1. Take the latest research findings and critiques of psychiatric drugs to your doctor

Gianna Kali at Beyond Meds has zeroed in on the Irish Examiner article I posted yesterday and sees a niche marketing developing for psychiatrists who will help their patients get off psych medications. Those psychiatrists who do will have a hard time keeping up with the demand. If you are one of these patients who feels that they would like to try functioning without psych meds, or at the very least reduce the number and dosage, there has never been a better time than now. Only a  few years ago, a lot of the information about the effect on the brain of psych meds was suppressed and it was easy for the psychiatrist to point to scientific “evidence” of the need for these medications. No longer need a patient go cap in hand to attempt to convince a psychiatrist that the drugs aren’t useful and are actually doing a lot of harm. Now, psychiatrists should be more than willing to listen.

Gianna Kali/Beyond Meds

The article ends with that final statement which I have bolded because the fact is there is a huge niche opening up for psychiatrists and other prescribing physicians who want to take the opportunity. People want and desperately need COMPETENT professional help in coming off of psychiatric drugs. We need prescribers to make the transition easier.

This is an invitation for prescribing doctors to think about stepping up to the plate and perhaps even undoing some of the harm they’ve maybe helped cause.

This is not to be taken lightly. Many people come off meds with relative ease. Some of us, though, become crippled with iatrogenic illness. You will need to educate yourselves. Once you start making it be known that you can help — those of us who’ve been seriously and gravely harmed will start appearing on your doorstep. Most doctors never see (or recognize) us because once they deny our reality those of us who understand what has happened to us don’t hang around to be further abused. The doctors then move forward believing we don’t exist and spread that dangerous misconception to other doctors. It creates a treacherous world for those of us who are very ill with nowhere safe to go.

Please, it’s time that doctors learn how to help us. Some of you have unintentionally helped create the iatrogenesis that is now limiting our lives so much more than any “mental illness” ever did. Please start helping us heal now. We need you.

Some of what I’ve learned about psychiatric drug withdrawal with links to additional resources here: Withdrawal 101.

2. Join the MindFreedom campaign

On Sat. May 5th, 2012, in the spirit of free thought and liberty, MindFreedom is taking itsnonviolent revolution to historic Philadelphia, PA, USA, and to thedoorstep of the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting.

The APA is expected to give their blessing to the newest version of their devastating label bible (the DSM-5), and so MFI is going to ‘occupy the APA!’ This is part of a global peaceful campaign to Boycott Normality.

There will be a counter-celebration, Mad Pride Liberty March, and a Peaceful “Creative Maladjustment Protest.” Members and allies will also be holding events in solidarity in other states and countries. Toronto is already on board!

For more information, visit: http://www.boycottnormal.org/

If you live in NYC, you may want to participate in an important public event, moderated by MFI President Celia Brown, in conjunction with the United Nations NGO Committee on Mental Health, on 8 December 2011, marking human rights day, more info here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/as/act-archives/us/new-york/nyc-human-rights-day 

 

It’s long over-due and wonderful to see how the news media is picking up on the widespread drugging of children in foster care. I watched the Diane Sawyer clip, but, of course, it was way too simplistic in equating coming off drugs with suddenly becoming an honor student and playing the clarinet. If this is not just a Hallmark feel-good story, the real story is what else happened to this child in the interim?

Further  rummaging around on the Internet got me the answer.
Ke’onte, who was on up to four medications at a time during his years in six foster homes, said that therapy has helped him in a way that meds never did. “In therapy, you talk about the deepest thing and it hurts, but you can deal with it better the next time,” he said.Now, he said, he is first chair in clarinet in his school band, participates in cross-country and has three small roles in the school play.“I’m not only more focused in school… I’m not going to the office anymore for bad behavior and I’m happy.”

Hopefully subsequent coverage will show in greater detail what alternative interventions are helping these kids
The Sawyer clip also implied that merely being adopted into a family will do the world of good for a troubled child. We all know it doesn’t work like that. A child still has problems and the adoptive parents must deal with them with simultaneously dealing with their own inexperience as parents. Parenthood, adoptive, foster or otherwise, is about the most challenging work anybody can take on. Most of us have good intentions when we first start out on the parenting road, but reality intervenes.

Another public good that more media exposure about childhood drugging of foster children will do is to turn the spotlight on all the non-foster children who are taking the same cocktails of drugs. Children from two parent families, children from single parent homes, adopted children. The foster children exposure will soon start making a lot of people very uncomfortable about their chosen course of treatment. I’m getting so old that I can see what is already happening. The pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction. More crazy excessive things will happen with our newfound zeal to right all the wrongs of the past. And so it goes.

Now, over to Sanjay Gupta. I gotta say I wince when somebody who should know better, titles his news clip “Young schizophrenic shares hope” It’s so carnival side show. See the schizophrenic dance and perform tricks! Come on, Sanjay. You are perpetuating the use of schizophrenia as an adjective to describe a set of behaviors that almost nobody with that label shares with another person with the same label. Alright, maybe if we gave the label “manic depressives” back to schizophrenia’s look-alike sibling ―people with bipolar disorder ―would I be more accommodating of the word “schizophrenic.” “Young manic depressive shares hope”  Young bipolar shares hope? Since there is no medical test for schizophrenia, Dr. Gupta is reinforcing to the viewing audience that schizophrenia must be like diabetes, and we know that Robert Whitaker’s book has exposed that myth. Apart from diabetes and schizophrenia, what other “tics” are used to describe people in the medically approved lexicon? There are fewer and fewer* once manic depressives got a face lift. It’s like trying to find an English word that rhymes with “orange.”

*narcoleptic, epileptic

I was delighted to read this quote from the Irish Examiner

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Dr Browne, now a counselling psychotherapist, said there is so much evidence about the dangers of psychiatric drugs that it cannot be ignored. . . .

“We don’t have alternatives in place for people and drugs are damaging long-term. We need to treat people as humans and not patients who have a long term sickness. And we shouldn’t call what we do ‘treatment’.

There is no way I can say to a person ‘I will treat you and make you better’. I can only guide the person. They themselves have to do the work.”

Dr Browne said 60%-80% of his work is helping people to slowly get off drugs. “At the moment I can’t keep up with the numbers of people trying to come and see me.”

From what I know about this publication that appears in my in-box everyday, it’s a great initiative. The mental-health-bloggers Daily is the brainchild of Tina Gibbons, of the mind sanctuary (helping you find peace of mind)

The life of Anders Behring Breivik.

Components for Recovery: The Seven Talks

Schizophrenia: A Blueprint for Recovery provides a series of components for recovery beginning with the building of psychosis, moving through recovery and rejoining mainstream society, and into drawing potentially profound spiritual lessons from one’s journey.

Please keep in mind that these talks about schizophrenia are intended to help family members, friends, and practitioners understand how to work with people with schizophrenia. They are not intended to be viewed by people are in psychosis or who were hospitalized in the last twelve months. Viewing these talks may help people who are clearly past the psychotic phase of the illness, but only if they are clearly past that phase.

Patients have been saying for years that their delusions are meaningful, but psychiatry hasn’t listened. Psychiatry, favoring the chemical cure for reasons we are only too well aware of, turned its back on the likes of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, and let psychologists, non-medical therapists and their former patients do the job of finding meaning in madness. As New York Times Lives Restored article notes, there is a movement now to take back one’s “delusions” from the authority of psychiatry. Psychiatry dropped the ball decades ago and actively discouraged people from getting better. Psychiatry became part of the medical/pharmaceutical/industrial complex that oversold the virtues of antipsychotic medication while underselling, or outright discouraging, talk therapy and other forms of innovative help. What a collosal waste of human potential! Let’s not give the ball back to them.

Lives Restored

Finding Purpose After Living With Delusion

Doctors generally consider the delusional beliefs of schizophrenia to be just that — delusional — and any attempt to indulge them to be an exercise in reckless collusion that could make matters worse. There is no point, they say, in trying to explain the psychological significance of someone’s belief that the C.I.A. is spying through the TV; it has no basis, other than psychosis.

Yet people who have had such experiences often disagree, arguing that delusions have their origin not solely in the illness, but also in fears, longings and psychological wounds that, once understood, can help people sustain recovery after they receive treatment.  
     
Now, these psychiatric veterans are coming together in increasing numbers, at meetings and conferences, and they are writing up their own case histories, developing their own theories of psychosis, with the benefit of far more data than they have ever had before: one another’s stories.

If you are looking for some real entertainment this week-end, I highly recommend seeing the new silent movie, The Artist.  Here’s an extract from L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan’s review:

Far from embracing the most modern cinematic techniques, “The Artist” is a glorious throwback, a black-and-white silent movie that manages the impossible: It strikes an exact balance between the traditions of the past and the demands of the present, managing to be true to the look and spirit of bygone times while creating the most modern kind of witty and entertaining fun. Look on this work, ye mighty of Hollywood, and rejoice……..

…Key to the success of “The Artist” is the work of its two French stars. Dujardin and Bejo, bursting off the screen like irrepressible Roman candles, give performances that are both subtle and incandescent, reminding us of the truth of silent star Norma Desmond’s famous “Sunset Blvd.” line, “We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces.”

Luckily, I’ve already seen this wonderful film, so tomorrow night I’m off to see Chris sing and hoof his way through the Christmas pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk. For those of you unfamiliar with pantomime, first of all, it’s not MIME (e.g. Marcel Marceau or the silent movie) — there’s plenty of singing and dancing that centers around a very loose interpretation of a fairy tale, a fractured fairy tale, in reality. I went to a couple of lavish pantos in Canada years ago that that cost a small fortune to stage. That can be a problem, depending on the venue. You’d like to bring the children, but the cost almost guarantees that the audience is composed mainly of adults. The pantomime is known for certain conventions – men playing the part of women and vice versa, very risqué double entendre, hissing and booing when the villain walks on stage, lots of audience participation. Great fun.  In bigger budget pantomimes, such as the Canadian one, it’s customary to invite a well known person to take one of the lead roles. The opera singer Maureen Forrester and Manuel, the butler from the British television series Fawlty Towers, made appearances.  Another convention is to tailor some of the humor to the local political scene, as is done in Gilbert & Sullivan productions.


Jack and the Beanstalk

The Kingdom of Absurdia is broke — its citizens are fearful of the evil Giant and his even more evil sidekick, Slimeball. These two are causing havoc, demanding money and taking hostages. It is also rumoured that the Giant likes to eat people — especially children! When Jack’s true love, the beautiful Princess Rose, is captured he sets out to save her, assisted by his dodgy bunch of helpers. With Jack and the Beanstalk GAOS brings you a really traditional family show, complete with magic beans and a pantomime cow.

From the mouth of actor Viggo Mortensen and The Daily Beast

“The idea of confession without judgment and helping through love–love being listening–is essentially what both Jung and Freud were talking about,” he continued. “And whether it’s a psychoanalyst, a director, a parent, or a friend who listens, that’s one of the greatest gifts you can give. To just listen.”

Viggo Mortensen on Playing Freud in ‘A Dangerous Method’

Mortensen goes against type to portray Sigmund Freud in David Cronenberg’s new film. Chris Lee talked to the alpha-male action hero about what made him put down his dukes for the role.

For the past year Chris has made leaps and bounds socially. He has joined several choirs and amateur theatrical productions and is busy with these activities every night and increasingly, on the week-ends. It’s his days that hold no promise. Other than shopping, cooking for the family, and keeping his appointments with Dr. Stern and the occupational therapist, he has nothing to do to fill them. Ian and I know that Chris is well, but we have deliberately avoided rocking the boat. We tell ourselves to be patient. We hope that Chris will eventually decide for himself that his day situation is intolerable. I’ve noticed that men who have recovered from the condition called schizophrenia often report that they began to take steps to change their lives beginning around the age of 28 (the first Saturn return).

The other day Ian and I left for work, as usual, and Chris waved us off at the door, as usual. I said to Ian as we drove away, “Don’t you think Chris being home all day has gone on long enough? Shall I contact the occupational therapist and tell her to get going on helping Chris find a job?”
“Go for it,” said Ian.

I sent an e-mail to the OT saying that Ian and I felt it was high time Chris became a useful member of society and begin by getting a job. I said we would have preferred that he go back to university or take some intense training course, but he didn’t seem ready for that step, because, if he was, he would have initiated the process by now.

I spent the remainder of the day wondering if I had done the right thing by putting pressure on the OT. What if Chris really isn’t ready for a job?

I got my answer that evening after I got home from my yoga class. Chris arrived home shortly after I did.

““Chris, wasn’t your rehearsal tonight?”

“I didn’t go,” he said, his voice sounding tired. “I bought the train ticket but I just couldn’t go.”

“Well, why not?”

““I was inside all day and I didn’t do anything, and I just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm at the end of the day.”

“Did you spend your day in fantasies?”

“No. I don’t do that anymore. They aren’t so interesting.”

Well, that was a relief, not that I am worried that Chris will slip back into psychosis, but I still felt I needed to check.

So, we sat down and talked. By now, I was glad that I had contacted the OT.

“Chris, I fully understand how bored you must be at home all day. It’s draining. I’ve been there myself when I was unemployed. The less I did, the less I wanted to do, the less I thought I could do. Don’t you think it’s about time you got a job? You need the stimulus of routine and people during the day because you have got to the point where you are very sociable and need more company. You have made great strides, you are basically “normal” now, you have great potential and there’s no reason why you can’t make an enormous contribution to the world, but you need to get out and start to be productive.”

Chris brightened. Hearing me say this was a huge relief to him.

“There’s one thing, though, Chris. You are still waiting for life to choose you, you are kind of like — apologies for not having a male equivalent — a princess in a fairy tale who is waiting for a handsome prince to wake her up out of her dream state. Just because you are intelligent and talented doesn’t mean that somebody is going to define you and tell you what you should be doing the rest of your life. Life doesn’t work like that. Learn to take chances and not fear failures. In the past you just collapsed when life started putting pressure on you.You’re much stronger today than you were then, so now it’s time to take action, and not intellectualize too much about whether it’s the right action. If you don’t mind, I’m going to start getting on your case more about developing a daily schedule and sticking to it. I don’t want you missing any more rehearsals because you haven’t been busy enough during the day. ”

End of lecture

From the Globe and Mail In medicine,sometimes it’s better to do nothing

In the seminal work of satire The House of God, author Samuel Shem provided a list of commandments for good medical care. The infamous 13th Law of the House of God was: “The delivery of good medical care is to do as much nothing as possible.” Yet, since the book’s publication in 1978, overtreatment has reached such tragicomic proportions that the satire has melted away, leaving only age-old wisdom. It’s as if we have come full circle back to Hippocrates, who said: “To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy