Tag: Open Dialogue

Peter Stastny is a New York-based psychiatrist, documentary filmmaker, and a co-founder of the International Network toward Alternatives and Recovery (INTAR). He has been...

Anthropologists study Parachute NYC to identify challenges and opportunities for implementing peer support and Open Dialogue practices.

My world turned upside down when my daughter nearly died from a serious suicide attempt. After several years as her caretaker I began to wonder: What can we do to change the way our mental health services are organized so they won't turn a crisis into a way of life for already distressed and vulnerable people?

Psychiatrist outlines varying roles in Open Dialogue model, fostering service-user and family agency through meaningful conversations with a team of providers.

Analysis suggests that Open Dialogue aligns with human rights-based perspectives on mental health care.

New qualitative study seeks to examine the implementation of the Open Dialogue approach in the UK.

The Open Dialogue psychiatric treatment approach is associated with reduced utilization of mental and general health services for Danish youth.

A year after my twin’s death, I stood in a supermarket and felt my body disintegrating into a thousand pieces. My soul knew it needed the right teacher and helper. Fortunately, I found Open Dialogue. It helped me expose the real childhood trauma, and gradually rebuild my shattered, grief-stricken psyche.

An interview with psychotherapist, trainer and facilitator Alita Taylor who shares her passion for Open Dialogue, explaining why Open Dialogue 'cannot be taught, but needs a teacher'.

A leading US journal published an extensive literature review and analysis of currently available research on Open Dialogue. An accompanying commentary concludes, “The present data on Open Dialogue are insufficient to warrant calls for further research on the program other than those projects that are currently under way.”

An interview with Dr. Sandy Steingard, Medical Director at Howard Center and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the College of Medicine of the University of Vermont. Dr. Steingard serves as Board Chair of the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care and is editor of the book 'Critical Psychiatry, Controversies and Clinical Implications' due in 2019.

As stories wove together, Ron turned to the son and said, “You know, I don’t think you were ever schizophrenic at all.” There was an extended silence as this statement sunk in and the group drew closer to hear what came next. But the rain fell harder until all sound was drowned out. We sat together, feeling the rain soak into our ears, our bodies, the ground; words were unnecessary.

An interview with Dr. Russell Razzaque, consultant psychiatrist and associate medical director in east London who, together with colleagues, is leading a pioneering multi-centre Open Dialogue pilot in the UK National Health Service.

Sandra Steingard, writing in the journal Psychiatric Services, reviews a recent article finding that the quality of the therapeutic relationship impacts the efficacy of medication treatment.

In a new report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius Pūras, calls for a move away from the biomedical model and “excessive use of psychotropic medicines.”

It is very encouraging to observe the spread of early psychosis programs to many states and communities throughout the United States. I hope that someday there are programs in all 50 states, not just 34, and that there are literally thousands of these programs not a hundred.

Over the past seven years, I have been teaching open dialogue principles and practices in a variety of settings. This blog will focus on the development of a training program, now based in Manhattan, and what I’ve learned from running this program and teaching this approach in the US.

Within days of announcing the webinar and providing the link to register, we were deluged with enrollments. It turns out that a great many professionals, advocates and clinical managers are interested in learning about Open Dialogue and its application to an American community.

Four years ago I dove into a deep and murky pond: the bottomless depths of medical databases that hold mental health research. After examining over 4000 studies, and hundreds of meta-analyses, I surfaced from my research and was hit with a startling “Aha” moment: non-drug approaches really work.

I have sometimes stopped en route to work, unsure how much longer I can continue. There is a sense of betrayal to my father and grandmother by working in a profession that failed them and is the only medical specialty to have its own survivor movement, not from the illnesses it hopes to treat, but from the ministrations of the profession itself.

In this second article, I will further analyze the reasons why the unevidenced biological-illness approach to “schizophrenia” has become so entrenched in our society. Most importantly, I will discuss hopeful alternatives.

As a psychiatric survivor who has personally experienced severe psychosis, my criticisms focus on the relative lack of attention to what psychiatric drugs actually are, and on the uncertain, contested nature of the supposed target of these drugs: “schizophrenia.” I will elaborate on each of these points with references, as well as highlighting alternative approaches to helping psychotic people.

In an article for Psychiatric Services, psychiatrist Christopher Gordon and his colleagues report on the results of a one-year feasibility study attempting to implement...

The Collaborative Pathway is a replication and adaptation of Open Dialogue at Advocates, Inc., a human services agency in Framingham, Massachusetts where I serve as Medical Director. Last week, our team published an article in the Best Practices column of the journal Psychiatric Services, describing the program and our results from the first cohort of young people and families experiencing a psychotic crisis. This is the first published adaptation of Open Dialogue in the U.S. and represents the culmination of several years of planning, training, and direct service.

For ABC’s All in the Mind, Lynne Malcolm and Olivia Willis report on the latest research showing that hearing voices may be far more...