Friday, September 18, 2009

The new frontier in mental health treatment

Medical science has had over 100 years to come up with anything resembling a cure for schizophrenia and it hasn't. Since the first generation typical antipsychotics were introduced in the 1950s, the medical community has promoted medications as effective in treating schizophrenia. Medications have not been able to make large numbers of people well, and they have undesirable side effects.

Vitamins have been tried, but not without controversy from within the mainstream medical community. Some people have claimed success with vitamins, but not enough, unfortunately. Vitamins should be part of everyone's daily regime, but will not necessarily deliver you out of schizophrenia. The vitamin approach is similar to the medication approach because both treat mental health problems as biochemical in origin.

So what is left that hasn't been well-explored? Oddly enough, psychotherapy. There is really good psychotherapy out there, but sadly, many of the better psychotherapeutic approaches have been demonized. Often, the originators of these therapies have been labeled extremists and their work unfairly discredited by the medical community. People with schizophrenia should be encouraged to choose the kind of psychotherapy that suits them. Psychotherapy in all of its various manifestations should be more widely promoted as beneficial for a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

It can take years to achieve mental wellness with some forms of psychotherapy. Clinical psychologist Dr Phil Mollon acknowledges that some mental pain doesn’t get better with psychotherapy, no matter how much insight the patient gains. “Psychoanalysis is useful in generating insight, but is not good at relieving mental pain which stems from trauma. Trauma often remains locked in the emotional part of the brain, which words can’t reach.” This is where the best psychotherapy is the kind that promotes an emotional catharsis. Healing can be quicker.

The new frontier for healing schizophrenia is energy medicine and its subdiscipline, energy psychology. Energy medicine doesn't really care what the origin of your condition is or what your official diagnosis is. It simply recognizes that energy blockages, which can stem from trauma, are emotional blockages that can leave you in poor mental and physical health. Therapy involving energy medicine is affordable, especially when you compare it to the alternative - spending time in hospital, paying out of pocket for long term psychotherapy, spending lots of money on vitamins, lost employment and educational opportunities, etc. Therapies involving energy medicine are of short duration, perhaps a few sessions spread over several weeks. Energy psychology and certain psychotherapies produce a catharsis of emotion. I would consider cathartic psychotherapies part of energy psychology because they work at the level of cellular memory/cellular resonance.

Energy medicine encompasses everything I have come to understand about the possible origins of Chris's problems. Energy medicine implicitly recognizes that emotions are energy, therefore it is complementary to psychotherapy. It is a belated modern acknowledgement of what ancient peoples and religions have practiced for years.

Over the past six years, I estimate that over $500,000 has been paid by our health insurer for the wrong kind of care for Chris. Had I known then what I know now, here is where the money might have been better spent:

Assemblage point shift - $300
Tomatis Method - $4000
Sound therapy - $360
Family Constellation Therapy (just one example of a cathartic psychotherapy)
Emotional Freedom Technique and other meridion techniques
Prayer, poetry, play reading, music, kindness, understanding, time - no price

None of the above are a quick fix, but they do produce results in a relatively shorter period of time. There are all kinds of therapies that relate to energy medicine and energy psychology. You don't need your doctor's blessing to undertake these therapies. There is absolutely no harm to them. Energy medicine and cathartic forms of psychotherapy are going to become the therapy of choice for many people. It will threaten traditional medicine, which in turn will cause the medical profession to demonize it while at the same time clamoring to regulate it.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/alternative_medicine/article1080879.ece

4 comments:

  1. Thanks Rossa...I really enjoyed reading this article. Kim

    ReplyDelete
  2. I totally agree: it is crucial to resolve trauma (whatever the cause) as part of any mental health treatment. One particularly effective method of energy medicine and trauma release is called Somatic Experiencing. This technique was developed by Dr. Peter Levine, who wrote "Waking the Tiger," "Healing Trauma" and many other books.

    Somatic Experiencing works with the trauma that's in the body in the present moment, regardless of the origin. It is the very opposite of "exposure therapy:" rather, it "titrates" the trauma out of the body in tiny increments.

    I practice Somatic Experiencing along with another form of energy medicine called Healing Touch. This is a unique and very powerful combination of therapies for people who are suffering from trauma, depression or other forms of dis-ease. Please visit my website for more information on this type of energy medicine: www.daphnewhite.com

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  3. Thanks, Daphne. I checked out your website, and it looks promising. I'm so glad to see the number of people like yourself who are involved in energy medicine and all its offshoots. I apologize for not posting your comment, but it ended up in my spam box and I only noticed it today.

    ReplyDelete
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