From Refusing Psychiatry Without Pissing Off the Neighbors

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Psychiatry and the Easter faith

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

Mourners visiting a tomb were asked this question one morning, long ago.

I ask it today of anyone who might study the mind or presume to heal mentally caused ills within a framework alienated from religion or in non-religious fields.

Lately we favor the proposition that bad behavior and unpleasant feelings are sicknesses or diseases of the brain. We believe doctors who specialize in behavior (but tellingly, not doctors who actually specialize in the brain) can solve social problems by medical means. We even tend to believe that scientific medicine is the best and most vital route to happiness in general.

We are apparently so far gone as to accept on faith that an individual read the rest here

From the it’s about time department.

Ursus Wehrli tidies up art.

Ursus Wehrli shares his vision for a cleaner, more organized, tidier form of art — by deconstructing the paintings of modern masters into their component pieces, sorted by color and size.

Comedian and cabaret artist Ursus Wehrli is on a crusade to tidy up art.

The Mindstorm: Fear and Misinformation and Throwing Away 50%: DJ Jaffe and Dr. Fuller Torrey are two leading figures in the cause for forced treatment of persons with severe mental illness. Their argume…

Children worry a lot, even if they don’t express it. They worry that their parents will die, they worry about problems that occur half a world away, not realizing that some of the problems are not a direct local threat. (“No, sweetie, we don’t get tsumanis here in central London.”) Is it good to be globally and politically aware? Yes. Is a certain level of insensitivity to life’s tragedies good for one’s health? Also yes. The constant barrage of inescapable doom and gloom frightens young children and continues to keep the more sensitive adults among us in a constant low level state of depression and fear.

It seems that everywhere we turn today, we are expected to care and weep for the world’s many victims of opression, injustice and the environment. Including animals.

The BBC announcer’s funereal tone of voice drifted over the radio waves early one morning last week. BBC announcers take the cake when it comes to “gravitas.”

“A Royal penguin found stranded on a New Zealand beach 2,000km (1,200 miles) from its Antarctic home has died.

Lisa Argilla, a vet at Wellington Zoo, said they suspected it had suffered multiple organ failure.

The bird, which was dehydrated and starving . . . . .“

Enough! This is one bird thousands of miles away, not your dear grandmother, the gruesome details of whose death would not be shared with the grandchildren. Why is this one misbegotten bird considered international news? I call it news pollution. Its toxic effects are insinuated into the cellular energy of anyone within earshot, even half a world away.

I had lunch today with the scalar energy shaman. We discussed the frustrations that both of us are having with the plant power guy, namely, that he has no documented results of his testing, even though he uses credible scientific instruments and well-established muscle testing techniques. The plant power guy claims Chris has a deficient immune system, but he does not produce progressive reports based on evidence that shows whether the plant power that he prescribes to fix the problem is doing the job.

While lack of documented evidence is a common problem with alternative healers,  I feel that conventional psychiatry doesn’t do much better. We are asked to take a leap of faith based on one person’s best guess as to the diagnosis (symptoms), then we are asked to believe that the medication prescribed address the fictitious problem. “Fictitious,” because most antipsychotic medications are dopamine receptor antagonists, and there is growing scientific skepticism about the dopamine theory serving as all-encompassing explanation of certain kinds of mental illness.

Even though we know that it is often our belief system, rather than hard data, driving our choices, there is still a need for more documented evidence and greater disclosure in any path we choose to take.  Alternative healers, too, not just mainstream medicine, should be mindful of the scientific method.

My sister has been urging me to watch this award winning 2007 film, and finally sent it to me as her Christmas gift. Yesterday afternoon, I settled down to watch it. The basic plot: Lars, a 27 year old loner, decompensates into what the family doctor terms “delusional disorder,” by buying a mail order anatomically correct female doll, which he introduces to his shocked brother and sister-in-law with whom he lives. Karin, the sister-in-law “gets it” quite quickly, meaning she figures it’s better to enter into Lars delusion as a way of communicating with him. She suggests that “Bianca” probably needs a physical check-up after her long journey. The doctor convinces Lars that Bianca needs a weekly visit and that Lars should come along with her to keep her company.

Lars’ brother Gus is quite hostile to the idea of buying into Lars’ delusion while his wife is more supportive of the idea. This, of course, causes tension between the two of them. The screenwriter, Nancy Oliver, has cleverly intuited that how well or poorly a bizarre behavior by a family member is handled by the family (and the community), makes a huge difference to healing. She also strongly implies that the behavior is the attempt at healing. This film would be an excellent teaching aid in mental health recovery programs.

  
Doctor: What we call mental illness,
isn't always just an illness ...
  
It can be a communication,
it can be a way of work something out.
  
Gus: Fantastic. When will be over?
  
Doctor: When he doesn't need it anymore
  
Karin: How can we help?
  
Doctor: Go along with it

Gus: -- Oh no.  No that's...
No no...
No I mean...
pretend that she is real?    I'm not gonna do that,
I mean I can't.   I'm just not gonna do it
  
Doctor: She is real.

Gus: -Well...
  
Doctor: She's right out there

Gus: -- Right, I get that
  
I'm just not gonna...  You know, I'm just not gonna
I'm not gonna do it, so...
  
Doctor: You won't be able to change his mind anyway

Bianca's in town for a reason.

Gus: -- Right, but... but ...

Doctor: It's not really a choice.
  
Gus: Then we'll do it, whatever it takes.

One half of the title of this post is an homage to the British documentary series about the hopes and aspirations of a diverse group of children seen at the ages of 7, 14, 21, 28, etc.  I have written about the importance of the first Saturn return, which takes place around the ages of 28 to 30. This is the age when people’s lives begin to take on a direction to carry them forward for the next few decades. So, here’s what the ages 27 to 29 have looked like, from a strictly activity point of view, for my son Chris.

• discovers love of musical theater and connects with different choral groups
• practices Transcendental Meditation (for over a year)
• expands circle of friends, including now a girlfriend
• starts taking piano lessons again after a 15 year hiatus
• talks more seriously about getting a degree

Why am I even bothering to mention these activities, which many people already manage to sandwich into a busy schedule while holding down jobs or pursuing education? Because, if you are, or were, like me, having a son or daughter in an almost total state of withdrawal and dependency lasting longer than we could have imagined, we may begin to believe that our adult child will never become self-advocating and independent. It is very likely that this dream of ours was discouraged at the outset by the people who should instill hope, but don’t do a very good job of it – namely the medical profession. To gain real hope, I learned early on from others who had been there, you have to distance yourself from the medical view, which is pessimistic and incomplete.

And, speaking of movies, Side Effects, opens this week-end.
 Steven Soderbergh’s “Side Effects” follows twists and turns involving a fictitious antidepressant (which has its own real Web site).

From Sera Davidow’s blog at Mad in America

Accepting the true message of the film would mean having to admit we don’t have all the answers. It would mean acknowledging that we’ve given or received incomplete or flatly incorrect information for a long time. It would mean that some well-intentioned people who are highly educated have done harm when they thought they were helping.

It would mean a loss of income for pharmaceutical companies who thrive on the message that virtually everyone can benefit from some sort of pill. It would mean we don’t have easy explanations for why some really scary things happen. It would mean we have to say ‘I don’t know why,’ a hell of a lot more. And sadly, it would mean that some of us will find ourselves asking, “You’re telling me I didn’t have to live like this for all these years?”

No, the message of the film is not anti-medical model. But the film does call for recognition of the pain the medical model has caused. That pain has been caused not so much by its existence but because of the force and dishonesty with which it has been applied. Were there more transparency about the medical model being just one of many options, about the lack of definitive scientific proof for its claims, about the true benefits and risks of psychiatric drugs… Well, then, it would just be another tool in the tool box that we could try or not try, use or discard.

The Message is…
The film’s message is one of freedom. It is one of the right to tell your own story and choose your own path (including the medical model), or to meander about across many paths as works for you.

Read more about the film here and watch the trailer.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the recovery movement lately. Most of my contact with it comes through the Mad In America site. I recently got into an exchange of comments on the MIA site with a person who appears not to want to hear what I had to say because I was a mother, and therefore not a person who qualifies as having “lived experience.” The fact that mothers, too, have lived experience in the recovery movement is not respected in the recovery movement, I am sad to say. Many people in the movement have their own stories to tell about how their parents contributed to their problems. This particular commenter assumed because I am a mother writing about my son that I am an oppressor, an infantilizer, even a castrator, and kept pestering me to allow my son to speak for himself, which is rather a silly attack because there is nothing stopping my son from speaking for himself. He can create his own blog, get his own Twitter account and go for it. But I own my experience and I feel that mothers, too, have a place a the table, whether others in the recovery movement like it or not. Many in the more radical wing of the recovery movement do not want to hear from people who hold opinions that even occasionally differ from their own firmly entrenched view and the hit list includes parents, psychiatrists, people who accept their diagnosis, people who claim they can function on meds, people who believe that vitamins and diet cured them, people who think they have a brain disease, etc. Is the recovery movement big enough and sophisticated enough to learn from each other’s lived experience?

The Mother Bear Community sent me the following request which I am circulating. Please consider writing a letter to the appropriate persons (listed below) re the potential federal mental health policy changes that were discussed today in Washington.

Dear Rossa:

Fellow Mother Bear CAN advisor, Jim Gottstein, Esq., of President and CEO of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, has sent a letter to his State Senator stating his concerns about potential Federal mental health policy changes, including psychiatric (diagnoses) profiling, that may be discussed at Thursday’s Senate HELP Committee Hearing on Assessing the State of America’s Mental Health System. (HELP- U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions).

If you are in the U.S. and concerned about possible mental health policy decisions and would like to write a letter to your Congresspersons, State Senator(s) and/or the Chairman of the Committee, Tom Harkin, D-IA, you might find the links below helpful:

PscyhRights Letter and recommendations (to review concerns and/or customize your own letter)
http://psychrights.org/2013/130121Ltr2SenMurkowski.htm
Names and contact information for Senate HELP Committee members (right vertical column).
http://www.help.senate.gov/