Month: August 2014

Treatment resistant mental illness? or Iatrogenic (drug-induced) illness?

What gets called treatment resistant mental illness is often drug iatrogenesis...people made worse by drugs...it's a sad loop to hell. What happens is that the drugs make people worse. Different drugs are added to the cocktail and it spirals out of control. People are made to believe it's something inherently wrong with them and not the drugs causing more symptoms and exacerbating existing ones This is a tragedy when it happens. It happens a lot. Sometimes we figure it out and get off the drug merry-go-round and find our selves. … [click on title to read and view more]

My life-bound friend…

Really love this. You can download it from soundcloud and there is a whole playlist from the artist here. … [click on title to read and view more]

On sanity and self-inquiry

Getting sane with inquiry means what was a minuscule awareness of my thoughts became a broader awareness of thoughts. It’s like being in a dark room with just a flickering light. Perhaps I’ve always been aware of this light, but when I started doing inquiry I began to investigate these flickers of light. What is it that is aware? What is hiding in the shadows where my beliefs are? I was the caretaker for a mansion full of beliefs that I imagined defined my identities and the vast majority of these were painful. Well, actually all of them were painful! … [click on title to read and view more]

Carl Jung’s Words of Advice for the Depressed

statue weeping

By Jason E. Smith -- From Jung’s point of view there is a hidden intention in depression. It “forces us downwards.” This is not, as it might sound, a punishment for arrogance, but rather a consequence of having become cut off from the human, instinctual part of ourselves. … [click on title to read and view more]

Sexual objectification: a mental health issue too

All forms of inequality can lead to trauma in various ways. Trauma is associated with most of what gets labeled mental illness. When people routinely feel a lack of acknowledgment it's not good for anyone. How we treat others also impacts us. So this is an unhealthy reality for both men and women. It's part of our culture that is generally traumatizing in far too many ways. Coming to understand these patterns and recognize them helps us disengage from them as well. Paying attention begins the process of change. One can be mindful of gender inequality too. Being mindful is a skill that can help elucidate our entire lives.

What is sexual objectification and why is it a big deal? In this video I give a (very brief) overview of our culture's sexual objectification problem and how it contributes to gender & sexual inequality in every sphere of life -- as well as perpetuating rape culture. … [click on title to read and view more]

Rethinking Depression

The general argument here can be made about all labeled psychiatric disorders. Most often, they are not brain disorders as popularly understood in psychiatry, but instead a combination of many things in our lives and environments intersecting with our bodies, too. … [click on title to read and view more]

Rethinking bipolar disorder

A collection of links to other posts from the Beyond Meds archives that look at that which gets labeled "bipolar disorder" from different perspectives so that we might be challenged to think outside the psychiatric box.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free … [click on title to read and view more]

Nia dance…another method to achieve ecstatic movement

I find that when I tell people about how I love to go to ecstatic dancing in my community that some number of people are intimidated at the thought of letting loose among strangers. I have personally found it the most comfortable way I can be with people right now, but I understand that for many dancing is a somewhat scary thing. What I like about the groups I dance with here is that it's as acceptable to sit against the wall and meditate as it is to dance. I often meditate or do yoga in corner when I'm not up to dancing the whole session. It's truly a safe space for me and I love it. ...

Mental wellness…accessible to everyone

graphic right here right now for Mental wellness...accessible to everyone

I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness. -- Abraham Maslow You see, Maslow was saying this well before the mindfulness craze we find now find ourselves in. Perhaps there is something to it! And it's accessible to everyone.

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