Wellness Wordworks peer support intervention

Wellness Wordworks

Instant Mental Health Peer Support Showing emotional distress as temporary and transformative

“Peer Support is THE most effective mental health intervention”

– National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors, “What Helps, What Hinders,” a report on how effective Peer Support is for Mental Health Recovery

Wellness Wordworks was founded in 2008 by Corinna West. We are building an innovative mental health care model called Instant Peer Support. We are using Google Gigabit technology to provide a 24 hour video call in support line for people to find resources for handling emotional distress. All of our staff will be people who are themselves in recovery for mental health diagnoses. Our video line will be linked with crisis care opportunities and community mentors to bring people into social activities.

This will relieve much of the burden on our over-stressed local mental health centers. We plan for recovery outcomes that are much higher than current mental health delivery models.

Consider joining this great initiative

Peter Breggin on the hazards of psychiatric diagnosis

I’ve extracted three key points from Dr. Peter Breggin’s Huffington Post blog. on the hazards of psychiatric diagnoses. Each one, except for “medication spellbinding” as Breggin terms it, speaks to my own experience. And the reason that medication spellbinding doesn’t apply in my son’s and my experience is because I sensed that the medication fairy dust fell on the psychiatrists’ prescribing the drugs. They attributed all kinds of benefits to things I didn’t see at all. Their judgement was impaired, not mine, but that, of course, was a no win point of view for me, because I had already ceded power and authority into the hands of health professionals. On Breggin’s third key point below, try as I may to get people to look deep inside their own lives in order to heal their relative, many people just assume that I’m just a mother basher who is determined to push psychiatry back to the bad old days.

Psychiatric diagnoses take power and authority over your life, and the lives of your children, out of your hands. They place that power and authority in the hands of health professionals. Often it takes but a few minutes in an office to transform you or your child from a complex human being into a product on the psychiatric assembly line–and endless assembly line that can lead to a ruinous lifetime.

Perhaps worst of all, these diagnoses almost inevitably lead to the prescription of psychiatric medication to you or your child. Psychiatric drugs are toxins to the brain; they work by disabling the brain. None of them cure biochemical imbalances and all of them, every single one of them, cause severe biochemical imbalances in the brain. The adverse effects of these drugs on the brain and mind are stunning. In my recent scientific books and articles, including Medication Madness, I have demonstrated they cause medication spellbinding. Spellbound by psychoactive drugs we cannot adequately judge the impairments they create in our brain and too often we mistakenly feel “improved” when in fact our feelings have been dulled or artificially jacked up, and our judgment about ourselves and our lives have been impaired.

But something more subtle occurs when we accept a psychiatric diagnosis for ourselves or a loved one. We lose empathy for ourselves and our loved one. Instead of learning about and identifying with the sources of our emotional pain and suffering, and our failures in life, we ignore our real lives and explain ourselves away with the diagnosis. To understand ourselves or anyone else, to help ourselves or anyone else, we must care about the details of the life before us.
Read the rest here

Neurotic interlude

Yesterday, Chris called me from a pay phone after his appointment with the employment counsellor.

“Great, so how’d it go?” I asked, mentally preparing myself for Chris to divulge some glitch on the road to employment.

“Uh, well, I sort of told her I was thinking about death a lot.”

“DEATH! Why would you tell an employment counselor THAT? She’s an employment counselor, not a psychiatrist!”

“Well, anyway, Mom, she called the L’Espoir program (outpatient day program Chris attended) to see if she could get me an appointment right away.”

“THE L’ESPOIR PROGRAM?” I exploded. “Why would you want to involve THE L’ESPOIR PROGRAM? You were perfectly fine this morning, and last night, and as far back as I can remember! ” (By now, I’m heading towards the land of high expressed emotion.)

“Chris, I’m taking the afternoon off. You meet me at home right away!”

Chris and I met up at home. I made him some herbal tea and we talked. There appeared to be nothing wrong with him except that he needs something to fill his days —a job or classes that bring him into contact with people. He has absolutely nobody to talk to during the day and this has been going on far too long. Staying inside the whole day means he can get easily spooked when he goes outside.

“Well, Chris, I guess you’ve set back the job hunt by several weeks. You obviously really spooked the employment counselor.”

“Yeah, and I haven’t told you the whole story. I have an appointment today at 4 p.m. at La Belle et La Bête.” (where Chris has spent a total of six months live-in)

“Okay, Chris, tell me what’s troubling you.”

The story emerged, nothing that both of us hadn’t already discussed. Chris is 28, at a crossroads.

“Mom, I am suddenly realizing how much time I’ve lost. I’m panicking. But I’ve got no plans. I’m an empty vessel. ”

“Right. Chris, this is normal for young men of your age who have gone through what you’ve gone through. They get to a point of being well when they suddenly wake up to possibilities and they panic. You’re perfectly sane, you know.”

Chris brightened. “Am I? Gee, I need to hear that.”

“Well, it’s the truth. And the good news is that you are moving another notch up the diagnosis food chain. You started out diagnosed as schizophrenic, the last time you were hospitalized for three months you were favoring bipolar, and now I would say you are simply neurotic. Congratulations!”

“I guess I am kind of neurotic right now.” We both laugh.

“Chris, I know you are not suicidal. You are perfectly welcome to keep your appointment today with the shrink at the residential hospital; I’ll drive you there, but let’s get our story straight. I’m not leaving you there. When he asks you about the supposed suicide ideation, what are you going to say?”

“Well, I’m spending too much time with old people.”

“That would be your mother and your father, and all the people my age you hang around with in musical theatre. Death is just around the corner for all of us!”

“I don’t see anybody during the day my own age. I’m lonely. I also feel I’ve gone as far as I can go with Dr. Stern. She’s quite Freudian, and I think that there is another side to me that is not coming out.”

“You have spent a lot of time with Dr. Stern. Maybe you need a change.”

So, I drove Chris to La Belle et La Bête and left him there and went off to an antiques store.

When I picked him up after his appointment, everything was cool. The psychiatrist, who was not much older than Chris, spent about an hour with him and Chris promised to phone him the next day to let him know how he was. He told Chris he could contact him anytime if he needed to talk further. No drugs, no hospitalization, just empathy.

Crisis averted.

              Death: You’re an interesting young man. We’ll meet again.
              Young Boris: Don’t bother.
              Death: It’s no bother.

We have a duty to protect our children

Becky Murphy is the force behind Involuntary Transformation.

Op-Ed

A MadMother: We Have a Duty To Protect Children

Becky Murphy
February 15, 2012

The recent reports by ABC News and the Senate Hearing on December 1, 2011, which was presided over by Senator Tom Carper, are the latest of many investigations and hearings into psychiatric drugs being used on foster children. But the fact is that the indiscriminate use of psychotropic drugs prescribed off-label is widespread, and not limited to children in foster care. Children who live with their parents often have the same safety and protection issues as children in foster care and experience equally harmful effects from the drugs.

When children are harmed instead of helped with psychiatric drugs it is always tragic. When the child lives with his or her parents, the parents can’t understand why the help—the medication—is not helping, but hurting.

My son was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy the month he turned seven years old. It is a neurological condition known to be caused by a brain injury, and can cause the same symptoms as schizophrenia. When he was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, he also had been getting mental health treatment services for over three years and had a diagnosis of PTSD. He had this diagnosis because he had been the victim of violent assault when he was three years old and in foster care.

My children were in foster care due to my own failure to deal with the effects of my own traumatic childhood. I placed my sons in foster care, when I became unable to care for them. My youngest son was placed in a home that had twelve reports filed with Child Protective Services. After he was victimized, I believe that the State of Washington attempted to cover it up, with little regard for how this would cause my son further harm. I was not informed of the trauma my son had experienced.

Read the rest of this moving testimonial here.

Antipsychotics – a form of birth control

Please read this post from Schizophrena at the Schoolgate. If Louise Gillett suspicions are correct, then chemical castration is one side effect of antipsychotic use that doctors routinely do not disclose to their patients. Yet, science also flirts with the idea that schizophrenia confers an evolutionary advantage for future generations. (See David Horrobin, The Madness of Adam and Eve). If science is correct, then there is an evolutionary DISADVANTAGE for people with a schizophrenia diagnosis not to procreate.

Excerpt from Amazon:

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2002

This volume presents an argument which aims to fundamentally alter our view of the roots of humanity and answer questions of how a species of clever ape evolved into something different. Schizophrenia is the only illness to be found in equal measure in all racial groups, pointing to the fact that the disease must have been present at the dawn of mankind before the races diversified and spread from Africa throughout Eurasia and Australasia. The book aims to reveal how the genetic legacy of schizophrenia is at the heart of the best and worst of human achievement.

Today’s obituary

Dory Previn, Songwriter, Is Dead at 86

By BRUCE WEBER

Published: February 14, 2012

Dory Previn, the lyricist for three Oscar-nominated songs who as a composer and performer mined her difficult childhood, bouts of mental illness and a very public divorce to create a potent and influential personal songbook, died on Tuesday at her home in Southfield, Mass. She was 86.

Read the rest of the article here

February blah

It’s icy cold here. I’ve stopped bragging that since I’m Canadian, I’m used to this kind of weather. This kind of weather sucks. I no longer have the 40 below wardrobe thanks to the effects of currently living in a more moderate climate. I got rid of the unfashionable Eddie Bauer stuff years ago. Our small apartment is driving me cabin crazy! The only way to make a small apartment bigger is for the people who live there to stay in their rooms or go outside. This works okay for Alex, our middle son. He’s got a new job that requires that he arrive at 8 a.m., so he’s long gone by the time I get up. He gets home usually around 9 p.m. after socializing with his friends.

This leaves Chris. Ian and I are at work all day, and Chris is alone much of the day, which is not a good thing. Combine that with the wickedly cold weather and self isolation is paranoid-provoking. He sees his psychiatrist, and his occupational therapist, and his voice teacher, but that’s kind of “it” in terms of a reason to go out the door during the day. Luckily, he’s got a roaring nightlife, for the first time in years, with his various musical commitments. And, a friend of his from first year university (imagine staying in touch with a classmate when you left university after only one year!) has moved here.

Believe me, Chris is mentally stable and I expect him to stay that way. He is a different person in so many ways that the collapsed shell of himself that he was when he had his full blown psychotic episode that landed him in the hospital eight years ago. Would I say he is symptom free? No. The more he stays indoors by himself, the more his mind races. He still has trouble knowing what he’s supposed to do in a room. He lingers, he hesitates, he stands in the threshold of a room, undecided about what to do next. Here is a more descriptive example. Ian and I are in the kitchen making dinner and talking about our day. Ian notices that Chris has appeared in the hallway, and is standing facing the kitchen directly, but not saying anything to Ian or me. I’ve tried to explain to Chris that there is a purpose to being or transitioning through a room. We enter to sit down and read a book, or to shake hands with a guest, or whatever. The point is, Chris, either get into the kitchen and talk (How’s your day, is always a good opener), or go off and do something else, but don’t just stand there.

The good news is that the occupational therapist, under some pressure from Ian and me, has hooked Chris up with an employment counselor. Chris has filled out a vocational aptitude test for her, called the “Jackson” something or something. Chris pointed out that all these tests seems to have the name “Jackson” associated with them. I immediately thought of Jackson Triggs, but then remembered that Jackson Triggs is a brand name for my beloved red wine. The Jackson test is kind of bizarre. It has multiple questions that, I kid you not, go something like this.

Would you prefer to raise turkeys?

Draw a blood sample?

That’s all for now. Stay warm.

Revisiting “normal”

Gianna Kali at Beyond Meds highlighted in her post today this quote from R.D. Laing.

The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.~ R.D. Laing

Which brought to mind the famous Stanford prison experiment

From Wiki

The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted from August 14–20, 1971 by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University.[1] It was funded by a grant from the US Office of Naval Research[2] and was of interest to both the US Navy and Marine Corps in order to determine the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners.

Zimbardo and his team selected out of 75 respondents, the 24 males whom they deemed to be the most psychologically stable and healthy.

The participants adapted to their roles well beyond what even Zimbardo himself expected, leading the officers to display authoritarian measures and ultimately to subject some of the prisoners to torture. In turn, many of the prisoners developed passive attitudes and accepted physical abuse, and, at the request of the guards, readily inflicted punishment on other prisoners who attempted to stop it.

If conversion disorder makes sense, so does schizophrenia

Bear with me while I try to collect my thoughts on why the opinion of this medical doctor on conversion disorder in a New York State high school should equally apply to the percentage of the population diagnosed with schizophrenia. You can read the full article here.

CNN–Dr. Charles Raison, CNNhealth’s mental health expert, is an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Below I have extracted what Dr. Raison says about conversion disorder. Would he, using his own logic*, agree with me that he could be talking about schizophrenia? No, of course he wouldn’t agree with me. Schizophrenia is always a special case to a psychiatrist, isn’t it?

strange behavior
no neural abnormalities
not manufacturing the problem
completely incapacitated by symptoms
makes psychological sense
age of onset often in teenage years

What is lacking in the diagnosis of schizophrenia, as opposed to the much rarer conversion disorder diagnosis, is “hope.” The medical community is resoundingly united in its prediction that the girls in New York State will make a complete recovery. This is great news for those girls and their families! Now, how about the much larger population of those diagnosed with schizophrenia being given the same good news?

Dr. Raison
When I teach psychiatry to medical residents, the first thing I tell them is that patients’ stories always make sense. No matter how bizarre a person’s symptoms might be, our lives follow a human logic, and they follow a medical logic. When a story doesn’t make sense, it means you don’t know the real story.Medical stories that don’t make sense are often big news makers, precisely because they don’t make sense. Sometimes, they titillate our hunger for the unexplained. Sometimes, they capture our attention because the medical uncertainty frightens us.

The essence of a conversion disorder is the development of a neurological symptom — such as the tics seen in the young people of Le Roy — for which no neural abnormality can be found. Typically, a simple neurological exam will confirm that the symptom doesn’t result from any type of brain or nerve damage. And yet patients with conversion disorder have no conscious sense that the symptom is a production of their brains. That is, they are not manufacturing the problem. They are truly afflicted, and it can be horrible.

Only someone who has hypnotized people paralyzed for months and had them hop out of bed and run around the hospital room, or who has conducted “truth serum” interviews of people unable to speak, only to have them erupt into King’s English, would believe that such bizarre conditions exist. But having conducted these interventions, and more, I can assure you that people can be completely incapacitated by symptoms with no obvious medical cause.

Labyrinth Walking May Calm Stress

Labyrinth Walking May Calm Stress and Promote Tranquility

Labyrinths differ from mazes in that a maze is meant to be a puzzle, posing difficulties in finding the correct path. Labyrinths are simple to follow, the point being that once you enter the path, your attention is meant to stay focused on reaching the center which each person may designate with his or her own value; the end of a journey, the reaching of a goal, satisfaction, balance, tranquility, or God, Himself.

Finger labyrinths were small, desktop sized labyrinths that could be traced with a finger to relax and “balance” oneself. If you would like to try one for yourself, click on the first link provided below to find a pattern to print off for your own use. Notice that the Christian cross is also occupies a dominant area at the bottom center of the pattern. If you are right-handed, try tracing the pattern with your left hand, and vice versa, to increase the challenge, and repeat the pattern several times in a row before stopping.

Read this fascinating article here.