Practicing Shamanism in a Community Health Center
By Myron Eshowsky .
From Shamanism Spring & Summer 1993, Vol. 5 No. 4 & Vol. 6 No. 1
For six years I worked openly practicing shamanism in a community mental health center. I was able to do this work with the support of my supervisor and the administration. In the course of that time, there were many successes, some non-successes, and a growing acceptance of shamanism as a culturally diverse method for addressing the needs of the center’s clientele. Most importantly, it was a proving ground for returning shamanism to the community setting.
Read the rest of this fascinating article here.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Dress for success
The appearance this past week of two myth-busting articles on schizophrenia in the New York Times, was long overdue. Still, I couldn't help firing off a cranky comment to the Well section of that paper to argue that it is absolutely ludicrous that mainstream medicine for years has gotten away with promoting the dumbing down of patient expectations.
Think about it. In almost every other area of endeavor, Americans are encouraged to self-promote, to aim big, to dress for success, to follow the American dream. Everywhere . . . except for a schizophrenia diagnosis. You would think, wouldn't you, that emulating what more successful people do would be part and parcel of any recovery. But, apparently the wisdom of this idea has escaped much of the mental health industry, which now appears finally ready to STUDY THIS PHENOMENON further! Oh, for heaven sakes! If you tell people they are sick, most people will believe you. Knowing they are "brain damaged" and have "a biochemical imbalance" will make the road to recovery even harder.
Researchers have conducted more than 100,000 studies on schizophrenia since its symptoms were first characterized. They have tested patients’ blood. They have analyzed their genes. They have measured perceptual skills, I.Q. and memory, and have tried perhaps thousands of drug treatments.
Now, a group of people with the diagnosis is showing researchers a previously hidden dimension of the story: how the disorder can be managed while people build full, successful lives. The continuing study — a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Southern California; and the Department of Veterans Affairs — follows a group of 20 people with the diagnosis, including two doctors, a lawyer and a chief executive, Ms. Myrick.
It was hard for me to keep a straight face when I read how "surprised" the research community was when it discovered this "hidden dimension of the story." In the meantime, my son Chris goes about his daily living while we continue to extract him from the clutches of his dismal diagnosis. He is out most evenings in rehearsals for the upcoming Christmas pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk. He's a member of several choirs that practice once a week. If he were living back in North America, and not the life of an expat in Europe, I feel sure that he would have a paying job in addition to all of the volunteer work that he does. The work permit here is not an insurmountable stumbling block, but it is a process to go through that we haven't managed to give much thought to until recently. I continue to push the idea of his going back to university to study voice and music. Chris and his brothers, Taylor and Alex, are getting along well and they are doing their bit to encourage Chris to develop his full potential. Why should anyone settle for less?
Think about it. In almost every other area of endeavor, Americans are encouraged to self-promote, to aim big, to dress for success, to follow the American dream. Everywhere . . . except for a schizophrenia diagnosis. You would think, wouldn't you, that emulating what more successful people do would be part and parcel of any recovery. But, apparently the wisdom of this idea has escaped much of the mental health industry, which now appears finally ready to STUDY THIS PHENOMENON further! Oh, for heaven sakes! If you tell people they are sick, most people will believe you. Knowing they are "brain damaged" and have "a biochemical imbalance" will make the road to recovery even harder.
Researchers have conducted more than 100,000 studies on schizophrenia since its symptoms were first characterized. They have tested patients’ blood. They have analyzed their genes. They have measured perceptual skills, I.Q. and memory, and have tried perhaps thousands of drug treatments.
Now, a group of people with the diagnosis is showing researchers a previously hidden dimension of the story: how the disorder can be managed while people build full, successful lives. The continuing study — a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Southern California; and the Department of Veterans Affairs — follows a group of 20 people with the diagnosis, including two doctors, a lawyer and a chief executive, Ms. Myrick.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Memoir About Schizophrenia Spurs Others to Come Forward
. . . Researchers have long wondered how some people with schizophrenia can manage their symptoms well enough to build full, successful lives. But such people do not exactly line up to enroll in studies.
For one thing, they are almost always secretive about their diagnosis. For another, volunteering for a study would add yet another burden to their stressful lives.
But that is beginning to change, partly because of the unlikely celebrity of a fellow sufferer. In 2007, after years of weighing the possible risks, Elyn R. Saks, a professor of law at the University of Southern California, published a memoir of her struggle with schizophrenia . . . read the rest here
and also from the NY Times:
Lives Restored
A High-Profile Executive Job as Defense Against Mental Ills
The study has already forced its authors to discard some of their assumptions about living with schizophrenia. “It’s just embarrassing,” said Dr. Stephen R. Marder, director of the psychosis section at U.C.L.A.’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, a psychiatrist with the V.A. Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and one of the authors of the study. “For years, we as psychiatrists have been telling people with a diagnosis what to expect; we’ve been telling them who they are, how to change their lives — and it was bad information” for many people.
Read the rest here
For one thing, they are almost always secretive about their diagnosis. For another, volunteering for a study would add yet another burden to their stressful lives.
But that is beginning to change, partly because of the unlikely celebrity of a fellow sufferer. In 2007, after years of weighing the possible risks, Elyn R. Saks, a professor of law at the University of Southern California, published a memoir of her struggle with schizophrenia . . . read the rest here
and also from the NY Times:
Lives Restored
A High-Profile Executive Job as Defense Against Mental Ills
The study has already forced its authors to discard some of their assumptions about living with schizophrenia. “It’s just embarrassing,” said Dr. Stephen R. Marder, director of the psychosis section at U.C.L.A.’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, a psychiatrist with the V.A. Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and one of the authors of the study. “For years, we as psychiatrists have been telling people with a diagnosis what to expect; we’ve been telling them who they are, how to change their lives — and it was bad information” for many people.
Read the rest here
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Danny Diaries: Overcoming Schizophrenia - a mother's experience
The Danny Diaries: Overcoming Schizophrenia
by Ann Cluver Weinberg
This is a memorable schizophrenia story, written from the point of view of the mother. Why "great"? Because there is no other schizophrenia memoir, written by a mother that shows by vivid example how, by understanding and supporting another person, full recovery can happen. "Danny" has been well for over twenty years and works in a professional capacity in an extremely challenging workplace. They say that the younger the age when schizophrenia symptoms appear, the less optimistic the prognosis. Danny's troubles started in early adolescence, but he eventually recovered, proving how wrong this prognosis can be.
Today's parents are told by doctors and psychiatrists that that their relative has a biochemical imbalance, a damaged brain. They believe that their children are mentally ill. How do you think the child will react to a parent who thinks that there is something wrong with them? Will they gain confidence in themselves? Not very likely. But where do parents turn to for information that runs counter to the medical model of the so-called illness? Memoirs written by ex-patients are a good place to begin. This particular memoir is unique, because it is written by the mother.
We are introduced to Danny as a child through delightful words and conversations that the author wrote down every night in her journal. She did the same for his older sister, Nicola. Both children are the precocious offspring of artistically-inclined parents. The family is South African and living in London in the 1960s. When Danny is a small child, they move back to their homeland. This is a critical time in South African history, as it was still under government enforced racial segregation. The memoir is brimming with South African English words and Afrikaans dialect, which gives the book its special flavor.
Lucy gives Danny lot of freedom to be himself, even if himself is problematic.
What his problem is initially appears to be pot, or dagga, the local term for it. He's smoking too much of it way too young. He's a precociously talented guitarist, and with the freedom that he has, drugs are easy to come by. He lacks the self-discipline to break away from dagga, and the parents, being self-professed liberals and artists, by nature are not disciplinarians and are not effective at stopping the smoking. The mother knows that dagga is only part of the picture. Recreational drug use never helps psychosis, but it adds unneeded complexity and angst to an already difficult condition.
The doctors and psychiatrists are not helpful. As Lucy remarks after a visit to one psychiatrist, "he gave me a stern and gloomy diagnosis, but no practical information about how to help." She is confident in her mothering skills and in her judgment of Danny, and is rightly critical of doctors who are grim about the prognosis for schizophrenia, seeing them as part of the problem, not part of the solution. She knows Danny, the doctors do not. She rarely wavers in her belief that Danny will be well one day. The trouble is, drugs are always within easy reach for Danny. He backslides a lot.
The early 1980s was yet another transition period in determining what schizophrenia was and how to treat it. This is a diagnosis that is subject to trends. After a break of two years, Lucy takes her son back to see the psychologist, "Jeff" who was so helpful with the family the first time. Now he tells her that he believes schizophrenia is a lifelong chronic illness that needs to be treated by medications. He no longer thinks he can be of any help, based on new information. Potential support denied. Lucy is on her own once again to figure this out for herself. Her optimism puts her at odds with the medical community. One psychiatrist in England wants her to institutionalize Danny for life. Truly shocking advice for someone who is only 17. On a plane trip she happens to sit beside a psychiatrist who says that some people with schizophrenia do recover and a good thing to do is to support the person's interests.
Today's treatment for schizophrenia and other mental health problems is skewed disproportionately in favor of medication. If Danny's treatment took place today, instead of in the 1980s, the author's strategy would not change, but she would also have to battle the by now well-entrenched biochemically determined treatment model of the so-called illness. At first, Danny was not on any medication, and then he was occasionally given sleeping pills at night. He was on lithium for a short period of time and was on an antipsychotic for a short time. Lucy comes home after Danny was doing very well and discovers him in a knife-wielding rage. She attributes this more to pot smoking (his rages usually lagged pot smoking by a few days), than to the fact that she had abruptly discontinued his antidepressant a week earlier because he was doing so well. In those days, there was no information about the dangers of going cold turkey off these medications. Dropping them quickly can cause rebound psychosis.
Lucy encourages her son in many ways—to drive a car, to be involved in music, to develop more self-discipline through Karate, etc. She reads Erik Erickson, and frames what Danny is going through as a difficult, extended maturation process. There is an astonishing statement by Danny towards the end of the book, which I won't reveal, that, if I interpreted it correctly, backs up the author's contention that Danny's problems were a child's struggle to become an adult in his own right. Doctors call this struggle "schizophrenia," but they maintain schizophrenia is a "disease."
Do you consider your own child "mad"? Have you ever considered that changing your attitude may change the outcome? Here is what the author does:
I explained to him (Oliver, her husband) my now clearly formulated philosophy of not even thinking Danny mad, or an addict, or helpless, or hopeless, etc.
Early the next morning Lucy finds his bed empty and Danny in the garage with his new Kawasaki.
"Danny!" I exploded, "Haven't you been to sleep all night?
"No. Me and Anthony rehearsed late late. And then I was just too fascinated by my bike. I couldn't leave it."
I thought. He is like a farmer sitting up all night with a horse.
Like a farmer sitting up all night with a horse. Exactly! The author shows the reader how to change what may be disturbing or unusual behavior to an understandable motivation, and then keep up a cheerful attitude even though you may have doubts. The child will adapt well to this strategy over time. I've done the same for my own son. Read this book (please!) for many of these insights.
I would love to see this book widely disseminated because here is a mother telling you that yes, schizophrenia is an understandable condition. This condition, seen here in the light of a difficult transitioning from childhood to adulthood (many people have said this, not just the author), can be overcome by seeing the person, not the medical model of the disease. Her viewpoint is very relevant today, when the purely medical model of the disease is being challenged as never before.
Consider asking your local library to order a copy.
Order this book online at Amazon.com or http://www.trafford.com/ / email orders@trafford.com, or in South Africa contact the author at sapler.press@artslink.co.za
Product Details
Paperback: 420 pages
Publisher: Trafford Publishing (February 3, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1426919603
ISBN-13: 978-1426919602
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
by Ann Cluver Weinberg
This is a memorable schizophrenia story, written from the point of view of the mother. Why "great"? Because there is no other schizophrenia memoir, written by a mother that shows by vivid example how, by understanding and supporting another person, full recovery can happen. "Danny" has been well for over twenty years and works in a professional capacity in an extremely challenging workplace. They say that the younger the age when schizophrenia symptoms appear, the less optimistic the prognosis. Danny's troubles started in early adolescence, but he eventually recovered, proving how wrong this prognosis can be.
Today's parents are told by doctors and psychiatrists that that their relative has a biochemical imbalance, a damaged brain. They believe that their children are mentally ill. How do you think the child will react to a parent who thinks that there is something wrong with them? Will they gain confidence in themselves? Not very likely. But where do parents turn to for information that runs counter to the medical model of the so-called illness? Memoirs written by ex-patients are a good place to begin. This particular memoir is unique, because it is written by the mother.
We are introduced to Danny as a child through delightful words and conversations that the author wrote down every night in her journal. She did the same for his older sister, Nicola. Both children are the precocious offspring of artistically-inclined parents. The family is South African and living in London in the 1960s. When Danny is a small child, they move back to their homeland. This is a critical time in South African history, as it was still under government enforced racial segregation. The memoir is brimming with South African English words and Afrikaans dialect, which gives the book its special flavor.
Lucy gives Danny lot of freedom to be himself, even if himself is problematic.
What his problem is initially appears to be pot, or dagga, the local term for it. He's smoking too much of it way too young. He's a precociously talented guitarist, and with the freedom that he has, drugs are easy to come by. He lacks the self-discipline to break away from dagga, and the parents, being self-professed liberals and artists, by nature are not disciplinarians and are not effective at stopping the smoking. The mother knows that dagga is only part of the picture. Recreational drug use never helps psychosis, but it adds unneeded complexity and angst to an already difficult condition.
The doctors and psychiatrists are not helpful. As Lucy remarks after a visit to one psychiatrist, "he gave me a stern and gloomy diagnosis, but no practical information about how to help." She is confident in her mothering skills and in her judgment of Danny, and is rightly critical of doctors who are grim about the prognosis for schizophrenia, seeing them as part of the problem, not part of the solution. She knows Danny, the doctors do not. She rarely wavers in her belief that Danny will be well one day. The trouble is, drugs are always within easy reach for Danny. He backslides a lot.
The early 1980s was yet another transition period in determining what schizophrenia was and how to treat it. This is a diagnosis that is subject to trends. After a break of two years, Lucy takes her son back to see the psychologist, "Jeff" who was so helpful with the family the first time. Now he tells her that he believes schizophrenia is a lifelong chronic illness that needs to be treated by medications. He no longer thinks he can be of any help, based on new information. Potential support denied. Lucy is on her own once again to figure this out for herself. Her optimism puts her at odds with the medical community. One psychiatrist in England wants her to institutionalize Danny for life. Truly shocking advice for someone who is only 17. On a plane trip she happens to sit beside a psychiatrist who says that some people with schizophrenia do recover and a good thing to do is to support the person's interests.
Today's treatment for schizophrenia and other mental health problems is skewed disproportionately in favor of medication. If Danny's treatment took place today, instead of in the 1980s, the author's strategy would not change, but she would also have to battle the by now well-entrenched biochemically determined treatment model of the so-called illness. At first, Danny was not on any medication, and then he was occasionally given sleeping pills at night. He was on lithium for a short period of time and was on an antipsychotic for a short time. Lucy comes home after Danny was doing very well and discovers him in a knife-wielding rage. She attributes this more to pot smoking (his rages usually lagged pot smoking by a few days), than to the fact that she had abruptly discontinued his antidepressant a week earlier because he was doing so well. In those days, there was no information about the dangers of going cold turkey off these medications. Dropping them quickly can cause rebound psychosis.
Lucy encourages her son in many ways—to drive a car, to be involved in music, to develop more self-discipline through Karate, etc. She reads Erik Erickson, and frames what Danny is going through as a difficult, extended maturation process. There is an astonishing statement by Danny towards the end of the book, which I won't reveal, that, if I interpreted it correctly, backs up the author's contention that Danny's problems were a child's struggle to become an adult in his own right. Doctors call this struggle "schizophrenia," but they maintain schizophrenia is a "disease."
Do you consider your own child "mad"? Have you ever considered that changing your attitude may change the outcome? Here is what the author does:
I explained to him (Oliver, her husband) my now clearly formulated philosophy of not even thinking Danny mad, or an addict, or helpless, or hopeless, etc.
Early the next morning Lucy finds his bed empty and Danny in the garage with his new Kawasaki.
"Danny!" I exploded, "Haven't you been to sleep all night?
"No. Me and Anthony rehearsed late late. And then I was just too fascinated by my bike. I couldn't leave it."
I thought. He is like a farmer sitting up all night with a horse.
Like a farmer sitting up all night with a horse. Exactly! The author shows the reader how to change what may be disturbing or unusual behavior to an understandable motivation, and then keep up a cheerful attitude even though you may have doubts. The child will adapt well to this strategy over time. I've done the same for my own son. Read this book (please!) for many of these insights.
I would love to see this book widely disseminated because here is a mother telling you that yes, schizophrenia is an understandable condition. This condition, seen here in the light of a difficult transitioning from childhood to adulthood (many people have said this, not just the author), can be overcome by seeing the person, not the medical model of the disease. Her viewpoint is very relevant today, when the purely medical model of the disease is being challenged as never before.
Consider asking your local library to order a copy.
Order this book online at Amazon.com or http://www.trafford.com/ / email orders@trafford.com, or in South Africa contact the author at sapler.press@artslink.co.za
Product Details
Paperback: 420 pages
Publisher: Trafford Publishing (February 3, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1426919603
ISBN-13: 978-1426919602
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Like-minded parents muscle their way into the ISEPP conference
I was pleased to be asked to contribute a blog post to the upcoming International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry (ISEPP) conference in Los Angeles, Oct. 28-29. The conference is entitled: Alternatives to Biological Psychiatry: If we don’t medicate, what do we do?
The content of my post (below) is the usual stuff that I yammer on about, that everybody talks about alternatives to the current mainly drug based treatment for schizophrenia, but what is anybody actually DOING about it?
Actually, it is parents who are disastisfied with the current group think about mental health, who, through trial and error, have figured out how to put the pieces of their child back together. We are reluctant to deliver our relative into the hands of professionals, having learned through experience that if you want to do something right, do it yourself. Unfortunately, parents who have figured it out, are rarely invited to speak at conferences, which are the domain of mental health professionals. That being said, the ISEPP conference is a terrific opportunity to shape and direct the future of alternatives to biological psychiatry. Fellow bloggers, Becky Murphy and Duane Sherry have also contributed posts to the ISEPP blog. Read Becky's contributions here and Duane's here.
A Mother’s Search Through Alternatives to Biological Psychiatry: If we don’t medicate, what do we do?
By: Rossa Forbes
First of all, I am delighted to have the chance to speak to this issue in my blog post to ISEPP. That’s the big question, isn’t it?
If we don’t medicate, what do we do?
Where is the how-to guide?
In December 2003 when my then nineteen year old son, “Chris,” was first hospitalized and given a diagnosis of “schizophrenia,” I had no idea that there were any alternatives to the medications. Certainly, no doctor informed my husband and I that there are competing schools of thought about schizophrenia and other so-called mental illnesses. Instead, we were told the usual claptrap that he had a brain disease and drugs would control it but not cure him. That negative message stopped us in our tracks for at least two years. My son did not get better during that period, even in an expensive outpatient program that he attended daily. He was as much a mystery to the psychiatrists when he left—as medicated as when he entered.
However, I got better, meaning I got smarter and started to investigate what I could do for him. I decided to take my inspiration from psychiatrists and others who have a generally more upbeat perspective on schizophrenia—Abram Hoffer, Thomas Szasz, R.D. Laing, Dr. Peter Breggin, and Dr. Loren Mosher. I went even further afield and read Carlos Castaneda, Hermann Hesse, and Daniel Paul Schreber and began to sense a wonderful magic to this so-called disease. I am not romanticizing this condition, but it’s important to see the magic. I read about the German New Medicine of Dr. Ryke Geert Hamer and I saw how trauma or shock registers in the body as cancer, schizophrenia and other health problems. Dr. Hamer also says that rendering a diagnosis sets in place feelings of hopeless and despair that prevent healing. How right he is. Armed with this information, I put together my own healing program for my son. This generally amounted to dragging him (and me) through some weird and wonderful stuff. I figured that chances are, as his mother, I had a role in why he reacted to life as he did, and I may as well take this opportunity to heal myself, too.
Read the rest here.
The content of my post (below) is the usual stuff that I yammer on about, that everybody talks about alternatives to the current mainly drug based treatment for schizophrenia, but what is anybody actually DOING about it?
Actually, it is parents who are disastisfied with the current group think about mental health, who, through trial and error, have figured out how to put the pieces of their child back together. We are reluctant to deliver our relative into the hands of professionals, having learned through experience that if you want to do something right, do it yourself. Unfortunately, parents who have figured it out, are rarely invited to speak at conferences, which are the domain of mental health professionals. That being said, the ISEPP conference is a terrific opportunity to shape and direct the future of alternatives to biological psychiatry. Fellow bloggers, Becky Murphy and Duane Sherry have also contributed posts to the ISEPP blog. Read Becky's contributions here and Duane's here.
A Mother’s Search Through Alternatives to Biological Psychiatry: If we don’t medicate, what do we do?
By: Rossa Forbes
First of all, I am delighted to have the chance to speak to this issue in my blog post to ISEPP. That’s the big question, isn’t it?
If we don’t medicate, what do we do?
Where is the how-to guide?
In December 2003 when my then nineteen year old son, “Chris,” was first hospitalized and given a diagnosis of “schizophrenia,” I had no idea that there were any alternatives to the medications. Certainly, no doctor informed my husband and I that there are competing schools of thought about schizophrenia and other so-called mental illnesses. Instead, we were told the usual claptrap that he had a brain disease and drugs would control it but not cure him. That negative message stopped us in our tracks for at least two years. My son did not get better during that period, even in an expensive outpatient program that he attended daily. He was as much a mystery to the psychiatrists when he left—as medicated as when he entered.
However, I got better, meaning I got smarter and started to investigate what I could do for him. I decided to take my inspiration from psychiatrists and others who have a generally more upbeat perspective on schizophrenia—Abram Hoffer, Thomas Szasz, R.D. Laing, Dr. Peter Breggin, and Dr. Loren Mosher. I went even further afield and read Carlos Castaneda, Hermann Hesse, and Daniel Paul Schreber and began to sense a wonderful magic to this so-called disease. I am not romanticizing this condition, but it’s important to see the magic. I read about the German New Medicine of Dr. Ryke Geert Hamer and I saw how trauma or shock registers in the body as cancer, schizophrenia and other health problems. Dr. Hamer also says that rendering a diagnosis sets in place feelings of hopeless and despair that prevent healing. How right he is. Armed with this information, I put together my own healing program for my son. This generally amounted to dragging him (and me) through some weird and wonderful stuff. I figured that chances are, as his mother, I had a role in why he reacted to life as he did, and I may as well take this opportunity to heal myself, too.
Read the rest here.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
A lotta humor
October 18, 2011
A Letter from Goldman Sachs
Concerning Occupy Wall Street
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)– The following is a letter released today by Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of banking giant Goldman Sachs:
Dear Investor:
Up until now, Goldman Sachs has been silent on the subject of the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street. That does not mean, however, that it has not been very much on our minds. As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests. And we have asked ourselves this question:
How can we make money off them?
The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund, whose investment objective is to monetize the Occupy Wall Street protests as they spread around the world. At Goldman, we recognize that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain – but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down.
The Rage Fund will seek out opportunities to invest in products that are poised to benefit from the spreading protests, from police batons and barricades to stun guns and forehead bandages. Furthermore, as clashes between police and protesters turn ever more violent, we are making significant bets on companies that manufacture replacements for broken windows and overturned cars, as well as the raw materials necessary for the construction and incineration of effigies.
It would be tempting, at a time like this, to say “Let them eat cake.” But at Goldman, we are actively seeking to corner the market in cake futures. We project that through our aggressive market manipulation, the price of a piece of cake will quadruple by the end of 2011.
Please contact your Goldman representative for a full prospectus. As the world descends into a Darwinian free-for-all, the Goldman Sachs Rage Fund is a great way to tell the protesters, “Occupy this.” We haven’t felt so good about something we’ve sold since our souls.
Sincerely,
Lloyd Blankfein
Chairman, Goldman Sachs
A Letter from Goldman Sachs
Concerning Occupy Wall Street
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)– The following is a letter released today by Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of banking giant Goldman Sachs:
Dear Investor:
Up until now, Goldman Sachs has been silent on the subject of the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street. That does not mean, however, that it has not been very much on our minds. As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests. And we have asked ourselves this question:
How can we make money off them?
The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund, whose investment objective is to monetize the Occupy Wall Street protests as they spread around the world. At Goldman, we recognize that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain – but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down.
The Rage Fund will seek out opportunities to invest in products that are poised to benefit from the spreading protests, from police batons and barricades to stun guns and forehead bandages. Furthermore, as clashes between police and protesters turn ever more violent, we are making significant bets on companies that manufacture replacements for broken windows and overturned cars, as well as the raw materials necessary for the construction and incineration of effigies.
It would be tempting, at a time like this, to say “Let them eat cake.” But at Goldman, we are actively seeking to corner the market in cake futures. We project that through our aggressive market manipulation, the price of a piece of cake will quadruple by the end of 2011.
Please contact your Goldman representative for a full prospectus. As the world descends into a Darwinian free-for-all, the Goldman Sachs Rage Fund is a great way to tell the protesters, “Occupy this.” We haven’t felt so good about something we’ve sold since our souls.
Sincerely,
Lloyd Blankfein
Chairman, Goldman Sachs
Monday, October 17, 2011
Occupy Wall Street & the Mental Environmentalism movement
Adbusters Media Foundation is a not-for-profit, anti-consumerist, pro-environment[1] organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The foundation describes itself as "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age."[2]
The Adbusters Media Foundation publishes the reader-supported, advertising-free Adbusters, an activist magazine with an international circulation of 120,000[3] devoted to challenging consumerism. Notable past and present contributors to the magazine include Christopher Hedges, Matt Taibbi, Bill McKibben, Jim Munroe, Douglas Rushkoff, Jonathan Barnbrook, David Graeber and others.
Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their "subvertisements" that spoof popular advertisements.
In English, Adbusters has bi-monthly North American, Australian, and International editions of each issue. Adbusters' sister organizations include Résistance à l'Aggression Publicitaire[4] and Casseurs de Pub[5] in France, Adbusters Norge in Norway, Adbusters Sverige in Sweden and Culture Jammers in Japan.[6]
The subtitle of Adbusters magazine is "The Journal of the Mental Environment".
Their philosophy is that if a key insight of environmentalism was that external reality, nature, could be polluted by industrial toxins, the key insight of mental environmentalism is that internal reality, our minds, can be polluted by infotoxins. Mental environmentalism draws a connection between the pollution of our minds by commercial messaging and the social, environmental, financial and ethical catastrophes that loom before humanity. Mental environmentalists argue that a whole range of phenomenon from the BP oil spill to the emergence of crony-democracy to the mass extinction of animals to the significant increase in mental illnesses are directly caused by the three thousand advertisements that assault our minds each day.[citation needed]
In a 1996 interview, Kalle Lasn explained the goal of Adbusters: "What we're trying to do is pioneer a new form of social activism using all the power of the mass media to sell ideas, rather than products. We're motivated by a kind of `greenthink' that comes from the environmental movement and isn't mired in the old ideology of the left and right. Instead, we take the environmental ethic into the mental ethic, trying to clean up the toxic areas of our minds. You can't recycle and be a good environmental citizen, then watch four hours of television and get consumption messages pumped at you."[9]
The Adbusters Media Foundation publishes the reader-supported, advertising-free Adbusters, an activist magazine with an international circulation of 120,000[3] devoted to challenging consumerism. Notable past and present contributors to the magazine include Christopher Hedges, Matt Taibbi, Bill McKibben, Jim Munroe, Douglas Rushkoff, Jonathan Barnbrook, David Graeber and others.
Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their "subvertisements" that spoof popular advertisements.
In English, Adbusters has bi-monthly North American, Australian, and International editions of each issue. Adbusters' sister organizations include Résistance à l'Aggression Publicitaire[4] and Casseurs de Pub[5] in France, Adbusters Norge in Norway, Adbusters Sverige in Sweden and Culture Jammers in Japan.[6]
The subtitle of Adbusters magazine is "The Journal of the Mental Environment".
Their philosophy is that if a key insight of environmentalism was that external reality, nature, could be polluted by industrial toxins, the key insight of mental environmentalism is that internal reality, our minds, can be polluted by infotoxins. Mental environmentalism draws a connection between the pollution of our minds by commercial messaging and the social, environmental, financial and ethical catastrophes that loom before humanity. Mental environmentalists argue that a whole range of phenomenon from the BP oil spill to the emergence of crony-democracy to the mass extinction of animals to the significant increase in mental illnesses are directly caused by the three thousand advertisements that assault our minds each day.[citation needed]
In a 1996 interview, Kalle Lasn explained the goal of Adbusters: "What we're trying to do is pioneer a new form of social activism using all the power of the mass media to sell ideas, rather than products. We're motivated by a kind of `greenthink' that comes from the environmental movement and isn't mired in the old ideology of the left and right. Instead, we take the environmental ethic into the mental ethic, trying to clean up the toxic areas of our minds. You can't recycle and be a good environmental citizen, then watch four hours of television and get consumption messages pumped at you."[9]
Moving on, but conflicted
Some of the most vulnerable times for Chris were the times following release from a mental institution. Three years ago I did my darndest to keep him out of hospital because I felt he would get worse the longer he stayed, which turned out to be three months. During that time he watched someone slit his wrists and bleed all over the bathroom sink. That's the one that I heard about. I have no idea what else went on during his time there. I decided in the end that a psych hospital is a learning experience, and chances are, Chris gained some valuable insights.
As it happened, Chris emerged three months later in reasonable shape, but, as I said to the psychiatrist, he was in better shape on in-take than he ever had been, so they were getting a better product to start.
However, on being sprung from the institution, his mind was still very much in fantasy land despite the vaunted drugs and the psychiatry, and that took time to straighten out. An old college friend of Chris's, who was then aged 25 and in grad school, came to visit, and Chris insisted that they play Magic: The Gathering together. That shows how he was still clinging to fantasy. He first got interested in myth and Magic cards at the age of ten. It seemed a giant regression for him to be playing Magic at aged 25, but I said nothing. Over the course of the next year, Chris began ruminating a lot on his childhood, and past transgressions. He telephoned a few old friends from childhood who he hadn't seen for years and apologized to them - for what I really have no idea. I suspect it had to do with the odd sly kick directed their way. This kind of behavior is not acceptable, but to my way of thinking it's part and parcel of childhood. As a child, Chris professed to be as good as gold, and being too good is always grounds for suspicion that the person isn't as good as they claim to be. Chris seemed to be feeling awfully guilty about his past deeds, not a healthy sign, but then again, perhaps a way of coming to grips with his past. His apologizing to people sounds like what people are encouraged to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. Perhaps Dr. Stern was urging him to do this.
I saw this post hospital phase of Chris's development as very positive, his learning to move beyond childhood and into adulthood.
One problem, though, on leaving the hospital, was that a couple of older people in the community (a man and a woman artist) who were mentally unstable were attracted to Chris. At first, I was glad that they were there, to offer friendship and to receive it. Chris had no friends at this point, and they had virtually none. He thought the older man was extremely interesting and learned, and yes, he was all of that. He and Chris would get together for coffees occasionally and talk about mythology and literature and the state of the world. Chris helped the man move several times. This man had a habit of very suavely talking his way into getting people to house him, but it rapidly went downhill from there as he always got verbally abusive and was kicked out usually after only a few days. I almost took him in, but I had the foresight to call someone I could trust, and was told under no circumstances should I do this. Nonetheless, the man kept telephoning me, always with a new excuse as to why he needed accommodation. When I didn't bite, he got verbally abusive. I began to not answer the phone, never sure what number he was calling from.
I felt very sorry for this man, because I could see that he was isolating himself and consequently, his mental problems were getting worse. I also felt guilty that I did not want to do more to help him. He was repeatedly urged by others to see a psychiatrist, but always refused, claiming that it was the other person who needed to see one. But it was when he moved beyond verbal abuse and started getting violent, not with Chris, with other people --a push here, a shove there--that I lost any sympathy I still was harboring.
On his own accord, Chris began distancing himself from the man, and the woman artist. He can see that they haven't dealt with their demons. He now sees them as "mentally ill," and this bothers him because he knows that he got the same label, and it was unjust. Chris is moving on emotionally, but it is sad that the other two people have not sought the help they need. One person can only give so much.
As it happened, Chris emerged three months later in reasonable shape, but, as I said to the psychiatrist, he was in better shape on in-take than he ever had been, so they were getting a better product to start.
However, on being sprung from the institution, his mind was still very much in fantasy land despite the vaunted drugs and the psychiatry, and that took time to straighten out. An old college friend of Chris's, who was then aged 25 and in grad school, came to visit, and Chris insisted that they play Magic: The Gathering together. That shows how he was still clinging to fantasy. He first got interested in myth and Magic cards at the age of ten. It seemed a giant regression for him to be playing Magic at aged 25, but I said nothing. Over the course of the next year, Chris began ruminating a lot on his childhood, and past transgressions. He telephoned a few old friends from childhood who he hadn't seen for years and apologized to them - for what I really have no idea. I suspect it had to do with the odd sly kick directed their way. This kind of behavior is not acceptable, but to my way of thinking it's part and parcel of childhood. As a child, Chris professed to be as good as gold, and being too good is always grounds for suspicion that the person isn't as good as they claim to be. Chris seemed to be feeling awfully guilty about his past deeds, not a healthy sign, but then again, perhaps a way of coming to grips with his past. His apologizing to people sounds like what people are encouraged to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. Perhaps Dr. Stern was urging him to do this.
I saw this post hospital phase of Chris's development as very positive, his learning to move beyond childhood and into adulthood.
One problem, though, on leaving the hospital, was that a couple of older people in the community (a man and a woman artist) who were mentally unstable were attracted to Chris. At first, I was glad that they were there, to offer friendship and to receive it. Chris had no friends at this point, and they had virtually none. He thought the older man was extremely interesting and learned, and yes, he was all of that. He and Chris would get together for coffees occasionally and talk about mythology and literature and the state of the world. Chris helped the man move several times. This man had a habit of very suavely talking his way into getting people to house him, but it rapidly went downhill from there as he always got verbally abusive and was kicked out usually after only a few days. I almost took him in, but I had the foresight to call someone I could trust, and was told under no circumstances should I do this. Nonetheless, the man kept telephoning me, always with a new excuse as to why he needed accommodation. When I didn't bite, he got verbally abusive. I began to not answer the phone, never sure what number he was calling from.
I felt very sorry for this man, because I could see that he was isolating himself and consequently, his mental problems were getting worse. I also felt guilty that I did not want to do more to help him. He was repeatedly urged by others to see a psychiatrist, but always refused, claiming that it was the other person who needed to see one. But it was when he moved beyond verbal abuse and started getting violent, not with Chris, with other people --a push here, a shove there--that I lost any sympathy I still was harboring.
On his own accord, Chris began distancing himself from the man, and the woman artist. He can see that they haven't dealt with their demons. He now sees them as "mentally ill," and this bothers him because he knows that he got the same label, and it was unjust. Chris is moving on emotionally, but it is sad that the other two people have not sought the help they need. One person can only give so much.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Around the blogs
"I was fine to speak to when she thought I was 'Owning my Illness' but once I disclosed that I was 'In Denial' she just couldn't cope."
Louise at Schizophrenia at the Schoolgate makes some interesting observations on competition for scarce resources in mental health charities, and how even mental health advocates discriminate when it comes to a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Pamela Spiro Wagner will be exhibiting her stupendous artwork on schizophrenia and recovery on the 4th floor of ArtSpace, Hartford during the week-end of Nov. 12-13. Open Studio Hartford is a Hartford (Connecticutt) regional event that celebrates the arts!
Stephany at Soulful Sepulcher announces that the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (CABF) has a name change and huge expansion plans! Still the same old pharma compromised Scientific Advisory Board, though. Also, don't miss the announcement of a new searchable adverse drug events database also posted on her blog.
And finally, not from a blog, but direct from Oz via YouTube, lounge lizard Bob Downe sings I Will Survive! Go for it, Bob!
Louise at Schizophrenia at the Schoolgate makes some interesting observations on competition for scarce resources in mental health charities, and how even mental health advocates discriminate when it comes to a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Pamela Spiro Wagner will be exhibiting her stupendous artwork on schizophrenia and recovery on the 4th floor of ArtSpace, Hartford during the week-end of Nov. 12-13. Open Studio Hartford is a Hartford (Connecticutt) regional event that celebrates the arts!
Stephany at Soulful Sepulcher announces that the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (CABF) has a name change and huge expansion plans! Still the same old pharma compromised Scientific Advisory Board, though. Also, don't miss the announcement of a new searchable adverse drug events database also posted on her blog.
And finally, not from a blog, but direct from Oz via YouTube, lounge lizard Bob Downe sings I Will Survive! Go for it, Bob!
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The Danny Diaries
The Danny Diaries, by Ann Cluver Weinberg, is available through Trafford Publishing and Amazon, both e-book and hard copy versions.
Product Description
The Danny Diaries is a book about a gifted, delightful child who had a teenage psychotic breakdown and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. This is a detective story for the reader. Why did he break down? Was it drugs? Was it growing up too quickly? Did he have too much adulation too young? Was society to blame?
And how did he recover? Once more the reader has a detective story to help him or her decide. His mother wrote down his spoken words from when he was fifteen months old, and she has chosen a selection of these both to delight and help the reader. Some of his psychotic speech does come into the book - only as examples, since it is not decipherable. "His weird talk" his sister called it.
People ask, "Is he really off all medication?" Yes! He has been sane and stable and happy for over 20 years.
The book will help parents of disturbed teenagers, but for everyone else it is a good, true story-with an innocent beginning, a chaotic middle, and an ending which is both triumphant and comforting. The book is also for anyone who has doubts about a lot of psychology and therapy. Real life goals are what work in the end.
Ann Cluver Weinberg is a South African author of poetry, stories and biographies who has been published and broadcast in South Africa. She is known for her robust honesty, her lyrical clarity, and her ability to give a universal experience from her very personal and well-observed stories. She lives in Johannesburg.
Product Description
The Danny Diaries is a book about a gifted, delightful child who had a teenage psychotic breakdown and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. This is a detective story for the reader. Why did he break down? Was it drugs? Was it growing up too quickly? Did he have too much adulation too young? Was society to blame?
And how did he recover? Once more the reader has a detective story to help him or her decide. His mother wrote down his spoken words from when he was fifteen months old, and she has chosen a selection of these both to delight and help the reader. Some of his psychotic speech does come into the book - only as examples, since it is not decipherable. "His weird talk" his sister called it.
People ask, "Is he really off all medication?" Yes! He has been sane and stable and happy for over 20 years.
The book will help parents of disturbed teenagers, but for everyone else it is a good, true story-with an innocent beginning, a chaotic middle, and an ending which is both triumphant and comforting. The book is also for anyone who has doubts about a lot of psychology and therapy. Real life goals are what work in the end.
Ann Cluver Weinberg is a South African author of poetry, stories and biographies who has been published and broadcast in South Africa. She is known for her robust honesty, her lyrical clarity, and her ability to give a universal experience from her very personal and well-observed stories. She lives in Johannesburg.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Breaking the Silence on Mental Health
Today is World Mental Health Day. I took my dog and pony show to a lunch time presentation on mental health and stigma, given by the former Prime Minister of Norway, Mr. Kjell Magne Bondevik.
Prime Minister Bondevik briefly considered resigning as Prime Minister in 1998 due to depression. He was urged not to resign, but to seek treatment and make this known to the Norwegian public. Three and a half weeks later, he resumed his duties, having succesfully engaged in walking and talking therapy with his psychiatrist, who took him on long walks up the mountains. Medications were also part of this therapy. He received top drawer treatment being the Prime Minister, and a Norwegian one at that, but he was also suffering from a top drawer diagnosis, depression, a time-limited condition. More importantly, the public thinks it understands, and is therefore sympathetic to depression, because it is so easily relatable to sad events in one's own life. Schizophrenia is not at all easily understood by the public. There are some people whose schizophrenia, like their depression, may be biochemical in nature and therefore can be "corrected" employing short term orthomolecular or drug therapy, but for a lot of people, the cause of the condition is higher up the food chain, so to speak, and related to the same things that make a depressed person, depressed.
I was madly scribbing some ideas to challenge his contention that people should be open and honest about their mental health problems. I think three and half weeks of major depression makes him a credible spokesperson, but I doubt he's got the full picture of what a major mental health label will do for someone over the long term.
So, I raised my hand and said that anti-stigma campaigns were all well and good, but the cause of stigma is more complex. Why do people discriminate in the first place? I said that as a mother of a son with a diagnosed major mental illness, I would not be so open about opening up and I cited the Sheila Mehta (Auburn University) study*, which found that stigma is increased if people think you have a mental illness caused by a biochemical imbalance as opposed to a mental illness resulting from understandable events in a person's life. Today, of course, everybody thinks mental illness is caused by a biochemical imbalance. I can run the numbers. This means that a large number of people are willing to discriminate against you.
I made my point. I sat down. Mr. Bondevik's answer didn't address my point about belief in the biochemical basis of the condition increasing stigma. He said it was everyone's personal decision about how much they wanted to open up about their mental illness. Fine, sure, but the Mehta study has raised some provocative issues about stigma that need further thoughtful discourse.
People who know that Chris was diagnosed with a major mental illness (in this case, the S-word), from what they have said to me, think Chris is somehow fundamentally flawed, will always be a "burden" to some extent in Ian's and my life, and they feel that as long as he stays on his medications he will be able to "cope." Gee, Chris is doing well," they may say, "the medications must be working." Had I not blabbed away the diagnosis in the first place, and did not let people know Chris has been on medications, the Mehta study suggests that people would not single him out as different, and therefore not apply the same pessimistic outlook.
_______________________
Mehta, S. , & Farina, A. (1997). Is being sick really better? Effect of the disease view of mental disorder on stigma. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 16(4), 405-419.
Prime Minister Bondevik briefly considered resigning as Prime Minister in 1998 due to depression. He was urged not to resign, but to seek treatment and make this known to the Norwegian public. Three and a half weeks later, he resumed his duties, having succesfully engaged in walking and talking therapy with his psychiatrist, who took him on long walks up the mountains. Medications were also part of this therapy. He received top drawer treatment being the Prime Minister, and a Norwegian one at that, but he was also suffering from a top drawer diagnosis, depression, a time-limited condition. More importantly, the public thinks it understands, and is therefore sympathetic to depression, because it is so easily relatable to sad events in one's own life. Schizophrenia is not at all easily understood by the public. There are some people whose schizophrenia, like their depression, may be biochemical in nature and therefore can be "corrected" employing short term orthomolecular or drug therapy, but for a lot of people, the cause of the condition is higher up the food chain, so to speak, and related to the same things that make a depressed person, depressed.
I was madly scribbing some ideas to challenge his contention that people should be open and honest about their mental health problems. I think three and half weeks of major depression makes him a credible spokesperson, but I doubt he's got the full picture of what a major mental health label will do for someone over the long term.
So, I raised my hand and said that anti-stigma campaigns were all well and good, but the cause of stigma is more complex. Why do people discriminate in the first place? I said that as a mother of a son with a diagnosed major mental illness, I would not be so open about opening up and I cited the Sheila Mehta (Auburn University) study*, which found that stigma is increased if people think you have a mental illness caused by a biochemical imbalance as opposed to a mental illness resulting from understandable events in a person's life. Today, of course, everybody thinks mental illness is caused by a biochemical imbalance. I can run the numbers. This means that a large number of people are willing to discriminate against you.
I made my point. I sat down. Mr. Bondevik's answer didn't address my point about belief in the biochemical basis of the condition increasing stigma. He said it was everyone's personal decision about how much they wanted to open up about their mental illness. Fine, sure, but the Mehta study has raised some provocative issues about stigma that need further thoughtful discourse.
People who know that Chris was diagnosed with a major mental illness (in this case, the S-word), from what they have said to me, think Chris is somehow fundamentally flawed, will always be a "burden" to some extent in Ian's and my life, and they feel that as long as he stays on his medications he will be able to "cope." Gee, Chris is doing well," they may say, "the medications must be working." Had I not blabbed away the diagnosis in the first place, and did not let people know Chris has been on medications, the Mehta study suggests that people would not single him out as different, and therefore not apply the same pessimistic outlook.
_______________________
Mehta, S. , & Farina, A. (1997). Is being sick really better? Effect of the disease view of mental disorder on stigma. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 16(4), 405-419.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
The diagnosis creates chronic stress and prevents healing
Today's big idea was prompted by a reader in a discussion group to which I belong. Commenting on an article in the New York Times, Talk Therapy Lifts Severe Schizophrenics, she wrote, "It’s interesting that these are patients doctors had given up on as hopeless, who would “never get better” ...might not the docs’ own expectations play a role in their previous stagnation?"
Replying to her questions was easy. I simply went to my book manuscript and lifted a section from Chapter 15, The Levels of Healing, which is printed in italics below. I bolded what he has to say about the diagnosis.
Dr. Ryke Geert Hamer is a German physician and researcher known for his "10 Iron Rules of Cancer." He considers schizophrenia, a cancer-equivalent. (Bear in mind when reading the passage, it's not just the doctors' expectations that prevent healing - also contributing to whether the person "heals" are the expectations of the family, which have been heavily influenced by the diagnosis.)
Most cancers or cancer-equivalent ailments, according to Dr. Hamer, begin with “Dirk Hamer syndrome”——a severe, highly acute, dramatic, and isolating conflict-occurrence shock that registers simultaneously on three levels: in the psyche, in the brain, and in an organ. The shock registered to the brain can be identified as concentric circles (or Hamer Herds) using computed tomography (CT). Where in the brain the Hamer Herd is located determines the theme of the conflict. By finding the location of the Hamer Herd in the brain, it can be predicted in which organ the cancer will arise and vice versa. Dr. Hamer maintains that the actual cause of the cancer is an unexpected shock but that the hopelessness, despair and meaninglessness felt by the patient after the diagnosis of the cancer and other diseases creates chronic stress, which prevents these diseases from healing.
In the case of the “schizophrenic” brain, according to Dr. Hamer, there are two (and sometimes three) such concentric circles, which register as a result of two (or three) shocks. Dr. Hamer does not indicate where the conflict/shock originates.
Replying to her questions was easy. I simply went to my book manuscript and lifted a section from Chapter 15, The Levels of Healing, which is printed in italics below. I bolded what he has to say about the diagnosis.
Dr. Ryke Geert Hamer is a German physician and researcher known for his "10 Iron Rules of Cancer." He considers schizophrenia, a cancer-equivalent. (Bear in mind when reading the passage, it's not just the doctors' expectations that prevent healing - also contributing to whether the person "heals" are the expectations of the family, which have been heavily influenced by the diagnosis.)
Most cancers or cancer-equivalent ailments, according to Dr. Hamer, begin with “Dirk Hamer syndrome”——a severe, highly acute, dramatic, and isolating conflict-occurrence shock that registers simultaneously on three levels: in the psyche, in the brain, and in an organ. The shock registered to the brain can be identified as concentric circles (or Hamer Herds) using computed tomography (CT). Where in the brain the Hamer Herd is located determines the theme of the conflict. By finding the location of the Hamer Herd in the brain, it can be predicted in which organ the cancer will arise and vice versa. Dr. Hamer maintains that the actual cause of the cancer is an unexpected shock but that the hopelessness, despair and meaninglessness felt by the patient after the diagnosis of the cancer and other diseases creates chronic stress, which prevents these diseases from healing.
In the case of the “schizophrenic” brain, according to Dr. Hamer, there are two (and sometimes three) such concentric circles, which register as a result of two (or three) shocks. Dr. Hamer does not indicate where the conflict/shock originates.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Plastic versus concrete
I have swiped another excellent post from today's Beyond Meds in order to make a schizophrenia related point. That point is about how psychiatry tries to scare us (patients/families) into medication compliance by telling us that "untreated" schizophrenia, meaning in pharma-speak, pharma treated mental illness, leads to brain damage. Never mind the fact that there is no sign of brain damage in the untreated schizophrenic brain on the autopsy table, as psychiatrist Thomas Szasz insists there should be in order to show damage.
Beyond Meds guest blogger Alto Strata, in her blog post entitled Neuropsychiatry: Same baloney, different sandwich, writes
And there has to be some stick to use to drive them to drugs, so psychiatry has enthusiastically taken up the cudgel of depression as progressive brain damage.
The progressive brain damage trope doesn’t fly — clearly many people recover from “depression” and other mood disorders without drugs and seem to be as good as anyone else.
It is an absurdity and an offense to humanity to argue, for example, that 2 weeks of grieving, which can be diagnosed as major depression, becomes brain damage if allowed to continue longer. In general, the brains of “depressed” people, even ridden with all those diseased circuits, work fine. Many are even intellectual leaders and creative geniuses.
Imagine, you are like me, a vulnerable parent, arriving at the emergency entrance of the hospital with your "loved one" in tow. You are panic stricken. Your "loved one" sure is acting weird, no doubt about it, and this is the perfect opportunity for the doctors to spring upon you the news that, without medications, your relative's brain is going to look like Swiss cheese. You don't need much convincing that there is something definitely wrong with his or her brain, because he/she sure is acting strangely, and you cling to the drugs like a shipwrecked sailor to a life raft. You think you're being responsible, and you are, based on the information that you've just been given. Unfortunately, it's false information. Remember, schizophrenia is not seen on the autopsy table, nobody has discovered a gene for it, and it is repeatedly alleged that neuro-imaging anomalies are often due to the effects of medication.
Back in Dec. 2003, the intake psychiatrists at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto had either never heard of neuroplasticity, or else they were trying not to let the latest research escape into the hands of the general population until they got the new story line straight. The doctors told my husband and me in all earnestness that my son's brain was going to slowly solidify like drying concrete (new word "neuroconcretivity" LOL) if he didn't get on those drugs toute de suite. That was only in 2003. Then, suddenly, around 2005, I would say, we start hearing that the brain has endless capacity to reinvent itself, busily erecting new turnpikes in the neuronal information highway. The brain was now plastic.
Is being plastic good or bad? I dunno, it initially sounded to me like good news, but the pharmaceutical companies are dealing with the new findings like it's business as usual: "The brain needs to be protected from progressive brain damage."
Damage caused by what, exactly? The fact that neurons may have taken a detour around the diagnosis? The damage in lost revenue, perhaps?
Beyond Meds guest blogger Alto Strata, in her blog post entitled Neuropsychiatry: Same baloney, different sandwich, writes
And there has to be some stick to use to drive them to drugs, so psychiatry has enthusiastically taken up the cudgel of depression as progressive brain damage.
The progressive brain damage trope doesn’t fly — clearly many people recover from “depression” and other mood disorders without drugs and seem to be as good as anyone else.
It is an absurdity and an offense to humanity to argue, for example, that 2 weeks of grieving, which can be diagnosed as major depression, becomes brain damage if allowed to continue longer. In general, the brains of “depressed” people, even ridden with all those diseased circuits, work fine. Many are even intellectual leaders and creative geniuses.
Imagine, you are like me, a vulnerable parent, arriving at the emergency entrance of the hospital with your "loved one" in tow. You are panic stricken. Your "loved one" sure is acting weird, no doubt about it, and this is the perfect opportunity for the doctors to spring upon you the news that, without medications, your relative's brain is going to look like Swiss cheese. You don't need much convincing that there is something definitely wrong with his or her brain, because he/she sure is acting strangely, and you cling to the drugs like a shipwrecked sailor to a life raft. You think you're being responsible, and you are, based on the information that you've just been given. Unfortunately, it's false information. Remember, schizophrenia is not seen on the autopsy table, nobody has discovered a gene for it, and it is repeatedly alleged that neuro-imaging anomalies are often due to the effects of medication.
Back in Dec. 2003, the intake psychiatrists at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto had either never heard of neuroplasticity, or else they were trying not to let the latest research escape into the hands of the general population until they got the new story line straight. The doctors told my husband and me in all earnestness that my son's brain was going to slowly solidify like drying concrete (new word "neuroconcretivity" LOL) if he didn't get on those drugs toute de suite. That was only in 2003. Then, suddenly, around 2005, I would say, we start hearing that the brain has endless capacity to reinvent itself, busily erecting new turnpikes in the neuronal information highway. The brain was now plastic.
Is being plastic good or bad? I dunno, it initially sounded to me like good news, but the pharmaceutical companies are dealing with the new findings like it's business as usual: "The brain needs to be protected from progressive brain damage."
Damage caused by what, exactly? The fact that neurons may have taken a detour around the diagnosis? The damage in lost revenue, perhaps?
Monday, October 3, 2011
B vitamins for brains
Here is yet another B vitamin study raising tantalizing links between ingestion of high doses of B vitamins and staving off dementia. Dr. Celeste de Jager of Oxford University, who led the trial, said, "A lot of the time brain changes start in your forties and fifties before you get clinical symptoms. I would think that in middle age people should start thinking about their vitamin levels."
A full scale national (U.K.) trial to establish whether the breakthrough can actually delay the slide into Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia is expected to begin within the next year.
Let's not forget that Dr. Abram Hoffer also endorsed high doses of B vitamins, especially Vitamin B3 (niacin) for not only schizophrenia but also for preventing dementia, although, in the latter case, he did not conduct clinical trials. Anecdotally, he noticed that after he started recommending niacin to his older relatives, over a twenty-five year period, none developed dementia. He recommended a daily 3 grams of niacin or niacinimide for people in their fifties and older, along with an equal amount of vitamin C and a B complex.
The endorsement surrounding B vitamins, and vitamins in general, is rather timid, and vitamins may never become officially sanctioned by the medical profession because, after all, vitamins in their pure form can't be patented. They are low cost. If you want to get serious about getting the best benefits from them, you often have to take megadoses, and that's when it gets tricky. Very few doctors will go on record to endorse high doses of vitamins. Their patients, on the other hand, often take their health concerns into their own hands. Nobel prize winning chemist Dr. Linus Pauling collaborated with Abram Hoffer in research into high dose vitamin C as an adjunct cancer therapy.
Here's what Dr. de Jager has to say. It's hardly bold. To my way of thinking, if you want results, you probably need consistent and high daily doses of certain vitamins targetted to the specific condition.
"People should not begin taking supplements without consulting their doctor because they can have a harmful impact on other conditions such as cancer," she added.
Asked if she would take the vitamins as a precaution, Dr de Jager said: "I would ask the doctor to check my B12 and my folic acid levels for starters."
"I take supplements when I'm feeling a bit low, I don't take one every day but I would certainly have multi-vitamins and B vitamins in my cupboard."
An excellent web site with factual information on vitamins and supplements is www.doctoryourself.com
A full scale national (U.K.) trial to establish whether the breakthrough can actually delay the slide into Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia is expected to begin within the next year.
Let's not forget that Dr. Abram Hoffer also endorsed high doses of B vitamins, especially Vitamin B3 (niacin) for not only schizophrenia but also for preventing dementia, although, in the latter case, he did not conduct clinical trials. Anecdotally, he noticed that after he started recommending niacin to his older relatives, over a twenty-five year period, none developed dementia. He recommended a daily 3 grams of niacin or niacinimide for people in their fifties and older, along with an equal amount of vitamin C and a B complex.
The endorsement surrounding B vitamins, and vitamins in general, is rather timid, and vitamins may never become officially sanctioned by the medical profession because, after all, vitamins in their pure form can't be patented. They are low cost. If you want to get serious about getting the best benefits from them, you often have to take megadoses, and that's when it gets tricky. Very few doctors will go on record to endorse high doses of vitamins. Their patients, on the other hand, often take their health concerns into their own hands. Nobel prize winning chemist Dr. Linus Pauling collaborated with Abram Hoffer in research into high dose vitamin C as an adjunct cancer therapy.
Here's what Dr. de Jager has to say. It's hardly bold. To my way of thinking, if you want results, you probably need consistent and high daily doses of certain vitamins targetted to the specific condition.
"People should not begin taking supplements without consulting their doctor because they can have a harmful impact on other conditions such as cancer," she added.
Asked if she would take the vitamins as a precaution, Dr de Jager said: "I would ask the doctor to check my B12 and my folic acid levels for starters."
"I take supplements when I'm feeling a bit low, I don't take one every day but I would certainly have multi-vitamins and B vitamins in my cupboard."
An excellent web site with factual information on vitamins and supplements is www.doctoryourself.com
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Do psychiatric institutions want to make people well?
from FLASHBACKS, an Autobiography by Timothy Leary (Published by Jeremy P. Tarcher ©1983, 1990 Timothy Leary.
excerptMARCH 1961
HARVARD UNIVERSITY I walked through the first tall cellblock, across the prison yard to the hospital. Bell, peephole, metal hinges creaking. Entered the hospital. Knocked on the door of the prison psychiatrist. It opened and facing me was good news. The prison psychiatrist was black and definitely avant-garde. Hurray! Philosopher Thomas Kuhn said that when you wish to introduce change-technology to a culture, you'll find your best allies among the outsiders, those whose alienation from the establishment makes them more open to change.
Aside from being a black psychiatrist Dr. Jefferson Monroe [Madison Presnell] stood out in the primitive period of 1961 as another kind of rarity—a sophisticated psychiatrist. Impeccable, graceful, hip. He had a twinkle in his eye and a wise, cool way of looking at you. He was definitely ready for something neew.
A few days later Dr. Monroe paid a return call at the Faculty Club and then came to a staff meeting at the Center. We put him on the Harvard payroll as a consultant. The following Sunday he brought his wife over for cocktails.
"Your plan to teach prisoners to brainwash themselves is simply delicious. There's even a slight chance you can pull it off. Do you know what that might mean?"
"A great boon to society," I suggested.
Dr. Monroe crossed his legs gracefully and laughed. "My dear, you don't really understand what you're getting into, do you? Sooner or later you're going to discover that law enforcement people and prison administrators have no desire to cut crime. They want more crime and more money to fight it. I'll cover you from the medical and psychiatric end, but sooner or later, if your methods work they'll start coming down on you. Reporters, bureaucrats, officials. 'Harvard Gives Drugs to Prisoners!' And you're going to have to do the impossible. Cure prisoners with your left hand while you try to hold off the entire bureaucracy with your right. "
"So what? If it works."
"Being human, sooner or later you'll make a teeny little mistake. One of your subjects will revert. 'Harvard Drug Parolee Robs Bank.' "
"As long as we do everything out front, no secrets," I said, "we can make a few honest mistakes."
"Maybe," said Monroe. "Look, here's the deal. I'll back you all-out, until you goof. When they start coming down on you, exactly at that point I'll have to protect my own pretty black ass. 'Cause, I'm not you. I'm not the new Freud. So I'll win with you, but I can't afford to lose with you."
On that basis we agreed on a plan: Monroe would line up volunteers in the prison population for the drug project and I'd line up Harvard graduate students willing to put their nervous systems on the line taking drugs with maximum security prisoners.
Bruce E. Levine's review of Revolutionary Road
I missed this wonderful review of Revolutionary Road by Bruce E. Levine* when it appeared in the Huffington Post in 2009. In it, he focuses on a minor but key character by the name of John Givings. Please read this review in its entirety. I've posted a few excerpts below.
The current PC explanation of serious mental illness brought to us by Big Pharma -- follow the money trail -- is that it is caused by this or that neurotransmitter or brain structure and has nothing to do with oppressive families and dehumanizing environments. It is also now PC to mock the notion that mentally-ill diagnosed people may sometimes be like canaries in the mine, more sensitive and reactive to insidious toxins.
John Givings -- though psychiatrically hospitalized and a recipient of multiple electroshock treatments which have damaged his mathematical abilities -- is clearly not delusional about oppressive family relationships, not wrong about meaningless jobs, not incorrect about gutless frauds, and not mistaken about a dehumanizing society. He, like many people I have known diagnosed with mental illness, feels alienated and powerless. And he is no diplomat. Truth serves as his only source of potency, and he uses it as both a constructive tool to celebrate and validate courage and as a hurtful weapon to castigate and punish gutlessness.
It is convenient for many people -- and lucrative for drug companies and the institutions that they support - if all disruptive, crazy-sounding, tension-producing people can simply be handed off to doctors to be labeled and drugged. If we can neatly compartmentalize and medicalize the John Givings of the world, then families and society don't have to halt the assembly line and ask questions such as: "What is exactly happening in this person's life that has made him or her so angry or frightened? Why does he or she feel so alienated? Is society oppressive for many people, and is this person simply more unbridled in their reaction to that fact? Is there something suffocating about nuclear families in which temperamentally mismatched people are forced to have relationships? Should we be satisfied with a paycheck and a full belly -- or is that not enough?
I have met many angry, rude, tension-producing people labeled with severe mental illness. Some of them are completely dominated by their own victimization and seek only to inflict payback pain on those around them. Others though, when feeling safe, state truths which, if taken seriously, would create a more loving family, a more caring community, and a more stimulating world.
When April and Frank take John seriously, he relaxes, stops being hurtful, and shares with them, among other insights, that "maybe it does take a certain amount of guts to see the emptiness, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more to see the hopelessness. And I guess when you do see the hopelessness, that's where there's nothing to do but take off. If you can."
___________________________
Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, and his latest book is Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (Chelsea Green Publishing, April 2011). Dr. Levine, also the author of Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007), has been in private practice since 1985 and has presented talks and workshops to diverse organizations throughout North America. He is also the author of Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy (Continuum, 2003), and he has authored the chapter "Troubled Children and Teens: Commonsense Solutions without Psychiatric Drugs or Manipulations" for Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry (Peter Lehmann Publishing, 2007). Dr. Levine has been a regular contributor to and AlterNet, CounterPunch, and Z Magazine, and his articles and interviews have been published in numerous other magazines. He is an editorial advisor for the Icarus Project/Freedom Center Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs and on the editorial advisory board of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry.
The current PC explanation of serious mental illness brought to us by Big Pharma -- follow the money trail -- is that it is caused by this or that neurotransmitter or brain structure and has nothing to do with oppressive families and dehumanizing environments. It is also now PC to mock the notion that mentally-ill diagnosed people may sometimes be like canaries in the mine, more sensitive and reactive to insidious toxins.
John Givings -- though psychiatrically hospitalized and a recipient of multiple electroshock treatments which have damaged his mathematical abilities -- is clearly not delusional about oppressive family relationships, not wrong about meaningless jobs, not incorrect about gutless frauds, and not mistaken about a dehumanizing society. He, like many people I have known diagnosed with mental illness, feels alienated and powerless. And he is no diplomat. Truth serves as his only source of potency, and he uses it as both a constructive tool to celebrate and validate courage and as a hurtful weapon to castigate and punish gutlessness.
It is convenient for many people -- and lucrative for drug companies and the institutions that they support - if all disruptive, crazy-sounding, tension-producing people can simply be handed off to doctors to be labeled and drugged. If we can neatly compartmentalize and medicalize the John Givings of the world, then families and society don't have to halt the assembly line and ask questions such as: "What is exactly happening in this person's life that has made him or her so angry or frightened? Why does he or she feel so alienated? Is society oppressive for many people, and is this person simply more unbridled in their reaction to that fact? Is there something suffocating about nuclear families in which temperamentally mismatched people are forced to have relationships? Should we be satisfied with a paycheck and a full belly -- or is that not enough?
I have met many angry, rude, tension-producing people labeled with severe mental illness. Some of them are completely dominated by their own victimization and seek only to inflict payback pain on those around them. Others though, when feeling safe, state truths which, if taken seriously, would create a more loving family, a more caring community, and a more stimulating world.
When April and Frank take John seriously, he relaxes, stops being hurtful, and shares with them, among other insights, that "maybe it does take a certain amount of guts to see the emptiness, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more to see the hopelessness. And I guess when you do see the hopelessness, that's where there's nothing to do but take off. If you can."
___________________________
Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, and his latest book is Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (Chelsea Green Publishing, April 2011). Dr. Levine, also the author of Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007), has been in private practice since 1985 and has presented talks and workshops to diverse organizations throughout North America. He is also the author of Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy (Continuum, 2003), and he has authored the chapter "Troubled Children and Teens: Commonsense Solutions without Psychiatric Drugs or Manipulations" for Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry (Peter Lehmann Publishing, 2007). Dr. Levine has been a regular contributor to and AlterNet, CounterPunch, and Z Magazine, and his articles and interviews have been published in numerous other magazines. He is an editorial advisor for the Icarus Project/Freedom Center Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs and on the editorial advisory board of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry.
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