Rethinking Therapy: Making Our Worlds as We Would Like Them to Be

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It’s funny how things turn out. I would never have anticipated becoming interested in the way in which psychological treatment is provided to people. A benign comment by a manager at the beginning of my clinical psychology career, however, piqued my interest and things have never been the same since.

Trauma, Psychosis, and Dissociation

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Recent years have seen an influx of numerous studies providing an undeniable link between childhood/ chronic trauma and psychotic states. Although many researchers (i.e., Richard Bentall, Anthony Morrison, John Read) have been publishing and speaking at events around the world discussing the implications of this link, they are still largely ignored by mainstream practitioners, researchers, and even those with lived experience. While this may be partially due to an understandable (but not necessarily defensible) tendency to deny the existence of trauma, in general, there are also certainly many political, ideological, and financial reasons for this as well.

Medicalizing Poverty

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In his Alternatives Conference 2012 Address, Will Hall called attention to the ongoing phenomena of “medicalizing poverty and calling it mental illness.” Mental health systems and practitioners often tend to perceive and identify the myriad ways that impoverished people cope and adapt to adverse environments (such as food and housing insecurity) as pathological indicators of mental illness. A poor child who does not pay attention to the day’s lessons at school may be diagnosed with ADHD, yet focuses intense attention on how he will return home safely, take care of his siblings and get a meal. A young woman may be labeled as Oppositional/Defiant who bravely copes with an erratic mother and her abusive boyfriend. Behaviors that can make sense in one context (home, neighborhood), are flagged as dysfunctional and impaired in another (school & work).

Unexplained Removal of Vermont Psychiatric Survivors Director

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Nancy Remsen discusses in the Burlington Free Press the unexplained removal of executive director Linda Corey after 15 years representing Vermont Psychiatric Survivors. Corey...

From Self Care to Collective Caring

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As a trauma survivor growing up in various adolescent mental health systems, I never learned any useful self-care tools or practices. I was taught that my current coping skills (self-injury, suicidal behavior, illicit drug use) were unacceptable, but not given any ideas as to what to replace them with. No one seemed to want to know much about the early childhood traumas that were driving these behaviors. Instead, I collected an assortment of diagnoses. I was told that I would be forever dependent on mediated relationships with professionals, and an ever-changing combination of pills. The message was that my troubles were chemical in nature and largely beyond my control.

Animals and Mental Illness

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The search for animal analogues for mental illness continues to inadvertently show that much if not most of what is thought of as mental...

A Daughter’s Call for Safety and Sanity in Mental Health

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My mother was once a bright, creative, beautiful young woman, a promising artist and a poet, who was captivated by the hippie movement. She was a creative bohemian artist, defying the conventions of our middle-class Jewish Midwestern family, which had carried a tradition of holding emotions inside and acting stoic. One day, soon after my grandparents’ divorce, she left. She hitched a ride to California, and from that point on, was never the same. The police picked her up on a park bench in Arizona, and she was committed for the first time at age 18. She rotated in and out of mental hospitals, the streets, and jail until her death.

Hearing Voices, Emancipation, Shamanism and CBT: Thoughts After Douglas Turkington’s Training

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When Doug Turkington, a UK psychiatrist, first announced to his colleagues that he wanted to help people with psychotic experiences by talking to them, he was told by some that this would just make them worse, and by others that this would be a risk to his own mental health, and would probably cause him to become psychotic! Fortunately, he didn’t believe either group, and in the following decades he went on to be a leading researcher and educator about talking to people within the method called CBT for psychosis.

“A Revolutionary Approach to Treating PTSD”

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The New York Times Profiles Bessel van der Kolk, and the controversial approaches to working with trauma, such as yoga and "tapping," that he...

“You Don’t Always Know What You’re Saying”

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Among the reasons for listening carefully to others, this article in Nature adds, "People's conscious awareness of their speech often comes after they've spoken,...

From Protesting to Taking Over: Using Education to Change Mental Health Care

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As we develop critical awareness about the mental health “treatments” that don’t work and that often make things much worse, the question inevitably comes up, what can those who want to be helpful be doing instead?

There is Big Medicine in Everyone

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I woke up at 3 am this morning. The spring is a time of big energy for me. Once upon a time in my life this energy was pathologized and called manic, bipolar. I was taught to fear it and drug it and by no means express it. I have been unlearning all that for some years now.

“A Soldier Fights Off the Cold”

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A soldier's story, in the New York Times, speaks for more than people in the military: "I feel an obligation to tell my story,...

Hearing Voices Workshop Comes to Vermont

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I recently had the great pleasure of hosting a Hearing Voices workshop with Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Many people described this as one of the best trainings they had ever attended. Ron's message is inherently uplifting - after all this internationally known educator was once a mental patient given a poor prognosis. But in addition, they offered pragmatic suggestions for how to think about voices and talk to someone who is experiencing them.

Psychiatry: We Need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Mental Health

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My name is Leah Harris and I'm a survivor. I am a survivor of psychiatric abuse and trauma. My parents died largely as a result of terrible psychiatric practice. Psychiatric practice that took them when they were young adults and struggling with experiences they didn’t understand. Experiences that were labeled as schizophrenia. Bipolar disorder. My parents were turned from people into permanent patients. They suffered the indignities of forced treatment. Seclusion and restraint. Forced electroshock. Involuntary outpatient commitment. And a shocking amount of disabling heavy-duty psychiatric drugs. And they died young, from a combination of the toxic effects of overmedication, and broken spirits.

Neuroplasticity: My Newest Friend

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I have been noticing the neuroplasticity of my brain. For 8 years I wore progressively stronger over-the-counter (non prescription) reading glasses. Two years ago I began working out at the gym more intentionally and intensively. At the same time I also began eating more nutritionally. About 2 weeks after I started my new routine, I went to read and my glasses were not handy and I noticed I didn’t need them.

My Healing Protocol Detailed

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Someone in one of my healing groups asked me the below question, as I've been rapidly getting healthier and people are noticing: "Monica what do you think has been helping you the most to get better?" I figured I'd answer by putting this post together for her and my readers here and on Beyond Meds. The bottom line is that everything I do is important. Yup, again, Everything matters.

Creating Sustainability, Disarming Trauma and Loving One Another

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I recently joined BHbusiness Mastering Essential Business Operations as a convener.  The plan is to recruit 15-20 peer organizations to participate in a peer provider learning community.  I decided to create an all peer - or at least a 95 percent peer - learner community with meaningful programs, innovation, and plenty of ideas that may not necessarily be easy to implement. How can we disarm trauma in the midst of creating sustainable communities? We must love ourselves a little harder, love our peers just a little bit stronger and bring our adversaries closer to our hearts.

“Drama Helps Kids with Autism Communicate Better”

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Results from a pilot study called Imagining Autism suggests that drama workshops help children with autism-spectrum disorders. Drama Helps Kids with Autism Communicate Better (New Scientist)

I Actually Woke up This Morning Thinking I’d Arrived, I’m Well . . .

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Herbs are medicine just like food is medicine really . . . this is Mamma Earth in action. Mamma Earth will nurture all your needs in a most beautiful and gentle way. We need to learn to listen. And just like a good diet when it comes to food, medicinal herbs should not be eaten every single day ad infinitum. Variety and moderation is important in all things. Right timing is also important. Learning to intuitively understand the body and its needs is important. I actually woke up this morning thinking I’d arrived. I’m well . . . even if still sick in some regards.

Psychiatric Teams Have a Responsibility to Think About the Psychosis/Sexual Abuse Link

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In England, childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has become big news. The increasing understanding of the level of childhood sexual abuse and how this produces mental anguish has of course reached the psychosis arena, and encouraged academic study. Whilst the majority of psychiatrists continue to privilege a biological explanation of psychosis, more and more workers recognise abuse as at least a trigger if not a cause of psychosis. It's important to develop thinking points for teams struggling with, or more generally avoiding, the CSA/psychosis link.

Enslaved to Abilify

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A very gifted and compassionate friend recently said that she feels enslaved to Abilify - that she has tried to taper off it several times but always ends up slipping into an extreme state, no matter how slow she tapers. She said this repeated experience makes her feel like a slave, because she has to go back on the drug to stop the very intense extreme state induced whenever she tries to stop taking it.

It’s About the Trauma: How to Truly Address the Roots of Violence and Suffering...

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Representative Tim Murphy is a psychologist who proposes unsatisfactory solutions to our most pressing social problems. In a "shockingly regressive" piece of legislation known as the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2013” (H.R. 3717), he proposes to expand the highly controversial practice of Involuntary Outpatient Committment (IOC) for persons with serious mental illnesses. But that approach is not the answer, as documented in a fact sheet authored by the National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery:

The Can Collector’s Club: Clarifying Where Mental Health Begins

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In 1980, my father started the Can Collector’s Club (CCC). I was 2 years old. As the story goes, it was my mother’s brainchild, but dad quickly took ahold of the idea with his entrepreneurial spirit. Some people thought he had lost his mind. Some still do. But the purpose of the CCC was simple. Convince family and friends to turn aluminum cans into him so that he could use the money from recycling to support our college fund. And clean up the environment.

“5 Reasons It’s So Hard to Combat Anxiety and Depression and What You Can...

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Alternet tells us that "Negative emotions can be a challenge, but there are effective ways to cope." 5 Reasons It's So Hard to Combat Anxiety...