Holistic Recovery from Schizophrenia

Brain scans, plant power, and the immune system

Those of you who follow my blog will know that I often italicize the word “schizophrenia” because I find it a catch-all term used by the medical profession for a condition they know little about. Many people attribute their schizophrenia to early childhood trauma, others claim that their schizophrenia cleared up after an undetected medical condition was discovered and treated, and some claim that the medication they were on triggered psychosis. I have a foot in all camps for a very simple reason. If the medical profession doesn’t know what causes schizophrenia in individuals, then, in order to help my son, I should try to find a likely explanation for what caused his condition, and then learn how to heal it. In practical terms, this means that Chris and I try many kinds of healing modalities. These methods aren’t offered by your general practitioner or psychiatrist.

Chris and I have been on two recent adventures that I haven’t written much about. The first adventure began last June when Chris and I underwent scalar energy work. You can read about our experiences here, so I won’t go into the details now of what the therapy involved. The shaman, or “scalar energy guy,” as I like to call him, was puzzled by the results of the work he did on Chris. He felt he had cleared Chris of all his early traumas, but a blockage continued to show up when Chris performed the color exercise. So, he took a new photoimaging of Chris’s brain. What he found were two dark masses. The first covering the entire pre-frontal cortex and the second in the temporal lobe area behind his ear. I then wrote to the hospital that did Chris’s original MRI when he was first hospitalized almost nine years ago. The MRI had revealed nothing abnormal. I then sent the original MRI with the superimposed photoimaging of Chris’s brain to the neurologist husband of a friend of mine. The neurologist found nothing abnormal about the areas the scalar energy guy was concerned about. While the neurologist’s findings were a huge relief to me at least, the scalar energy guy feels that there is something going on that remains undetected. “Welcome to schizophrenia!” is all I can say. Short of drilling into Chris’s brain, the mystery remains for now.

Today Chris came along with me for his first visit with the “plant power guy,” who has been treating me for several months with energy captured from plants, not plant extracts. There’s a difference. It’s power, not actual plant extracts like you would find in homeopathy. Apart from that, I can’t explain what this guy does, and one reason is that the two-way conversation is in French. I’m just not that good in French to probe into this latest subject. The scalar energy guy knows the plant power guy, and was curious to find out what he would see in Chris.

Keep in mind that the plant power guy, who is actually trained as a medical doctor, does not want to know the patient’s medical complaint or past diagnoses. All he wants to see is a recent blood test, and all he wants to know is if the patient has ever had an operation or suffered a broken bone. So, knowing nothing about Chris’s schizophrenia diagnosis, he would not be able to leap to conclusions based on the diagnosis.

The plant power guy, after running his tests, told Chris that he has an almost non-existent immune system. That’s pretty dramatic, I’d say. It’s weird, too, because if that were the case, I would have thought that Chris would have a history of colds and various other immune-related illnesses, which he doesn’t.

Unless, of course, schizophrenia, Chris’s particular “illness,” is a manifestation of a disorder of the immune system.

I  pulled an abstract (1999) from off the Net, which, as usual, makes me wonder if the authors were funded by pharma. I’ve underlined the juicy bits below. The authors claim that antipyschotic medication activates the specific immune system and increases antibody production. This may very well be true, except that Chris is on an antipsychotic and yet his immune system continues to set off alarm bells. My conclusion is that whatever the antipsychotic may be doing for Chris, it isn’t working on his immune system, and I certainly don’t want him on higher doses of an antipsychotic to bring his immune system up to par. What remains to be see is what plant power will do for Chris over the course of the next year.

1. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 1999;249 Suppl 4:62-8.

The role of immune function in schizophrenia: an overview.

Müller N, Riedel M, Ackenheil M, Schwarz MJ.
Psychiatrische Klinik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München.
nmueller@psy.med.uni-muenchen.de

Immune alterations in schizophrenia have been described for decades. However, modern immunological methods and new insights into the highly developed and functionally differentiated immune system allows an integrative view of both, the older and also recent findings of immunological abnormalities in schizophrenia. Both, the unspecific and the specific arm of the immune system seem to be involved in the dysfunction of the immune system in schizophrenia. The unspecific “innate” immune system shows signs of an overactivation in unmedicated schizophrenic patients, as increased monocytes and gamma delta-cells point to.

Increased levels of Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and the activation of the IL-6 system in schizophrenia might also be the result of the activation of monocytes/macrophages. On the contrary, several parameters of the specific cellular immune system are blunted, e.g. the decreased T-helper-1 (TH-1) related
immune parameters in schizophrenic patients both, in vitro and in vivo. It seems that a TH-1-TH-2 imbalance with a shift to the TH-2 system is associated with schizophrenia. During antipsychotic therapy with neuroleptics, the specific TH-1 related immune answer becomes activated, but also the B-cell system and the antibody production increases.

PMID: 10654111 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]

Making the most of the journey

Matt Samet writes in The Other Side at the Mad in America site, about benzo withdrawal and the spiritual lessons he learned. Many aspects of his journey are also applicable to recovery from schizophrenia – to take the longer term view, and learn to make the most of the downtime. I’ll expand on his point below to include parents and family members. As a parent, I wanted Chris to be fully recovered as quickly as possible, and there were long periods then and there still are, when focusing on short, medium, or long term goals, is very discouraging and self-defeating.

How did you do it — how did you get better? (And I am better, almost completely so!) And of course, “Will I get better too?”

The easiest answer and the first one I turn to is also the simplest: time. I did my research, realized it would likely take months and years — not weeks — for my brain and nervous system to normalize to something resembling a baseline state, and I made my peace as best I could with a time span then ultimately unknowable, even as I craved nothing more than its end. Even as I prayed for a fast-forward button on my very life so that I might wake up some magical, sun-soaked morning no longer paralyzed by a swarm of profound and horrific symptoms.

But time is only half the equation, because the true crux is what you do with that time. There is no fast-forward button on life, and I don’t believe there should be. Why treat your stint on Earth, even the darkest hours, like slogging through an eight-hour shift at some crappy, low-paying job?

Read more here

Two ways of looking at it

From today’s New York Times

His physical injuries healed, but his mental illness persists. More than anything, Mr. Salomon does not want to be sick, so much so that he does his best to ignore the voices he says he still hears, denying them to most people who ask. He feels comfortable talking about his illness in group therapy, but does not like discussing it elsewhere. “I don’t know how to explain it to anyone,” he said.

It scares him that he will have to take medication for the rest of his life, both for schizophrenia and for diabetes. He also has a learning disability, which prevented him from advancing in school past the sixth grade. He excels at math, he says, but has trouble with reading and writing.

It is discouraging that Mr.Salomon tries to ignore his voices – I wonder if he or those around him are aware of the Hearing Voices Network and its way helping people to appreciate voices as messengers of themselves. It bothers me that the the reporter unquestioningly writes that he will have to take medication for the rest of his life. It bothers me that the story does not enlighten readers by connecting the outcome of diabetes to the medication. I wish that these stories weren’t so focused on the supposed sadness of “schizophrenia” and instead conveyed a more positive message.

Entre Il et Ailes

Last Sunday during lunch, I found myself having a lively discussion with two transgendered individuals (male to female). The lunch followed a screening of a documentary film entitled Entre Il et Ailes (crudely translated: Between He and Wings.) Christa, seated opposite me, and I are at best casual acquaintances. Chloe came along as a guest of another member. Christa and I are both members of a group that meets quarterly to discuss the many aspects of consciousness, so we have occasionally crossed paths. While munching our vegetarian fare, Chloe, Christa and I, shared observations on the tediousness of applying daily make-up. “I thought it would be fun,” said Chloe, while Christa nodded in agreement, “but after six months went by, it was a chore.” I hear you, Chloe.

Entre Il et Ailes is the story of Christa’s sex change operation and her journey before and after.

The film is delightful, not at all sad, and actually very funny. This was a deliberate choice by director, Laurence Périgaud, who was on-hand at the screening. Périgaud said that all the films she had seen on transgendered individuals took on a sad air and that’s not the tone she wanted to convey. Incidentally, that’s exactly the intention with my schizophrenia blog – to show the upside, the hopeful side, the funny side, and always the human side of what others stereotype as “way beyond the norm.”

I am not in Kansas anymore ( and neither are you!), to paraphrase Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. If you are a parent of someone with a schizophrenia or related diagnosis, our perspective of “normal” took a huge hit when our relative veered from the norm. Oz is a most interesting world.

Entre Il et Ailes
Devenir femme à 60 ans
un film de Laurence Pérgaud
English subtitles

Accepting and indulging differences

“It was time to do some work of our own. If Tyler felt alienated and alone, it was because we had failed to acknowledge—and accept—his difference. I was so focused on the conceit that my son would be like Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams that I failed to see the son I was lucky enough to have. It was time to get to know Tyler.”

This story* from the National Journal reminds me in a different way of Rupert Isaacson’s journey with his autistic son, which he recounted in the memoir The Horse Boy. Isaacson tells an unusual story of riding horses in Mongolia and visiting Siberian shamans in a search of healing. He had early on noticed that his son had an affinity with horses and shamans so decided to immerse himself in what his son was interested in to see if this had a curative effect. Isaacson makes the point that if your son or daughter is interested only in trains and numbers, then indulge their love for trains and numbers by joining them in their pursuits.  Further reading: interesting interview with Isaacson

*PERSONAL ESSAY

How Two Presidents Helped Me Deal With Love, Guilt, and Fatherhood
Guidance from Bill Clinton and George W. Bush taught the author how to accept and understand his son’s Asperger’s syndrome.

By Ron Fournier

Updated: December 4, 2012
10:35 a.m.

November 29, 2012
9:00 p.m.

A well aimed letter to the editor

I tried to ask permission of blogger extraordinaire ALT_mentalities to reprint her letter on my site, but for some reason it seems I can no longer comment on her site unless I join WordPress. I am having the same problem with other WordPress blogs. So, figuring it’s easier to ask ALT’s forgiveness than to seek her permission as the saying goes, I have swiped her broadside and pasted it into my post. 

FROM: ALT

TO: Cristina Traina and Laurie Zoloth

CC: Editors, Northwestern Daily and Huffington Post College

SUBJECT: Response to your article: “Culture stigmatizing mental illness must change”

Dear Professors,

In your recent Huffington Post article (Culture stigmatizing mental illness must change), you wrote that “depression is really a chemical imbalance in the brain.” I understand this was not an academic publication – but could you provide a citation to back this up?

Try.

You’ll find it impossible to do so; because this mantra, this advertising slogan is about as scientific as the statement that “the best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup!” The best? Really?

Meanwhile, let me provide with you with a few citations of my own:

[Antidepressant] advertising campaigns have revolved around the claim that SSRIs correct a chemical imbalance caused by a lack of serotonin… Contemporary neuroscience research has failed to confirm any serotonergic lesion in any mental disorder, and has in fact provided significant counterevidence to the explanation of a simple neurotransmitter deficiency… In fact, there is no scientifically established ideal “chemical balance” of serotonin, let alone an identifiable pathological imbalance.
 from Lacasse, J.R. & J. Leo (2005) Serotonin and Depression: A disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature.

A serotonin deficiency for depression has not been found.
– Psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen, clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, in Prozac Backlash (2000)

Although it is often stated with great confidence that depressed people have a serotonin or norepinephrine deficiency, the evidence actually contradicts these claims.
– Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience Elliot Valenstein, in Blaming the Brain (1998), which reviews the evidence for the serotonin hypothesis.

But I am not writing merely to correct a factual error in your post – there’s more.

Read more.
“Depression is really a chemical imbalance of the brain” – just one more branch on the eugenics tree 12/03/2012

Undue faith in evidence based treatment may lead to commitment orders

In a recent edition of  Huffpo, Marvin Ross takes on the recovery movement, in his blog post entitled For Some with Mental Illness, There is No Recovery.

Mental health advocate Lembi Buchanan of Victoria, B.C. released a new report called Emergence of the Recovery Movement: Are medications taking a back seat to recovery? She points out that the popular recovery model threatens to take centre stage at the expense of the urgent needs of the people diagnosed with severe and persistent mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. What sounds like a logical approach to the treatment of mental illness, recovery, is actually regressive because it does not focus on the evidence-based neuroscience of these brain disorders.

Read more here

Mr. Ross’s complaint about the recovery movement, is that “They reject the emphasis of the biomedical model of mental illness. Instead, they believe the patient is the expert on treatment rather than the doctor and that there is no need for clinical evaluation or evidence-based treatment. This model does not accommodate the needs of individuals with severe mental illness (3 per cent of the population) who may lack insight into their illness and are unable to make appropriate treatment choices.”

Dr. Mark Ragins, Medical Director, MHALA Village, stepped up to the plate with a detailed critique of Marvin Ross’s post.
Your argument is irrational: Because some people don’t recover, the recovery movement should be stopped.

No approach to anything requires a 100% success to be implemented. At best pills help about 70-80% of the time and we don’t urge stopping them because some people don’t respond to them. Not everyone learns in school, some people can’t read and some people can’t see or hear TV. That doesn’t mean schools, books, and TV shouldn’t be widespread.

There are some people for whom the recovery model seems a bad idea – people who are repetitively seriously dangerous, predatory people, people with severe brain damage or mental incapacity, and people incapable of any human relationships. This is a very different group and a much smaller group than the group this article discusses – people who don’t believe they have a biochemical illness, “lacking insight,” and people who won’t do what other people want them to do, “noncompliant”. Those two sets of people are failures of our existing medical system, not the recovery model. I spend my life focusing on working with precisely those people (low insight and compliance) in a recovery program and we have very high success rates including reductions of over 70% in homelessness, jailings, and hospitalizations, increases in independent hosing, family reunification, and working along with very low dropout rates. Those people (low insight and compliance) are the main group of people who will benefit from more recovery based programs, not a reason not to use recovery.

Misleading assertion 1: The recovery movement neglects people with severe mental illnesses. The core focus of the recovery movement is people with severe mental illnesses. It is people who have suffered the most loss and suffering in their lives who most need a person centered approach instead of an illness centered approach. For them mental illness is not just a medical condition needing medical care, it is a profoundly destructive experience needing recovery. Recovery is for people who don’t respond to just treatment alone, not for people who respond very well to treatment first. The vast majority of the recovery based strategies are specifically directed towards people with severe mental illnesses including – outreach and engagement, trauma sensitive inpatient treatment, housing first, harm reduction, motivational interviewing, integrated substance abuse treatment, supported housing, employment, and education, skills training and psychosocial rehabilitation, clubhouses, self help and consumer staff, building protective factors and resiliency, and strengthening families.

Misleading assertion 3: Recovery is anti-medication. Many people use medications as part of their recoveries, but they have a choice just like people with physical illnesses. If you have high blood pressure you may want to use pills, at least for awhile, and/or you may want to exercise or diet, or you may want to live with your condition and its risk of stroke and heart attacks because of side effects, or even just because you don’t like doctors. In contrast, anyone who doesn’t agree to take psychiatric meds “they “need for the rest of their lives” is labeled as “noncompliant” and shunned in our current system. Recovery favors a collaborative, goal driven, client driven approach to “using” medications, instead of a professionally driven, compliance based, symptom reduction based approach to “taking” medications. Many people who don’t agree they have a mental illness and don’t like following orders, can find their way to using medications to improve their lives if they have a psychiatrist willing to collaborate with them. In many cases it is the system that needs to be committed to helping the person more than the person needs to be committed to working with the system. Recovery is an improvement in accessibility and customer service. Dropouts go way down.

Misleading assertion 4: Recovery eliminates involuntary treatment. Most people in the recovery movement believe that involuntary treatment is occasionally absolutely necessary. However, most people presently treated involuntarily today, could and should be more humanely and effectively treated in voluntary, trauma informed, welcoming, accepting crisis programs that include consumer staff. It only looks like we have too few involuntary treatment resources because we have almost no recovery based voluntary treatment resources. None of the horror stories of desperate people being turned away by hospitals included those people being offered anything else as a meaningful alternative. Involuntary treatment, even when it is effective and necessary, is a violation of human rights, usually highly traumatizing, and destructive of relationships with the mental health system overall. So we shouldn’t use it for social disruption, poverty and homelessness, avoiding responsibility, or frustration by staff and family that someone is not doing what they’re told to do. There should be highly restrictive usage. Also having coercive power over someone else is corrupting and damaging to the staff, family, and society that uses it. Locked hospitals have a way of becoming dehumanized, burned out, hopeless places for everyone involved. Recovery programs have higher staff morale and hopefulness.

Irrational conclusion: Because we can find a heartwarming story of someone’s recovery that included involuntary treatment and medications, the present system is working and should be defended against the threat of the recovery movement.

Our present system is not “all bad” nor are the people working in it evil and unhelpful. Sometimes recovery does result from our current efforts. Everything we’re doing doesn’t need to be changed. (Sometimes recovery results from placebo too.) That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to improve things. We all deserve a better approach and system to work with. The recovery movement has developed better approaches and continues to learn and implement new strategies.

The recovery movement is actively fighting for positive reforms. Please join us.

Mark Ragins, MD
Medical Director, MHALA Village
www.mhavillage.org

novabird Lover of Life, Radical Centrist comments:  My daughter literally lost everything as untreated schizophrenia ravaged her mind over a period of years. She ended up sleeping on the streets because she was in psychosis and all of the women’s shelters kicked her out because her behavior was so out of control. She was in full blown psychosis for many months, a fact that was well known to the police department as she kept breaking the law. The police took her to the emergency room many times and the hospital repeatedly refused to admit her or treat her due to the fact that she has extreme lack of insight.

I went to a judge and got a court order and she finally got admitted and put on the anti-psychotic drugs she so very desperately needed. And she has continued to stabilize since that time.

You say that involuntary treatment is a “violation of human rights, usually highly traumatizing, and destructive of relationships with the mental health system overall”. And yet evidence based science tells us that the earlier the person can be treated with anti-psychotics, the better their chances for recovery.

Are you OK with the massive and permanent losses my daughter suffered due to the fact that she has extreme lack of insight and the local hospital saw fit to not provide the involuntary medical treatment she so very desperately needed? That is not a rhetorical question by the way. I would sincerely like an answer.

MarkRagins replies: 1) Was your daughter offered any meaningful assistance in the community that accepted her as she was, psychotic, and tried to form a relationship with her and help her with her goals, even if they were irrational – for example, housing first, voluntary crisis housing, peer outreach and support, quality of life community policing, drop-in-serivces, charity, benifits assistance? If not, I’m not “OK” with that.

2) After all of that and more is tried and failed and if there is acute danger (and I assume there was since the judge granted your order), I’m “OK” with involuntary treatment even with it’s massive downsides, if it’s trauma sensitive and used to engage in voluntary recovery-based services before discharge,

3) What family services and supports were you offered to you?

BTW It’s hard to distinguish between correlation and cause in early intervention studies. Many people who take a long time to engage in treatment have significant risk factors that impact their outcomes in additon to not taking meds. Many places are now using intensive psychosoical interventions with first break psychosis instead of jumping straight to meds to build relationships and coping skills and avoid antagonizing people. Also it’s unclear whether meds themselves may have long term negative effects.

I hope, in addition to stabilizing, your daughter is now recovering.

Mark Ragins

The evolving nature of the recovery/liberation movement

Seth Farber has written a brilliant Op-Ed post today at the Mad in America site. Szasz and Beyond: The spiritual promise of the Mad Pride Movement 

It’s a very long read, but well-worth the time for anyone interested in the history and theories of madness and its movements, and the great names  i.e. Thomas Szasz, R.D. Laing who have contributed, often by the force of their own personalities, to shaping our beliefs about sanity . According to Farber, we are in the second phase of the movement, the phase where the movement no longer cares to strive towards socially sanctioned “normal.”

The Politics of Experience was in effect the first Mad Pride manifesto of the 20th century. But it was 35 years ahead of its time. There was no mad pride movement then that invited Laing to become the theoretician of a mad revolution. The mental patients liberation movement that emerged in the 1970s was focused on gaining equal rights and on ending coercive treatment. Laing did not take much interest in this. What was the point of integrating schizophrenics into an insane and self-destructive society? As Laing became a new age speaker, pioneer of innovative therapy and advocate of the individual mad person, Szasz accepted graciously the role of the theoretician of mental patients’ liberation, a movement that demanded equal rights for the psychiatrically labeled—and reform of the mental health system– but did not seek to otherwise change society. Szasz’s libertarian capitalism was tolerated grudgingly by patients’ who tended to be left-wing and who often remained, at least temporarily, dependent on the government’s financial help of which Szasz disapproved. Although many patients had been influenced by Laing, his ideas were not incorporated into the movement. Why? In this initial phase of the movement the emphasis was on the similarity between so-called schizophrenics and normal people. Laing’s emphasis on their distinctive albeit admirable traits was only an obstacle to the movement. Former patients wanted to demonstrate that they were as rational as “normal” people. (This was similar to the black and gay movements for equal rights which in their initial phases tried to be as conventional as possible.) One of the former leaders of the patients’ liberation movement whose story was recounted in my first book became enraged with me when I told him I was writing a book about Mad pride. “If you call us mad they will view us as irrational” he protested. But by then the younger generation was ready for mad pride, and tired of trying to seem normal.



The social consequences of “insight” and rumination

I’ve made lots of mistakes along the way with Chris, and one of them, in the early stages, at least, of his “officially diagnosed illness,” was getting caught up in negative thinking patterns. I attribute this to the dismal diagnosis, being counseled by mainstream to see the “illness” in medical terms, and interaction with dismal doctors. All of these factors influenced me to dwell negatively on Chris’s future. The purely medicalized view of this “illness” has huge impact on the patient and how s/he is treated by family members.  If I was influenced to adopt negative thought patterns, consider what happened to Chris. People do much better where families behave as if they are not particularly concerned/worried about them. It’s a skill one can learn. Also, think about the message given out by families who are convinced that their relative lacks “insight” into his own condition. “If only they were as worried as I am, they would know they are mentally ill.”  This is called “insight” from the point of view of the relative. The relative assumes that, armed with this “insight,” the patient will learn to take better care of himself, to avoid future relapse.

This research article suggests that “insight” (believing you are mentally ill) and rumination is associated with depression and negative self-appraisal in people with chronic schizophrenia.

Abstract
Rumination, Depression, and Awareness of Illness in Schizophrenia
Neil Thomasa1 c1, Darryl Ribauxa2 and Lisa J. Phillipsa2
a1 Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre and Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia
a2 University of Melbourne, Australia

Background: Depressive symptoms are common in schizophrenia. Previous studies have observed that depressive symptoms are associated with both insight and negative appraisals of illness, suggesting that the way in which the person thinks about their illness may influence the occurrence of depressive responses. In affective disorders, one of the most well-established cognitive processes associated with depressive symptoms is rumination, a pattern of perseverative, self-focused negative thinking. Aims: This study examined whether rumination focused on mental illness was predictive of depressive symptoms during the subacute phase of schizophrenia. Method: Forty participants with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and in a stable phase of illness completed measures of rumination, depressive symptoms, awareness of illness, and positive and negative symptoms. Results: Depressive symptoms were correlated with rumination, including when controlling for positive and negative symptoms. The content of rumination frequently focused on mental illness and its causes and consequences, in particular social disability and disadvantage. Depressive symptoms were predicted by awareness of the social consequences of mental illness, an effect that was mediated by rumination. Conclusions: Results suggest that a process of perseveratively dwelling upon mental illness and its social consequences may be a factor contributing to depressive symptoms in people with chronic schizophrenia.

Keywords:

schizophrenia; psychosis; rumination; post-psychotic depression; insight

Dear Abby’s advice to “Hearing Voices in Illinois”

DESPITE TWO SUICIDE ATTEMPTS, FAMILY INSISTS WOMAN IS ‘FINE’
11/19/2012
DEAR ABBY: I’m a 40-year-old woman, diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder after two suicide attempts. I have tried to get my parents and siblings to attend a session with me so they would understand my diagnosis, but all I hear is, “You don’t need all those drugs. You’re fine — just a little different than the rest of us,” and, “You have always been ‘odd’ and we like you that way.”
I have given up trying to get their support, but my gifted 14-year-old nephew has been asking questions about my diagnosis. I’m not sure how much to tell him, especially about the suicide attempts, one of which landed me in the hospital.
Any advice about what I should tell him and how to get family support? — HEARING VOICES IN ILLINOIS

DEAR HEARING VOICES: Tell your nephew the truth. If he is as intellectually gifted as you say, he will go online and start researching. Explain that your condition can be overwhelming at times, which caused you at one point to try to harm yourself, but that it is kept in check with medication.
Your relatives may be reluctant to admit that there is a mental illness in the family, which is why they refuse to allow your psychiatrist to confirm it. However, you may be able to find support from NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. With 1,200 affiliates, NAMI provides grassroots, self-help groups for people with mental illness and family members who are affected by it.

The website is www.nami.org and I hope you will check it out. The organization was established in 1979, and it may be able to help you get through to your family that your problems are not imaginary.

Here’s what SRK at Refusing Psychiatry without Pissing Off the Neighbours has to say about Dear Abby’s advice.

Trashing Dear Abby (again)

Jeanne Phillips, 70-year-old daughter of the original Abigail Van Buren, Pauline Phillips, has always told almost everyone who writes to her to see a psychiatrist as the “common-sense” solution to whatever problem they are having.

Today, her omnipresent Dear Abby column inadvertently reveals the obnoxious agenda of all psychiatric shills, particularly so-called “family support” groups like NAMI.

Abby sagely suggests to a writer she calls “Hearing Voices in Illinois” that the only reason her family might think she doesn’t need psych drugs is that they’re “reluctant to admit” what Hearing’s psych would confirm — that in fact, there is a mental illness in the family.

In other words, if the family weren’t so irrationally prejudiced against people with diseases of the brain as opposed to the heart, kidney or stomach, then they’d surely see the obvious logic of taking drugs which reduce your life expectancy by twenty-five years and do virtually nothing to help you.

Abby speculates that Hearing’s nephew could go online to research mental illness since he is gifted. She presumes that this gifted nephew will clearly see the truth — that the orthodox, hyper-medicalized view of all human problems absolutely must rule.

Families are only to be respected when they tell people to take psych drugs. If they tell people not to get “treatment” then they’re wrong, and they deserve no respect. That’s the way NAMI has always operated. Today’s Dear Abby just takes the implication to a more obvious, blatant and pedestrian level.

Read the rest of the SRKs post here.

Should relatives buy into the diagnosis, as Hearing Voices in Illinois wants them to do? Would this help or hinder the relative to get better (getting better is not something that “Hearing Voices” seems to set as a personal goal).