50 metres in front of her, and seeming to pass commentary upon her thoughts. does this make him “mad” or does this description equal the occurance of the phenomena described by this description, and may not each case be described this way, according to the particulars of the instance?

    i understand that you wish to communicate, to clients and other health care professionals, about a large number of instances all at once, but i offer that an injustice is committed when this attempt at generalisation by naming is attempted. i don’t care really if you call it crazy, mad, loopy, nuts, bonkers, eccentric, or any one of the compound euphemisms that are readily avaulable. it is still labelling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory), and although to be honest i often quite like the name “mad” and frequently use this and other similar names as terms of admiration for someone’s radically inventive and adventurously creative personal way, the term “mad” is not without negative connotation to many people in many usage contexts.

    in effect, on the ground, isn’t it almost equivalent to the terms “schizophrenia” and “mental illness”, carrying similar stigmatising implications…?

    Report comment

    • Thank you for your comment Taotiger. I will take it to heart. What I went through I hold as madness and I have felt comfortable with the word in R.D. Laing’s book title -”Sanity Madness and the Family” and my mentor John Perry’s -”The Far Side of Madness” and Whitaker’s-”Mad in America” which is also the name of this web magazine. Using the word mad and madness and mad pride has always felt subversive in pushing back against the terminolgy of the DSM and the pathologizing language and labelling inherant in psychiatry. Plato talke about the 4 types of divine madness and the God Dionysus, the livberator was called the mad God, so I probably will continue in my path that began with my own madness that you can read about in my blog here- “Initiatory Madness.”

      Report comment

  28. I was taken into the principal’s office during my senior year in high school and told that if I did not receieve immediate psychiatric help, I would surely degenerate into schizophrenia. I love your comment about love and compassion. Had I been raised by a loving, compassionate father, I would not have become ill. I have forgiven my father for his actions. I think mental illness could be lessened if not eradicated if we were to cultivate a culture of love and compassion, one that would exclude drugs and alchohol and all other addictive behaviors. I believe “mental illness” comes about due to generations of misconduct. Perhaps one can be raised in a loving family and still be mentally ill. Chances are that some genetic abnormality coming from some form of misconduct could be passed on down. I don’t know the answers.
    What is your opinion?

    Report comment

    • Thanks for your comment Barabara. I don’t believe, and the research doesn’t prove, that there is a gene for madness that is inherited. I Think it happens for some of the reasons you say and others I share in one of my other blog posts- “Responding to madness with loving receptivity.”

      Report comment

  29. I believe that I have a mental illness, and I don’t believe that just because some people can manage their madness without medical help that we should abandon the neuro-psychiatric model altogether. It’s also thoroughly hypocritical to complain about the mud-slinging on both sides of the argument and then quote Laing’s ‘The harming effects of psych drugs aren’t side effects, they are the effects!’ at people.

    Holistic therapy, counselling, talking about emotions and healing and yoga and all of that stuff is great, and I encourage ANYONE suffering with ‘madness’ (or whatever you choose to call it) to try those things, but for some people they are just NOT ENOUGH, and taking an imperfect medication that puts your life somewhere in the spectrum of tolerability is preferable to carrying on with problems that in all likelihood (statistically speaking) will only get worse otherwise.

    Like another commenter said, it’s a big leap in logic from disagreeing with forcible hospitalisation etc to not believing in mental illness. Many people choose medical intervention, and feel their lives are a lot better because of it.

    Report comment

    • Thank you for your comment Sarah. I don’t discourage people from taking medications who are helped by them. I know people suffer and need help of all kinds. I don’t believe that the medical model vision that pathologizes some human experience is accurate.

      Report comment

  30. I hold the same belief that no one suffers from mental illness, I believe psychiatry is a scam. Its sad that society holds itself as a “judge” to label someone this or that. Only because that person is different or has a different belief.I for one strongly hate society, and all its teachings. People look down upon their fellow human brother who has a so called ” mental illness” as crazy or insane. These labels only divide us, not bring us together. Many people believe that these pills that psychologist give them, will in fact help them. Not knowing, these pills only give you the illusion you are getting better but in fact its only hiding the symptoms. Also, I believe the governments uses psychiatry to their advantage, so they can lock up people who question their authority. This is a poem I wrote not too long ago, its called The scorned one and pretty sums up everything.

    The night turns to gray,day turns to ash. The beast prowls among this empty place. No man shall come here less he be consumed by the monsters claws.The darkness calls my name,and the well shall be my resting place.Such a cold place it shall be, where hearts rot and eyes lose their shine.Such a horrible fate for a man such as me,but yet what worries lies therin after? Society is a prision,empty men with empty hearts.Woe is them,if only they but knew… such a empty place.. A sign with no sense of direction,ahead where the confused lie. Eyes view the one who thinks diffrently as insane,oh how it hurts.Minds filled with Venom,from the fangs of so called truth.The glamour and glitz for how long will it please a man,for the sky will crack and show the infection it hid.What do you consider normal? For every man has a reality tunnel,but the wolfs come out to play.quick to judge,but lack of similatry.Does the judger see through the eyes of the condemed? Oh,how unfiar it is. The scorned one walks all alone,with no place to call home.The voices of the alike scorn him and tells him there is a place for him.Woe is him Woe is him,in the pit of the abyss where others such as him will go.But comfortable to see men such as him.The scorned one views love as evil,becuase the bucket is easy to spill.Such a over used word,in a heartless world.But yet,within him he cries for love.The ghost of the “before” haunts him reminding him of the scars that appeared within him.The dragon holds dominion upon the sheep,oh will when they wake up? The whips of ignorance slice across the scorned one,and the bullets of the hateful writhe his inner reality.He views himself as crazy upon the wolfs,but his hope holds a rope for him.Watch Rome the second crumble upon its errors,will the truth touch them then? Oh how awful it is to see the sun turn black and the beast regin among the dead.Where naked woman dance,and bitter men cheat.Let it be,that it will not change me.Skulls reign among the machine,and the Octopus prospers.For it gains the riches,and steals from the low.The buildings of conformity,prey among the young to mold them into a mindless drone.May they call me insane and lock me in the place of the well,but my eyes see the truth.Who am I you ask? well im the scorned one

    Report comment

  31. I am in the middle ground, I believe in mental illness, I just disagree with EVERYTHING that professorial have to say about it, or how to treat it. Doctors say everything will help, when really, they are just EXPERIMENTING on their patients. “try this new medication! I am being given bonuses to give it out and record the side effects!”

    I had an Uncle that became schizophrenic when he hit 18. My grand parents where fooled by their doctor into thinking ELECTRO SHOCK therapy will help. Guess what? It didn’t. just made him worse.

    Doctors keep giving my grandparents different medications for THEIR “mental problems” but they refuse to take any. So far 5 different medications they where told to take have been RECALLED due to causing DEATH.

    I’m not saying all, but most doctors don’t care at all about their patients. They care about their bonuses, and experimenting and finding out new things using patients as human test subjects.

    When I was 3 I was kidnapped. I have memories of being taken around the country for a year, then the SWAT TEAM kicking the door to the motel suite down and rushing in with guns and what not. My step dad and mother kidnapped me, so for years afterwards I had to talk with judges, lawyers, be in court. Things are different now, but back then they actually would bring the child to the court case, and have lawyers question em infront of everyone.

    From then till I was 16 I would wake up every night from night terrors screaming, and my nightmares felt real, and where more like memories than dreams.

    The court couldn’t decide who should get me so I had to grow up with my grand parent who where strict JW. No birthdays, no Christmas, no holidays, no cartoons, no movies, my entertainment was reading the bible.

    I was robbed of my childhood. It has made me really screwed up now. I am 28 and I can’t keep a job, I can’t trust anyone, I can’t make friends, I can’t believe anything or anyone. I have no faith in Government, police, doctors, school systems, the FDA.

    Every night I sleep I wake up knowing my dream was just another repressed memory. I can’t sleep right because when I do it makes me think and remember all my repressed memories, so I always stay up and generally do not like sleeping. Every time I talk to someone repressed memories rush into my head and make me unable to trust the person talking to me. When I am at work and my boss yells at me, it’s like I am a kid again and everything I hated from my childhood I see in my boss, and I can’t control myself.

    Every decision i make, every thought I make is clouded by all the bs from my past and I can’t escape it.

    So now I just smoke huge amounts of Marry J, and empty my head. If I am not high, my head gets so full of repressed memories and sounds, feels and sights from my childhood that I cannot think, do anything productive, and just generally get very very angry at everything…

    Some say I HAVE a mental illness, I just say I am having a bad time dealing with my past

    Report comment

Leave a Reply