Indeed, brain injury due to psych meds

I am posting this link from Beyond Meds as a public service for a fellow blogger who has been going through a tough withdrawal process after years of taking multiple medications, often at extremely high doses. She is finally off benzos, but is still suffering the lingering effects. A medical professional finally said it. She has endured injury to the brain because of using these drugs. It is the first time on her long journey that a doctor has put the blame where blame is due, on the medications for the protracted agony she has been going through. Critics have been saying all along what doctors have refused to acknowledge, that these drugs cause damage to the brain. I am using the phrase “damage to the brain” rather than “brain damage,” to make a subtle distinction. Damage to the brain can be healed, whereas “brain damage” implies that the condition is irreversible. That’s my interpretation, anyway.

I also feel it is important not to alarm people who are already struggling with the heavy anxiety and guilt that comes with the use of psychiatric drugs as part of the therapy. Since there are no “medically” sanctioned alternatives, and patients and relatives are not informed by the doctor about non-drug possibilities, antipsychotic medications are almost always part of the treatment plan. Therefore, it is extremely important to be vigilant with the doctors by doing your homework. Medication should be short term and in low doses. There is no justification for the use of two antipsychotics, scientific or otherwise. I do not believe in multiple diagnoses for a mental health condition. When your doctor diagnoses you as, for example, bipolar and schizoaffective, with OCD traits, what this means is that you have problems, and your doctor is one of them. He or she doesn’t have a clue how to help you so simply piles on the drugs. Your only defense is to hold your doctor’s feet to the fire to keep drugs to a minimum and learn to find other ways of coping.

The Chalk Garden

Chris and I went to see The Chalk Garden Friday night, our local expat production. Ian was out of town and Alex has a girlfriend to occupy his time, so it was just the two of us. Putting aside the weak acting, the message was interesting.

The Chalk Garden had its debut on Broadway in 1955. The setting is an English country house owned by an exceedingly wealthy woman who is parenting her sixteen year old granddaughter Laurel. They have a conscientious objector manservant and an incapacitated butler who lives upstairs. The play opens as new governesses are being interviewed to take charge of Laurel. No governess has stayed for long because, among other things, Laurel sets fire to things. Laurel also delights in telling anyone in earshot that her father committed suicide when she was twelve, she was sexually molested in a park around that time as well, and her mother has remarried for “love!” Laurel is, as we say nowadays, a “piece of work.”

The grandmother thinks Laurel is delightful and humors her. “Apart from a few fixations with fire, she’s a charming girl,” she insists. The greatest sin it appears, in the grandmother’s eyes is to be boring. Other than that, the grandmother comes across as engaged, liking people, confident in her own judgment (she doesn’t ask for references), but not terribly introspective. In short, she seems relatively “normal.” She encourages Laurel to run amok and poke her nose into other people’s business. Today she would probably be referred to as an “enabler.”

The reserved new governess, Miss Madrigal, is obviously hiding something. She is a knowledgeable gardener and horrified that nothing will grow in the garden. All the wrong plants have been introduced into soil that is essentially chalk. She catches on to Laurel rather quickly. Laurel’s mother makes a couple of attempts to visit and she and the grandmother quarrel constantly. She wants to take Laurel back to Suez live with her, her new husband, and Laurel’s soon to born be half-sibling.

The play was written in an era when people were fascinated with Freud’s theories. What I find interesting is that it wasn’t a heavy-handed caricature of motherhood, sex and secrets, but rather how obviously people can overlook problems brewing in children. Many parents want their children to be interesting, even a little bold, we often give them a long leash while they are growing up and we expect them in the end to come around. Parents are stereotypically portrayed as spirit crushing tyrants, but I feel this play shows the other side of child rearing that will often lead to problems in adulthood if tolerated. Laurel’s problems are an exaggeration of more benign traits in children that can still prove to be problematic in adulthood.

The action in the play really picks up when the grandmother’s old flame, the Judge, comes for luncheon. He’s seventy-five years old and still presiding at the criminal court. Laurel, the manservant and the butler are fascinated by murder cases. Laurel cleverly figures out during the luncheon that Miss Madrigal has appeared before the judge at some point in the past, and it quickly becomes evident that Miss Madrigal was tried for a murder. She was originally sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted to fifteen years solitary confinement. Miss Madrigal feels very strongly that she was unjustly convicted, since she had, for the first time in her life, told the truth, but neither the judge nor the jury wanted to hear it. So to jail she went, narrowly avoiding execution.

Time in solitary confinement has given Miss Madrigal time to change who she is, not just in hiding her past, but in her newfound commitment to truth. If she doesn’t get to Laurel, she, of all the people there, knows where lying can lead. She won’t give it a pass as just something Laurel will grow out of. She confronts Laurel about the incident in the park, and sure, enough, it didn’t really happen, and Laurel’s father died of liver failure, not suicide, when Laurel as three, not twelve. Miss Madrigal literally forces Laurel to leave for Suez with her mother, because she knows that Laurel will not grow in this house.

I remember when I was in my twenties reading in the newspaper of a girl I had gone to elementary school with, who was sent to jail for bank embezzlement. I hadn’t thought of this girl for years until I saw the headline. The first thing I remembered about her was that even back in third grade, you couldn’t trust anything she said. Her family probably thought she would grow out of this, too.

Chris’s “problems” in childhood flew under our radar screen. He was an intelligent child who did his best to remain invisible. He didn’t bother working in school, yet managed to do okay. Mathematics, the perennial Achilles heel up for a lot of students, wasn’t a problem for him. He simply didn’t try to excel, which Ian and I overlooked as typical of boys. We assumed he would clue in later. No teacher ever called us to say that Chris was having problems, academic or social. His problem from my perspective even then was that he was kind of invisible and he wasn’t putting himself out there in the game of life. Do parents drag their child to a psychologist with the complaint that he’s kind of bland and not putting himself out there? This is the opposite of Laurel’s problem. Laurel’s issues are nowadays the kind that are more likely to be brought to the attention of psychologists.

Would a psychologist have been able to do anything about my concerns? Maybe, maybe not. Would a psychologist have even seen where this could lead? I don’t know. If I knew then what I know now, I would have paid more attention to helping Chris come into himself and looked within myself more for its cause. I would have needed some help because I just didn’t see the dark side of this.

Debunking the bunk about megadose vitamins

From Opednews.com

Decades ago, when Linus Pauling and Abram Hoffer first proposed mega-dose vitamin therapy as a serious treatment, mainstream medicine and the press promptly discredited this as quackery. To this day, the media faithfully bombards us with the message that vitamins and minerals are useless, harmful or even killing us.(1-6) When one considers the lowly vitamin pill as an economic rival to drugs, and the dependence of the media on drug company advertising, the motivation to discredit mega-dose vitamins becomes all too obvious. Seemingly oblivious to this negative message, physicians quietly go about their business using megadose vitamin therapy in the intensive care unit with considerable success. Recent reports of this have been appearing in medical journals, finally vindicating Linus Pauling and Abram Hoffer as yes, of course, they were right all along

My comment: This is a good article but it occurred to me that megadose niacin therapy is not one of the therapies used in the emergency room when someone is psychotic. It should be.

In other words, the show must go on

“We cannot afford to take any chances with the integrity of the research process,” Collins said.

The NIH’s tougher disclosure requirements came in response to a spate of bad press showing huge private-sector bucks flowing to researchers at universities and institutes and the like, creating, as NIH Director Francis S. Collins said, an appearance of a conflict of interest that could undermine public trust.

I directly put the question to Thomas Insel a couple of years ago. “Dr. Insel,” said I, “how come I, a mere mother, can figure out what is going on with my son’s mental health issue and what to do about it, but here’s the NIMH still chasing magic bullets? Why don’t you pay attention to people like me more and forget trying to find the next wonder drug? It hasn’t happened yet and there have been plenty of bright minds working on this.” Okay, I didn’t say exactly that, but that was the gist of my argument.

I guess we can all predict what his answer was. Here’s a reasonable facsimile of what he said. “Yes, I often meet people like you, and maybe we should be looking into emulating what others have successfully accomplished. But, of course, schizophrenia is a serious mental health disorder, so I absolutely disagree with you that drugs are not the answer.”

Emulating what works for others who have been there is not going to happen when the “smart” money is into drugs dreamed up to combat the continually elusive “serious mental health disorders.”

der Insel

There is a flurry of recent blogsphere posts about the conflict of interest relationship between Dr. Thomas Insel, Director of NIMH and Dr. Charles Nemeroff, University of Miami, formerly of Emory University. I did a previous post in May where I voice my complaints about the NIMH’s focus on future magic bullets.

In Dr. Insel’s own words (I painted in my own highlights):

We must address mental illnesses, from autism to schizophrenia, as developmental brain disorders with genetic and environmental factors leading to altered circuits and altered behavior. Today’s state-of-the-art biology, neuroscience, imaging, and genomics are yielding new approaches to understanding mental illnesses, supplementing our psychological explanations. Understanding the causes and nature of malfunctioning brain circuits in mental disorders may make earlier diagnosis possible. Interventions could then be tailored to address the underlying causes directly and quickly, changing the trajectory of these illnesses, as we have done in ischemic heart disease and some forms of cancer. For serious mental illness, this is a new vision for prevention, based on understanding individual risk and developing innovative treatments to preempt disability.

I highlighted the word “supplementing” because here he is being disingenous. If anything, it’s the other way around. Psychological explanations for mental illness have been ignored by the brain biochemistry model. Dr. Insel believes mental illness is a brain disease.

Where Dr. Insel is not even bothering to look:

The placebo effect
Psychotherapy
Non-drug alternative therapies
What actually works for people
Orthomolecular therapy
Family therapies

He promotes the diseased brain version of mental health disorders because that’s where the money is today and will continue to be if the NIMH gets its way. If big money were in alternative therapies, Dr. Insel might be its public face, but it’s doubtful it would be him. If the NIMH were to look seriously into these matters, the way it stands now it would become a rump organization with a small office and skeleton staff in some industrial park or run-down storefront. He otherwise would have to go back to being a psychiatrist who makes a comfortable, but by no means lavish living by listening to patients. There is already competition in this area from psychologists. The 1950s is beginning to look like the Gilded Age for psychiatry. The big money is over for psychiatry if it abandons its disease mantra. Dr. Insel would be paid less than most of the people he went to medical school with and there would be no flying around the world giving keynote addresses.

The collapse of the biochemical model is looming. The NIMH has aligned itself with the pharmaceutical industrial complex which is beginning to show signs of unravelling from within. If the machinery collapses it will be thanks to bloggers, certain politicians, patients’ rights groups, investigative journalists, and lawsuits. The monopoly on information has been challenged by the internet and it’s looking unlikely that the diseased brain model can be sustained. Its end will be like the demise of the Soviet Union back in 1989 which had been building slowly for a long time and took everybody’s breath away with the speed of its collapse.

Not a mother to brag, but . . .

I missed Chris’s choir solo during the taking up of the offering in church last Sunday. The reviews so far have been good. My spy in church sent me the following e-mail:

Rossa, thank you too for the book. Your chapter left me reverberating like a tuning fork with your sense of resolve, your (inspiring) confidence in the validity of your experience and point of view. By the way, Chris sang absolutely beautifully today. His solo opened the Offertory and was repeated throughout the piece. His voice is lovely, and from where we sat, he seemed calm and confident.

I know it seems ridiculous for the mother of a twenty-six year old son to get all excited about this at his age, let alone brag about him, but, darn, it’s grand that he has the growing confidence to belt out “Ain’t Got Time to Die” in church. I’m hoping, since evidentally he ain’t got time to die, that he will take his own advice and get busy with the game of life.

Bipolar children – what are they missing?

I am sure you have noticed that newspaper articles on bipolar children never mention alternative therapies. In my opinion, diet and nutrition are part of the picture, but not necessarily all of it. Psychotherapy also has an important role. doctoryourself.com makes a good case for the importance of nutrition and vitamins in treating these childhood behavior problems. You often hear people say, “oh vitamins, I’ve tried them and nothing happened.” However, if you investigate closer, as the article below shows for niacin, the doses probably aren’t high enough. Most people are scared off by “dangerously unproven” megavitamin therapy.

Bipolar Kids Need Nutrition, Not Junk Food and More Drugs
(OMNS, October 16, 2008) The NY Times Magazine’s cover story, “The Bipolar Kid” (September 14, 2008), is a very bleak article. While emphasizing the miseries of living with such a child, Jennifer Egan’s article offers little hope except for ever-increasing doses of lithium. Long on discussions of definitions and diagnoses, it is remarkably short on treatment alternatives. Not a word about diet. Not a word about vitamins. Indeed, in this 9,500 word feature, describing the daily life of an out-of-control, beyond-ADHD boy, the word “nutrition” is not mentioned at all. Neither are the words “sugar” or “caffeine.”

What astounding omissions. Pediatrician Lendon H. Smith, M.D., nationally famous as “The Children’s Doctor,” was very plain in stating that sugar causes profound mood disorders. He specifically advised parents to give their children a “sugarless diet without processed foods.” (1) It is not easy. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has reported that children between the ages of six and eleven drink nearly a pint of soda pop a day. 20% of toddlers drink soda pop, nearly a cup daily. (2) And, of the seven best selling soft drinks, six have caffeine in them. In sensitive persons, caffeine can cause psychotic behavior. (3)

Food colorings and benzoate preservatives increase childhood hyperactivity, according to research published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, June 2004. (4) The study, involving 277 preschool children, also demonstrated that withdrawing these chemical additives decreased hyperactivity. When additives were reintroduced, there was once again an increase in hyperactivity. “Additives do have an effect on overactive behavior independent of baseline allergic and behavioral status,” said lead author Dr. J.O. Warner. So many parents, and any of us who have taught school the day after Halloween, can verify this.

It is possible that the children profiled in the NY Times story are unusual in that they do not consume any sugar, or any artificial food colorings, or any benzoate preservatives, or any caffeine-laced soft drinks. But it is much more likely that they do. The article ignored these important factors even though health professionals are increasingly aware that the normal functioning of the brain and nervous system is nutrient-dependent and additive sensitive. Ian Brighthope, M.D., says, “What is going on in the mind can be influenced by the nutrients and chemicals going into it. You can’t get anywhere with a patient with psychiatric symptomatology if their brain is hungry, starved, or poisoned.” (5)

Yet in the entire Times article, the words “allergy” and “junk food” are not mentioned, not even once. Children’s learning and behavior problems often begin in their parents’ grocery carts. Allergist Benjamin Feingold, M.D., was convinced of the negative effect of food chemicals on children’s behavior and the role of good nutrition in treatment. (6) Says the Feingold Association: “Numerous studies show that certain synthetic food additives can have serious learning, behavior, and/or health effects for sensitive people.” (7)

Another word totally absent from the Times article is “vitamin.” Psychiatrist Abram Hoffer, M.D., has had decades of experience and considerable success treating children’s behavioral disorders with vitamins. High doses of vitamin B-3 (niacin, or niacinamide) were first used by Hoffer and colleague Dr. Humphrey Osmond in the early 1950s. The trials were double-blind and placebo controlled. Over half a century later, vitamin therapy has still been largely ignored by the psychiatric profession, and, evidently, by some newspapers.

What a loss to patients and their families. I know and personally observed a preadolescent who was having serious behavioral problems in school and at home. Interestingly enough, the child had already been taking physician-prescribed little bits of niacin, though totaling less than 150 mg/day, but evidently it wasn’t enough to be effective. When tried, drugs (especially Adderall) actually made him worse: far more angry and dangerously confrontational. I was present when his parents had to hold him down while he screamed death threats at them. In desperation, his mother finally tried giving him 500 mg of niacin, three times daily (1,500 mg total). There was some improvement. With about 500 mg every two hours (an astounding 6,000-8,000 mg/day), the boy was a new person. He was now a cheerful, cooperative, affectionate youngster. Adding vitamin C and B-6 to his regimen helped even more. His school performance soared, the teachers loved him, and they repeatedly said so. At age 15, his maintenance dose was about 3,000 mg/day. He has since graduated from high school and is successfully employed. This is exactly in line with what Dr. Hoffer has repeatedly demonstrated for over 50 years. (8)

People often ask, “If this treatment is so good, how come my doctor doesn’t know about it? How come it is not in the newspaper?” Those are good questions.

The NY Times should know that reporting one side is not good reporting. To tell the whole story, we need nutrition. So do bipolar children.

References:

(1) Smith L. Foods for Healthy Kids. Berkley, 1991. ISBN-10: 0425127087; ISBN-13: 978-0425127087

(2) Jacobson MF. Liquid Candy: How soft drinks are harming Americans’ health. http://www.cspinet.org/sodapop/liquid_candy.htm Accessed Sept 18, 2008.

(3) Whalen R. Welcome to the dance: caffeine allergy, a masked cerebral allergy and progressive toxic dementia. Trafford Publishing, 2005. ISBN-10: 1412050006; ISBN-13: 978-1412050005. Reviewed in J Orthomolecular Med, 2005. Vol 20, No 3, p 215-217 and at http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v5n11.rtf Synopsis at http://www.doctoryourself.com/caffeine_allergy.html

(4) Bateman B, Warner JO, Hutchinson E et al. The effects of a double blind, placebo controlled, artificial food colourings and benzoate preservative challenge on hyperactivity in a general population sample of preschool children. Arch Dis Child. 2004. Jun;89(6):506-11.

(5) Interview, in the documentary film, Food Matters. Permacology Productions, 2008. http://www.foodmatters.tv

(6) Feingold BF. Why Your Child is Hyperactive. NY: Random House, 1985. ISBN: 0394734262. List of Dr. Feingold’s publications: http://www.doctoryourself.com/biblio_feingold.html

(7) http://www.feingold.org/pg-research.html and http://www.feingold.org/pg-news.html Free email newsletter available.

(8) Hoffer A. Healing Children’s Attention & Behavior Disorders: Complementary Nutritional and Psychological Treatments. Toronto: CCNM Press, 2004. ISBN-10: 1897025106; ISBN-13: 978-1897025109. List of Hoffer’s publications: http://www.doctoryourself.com/biblio_hoffer.html See also: http://www.doctoryourself.com/review_hoffer_B3.html

The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is a non-profit and non-commercial informational resource.

Editorial Review Board:

Damien Downing, M.D.
Harold D. Foster, Ph.D.
Steve Hickey, Ph.D.
Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
James A. Jackson, PhD
Bo H. Jonsson, MD, Ph.D
Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.
Erik Paterson, M.D.
Gert E. Shuitemaker, Ph.D.

Andrew W. Saul, Editor

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Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html ) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html )

For ordering information, Click Here .

Where are the bodies?

Below is the information I was actually looking for when I posted a reply to a previous comment. Anytime an anti-vitamin bigot tries to tell you that vitamins are dangerous and unproven in high doses, refer them to Andrew Saul’s research that appears on the doctoryourself.com website. (Please don’t assume that all vitamins are safe at high doses. Always do your homework.) Andrew Saul poses the logical question, if vitamins are so dangerous, where are the bodies? While reading the answer below, compare the actual body count cited to Andrew Saul’s findings that:

“Harmful reactions to some of the most widely used medicines — from insulin to a common antibiotic — sent more than 700,000 Americans to emergency rooms each year, landmark government research shows.” (Associated Press, Oct 17, 2006) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15305033/

25 YEARS OF DOCUMENTED VITAMIN SAFETY

by Andrew W. Saul

Over a twenty-five year period, vitamins have been connected with the deaths of a total of eleven people in the entire United States. Poison control statistics confirm that more Americans die each year from eating soap than from taking vitamins.

Where are the bodies?

A 25-year review of US poison control center annual reports (1) tells a remarkable and largely ignored story: vitamins are extraordinarily safe.

Annual deaths alleged from vitamins:

2007: zero
2006: one
2005: zero
2004: two
2003: two
2002: one
2001: zero
2000: zero
1999: zero
1998: zero
1997: zero
1996: zero
1995: zero
1994: zero
1993: one
1992: zero
1991: two
1990: one
1989: zero
1988: zero
1987: one
1986: zero
1985: zero
1984: zero
1983: zero

The zeros are not due to a lack of reporting. The American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC), which maintains the USA’s national database of information from 61 poison control centers, has noted that vitamins are among the 16 most reported substances. Even including intentional and accidental misuse, the number of alleged vitamin fatalities is strikingly low, averaging less than one death per year for more than two decades. In 17 of those 25 years, AAPCC reports that there was not one single death due to vitamins.

These statistics specifically include vitamin A, niacin (B-3), pyridoxine (B-6), other B-complex, C, D, E, “other” vitamin(s), such as vitamin K, and multiple vitamins without iron. Minerals, which are chemically and nutritionally different from vitamins, have an excellent safety record as well, but not quite as good as vitamins. On the average, one or two fatalities per year are typically attributed to iron poisoning from gross overdosing on supplemental iron. Deaths attributed to other supplemental minerals are very rare. Even iron, although not as safe as vitamins, accounts for fewer deaths than do laundry and dishwashing detergents.

Reference:

Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin SL. 2008 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 26th Annual Report. Clinical Toxicology (2009). 47, 911-1084. The full text article is available for free download at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2008annualreport.pdf . Vitamins statistics are found in Table 22B, journal pages 1052-3. Minerals, herbs, amino acids and other supplements are in the same table, pages 1047-8.

For Further Reading:

Download any Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers from 1983-2008 free of charge at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/NPDSPoisonData/AnnualReports/tabid/125/Default.aspx

The “Vitamin” category is usually near the end of the report.

To subscribe to the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service at no charge: http://www.orthomolecular.org/subscribe.html

Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html ) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html )

Become your own doctor – nobody else cares about you like you do

I have been a fan of Andrew Saul’s website for a few years. I even got to sit next to him at a luncheon. He’s like a rock star to me. I like his website motto: If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. This especially includes your health care.

For those of you who don’t know it, his website, doctoryourself.com is a treasure trove of health advice from the vitamin perspective. Plus, it’s interesting. He has added some Frequently Asked Questions, which are in themselves very interesting. Here’s just a sample of the FAQs from what is billed as the “World’s Largest HEALTH HOMESTEADING Website.” I like that, too!

Doctor Yourself? Do you honestly think you can become your own doctor?

Very often, yes. This is neither impossible nor illegal, and is more and more essential all the time. Healing is too big a topic for any one person to know it all. While that statement includes me and you, it also includes your doctor. But it is not impossible to learn more than your doctor knows, particularly in key areas. You can go to any book or paper in print, read it, apply it, and draw practical conclusions from it. What you will read is just what any physician reads. In fact, you may discover material that your doctor never saw, or did see and never investigated. With a good bibliography, an inquiring mind, and gradual experience, there is no reason why you cannot gain considerable competence in treating yourself and your immediate family in many instances. Remember that in doing your research you will also learn when you really do need a physician.

How can you say this? Aren’t doctors the ones for this duty; isn’t it their special province to be the formally educated authorities on health?

Commonly, yes: but a doctor’s authority in America often exceeds his or her knowledge. Whole bodies of knowledge in healing are ignored because they are unorthodox and non-medical. A doctor’s education seems exhaustive, yet MDs study so much of drugs and surgery, and so little of nutrition, fasting, herbal remedies, spinal manipulation, massage, vitamin and mineral therapy, homeopathy, and more that we realize their qualifications are only partial. This takes nothing away from their dedication as individuals, but being individuals they are prone to following certain theories over other theories, particular practices over other alternatives, and holding opinions as well as facts. This is true with any person, certainly, but it is our responsibility to cover all possible ground in our efforts to cure and prevent illness. If we learn more than the doctor in areas of value to our health, it is our duty to apply this knowledge to the betterment of ourselves and our family. We need total health more than medically approved health. Our wellness should not be limited to our doctor’s experience, but enhanced by our own experience.

A lot of the media, professional organizations, politicians, and physicians aren’t going to concur with your ideas here, are they?

Nope, especially since I believe that alternative healing methods are much more than just temporary or half measures. I am not going to give you yet another “use drugs wisely” or “help your doctor help you” speech. That stops short of true wellness self-reliance because it always defers final say to the doctor, and trust medical, conventional treatments for the “real illnesses.” That will not be the case here. I believe that your doctor works for you, not the other way around. Your physician is your contractor, and it’s your jobsite. Following the government’s health advice, the American Medical Association, the American Dietetic Association, the syndicated doctor’s advice columns in the newspaper, or television commercials for patent remedies will not be recommended, either. Rather, I offer some unusual substantiation, references, research summaries, obscure clinical material, unpopular preventive or therapeutic measures, little known or under-used facts and approaches to do-it-yourself health. My presentation is incomplete, of course, because there is so much to know. Hopefully, this will be a starting point, sort of a “health homesteader’s handbook.”

A Way Out of Madness: Dealing with Your Family After You’ve Been Diagnosed with a Psychiatric Disorder

A self-help manual for psychosis, this book by author Daniel Mackler has got to be unique. As a parent, I am not the intended target audience for this book. This book is aimed mainly at young people in their late teens or twenties who have suffered a mental health breakdown and now have to pick up the pieces, usually under the anxious eyes of their families. I gifted this book to my son and have been stealing time with it ever since.

I am relieved that this book was written because, to be selfish about it, it makes my job easier. The chapters’ authors say what I have been saying to my son, but the difference is, they’ve been there and they are opinionated about the role of the family as a force for both good and evil. For every mother and father who is wondering why their child is still at home on the couch after several years, the advice given here will cause you to cheer. You don’t have to risk the high Expressed Emotion of clumsily nagging your child to do something with his life. Your relative is finally hearing it from people who’ve been there at that age: “Get a job or go back to college,” “realize that your family may not be the best support for you at this stage,” “you’re probably spending way too much time with “mother,” “learn to set limits,” etc. etc. etc.

It is clear from this book that whoever has suffered a psychotic break has been victimized on some level. The book urges people to acknowledge this, but move on, even if it means distancing yourself from family. It also lists ways in which families can abuse their powers over the individual, sometimes unintentionally, other times not. I, for one, am delighted that my relative is hearing it like it is. This book is written by people who were labeled, medicated, and had a rocky start, but they figured it out and moved on. Others may disagree, but I am of the opinion that most parents want their children to be independent – one of the greatest gifts that a parent can give a child is to encourage the child stand on his or her own two feet. Often, though, the labeled child is overly attached to the parents, unconsciously feeling that he or she must please us, appease us, and generally be there for us. This self-sacrificing is a problem and most likely the reason for the label in the first place.

I would love it if my son began to mentally distance himself from me as one of the many steps on his road to independence. He needs reinforcement from outsiders. Positive views about psychosis and mental breakdowns and what to do about it are hard to find in the literature. This kind of advice has generally been promulgated by doctors and psychologists, not consumers. Dr. E. Fuller Torrey has had a monopoly on this kind of advice for far too long. He is bleak. Do you want bleak for your relative? It is time for a fresh perspective that empowers the person to heal himself. Do yourself and your relative a favor by buying this book and do let others know about it.

You can buy it here.