Jeremy Narby quotes

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To my friends and readers who still take psych drugs (and to the whole spectrum of folks on and off meds too)

I often stop and wonder about the spectrum of readers this blog draws.  I have readers who are interested in mental health and wellbeing who’ve never taken a drug, nor have they ever been subjected to any sort of coercive psychiatric care. I have readers who take meds willingly, understanding that for them at this point of their individual, personal, idiosyncratic journeys it makes sense for them to do this. I have readers who take meds but really do not want to. They have not found meaningful supports that allow them to find a way to be free of them. Then there are readers who have been on meds but have freed themselves from them. Among those readers is a huge spectrum as well. Some were coerced and traumatized in the system. Others, didn’t have terribly traumatic experiences,  but they understand that for them medications were not a long-term solution. I also have readers who were coerced and traumatized and harmed who cannot free themselves from the drugs and who have admirably and painfully come to terms with this reality. I am actually in a bit of awe of such people. They do not know what the future holds but they know that for now this is what is best for them. And they move forward like we all do in the unknown. Watching life unfold.

Oh, and I do also, have some readers who are grateful for what drugs did for them. Yes. Some of these folks are still on drugs and others have come off when they no longer felt the need for that support. They understand that a dialogue with all of the players must be had and appreciate the perspective I have to offer as one of the many folks who’ve been gravely harmed by psych drugs.

The fact is I hold a space for every single one of these folks. Our journeys are long and complex and individual. I was on drugs for over 20 years. I hold a space for who I was a …….READ THE REST HERE

So, here I am in the neurology unit of our local teaching hospital, where I have been since Saturday. No flowers or cards, please! I’ll be out in a few days. There is no need for surgery. I’ll be on medication. For life. I’m fine with this because the tests have determined where the problem lies and what remedial action will prevent the problem from happening again in future.

There are no psychiatrists attached to the neurology unit.  Imagine that! If mental illnesses are really brain disorders, why aren’t psychiatric patients treated by the hospital’s neurologists? Well, we all know that psychiatric patients never see a neurologist, and most don’t undergo medical testing to determine the cause of their symptoms.

I wandered down to another floor of the hospital and found the hospital’s glossy magazine on a display rack. This month it features its department of psychiatry and an interview with the head doctor of the day program that Chris attended for two years. The program, as it did when Chris was there, emphasizes early intervention, which seems to be the premise for the interview. The program still focuses on the importance of structure in the patient’s day, the value of integration back into the community, the art and music therapy, etc. Interestingly, the doctor did not mention medications. Perhaps he wanted to avoid an overt conflict of interest since the magazine had a number of pharmaceutical sponsors’ logos on the back page. Medications are a mainstay of the program. The program staff taught my son that medications, for him, are for life.  Early intervention, a good idea, depending on how it is done, I strongly believe is also a way for the program to extend pharma’s revenue stream.

Unsurprisingly, a critical omission in the interview was discussion of importance of the role of the family. It was all about how doctors and therapists help the patient recover and resume his or her role in the community. The critical influence of the family was totally ignored. The family, I know from my experience, being merely passive bystanders who attend the program for 90 minutes every two weeks to listen to the “experts” talk about the program and the medications. It was four years after leaving the program that Chris was finally able to begin integrating into the community. My husband and I had to educate ourselves during that period on how to bring out Chris’s potential; Chris left the program still very much in his shell, and unable to undertake further work or training. He was not its star pupil. The day program did not clue us in how we could help Chris better at home, the environment he was born into and where he spends most of his time.

How much trust should we place in mental health experts to bring out relatives to a state of wellness? How much work should we be willing to do ourselves? Could efforts be better directed by working with self-help and recovery programs that teach families and friends how to help someone in distress from a non-disease perspective?

Summertime and my thinkin’ is hazy…… It’s so hot here that I am not much good doing anything. I’ve got deadlines, though. I’ll be retiring from work at the end of November. I’d been using that date as the point where I plan to begin the task of finishing my long overdue memoir, but have been snatching time when I can at night to review the chapters once more.  I want to stop talking about it, forget about dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” and just get it out there as an e-book. A lot of the reason for the delay is that, well, frankly, I’m no writer, and I had a lot to learn about effective writing.

So much has changed in the world of mental health since I began my book eight years ago, most importantly, Robert Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, which came out in 2010. As painful as it was to read, the research it presented vindicated my own experience with my son’s inadequate (but very costly) medical treatment.

An interview with well-known neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Nancy Andreasen appeared in Sept. 2009 in the New York Times, in which she reveals her research finding that people with schizophrenia are losing brain tissue at a more rapid rate than healthy people of comparable age (as much as 1 percent per year), and that more drugs given, the more brain tissue lost.

The power of the Internet continues to bring people together to discuss issues of common concern when it comes to mental health. The Mad in America site provides the most authentic and intelligent discussions (not always the briefest or the kindest) on mental health

The beginnings of recovery based networks, such as Mother Bear, Practice Recovery, and Family Outreach and Response that challenge the accepted notion that mental health problems are almost always biochemical in nature by showing family members what they can do encourage recovery in their relative.

The rise of the mommy memoir re a child’s mental health crisis. Here’s where my added value will come in. These mommy memoirs, most of the ones I have read, with the notable exception of The Danny Diaries, fully subscribe to the medical model of the “illness.” Mine won’t. I promise.

Why, you might ask, does Pope Francis live in the Santa Marta (Vatican) hotel, instead of in the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace?

It wasn’t so much a question of luxury as personality, he said. “I need to live among people,” he said. “If I was living alone, isolated, it wouldn’t be good for me. A professor asked me the same question, ‘why don’t you go and live there (in the Papal apartments)’? And I replied: ‘Listen to me professor, it is for psychiatric reasons,'” he said chuckling.

Read the full story here.

I’m currently enrolled (and luvin’ it) in the online recovery education course offered by Mother Bear, Practice Recovery, and Family Outreach Response. There are two registration points Registration for the July course is happening now.

The strength of the Famililes Healing Together course for me is that it views psychosis as an understandable human coping mechanism and coaches families on how to help their relative from a strengths based perspective. I wish this course was available ten years ago when our family was in turmoil. Over the years I’ve had to piece together my own reading program and develop a strengths based relationship with Chris through trial and error. This course weaves it all together.

As a parent and mother, I want to be a problem solver. That’s how most of us parents operate, isn’t it? We try to fix our relative in the problem solving way that we tackle our own issues. Here’s what the course moderator Krista MacKinnon emphasizes:

“You are not a problem to be solved and neither is your relative. Your deficits and your relative’s don’t need to be the main focus in recovery. Your strengths do.

A strengths-based approach isn’t about denying that problems are occurring. It is a fundamental shift in perspective that can help us identify inner and outer resources that can help us transform challenges into opportunities for healing and growth.”

The current course started in May. Here are the lessons so far:

1. Introductions
2. Guiding Recovery Principles and Emotional Tools
3. Fundamentals of Mental Health Recovery
4. Looking at Roadblocks and Strengths
5. Recovery Attitudes, Challenges, and Turnaround People
6. The Continuum of Mental Health, Distress, and Psychosis
7. Hopelessness and Learned Helplessness
8. Making A Case For Cultivating Hope
9. Your Hope Practice
10. Looking at Strengths
11. How To Use A Strengths Based Approach
12. Relationship Building Amidst Psychosis
13. Communicating in the Midst of Psychosis
14. Boundaries

If you or someone you know would like to take this course, you won’t regret it. You will discover how to practice recovery and transform pain.

The job possibilities are endless with my LinkedIn account profile as “Rossa Forbes.”

Novartis posted a job you might be interested in:
Director, Payment Policy, Public Affairs

Job Purpose: Develop, align and represent the Novartis position on Healthcare policy with particular focus on payment policies for medicines/devices such as Health Technology Assessment, Referene Pricing, Value of Medicines and various cost…

Kelly Scientific Resources posted a job you might be interested in:

Head Medical Affairs

AbbVie is a global biopharmaceutical R&D company focused in developing leading-edge therapies and innovations. Their expertise in research and development of pharmaceutical products goes back to a 125-year legacy. They are the owner of a solid…

The best advice I’ve come across about how to help someone recover from a mental illness is from Pat Deegan, Director of Training and Education at The National Empowerment Center. The entire article is available for a nominal fee from the National Empowerment Center. If you know someone who is experiencing a mental health crisis, you can become their powerful ally by absorbing the message in Recovery as a Journey of the Heart. Her article explains how people like herself who have been labelled mentally ill defend themselves againt profound disappointment and hurt.

“The fact that I was unmotivated was seen as a problem by the people who worked with me. But for me, giving up was not a problem, it was a solution. It was a solution because it protected me from wanting anything. If I didn’t want anything, then it couldn’t be taken away. If I didn’t try, then I wouldn’t have to undergo another failure. If I didn’t care, then nothing could hurt me again.”

Think about how Pat Deegan’s observations might apply to your own relative.