The individual, family and society: Who and what exactly is mentally ill?

Parents who feel comfortable calling their children mentally ill while refusing to take a look at family dynamics are problematic and complicate the healing process for those labeled ill. We need to know that we are part of a web of life and our situation has not happened in a vacuum. We are not defective. We are sensitive. See: Consider the possibility that sensitive folks are not mentally ill

This isn’t about blaming anyone…it’s about recognizing the human condition…we are all connected. Open Dialogue is one therapeutic system that looks at how we are intertwined with family and community, bringing everyone into the therapeutic process.

The concept of the  “identified patient” (that John Bradshaw popularized – that’s where I first learned about it) is critically important…the family unit is always a significant part of emotional wellbeing. If there is one “mentally ill” person in the family, most of the time that means the whole family is involved in a dynamic of stress and denial.

We can expand this into our society and, really, we must — our entire society is comfortable “othering” those with “mental illness” yet, our society is sick too.

Our society is in deep denial of this reality, as well, as we catapult towards global collapses of all kinds. We might even say that everyone is mentally ill in our very troubled and desperately teetering society.

I will end with my favorite and very often quoted line from Krishnamurti:

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” 

Let us all look to ourselves and then with love heal one another that we might save ourselves and our planet.

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The Mental (Illness) system and thoughts on alternatives: a collection

I can’t call the current system of care a “mental health system” when it’s so clearly one that generates, encourages and sustains mental illness. And so I’ve often referred to it as a mental illness system. Here I’m underscoring that as it’s important that we make big changes if we want to help not only the most vulnerable people in our society, but also society itself. We create one another. None of this happens in a vacuum.

Below is a list of posts from Beyond Meds that look at the system from many different perspectives. It will become one of the main drop-down navigation menu tabs at the top of the page. It will replace the Professional/Patient Divide tab and will be called Mental Illness System. The contents of it will include those posts that were included in the Professional/Patient Divide Tab.

This post will be updated as appropriate. Check the drop-down navigation menus often for updates and additional access to the archives. I’m always working on them.

New: History in the system and my vision for mental health on Nonduality Talk— Beyond Meds (audio)

• Community Mental Health in Times of Crisis

• State of mental health care

• From Self Care to Collective Caring

• Standard psychiatric care: torture (yes, the United Nations, too, calls forced treatment torture)

• Harms of over-treatment in medical care — this is true throughout all of medicine but especially true in psychiatry

• Where Do Messages of Hopelessness in Mental Health Care Come From?

• Health care is a human right

• Exposing the Mental Health system – Only Smarties exhibition

• Mental health professionals along with police, teachers and the corporate press are the guards of the system

• Coming Off Psych Drugs: A Meeting of the Minds — new documentary and info

• Can Our Medical Model of Care Be Remade? — By Robert Whitaker

• Why I’m pro-information and pro-choice when it comes to drugs and medications in mental health care

• Shrinks get patients hooked on drugs and then cut the cord

• Open Dialogue: Alternative Care for Psychosis

• Coercion, subtle or otherwise, is the rule in psychiatric care…

• Medically induced illness: iatrogenic injury

The below are pieces written specifically about the divide between the professionals in the system and those who are subject to their care and/or abuse.

• Bridging Patient-Professional Divide

• Professional denial is a form of retraumatization (new)

• Being the empowered patient

• The divide between client/patient/consumer and professionals (with list of links)

• healing journey — part 1 and 2 (brief thoughts from this morning to a friend)

• A doctor who talks sense about the all too frequent use of coercion in medicine

• Informed Choice: Pro-information and pro-choice when it comes to drugs and medications

• Words for all in the “helping” professions (and for any human who wants to benefit others)

• Medical compliance? Adherence? No. My MDs are my PARTNERS

• Letters to my shrink

Other significant pieces:

• Mad Rad Crisis Intervention Team Training: psych survivors train sheriff deputies

• Providing sanctuary (alternative to hospitalization in community)

• Breaking down in the service of breaking through: can madness save us?

Having well-being in general is simply about learning to live well. It really doesn’t need to called therapy or need medical intervention most of the time. What a concept! Here is a collection of self-empowering ways to view our health and well-being from a holistic standpoint. This list does not begin to be exhaustive. There are as many ways to wellness as there are human beings. The below list of links all include additional collections of links on the topic they cover.

• learning to deeply love and attend to the body

• Nutrition and gut health — Mental health and diet

• Everything matters

• Meditation is the PRACTICE of learning to PAY ATTENTION. That is all.

• Yoga

• Help for Insomnia

• Fear and anxiety: coping, reframing, transforming…

• Rethinking bipolar disorder

• Grief collection

• Trauma and PTSD collection

• Conversations about suicidal feelings

People are recovering and thriving in spite of what psychiatry tells them everyday. Sadly many of us had to disengage ourselves from a system of “care” that harmed us gravely in order to do it. Non-compliance saves people everyday. This needs to change. It’s dangerous and tragic both.

• Drug free recovery from depression, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, etc…

• Psychosis recovery: stories, information and resources

• Peer support? This is the real thing. Free of institutionalization. (psych drug withdrawal)

If you would like to know more about coming off meds as safely as possible start here:

• Psychiatric drug withdrawal and protracted withdrawal syndrome round-up

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For a multitude of ideas about how to create a life filled with safe alternatives to psychiatric drugs visit the drop-down menus at the top of this page. 

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