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

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

The Myth of Schizophrenia as a Progressive Brain Disease

RxISK STORIES: How pharma captures bereaved mothers

Experimental treatment for PTSD: Ecstasy (first of three parts)

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.

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).

In 2007 he prescribed various medications to 4,141 Medicaid patients, including more prescriptions for clozapine than were written by all the doctors in Texas put together, Medicaid records show. Records also showed he was getting government reimbursement for seeing an improbably large number of patients.

Silver Linings Playbook

How Psychology, Psychiatry Discriminate Against People with Mental Illness

The aftermath of polypsychopharmacology: my story on Dr. David Healy’s site today

Louise Gillett writes about Rethink Mental Illness Members’ Day and other matters in her most recent post. Status and the status quo, continue to be alive and well in England, like they are in so many other countries where official “commissions” are established to preserve the status quo. Shame, shame!

Here’s an excerpt from Louise’s blog, Schizophrenia at the Schoolgate:

I suffered a major disappointment yesterday – I learned that the Schizophrenia Commission have not recommended that the label be abolished or changed as I had hoped.  (The report is not due to be published until next week but I feel no sense of loyalty that would prevent me from publishing this ‘spoiler’). 

I was not actually surprised to find out that the label has not been changed – I suspected as much by the fact that after asking me to write a case study (of my own case) I was asked if I would mind if it was ‘tweaked’ to reflect the fact that some members of the Commission do not agree with my view of the damage done by the diagnosis of schizophrenia.  After some thought I rejected my instinct towards compliance and wrote back to say that if they did use my case study I would prefer the wording left intact.  They agreed to use the case study as I wrote it, and apparently it has been included in the report (although I think anonymously.  I am not sure, I have not seen it, but one of the other Trustees who I spoke to yesterday dropped a big hint to this effect).  Although of course, it might be removed after I have published this blog post!

So I had an inkling of what the outcome of this report would be – and it was confirmed as soon as I saw the title of Robin Murray’s*  talk at the meeting yesterday – ‘What next for the Schizophrenia Commission?’

So the Schizophrenia Commission will continue – having already let down the people they are supposed to be helping.

I am staggered that they haven’t effected the change.  Robin Murray was questioned on the subject by a member of the audience and he couldn’t produce a coherent reply – he stuttered and stumbled over the issue, saying there were differing views, even claiming that, ‘The Schizophrenia Commission doesn’t have the power to say one way or another’ (really, Sir Robin?).  Eventually he told us that although the diagnosis had been changed in some countries it wasn’t going to happen here at the moment, but that maybe in a few years time, things would be different.

_________________________
Rossa’s comment: Do we think this guy’s going to change the system?

Robin Murray

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir Robin MacGregor Murray (born 1944) is professor of Psychiatric Research at the Institute of Psychiatry (Kings College, London, United Kingdom).[1] He also sees patients with schizophrenia and bipolar illness at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust. He is originally from Glasgow. Murray is part of The Psychosis Research Group, one of the largest outside the United States. It uses a range of methods to improve understanding and treatment of psychotic illnesses, particularly schizophrenia. For the decade from 1997 to 2007, Murray was ranked as the 8th most influential researcher in psychiatry by Thomson Reuters’ Science Watch[2] and 3rd in schizophrenia research.[3] In 1994 he was the president of the European Association of Psychiatrists; now the European Psychiatric Association. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (elected 2010) and also a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.[1] Murray is co-editor-in-chief of Psychological Medicine.[4] In 2009 Murray had a public disagreement with David Nutt in the pages of The Guardian about the dangers of cannabis in triggering psychosis.[5] Murray previously wrote that while the risk increase is “about five-fold […] for the heaviest users”, the issue has become political football.[3] Murray has commented repeatedly on these issues in BBC articles and programmes,[6][7][8] including in a Panorama documentary on BBC One.[9][10] He has also been critical of the proposed use of cannabis for its anti-depressive effects as a “very big leap of faith” based solely on preclinical data.[11] Murray was knighted in the 2011 New Year Honours for his services to medicine.[12]

Will Hall, author of The Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Medications, has articulated my thoughts on the dangers of the pendulum swinging too far in either direction. We’ve experienced the one extreme (the biochemical model) of being told that psych meds are the only solution for brain “disease,” that medication is normally forever, and that side effects are tolerable and manageable. The growing backlash to that extreme rightfully came about because truthful information was being withheld. But there are now a lot of people working to force the pendulum in the other direction, the one that promotes the idea that medications to treat distress are more dangerous than they are in many cases, that mental illness will go away if people would only get off their meds. A lot of the recovery movements complaints are with how psychiatry has abandoned the nurture of the psyche, therefore perhaps we over-vilify the meds — the most obvious thing psychiatry does do these days. (It’s an easy target.)

I agree with Will, that we are in danger of creating a backlash if we don’t take a more balanced approach. (Remember, we want the pendulum to swing disproportionately on our side for as long as possible.) One way to avoid the backlash is to be careful not to replicate the mistake of withholding or denying information that doesn’t fit our sometimes simplistic view of getting on or off the drugs.

In the comments section to his post, Will writes:

I think, in our efforts to alert the world about the dangers of psych drugs, we sometimes overstate the case. Psychiatry has erred for so long in favor of meds, we shouldn’t make the opposite mistake by exaggerating the dangers of drugs.That is not to deny that people are killed and seriously damaged by medications, but if we express only these accounts we are distorting a complicated picture.

What I am seeing these days is people and families who read Bob’s work and think that getting off meds is the solution. Often it is, like a magic bullet in reverse. Sometimes it’s not. I fear if we promote coming off meds, we are setting ourselves up for a backlash just like is happening now to those who promoted taking meds. Maybe a smaller backlash, and maybe the overarching message is better, but I’d rather be honest at the outset.
Will Hall is always worth reading. He knows his stuff and he’s willing to admit what he doesn’t know, and that people and situations are complex. Here’s the link to his post at the Mad in America site.