Get Behind Open Dialogue Movement for Mental Health
Target: US Department of Health and Human Services
Sponsored by: Susan V
Dr. Peter Lynch has released a new video in his series exposing misinformation that has dominated the mental healthcare industry far too long.
He, among others, says it's not true that chemical imbalances in the brain cause mental illness, that psychiatry is solidly grounded in science or that its drugs correct any so-called imbalances. Also false, says Lynch, is that psychiatry and drugs are the best we have to deal with mental illness - that no other treatment options exist.
The real problem, he says, is not brain pathology. “It is emotional distress.”
And Dr. Jaakko Seikkula would agree. In the 1980s Seikkula and a team in Tornio, Finland developed an innovative treatment program that focuses on alleviating the emotional trauma of those in distress. This “Open Dialogue” has consistently reduced the need for hospitalization and medication and also reduced relapse “when compared with treatment as usual.”
With PTSD on the rise, exacerbated by two wars and added economic stress, it is destructive for the US DHHS to continue supporting the old myths about mental illness, while ignoring this new and effective treatment that the Institute for Dialogic Practice is teaching within the US.
Tell the Dept of Health to put full steam behind the Open Dialogue movement.
sign here
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
Refusing psychiatry without pissing off the neighbors
One of my favorite blogs is Refusing Psychiatry (Without Pissing Off the Neighbors). The author's bio says "I became an attorney late in life primarily to advocate for the universal human right to refuse psychiatry." I believe that the author is now retired but volunteers his legal services in his state's penal institutions. You can follow him on Twitter: @mentalhealthlaw
In his most recent post, he examines the case of Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.. Rep. Jackson recently was released from the Mayo Clinic after being treated for bipolar II disorder.
Mr. Hudson complains that U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-2nd) is receiving the best medical care in the world from the Mayo Clinic, which most of his constituents could never afford. He continues, "Because of a recent lack of funding, his constituents can no longer visit the recently closed community mental health center that has served the South Side for 37 years. Had Jackson sought care from this center, it might still be open."
But community mental health centers, and state institutions like Tinley Park Mental Health Center, are being closed because the people of Illinois simply do not want to pay for this garbage any more. Psychiatry has clearly failed to reduce mental illness by operating under a medical model, given the opportunity of almost unlimited funding for at least two generations. Arguably, the total efforts of the mental health orthodoxy have dramatically increased the incidence of mental illness and disability!
Read the rest here
In his most recent post, he examines the case of Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.. Rep. Jackson recently was released from the Mayo Clinic after being treated for bipolar II disorder.
MONDAY, AUGUST 27, 2012
The August 26 edition of the Southtown Star, a neighborhood newspaper in Chicago, includes a letter from one Cornell Hudson of Steger.Mr. Hudson complains that U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-2nd) is receiving the best medical care in the world from the Mayo Clinic, which most of his constituents could never afford. He continues, "Because of a recent lack of funding, his constituents can no longer visit the recently closed community mental health center that has served the South Side for 37 years. Had Jackson sought care from this center, it might still be open."
But community mental health centers, and state institutions like Tinley Park Mental Health Center, are being closed because the people of Illinois simply do not want to pay for this garbage any more. Psychiatry has clearly failed to reduce mental illness by operating under a medical model, given the opportunity of almost unlimited funding for at least two generations. Arguably, the total efforts of the mental health orthodoxy have dramatically increased the incidence of mental illness and disability!
Read the rest here
Friday, September 21, 2012
Recovery in social housing may depend on disclosure of the diagnosis
Monica Cassani at Beyond Meds has alerted me to an excellent article at the Wilson Quarterly.
Concerning the content of the Wilson piece, she writes:
Yes, slowly but surely there begins a recognition that what gets called mental illness cannot be explained with the bio-medical model.
From The Wilson Quarterly an article well worth reading with the recent history of how that which is called mental illness is considered in society and how that is changing since the psychopharmacological era has clearly failed:
Please check out Monica's page for a list of high quality recovery resources that she recommends. She also has a bookstore on her site where you can order much of the material.
One thing that struck me about the Wilson Quarterly article was the recognition that diagnosing someone with a mental illness almost always guarantees that recovery will be harder to achieve. For quite some time researchers have puzzled over why schizophrenia outcomes are invariably better in countries with less reliance on Western medical practices. The article sheds some light on this:
Indian families also don’t treat people with schizophrenia as if they have a soul-destroying illness. As an anthropology graduate student, Amy Sousa spent more than a year in northern India, sitting with doctors as they treated patients who came with their families into a dingy hospital where overworked psychiatrists can routinely have 10 appointments an hour. Many of the doctors didn’t mention a diagnosis. Many of the families didn’t ask. There was a good deal of deception—wives grinding medication into the flour for the daily chapattis they made for their husbands, doctors explaining to patients that they were completely well but should take strengthening pills to protect themselves from the ravages of their youth. As a result, none of the patients thought of themselves as having a career-ending illness, and every one of them expected to get better. And at least compared to patients in the West, they generally did.
It's heartening to see that the the Indian deception (the biochemical model of the illness calls this "denial"), is finding its way into the American health care system. Under the old United States' regime, as the article explains, people had to state their diagnosis in order to get housing.
The new kind of intervention simply gives people housing without asking them to admit to a diagnosis. Programs like the one that helped Susan are supported by federal funding set aside for people with serious mental illness, but the benefit is not described that way to clients. Though Susan knows that she has subsidized housing, she thinks she got it because she entered a program at a shelter to help her get off crack. Those who created programs like the one Susan is in believe that the social setting in which a patient lives and imagines herself have as much to do with her treatment as any medication. In general, the data prove that they are right. People are more likely to accept housing when offered it in these programs than in care-as-usual settings, and after they are housed their symptoms lessen—whether or not they are taking medications.
School teachers don't encourage their students to become better students by labelling them stupid. Empowering students by bolstering their self-esteem was a revolution of its own kind - remember the dunce cap?
The recovery movement in mental health is more and more vocal about rejecting the diagnosis because it has long recognized how self-limiting for people the diagnosis can be. In my son's case, my husband and I reversed our thinking about the diagnosis and the best treatment, but it has taken us years to get the message across to my son that we were wrong to uphold it for as long as we did. I'm still not sure that our message of empowerment has trumped in his mind the original, discouraging diagnosis.
Read the rest of the Wilson Quarterly article here
Concerning the content of the Wilson piece, she writes:
Yes, slowly but surely there begins a recognition that what gets called mental illness cannot be explained with the bio-medical model.
From The Wilson Quarterly an article well worth reading with the recent history of how that which is called mental illness is considered in society and how that is changing since the psychopharmacological era has clearly failed:
Please check out Monica's page for a list of high quality recovery resources that she recommends. She also has a bookstore on her site where you can order much of the material.
One thing that struck me about the Wilson Quarterly article was the recognition that diagnosing someone with a mental illness almost always guarantees that recovery will be harder to achieve. For quite some time researchers have puzzled over why schizophrenia outcomes are invariably better in countries with less reliance on Western medical practices. The article sheds some light on this:
Indian families also don’t treat people with schizophrenia as if they have a soul-destroying illness. As an anthropology graduate student, Amy Sousa spent more than a year in northern India, sitting with doctors as they treated patients who came with their families into a dingy hospital where overworked psychiatrists can routinely have 10 appointments an hour. Many of the doctors didn’t mention a diagnosis. Many of the families didn’t ask. There was a good deal of deception—wives grinding medication into the flour for the daily chapattis they made for their husbands, doctors explaining to patients that they were completely well but should take strengthening pills to protect themselves from the ravages of their youth. As a result, none of the patients thought of themselves as having a career-ending illness, and every one of them expected to get better. And at least compared to patients in the West, they generally did.
It's heartening to see that the the Indian deception (the biochemical model of the illness calls this "denial"), is finding its way into the American health care system. Under the old United States' regime, as the article explains, people had to state their diagnosis in order to get housing.
The new kind of intervention simply gives people housing without asking them to admit to a diagnosis. Programs like the one that helped Susan are supported by federal funding set aside for people with serious mental illness, but the benefit is not described that way to clients. Though Susan knows that she has subsidized housing, she thinks she got it because she entered a program at a shelter to help her get off crack. Those who created programs like the one Susan is in believe that the social setting in which a patient lives and imagines herself have as much to do with her treatment as any medication. In general, the data prove that they are right. People are more likely to accept housing when offered it in these programs than in care-as-usual settings, and after they are housed their symptoms lessen—whether or not they are taking medications.
School teachers don't encourage their students to become better students by labelling them stupid. Empowering students by bolstering their self-esteem was a revolution of its own kind - remember the dunce cap?
The recovery movement in mental health is more and more vocal about rejecting the diagnosis because it has long recognized how self-limiting for people the diagnosis can be. In my son's case, my husband and I reversed our thinking about the diagnosis and the best treatment, but it has taken us years to get the message across to my son that we were wrong to uphold it for as long as we did. I'm still not sure that our message of empowerment has trumped in his mind the original, discouraging diagnosis.
Read the rest of the Wilson Quarterly article here
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Now, where were we?
September is here and my "children" are no longer even attending university, so I don't get the same frisson of back to school excitement that I used to get around this time. Alex, our 26 year old, has just this week moved out to a place of his own. Taylor, the 22 year old, has started his first job a few time zones away.
That leaves Chris (28) at home. I've already broached the subject with him of his starting university afresh, if not this year, then the following year, but he should at least begin planning towards this goal. Chris is well enough now that he can take steps to become more independent and work toward some career goals. It's a scary prospect, of course. Four years ago when I encouraged him to go back to university, he promptly suffered a relapse. He's much more resilient now,
There are so many factors he needs to consider:
Eventually, something's gotta give.
- Is he ready?
- What would he study?
- Is he willing and able to tackle the application process?
- What size of institution will make him feel more comfortable? Big or small?
- How will he handle the fact that he will be a mature student in a sea of 18 to 22 year olds? A smaller college might be more to his liking, but there will be fewer people his own age. How can he overcome loneliness?
Eventually, something's gotta give.
Friday, September 14, 2012
I've finally put a name to my experience: Stockholm Syndrome
Though technically not the patient, I too, felt like there was a hostage taking going on when I met with Chris's doctors. (I have since found psychiatrists for him where the power relationship is on a more equal footing.)
From David Healy's blog post, BarMitzzva Romba: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies
Quite aside from transforming doctors into the perfect consumer in this sense, in 1962 it was not appreciated how much a mechanism designed to improve safety might in fact do just the opposite by transforming clinical encounters into hostage situations. Making drugs available on prescription only means that patients have nowhere else to go to get a medicine they need or think they need. They effectively become a hostage rather than a patient and risk the development of Stockholm syndrome.
In 1962 Stockholm syndrome had not yet been described. It is now known that people whose lives are at risk and who are isolated (anyone with an illness), when held hostage by kind captors concerned about their welfare (as doctors are increasingly trained to be) are highly likely to identify with their captors and want to keep them happy. In these circumstances, especially when the patient finds their condition worsening, it becomes very difficult to raise the possibility that what the doctor has done in good faith to help might in fact be causing problems.
It seems more and more likely that the safety consequences of turning patients into hostages outweigh the risks inherent in the drugs that doctors prescribe. The evidence that treatment induced adverse events have now become a leading source of death and disability point just this way. Meanwhile there is not a medical course on earth that trains doctors to recognize their capacity to induce Stockholm syndrome.
From David Healy's blog post, BarMitzzva Romba: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies
Quite aside from transforming doctors into the perfect consumer in this sense, in 1962 it was not appreciated how much a mechanism designed to improve safety might in fact do just the opposite by transforming clinical encounters into hostage situations. Making drugs available on prescription only means that patients have nowhere else to go to get a medicine they need or think they need. They effectively become a hostage rather than a patient and risk the development of Stockholm syndrome.
In 1962 Stockholm syndrome had not yet been described. It is now known that people whose lives are at risk and who are isolated (anyone with an illness), when held hostage by kind captors concerned about their welfare (as doctors are increasingly trained to be) are highly likely to identify with their captors and want to keep them happy. In these circumstances, especially when the patient finds their condition worsening, it becomes very difficult to raise the possibility that what the doctor has done in good faith to help might in fact be causing problems.
It seems more and more likely that the safety consequences of turning patients into hostages outweigh the risks inherent in the drugs that doctors prescribe. The evidence that treatment induced adverse events have now become a leading source of death and disability point just this way. Meanwhile there is not a medical course on earth that trains doctors to recognize their capacity to induce Stockholm syndrome.
You try it first, Doc
Doctors may be the only significant group of buyers who are not trained in the pitfalls of buying for a third party. Their background means that they do not even realize that they are not trained in an area of huge consequence for them and their patients.
Recent estimates suggest that companies spend over $50,000 per annum per doctors marketing to doctors. This figure could likely be greatly increased if the cost of “scientific” articles were also included in the mix. Doctors in other words are subject to a greater concentration of marketing power than any other group of people on earth. But, just as they know nothing about buying for a third party, so also no doctors are trained to recognize the way companies market to them.
Both doctors and patients fail to realize that doctors are the consumers of medicines and that they consume by putting pills in patients mouths. In so doing they consume without consequences or side effects. Companies fully appreciate this and exploit it. If the patient has a problem, company marketing ensures doctors will have to hand a great deal of evidence suggesting that any problems are part of the patient’s illness rather than a consequence of treatment. Evidence based medicine is deployed to relegate any reports of difficulties from doctors or patients to the status of anecdotes.
From David Healy's post at Mad in America - read more about the evolution of the prescription drug market in America: BarMittzva Romba: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies
Recent estimates suggest that companies spend over $50,000 per annum per doctors marketing to doctors. This figure could likely be greatly increased if the cost of “scientific” articles were also included in the mix. Doctors in other words are subject to a greater concentration of marketing power than any other group of people on earth. But, just as they know nothing about buying for a third party, so also no doctors are trained to recognize the way companies market to them.
Both doctors and patients fail to realize that doctors are the consumers of medicines and that they consume by putting pills in patients mouths. In so doing they consume without consequences or side effects. Companies fully appreciate this and exploit it. If the patient has a problem, company marketing ensures doctors will have to hand a great deal of evidence suggesting that any problems are part of the patient’s illness rather than a consequence of treatment. Evidence based medicine is deployed to relegate any reports of difficulties from doctors or patients to the status of anecdotes.
From David Healy's post at Mad in America - read more about the evolution of the prescription drug market in America: BarMittzva Romba: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies
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Medical resident goes over prescriptions with Joyce
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