Non-drug Approaches

One of the most amazing activist campaigns I have been involved in during my 40 years of protest for human rights in the mental health system, was the effort to stop the involuntary electroshock of Ray Sandford of Minnesota. Ray reached MindFreedom in the Fall of 2008, and an international human rights campaign began for him.

-An article In Disability and Society asks why iacademic research approaches which "at first seem inviting and like they might even help to disrupt psychiatric control," so often seem to "ultimately resort to marginalising mad people’s own knowledge."

Even the most level-headed individual can be rendered insufferable by taking an introductory psychology class. Suddenly the neophyte student will become an arrogant expert, deriding the ignorance of friends, family, and dinner companions. The use of the term “nervous breakdown” is a case in point. Uttering the words is a bit like blowing a dog whistle: Intro Psychology graduates will converge from miles around to clarify that there is no such thing . . . In this case, however, the phenomenon is not restricted to sophomores.

For those who actually believe that psychological problems are on the rise, serious inquiries must ensue. Many have rightly raised concerns about iatrogenic culprits, including drug-induced effects, but this too seems to fall short of accounting for the meteoric rise. Except for those forced to take psychiatric drugs, I would suggest that most seek out drugs in the hope of relieving iniquities caused by factors such as those I discuss below; unfortunately, this may not only lead to avoiding addressing the real issues, but may even lead to further complications of the drugs. Given this, I present five areas for further discussion, which I believe are causal agents for the mental health crisis.

-Artists who have "outsider" ways of thinking and expressing are reportedly becoming more popular with some galleries and collectors.

-The Edinburgh International Book Festival hosted a discussion exploring religious beliefs, creative inspiration, and whether hearing "the voice of God" should be regarded as a symptom of mental illness.

-The Globe and Mail looks interviews researchers about the growing interest in inflammation as a source of serious psychological distress in some individuals.

-Does it make any more sense to try to describe what a brain does based on its physical components than it does to describe what a computer does based on the plastics and metals that make it up?

In order for you to understand where I am coming from, you probably need to know a bit about how I got here. Throughout my psychiatric training I had always, in the back of mind, this question: What is the difference between my suffering and those of my patients? How come they get all this treatment and I got none? Why do they have a ‘brain disease’ (there was a time when I tentatively believed in this sort of thing), whilst I, who was at times symptomatically severe enough to warrant medication, have no brain disease? The answer seems plain to me now. I had suffered exactly in the same way as many of the people I see every day do, but I had been lucky enough to avoid labeling and drugging.

Many of us spend a lifetime avoiding our emotional pain, and it does become more and more toxic as long as we keep it buried. It will literally make us ill, physically and mentally, as Bessel Van talks about in the book, The Body Keeps Score. The little quip, "What you resist, persists" has proven very true in my life. The only way out of that trap is to stop avoiding and learn in whatever way makes sense to us as individuals to feel once again and to embrace and absorb and therefore transform the pain of our lives. This is how I am healing.

The Division of Clinical Psychology of the British Psychological Society published a paper titled Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia. The central theme of the paper is that the condition known as psychosis is better understood as a response to adverse life events rather than as a symptom of neurological pathology. The paper was wide-ranging and insightful and, predictably, drew support from most of us on this side of the issue and criticism from psychiatry.  Section 12 of the paper is headed "Medication" and under the subheading "Key Points" you'll find this quote: "[Antipsychotic] drugs appear to have a general rather than a specific effect: there is little evidence that they are correcting an underlying biochemical abnormality."

-Hannah Giorgis describes how she felt even more "crazy" when her mental health professionals denied the existence of racism against black people in Britain.

There were days that I’d wake up and all I could do was cry for no particular reason, just another miserable day of withdrawal. However, the idea of taking photos would get me out of the house. Especially on those days, the absolutely only thing that would get me to move at all was the idea of taking photos. One particular day, I was just crying, crying, crying, and as soon as I got to a beautiful spot that I loved, I stopped crying, took photos, and felt at peace. I even found that the days I felt the worst were the days I took the best photos.

-The findings of many neuroscientific studies are really just random background noise.

-Hurricane Irene seems to have left some community-based approaches to psychiatric care in its wake.

This week a commentary, written by members of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy and titled “Improving Long-term Psychiatric Care: Bring Back the Asylum” was published in JAMA Online. The authors recommend a return to asylum care, albeit not as a replacement for but as an addition to improved community services and only for those who have “severe and treatment-resistant psychotic disorders, who are too unstable or unsafe for community based treatment.” The authors seem to accept the notion of transinstitutionalization (TI) which suggests that people who in another generation would have lived in state hospitals are now incarcerated in jails and prisons. While I do not agree, I do find there is a need for a safe place for people to stay while they work through their crisis.

-A new regular radio program from NPR "explores the intangible forces that shape human behavior."

The more that patients feel that they have a high-quality relationship with their prescribing physician, the more likely that they will regard their own responses to antidepressants as positive.

-How much is hoarding rooted in consumerism?

Yoga helped me explore and reconnect with the body I’d abandoned and abused for years. My pain and sadness had me living exclusively in my mind, my body nothing more than a battleground for my inner wars. Through yoga and meditation, I slowly began to love myself again, learning to treat myself with care and respect. I felt a greater sense of self-awareness, and a sense of connection to something greater. This was a drastic contrast to the days when I felt as if god had forgotten about me, or like I was a mistake not meant for this world.

-What would an anti-militaristic, animal-loving, non-toxic, anti-sanist neuroscience look like?

-A neuroscientist hopes to identify the exact place inside a brain where a particular memory is held.

-Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann reflects on the British Psychological Society's "Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia" document.

-Newsweek visits the Hearing Voices Network.

-What are scientists learning from brain scans of babies in the womb?