Holistic Recovery from Schizophrenia: A Mother and Son Journey
living within a family is individual and collective insanity
all children experience trauma in one form or another
all children are mentally ill, if a belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy offers any clue at all
families go to great pains to not project publicly what is going on privately – this is hardly news
most parents start out with good intentions – reality gets the better of them
real families are not sitcom families – I wish it were otherwise
The doctor in the tiny town in Northern New York where I spent my teenage years, was popularly regarded as a “pill pusher.” We all knew that when we left his office we would be holding a prescription. We just felt that these prescriptions were often unnecessary. (Of course, we filled them anyway.) The term “pill pusher” seems to have gone out of fashion when (a ) in the early 1970s recreational drugs took over the town’s teenagers, and (b) people began to go to doctors and demand prescriptions.
On Easter week-end I was delighted to discover that there is a labyrinth within walking distance of our vacation home in Southern Germany. That could be Chris in the foreground of the photo. The labyrinth is just one interesting attraction in the Park of the Senses. It’s a replica of the famous Chartres Cathedral labyrinth, although the camera angle makes it look bigger than it actually is. I would say it took me about ten minutes to get to the center, and when I got there, I realized it would take me another ten minutes to go back to where I started. There are no shortcuts when you walk a labyrinth. The Chartres labyrinth has complex numerological meaning. I would love to see more labyrinths being built in public, residential and therapeutic settings. If you know of any in your neck of the woods, send me the links and I’ll add them to this post. If you live near Asheville, NC, check this one out.
The Labyrinth is a prayer tool, a divine imprint, found in all religious traditions in various forms around the world. By walking a replica of the Chartres Labyrinth; laid in the floor of Chartres Cathedral around 1220, we are rediscovering a long-forgotten mystical tradition that is insisting to be reborn. This labyrinth has only one path so there are no tricks to it and no dead ends. The path winds throughout and becomes a mirror for where we are in our lives; it touches our sorrows and releases our joys. So walk it with an open mind and an open heart.
There are three stages of the walk:
Purgation — a releasing, a letting go of the details of your life. This is an act of shedding thoughts and emotions. It quiets and empties the mind.
Illumination — is when you reach the center. Stay there as long as you like. It is a place of meditation and prayer. Receive what is there for you to receive.
Union — which is joining God, your Higher Power or the healing forces at work in the world. Each time you walk the labyrinth you become more empowered to find and do the work you feel your soul reaching for.
Guidelines for the Walk
We come to the Labyrinth walk at various stages in our spiritual journey and with a wide variety of needs and questions present in our life. Some people find it helpful to focus their minds and hearts on a particular question as they walk the Labyrinth. Others find it most helpful to simply clear their mind and become aware of your breath and open yourself to whatever the experience on the path has to offer. Trust your experience and the Spirit to guide you on your way. You may “pass” people or let others step around you whichever is easiest at the turns. The path is two ways. Those going in will meet those coming out. Use the pace and movements that feel natural to you. You should plan on taking at least twenty minutes to walk the Labyrinth.
ALT_mentalities has posted an NPR interview with psychiatric survivor Carmelo Valone. Please check out ALT_’s post and then listen to the NPR interview. If you’re still hanging in there (and believe me, it’s worth it), feel free to add your two cents to the discussion.
Valone’s story should give many people cause for hope! The psychiatrist who phoned in should give many people cause for dismay.
Since this is a blog about a mother and son journey through schizophrenia, I try stick to the knitting as much as I can and offer up anecdotes about our daily lives. Lately, I’ve posted more about external news and events. I haven’t posted much personal stuff recently because Chris is in kind of a holding pattern. He’s out most evenings during the week rehearsing for H.M.S Pinafore, and has another upcoming concert in celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 60 years on the throne. “Land of hope and glooooryy, da, da, da, da, da, da.” etc.
On the week-ends, Chris can be found building props for “the Queen’s Navy”. He’s really enjoying the physical work. He’s decided to drop the weekly voice lessons for a while because he feels he’s not progressing. Fair enough.
But, he seems too serious these days. A bit sad. A bit nervous. I’m not sure what this means. I know he feels that he is spinning his wheels, but I also know he’s not ready to make any big life changes. Taylor, our youngest, will be graduating from university in May and has a job lined up beginning in August. Time is marching on, and Chris is a worried that he’s not in step.
Just stay the course, I tell myself. Chris will figure it out eventually.
Here are some highlights from the latest New York Times article on the ruckus on the Jet Blue aircraft.
Two years ago, the F.A.A. relaxed its longstanding ban on psychiatric medications for pilots, saying that new drugs for depression had fewer side effects than older drugs. The agency now grants waivers allowing pilots to fly while taking Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa or Lexapro, and their generic equivalents.
The F.A.A.’s administrator at the time, J. Randolph Babbitt, said the agency was relaxing its ban because it was concerned that some pilots with depression were not being treated, or were being secretive about it. “We need to change the culture and remove the stigma associate with depression,” Mr. Babbitt said then.
But the F.A.A. said in an e-mail on Wednesday that since April 2010, less than one-half of 1 percent (0.016 percent or 20 out of 120,000 pilots who have a first-class medical certificate) have taken advantage of the F.A.A.’s policy. Pilots on commercial airliners are required to have a first-class certificate.
A 2006 study by the F.A.A. of post-mortem toxicological evaluations of 4,143 pilots killed in accidents from 1993 to 2003 found that 223 were using mood-altering drugs like antidepressants, according to The Associated Press. Only 14 of the pilots who tested positive for the drugs reported a psychological condition on their medical forms, and only one reported using a mood-altering drug. None of the pilots determined to have used neurological medications had reported that on their medical forms, the AP reported.
I wrote a comment about the perils of blame on the Op-Ed page at the Mad in America blog. I’m wondering if either I have got it all wrong by seeing blame in the piece where no blame was intended, or else I’ve rightly sensed that psychologists are publicly back to blaming family for a relative’s mental illness because they are sensing a growing strength in numbers. At least one other blogger at the Mad in America site got jumped on recently for family bashing. He denied it of course, but like the Op-Ed author, he sprinkled his post with anecdotes about nasty family members of his patients. I call this kind third party relaying of a message “hear say.” Perhaps it’s hypocritical of me, but in my opinion, it’s okay for a patient to blame a family member for his suffering (as he’s 100% entitled to interpret the cause of his suffering the way he does because he knows his experience) but it’s different thing for a psychotherapist to turn around and publicly make negative attributions on individuals he’s probably never met outside of the therapy room. What purpose does this serve? There are ways of getting a healing message across that will not lead to charges of family bashing.
I think it’s appropriate for parents and relatives to examine their role in a family member’s mental illness (parents, especially), and I know how difficult it has been to get this message across in the era of no-blame antipsychotics, when parents would prefer to blame faulty biochemistry rather than venture out into more helpful ways of looking at mental illness. I do believe in personally looking in the mirror and then doing whatever it takes to changing aspects of the relationship that may have caused trauma for your relative. I do believe this and I encourage others to do the same thing because one really can help someone recover this way.
Selling the “look yourself in the mirror” message is a particular hard sell to parents because all parents feel guilty at some level about the way they have raised their children, whether there is a diagnosis of mental illness or not. Nobody likes criticism. Most people don’t react well to it, unless it’s done constructively. When psychiatrists or psychologists write or speak in a public forum, I believe they have a special duty to be non-inflammatory, and non-judgmental. This doesn’t mean that, if they believe the family environment is an important factor in the development of mental illness, they shouldn’t say so, but they should be super vigilant about how their words will be construed.
I’d like to know what you think about Albert Silver’s Op-Ed piece. Is he really family bashing or have I got it wrong? I’d like to hear what you think because I believe this topic is going to become increasingly debated as psychotherapy gains ground at the expense of medications. I contributed a lengthy comment at the end of his Op-Ed in which I pointed out that there may very well be a backlash if the role of family in mental illness isn’t handled constructively.
They say change always starts in California (the birthplace of NAMI). The NAMI Westside LA agenda for its annual conference (April 22, 2012) includes Robert Whitaker (author, Anatomy of an Epidemic), Dr. Daniel Dorman (author, Dante’s Cure), Catherine Penny and Dr. Michael Livittan.
SESSION 1
Workshop 1 – Robert Whitaker
Evidence-Based Solutions that Promote Robust Recovery: Open Dialogue Therapy in Finland, Exercise for Depression, and Other Promising Therapies
In western Lapland in Finland, only a small percentage of first-episode psychiatric patients are treated with antipsychotics, with the focus instead on psychosocial care. The long-term outcomes for these patients are now the best in the Western World. Why does this approach work so well, and could it be adopted here? Meanwhile, in Britain, depressed patients can obtain a prescription for exercise, which has been shown to produce a much better long-term stay-well rate than antidepressants.
Here in the United States, there is a non-profit group that has formed, called the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care, that is seeking to promote such evidence-based therapies that best promote robust recovery.Worshop 4 – Daniel Dorman, Catherine Penny
This workshop will explore therapeutic approaches that have proven to produce good long-term outcomes, and detail the efforts of the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care to promote such evidence-based therapies here.
PSYCHOTHERAPY OF SCHIZOPHRENIA RESULTING IN FULL RECOVERY. Dr. Dorman and his former patient, Catherine Penney, will discuss “What worked.”
Catherine Penny, age nineteen was admitted to UCLA Hospital suffering from catatonic schizophrenia. Daniel Dorman, M.D., then a resident-in-training, was interested in treating those suffering from schizophrenia psychotherapeutically, without medication, hoping that a human connection oriented towards understanding his patients’ struggles might be curative. Ms. Penney and Dr. Dorman will discuss how their relationship served to help Ms. Penney establish a sense of self, thus relieving her of her terrors and poor self-esteem which allowed her to resume her life, free of the hallucinations and mental shut-down that characterized her years of suffering from schizophrenia. Dr. Dorman and Ms. Penney will also discuss how the current medical model of mental illness needs to be expanded to include a person’s meanings and efforts toward individuation and self-sufficiency.
SESSION 2
Workshop 10- Dr. Michael Livittan
HEALING TRAUMA: THE MIND, THE BRAIN, AND THE FAMILY
This seminar provides an understanding of trauma and its effects on the individual mind, brain, and the family as a whole. The definition, impact, symptoms, and dynamics of trauma are explored in simple yet in-depth terms. Mental and emotional processes, as well as new research on the brain, are explained to highlight the consequences of trauma. In addition, the impact on the family is examined in order to better understand post-traumatic behaviors. Methods and practical tools are provided to facilitate coping, healing, and moving forward with compassion, vitality, and wisdom.
A complete list of Robert Whitaker’s upcoming speaking engagements is found on the Mad in America site.
The Role of Subjective Illness Beliefs and Attitude Toward Recovery Within the Relationship of Insight and Depressive Symptoms Among People With Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders
Keywords:
I actually wanted to have a nastier title, (two P words came to mind before I came up with “ambassador”) but I thought better of it. I wish Claire Danes had at least thought about the implications of what she is doing – but of course, money talks. May the Karma truck eventually drive up to her door and dump a load of excess calories her way.
Here’s a look behind the scenes at clozapine, courtesy of David Healy’s Mad in America post.
In the latest hit series Homeland Claire Danes plays Carrie Mathison a CIA agent with bipolar disorder taking Clozapine. She takes the drug to prevent herself tipping over into frank paranoia in a world where being paranoid is necessary for survival.
Anyone who knows anything about Clozapine knows Claire Danes is definitely not on it – she would not be as slim and svelte as she is if she were taking it. Weight gain is something Evident about clozapine that stands in contrast to the Evidence showing no weight gain that companies have gone out of their way to produce for Clozapine and related drugs like Zyprexa and Seroquel (see False Friends).
The question is what does Claire Danes know about Clozapine and should she get paranoid rather than just play the paranoid? As an actress is she killing people playing the part she plays? Is there anything else Evident about Clozapine being hidden by the Evidence?
Clozapine began life in 1958. It was given to the world’s leading psychopharmacologist Pierre Deniker to assess. At the time the neuroleptic/antipsychotic group of drugs was regarded as very safe. Several of Deniker’s patients died on Clozapine and startled by the number and range of deaths he said it was Evident that it should not be developed.
The company who made Clozapine (Wander) paid no heed to him; business and clinical evidence are two different things. Clozapine’s development continued even after Wander was taken over by Sandoz. Then in 1975 a series of deaths on Clozapine following drops in white blood cell counts happened in Finland. Clozapine was removed from markets in Europe and never made it to the US – Homeland Security (aka the FDA) intervened.
But it re-emerged in 1988 in the United States, in part because of efforts within Homeland Security. The history of clozapine’s return has been spun and respun – see The Creation of Psychopharmacology – in the course of which a myth has been created that clozapine is more effective than other antipsychotics (very important for someone on whose wits the fate of America depends) even though head to head trials in first episode psychoses show clozapine to be no better than older drugs like chlorpromazine.
Read the rest here.