I have fallen in love with a book called Holy Spirit for Healing: Merging Ancient Wisdom with Modern Medicine, by Ron Roth, PhD. (available from Hay House). What I love about it is that the author, a former Catholic priest, is open-minded to all religious belief systems. He is especially interested in discovering the original meaning behind the Biblical words used today that so often obscure rather than clarify Jesus’ message. Jesus, like Buddha, Mohammed, and others, had what is called “cosmic consciousness.” He applied in his day to day teachings the laws governing the universe.

Roth has written an astonishing treatise on healing that shows that energy is the basis for healing, and love is the greatest healer of all. I’ll be writing more about this book later, but for now here is an excerpt below from an interview with Ron Roth in The Share Guide.

Ron: I began to meditate on these various concepts many years ago. I don’t take the scriptures dogmatically and doctrinally as many people do. In all my studies of the sacred scriptures, I look for understanding in the original Greek and Aramaic, the language of the original text. When we translate it into English, it is always a poor substitute. When I looked at the original text, the first thing I noticed was that the Greek word that is used, dynamis–which we took “dynamite” and “dynamic”–that word actually means energy. In the Phillips translation, the words for Holy Spirit are “that divine energy that raised Jesus from the dead.” He uses the term energy because it is the closest to the Greek. In the old testament and the new testament, it says “great balls of fire” came flying out of the sky when people were praying. I think it was their way of saying that there is an energy that is unexplainable. This energy is really an aspect of the Divine Spirit. I don’t believe that anybody has to belong to a certain religion to be healed or to be loved by God. I studied Christianity because that was my background. But there were a lot of things I did not like, and I could not see Jesus as being a promoter of those things.

The Share Guide: So you were seeking the original languages in which these holy books were written so as to get closer to the source, rather than working with thousands of years of interpretations?

Ron: That’s correct. I had a scripture professor who had PhD’s in Scripture, Aramaic and Sanskrit. He would say to us, “Gentlemen, whenever you are looking at passages, don’t look at the English because you have to understand what the situation was at the time that the scripture was written.” In other words, what did they mean by a particular phrase 2,000 years ago, which could mean something entirely different today? The word “awful” comes to mind. The word used to mean full of awe, respect, and reverence. Today it means something terrible. In the original context it still means “full of awe.” So if you read a passage that says our God is an awful God, it is a clear example.

The Share Guide: Are you saying that the phrase “Energy Medicine” is really tied with the Holy Spirit, the original healing energy of God?
Ron: When you get an understanding of what a true authentic prayer means and is, it is an “energy prayer.” It is not something we do; it is something the Spirit of God at the center of our being does. That divine connection keeps coming up from the spirit essence. So when you put prayer and spirit together and understand what they truly mean, you can define it as a tangible energy that people feel.

The Share Guide: Is this the same energy which in India is called prana or in the Orient called chi, the life essence?

Ron: Yes.

Kris Ulland recently wrote at Borderline Families about her feelings of apprehension when invited to attend a conference, the venue which was directly opposite the treatment facility her daughter had once attended. Many of us feel the same way. We do not like to be even in the vicinity of the psychiatric care facilities that our relatives attended. These days I only get mildly stressed when I pass the outpatient facility that Chris attended for two years. It’s hard to avoid because it’s on a well-travelled route within walking distance of our home.

Kris brings up a little discussed aspect of mental health care. It is traumatizing for the patients and families to revisit the “scene of the crime.” I assume that mental health care is aware of this and tries to stage events away from the hospital or clinic when at all possible. I attended one such event as a service to an older woman friend whose nephew had been released years ago from the US marines after his schizophrenia diagnosis.  The military would not reveal to the family what had happened to him during his time in the marines. His aunt is still grieving and bewildered.

The event was sponsored by a local family support group for schizophrenia and was held in a meeting hall unconnected to the hospital. The guest speaker was none other than Dr. Rx, an eminent psychopharmacologist and overall head of Chris’s treatment program. There he was, still wearing the same navy blazer and not looking a day older than when I had last seen him four years earlier. I slunk to our seats well in the back of the room and kept my head down, not wanting to make eye contact. This was already becoming a traumatizing experience.

If I recall correctly, the purpose of the meeting was to “end the stigma” surrounding schizophrenia. So, what did we watch? A French Canadian documentary entitled “Schizo,” if you can believe it. It was all the dreary stuff associated with schizophrenia, camera slightly out of focus, sad music, a feeling of impending doom. One of the psychiatrists interviewed in the film had a long grey beard. He  looked far crazier than his patients. The mother of Marc Lépine, the young man who massacred fourteen female engineering students at the University of Montreal in 1989, was interviewed, thus reinforcing schizophrenia with mass murder. All very sad, a downer really and what was I doing there? Oh, yes, to support my friend.

After watching a film about stigma that was stigmatizing, questions were taken from the floor by Dr. Rx and his assistant. A tall, well dressed man who appeared to be in his fifties stood up to ask a question. It was apparent by the rather enigmatic way he posed his question that he was a one time consumer of mental health services. Without my remembering the specifics, there was a challenge imbedded in his question to the doctors. Dr. Rx and his assistant, remember, they were there to stop the stigma, ignored him. They looked at each other when the question was posed, and appeared rather embarrassed that a consumer of their services had challenged them, even obliquely. The man sat down after getting nowhere with the two onstage. He tried again later, and got the same result. (The definition of insanity?)

Now, if I were a psychiatrist and that were me on stage, I would have welcomed an intervention from someone who had been there. (Remember, Dr. Rx was there to combat the stigma.) I would have tried a lot harder to bridge the gap. Dr. Rx and his assistant came across to me as wanting to retain their authority and overly afraid of exposure.

I was glad when it was finally over. Never again.

I need more laughs in my life, I’ve decided. Let me put this in context. In the city where I live, I notice that nobody smiles. It’s not just me who has noticed this. Life is very serious here, apparently. I have lived in the same apartment block for thirteen years and only nod to the neighbours when we meet in the elevator. They give me a wan smile in return.

Now that Chris is well on the road to full recovery, ironically I am feeling sicker. I have spent the past few years reading, almost exclusively, psychiatric literature. Not many laughs there. I need a break.

For my birthday, Chris gave me Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years. I’ve been a big fan of Adrian since he was aged 13 3/4. I laughed my way through the latest book in two sittings.

What tickles your funny bone?

There is no shortage of glitzy events by the Napa Valley’s wine elite, but the annual music festival sponsored by Garen and Shari Staglin may be the most poignant.

When money meets schizophrenia (e.g. the Stanley Medical Research Institute), the condition becomes sad and chronic. Here is a supposedly feel good story about winery owners and their son. It doesn’t buck me, up, however. Where is the good news here about the person? The good news is in the glitz and the charitable do-gooderism. Why is the word “poignant” used in this article in reference to schizophrenia? It needlessly provokes, since so many others have recovered and moved on in their lives. The public is continously fed these kind of stories in relation to schizophrenia, much more so than with depression and bipolar.

Money can’t solve everything, it just confuses the issue when it comes to schizophrenia. Entrepreneurs are a class of individuals who feel that they can apply the same gung ho logic to human emotions, as if the human mind were a business plan or a balance sheet. The article is full of references to genetics, medications, and, unfortunately, resignation. Heaven help us if the Gates Foundation got involved with schizophrenia.

“Most people chose to bury or run away from the problem,” Garen Staglin said. “We chose to run toward it.”

Did you, really?

We’ve all heard the news that psychiatric patients die, on average, twenty-five years earlier than the average life expectancy. There appears to be no empirical evidence as to why this is so. Most of us know the answer is tied up with the alarming insistence by the medical profession on medications to treat these conditions. In addition to causing diabetes, blood disorders and heart conditions, there can be fatal drug interactions. The statistic presumably include the rare person who kills himself, and the rarer person who starves to death.

I believe that people who end up with a diagnosis of schizophrenia are physically healthier than most people, so there is no reason related to just having a diagnosis of schizophrenia that should case premature death. Many are like Chris. My son has, to my recollection, never suffered from a cold, a fever, a cavity, or an ear infection. He has never spent a day in bed due to an illness. . . until he ended up with a diagnosis and went on medications. Dr. Abram Hoffer observed that his schizophrenia patients tended to be the super healthy.

Since being on the medications, Chris has suffered dizziness, weight gain, tiredness. He has had to have his heart regularly monitored. While he was on clozapine he had to go for a monthly blood test. Despite all this, he has still has never had a cold, a fever, a cavity or an earache.

If you are naturally super-healthy (you have received a diagnosis of schizophrenia), there is absolutely no way that you should be dying twenty-five years early. If anything, you should be living twenty-five years longer than the average life expectancy. If people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia are supposedly dying twenty-five years early, it must be the medications that are causing this in the majority of cases. Getting off or substantially reducing the medications, even if you have been on them for years, should be something worth thinking about.

The excerpt below* is from a recent address given by Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, at the Mental Health Gap Action Programme Forum.

If you read the mhGap Action Programme guide, mental health care is seen as the domain of the medical profession. Antipsychotic medications are also the first line of treatment for psychosis and for bipolar disorder. This runs contrary to what consumers want. People who actually suffer from these and other mental health conditions often say that the person who made the difference in their recovery was a caring relative, a friend, or more rarely, someone in a clinical setting who actually took the time to talk to them in a caring, empathetic way. This kind of intervention early on has greate potential to help the patient recover quicker.

Running contrary to the consumer’s position, the mhGap Action Programme places the emphasis firmly on interventions that can be undertaken by busy doctors, nurses, and medical assistants. Well, how is a busy doctor or nurse going to fulfill the needed empathetic role in a crisis situation? They’re not. The guide directs the patient to» Encourage involvement in self-help and family support.

What positive, encouraging attitude does the guide promote about the prospects for full recovery?

» Inform the person of the expected duration of treatment, potential side-effects of the intervention, any alternative treatment options, the importance of adherence to the treatment plan, and of the likely prognosis. (Rossa’s comment: This is purely “clinicalese,” very off-putting to patients and family. Will non-drug approaches be considered as alternative treatments? The term “likely prognosis” sounds bad, very bad to me. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy for a dismal prognosis. Also, how is a medical assistant, a nurse or a doctor qualified or even capable of predicting the “likely” prognosis?)

» Address the person’s questions and concerns about treatment, and communicate realistic hope for better functioning and recovery.
(Rossa’s comment: Again, who are the staff to tell us what is realistic? What’s this talk about “functioning?” We demand and expect better than this.)
 
Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, should be invited to speak at the World Health Organization. He can talk about how the use of medications actually prolongues mental illness and, more importantly, in the context of the Mental Health Gap Action Programme, he can talk about the success of the Open Dialogue program in Finland. The Open Dialogue program is purposely staffed by non-medical professionals and resists drug treatment if at all possible.

*Excerpt:

With publication of the mhGAP Intervention guide, we now have a simple technical tool for detecting, diagnosing, and managing the most common, and burdensome, mental, neurological, and substance use disorders, in any resource setting.

The emphasis is firmly placed on interventions that can be undertaken by busy doctors, nurses, and medical assistants working, with limited resources, at first- and second-level facilities. Mental health problems, whether depression, epilepsy, dementia, or alcohol dependence, are real disorders. They cause death and disability. They cause suffering. They have symptoms. And they can be managed, in any resource setting.

This is the message we can now communicate with confidence.

No matter how weak the health system or how constrained the resources, something can always be done.

In a key achievement, the Intervention guide transforms a world of expertise and clinical experience, contributed by hundreds of experts, into less than 100 pages of clinical wisdom and succinct practical advice.
The guide, in effect, extends competence in diagnosis and management to the non-specialist, while respecting their busy schedules.