Wonderful talk on the holistic nature of reality and how we so often deal with the pieces rather than understanding the whole. How do we come to know and not know in the context of this reality. A reality that is dependent on a multitude of relationships with all the multitude of parts. How do we hold this all together? What does it mean to think differently? … [click on title to view more]
By Jon Keyes - Herbal medicine, Extreme States and Transformation. The idea that extreme states are something that requires medical intervention is a relatively new one. Generally indigenous and folk cultures throughout the world have employed a wide variety of interventions that include spiritual, shamanic, herbal and dietary techniques for working with people in crisis and spiritual emergence.
By Ron Unger ... a video has just become available which, in 5 minutes, very coherently explains how a compassion focused approach can completely transform a person's relationship with their voices and so transform the person's life! … [click on title to read the rest]
Again and again I am told the ‘severely mentally ill’ are impaired and incapable, not quite human. I am told they are like dementia patients wandering in the snow, with no capacity and no cure, not to be listened to or related to. I am told they must be controlled by our interventions regardless of their own preferences, regardless of the trauma that forced treatment can inflict, regardless of the simple duty we have to regard others with caring, compassion, and respect, regardless of the guarantees of dignity we afford others in our constitution and legal system. I am told the “high utilizers” and “frequent flyers” burden services because they are different than the rest of us. I am told the human need for patience doesn’t apply to these somehow less-than-human people. And when I finally do meet the people carrying that terrible, stigmatizing label of schizophrenia, what do I find? I find – a human being. A human who responds to the same listening and curiosity that I, or anyone, responds to. … [click on title to read the rest]
Neuroplasticity: enormous implications for anyone who has been labeled with a psychiatric illness -- That's us, the readers of this blog...going against paradigm and healing ourselves with openness and conscientiousness. These are qualities that can be contagious. Right now we operate in a society telling us we don't know what we're doing...or that what we are doing is "woo." Just think what happens when people start understanding what is possible. Others will start to open up and see the possibilities too. This is why education and sharing our journeys are both critically important. None of what we do is unscientific by the way, it's just that science doesn't know how to measure what we're doing...
By Ron Unger As we struggle to invent a humane approach to the extreme states that get called “psychosis” or “madness” or “schizophrenia,” it may be helpful to investigate some of the better approaches developed in the past. While these approaches are not without their flaws, they are often surprisingly insightful. (It can also of... Continue Reading →
A theory that is wrong is considered preferable to admitting our ignorance. – Elliot Vallenstein, Ph.D.
Beyond Meds and anyone who’s actually paid attention to the science for the last many years has known that the serotonin myth about depression and how antidepressants work has no evidence to back it up whatsoever.
by Ron Unger
When people are seeing the world really different than we do, it’s often reassuring to think that there must be something wrong with them – because if they are completely wrong, or ill, then we don’t have to rethink our own sense of reality, we can instead be confident about that own understandings encompass all that we need to know. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
We’ve learned to co-exist with different beliefs as one of our most cherished values of tolerance in a multicultural society. That lesson can be key for encountering the different realities in situations where someone is being called psychotic, delusional, schizophrenic or mentally ill. Respect and support may stretch our thinking, but can be vital to recovery. Cross-culturally, we accept that even the most strange or unfamiliar belief has value, meaning, and purpose in the person’s life. We give it the benefit of the doubt. The same is true of bizarre beliefs that get called psychosis. And using diagnostic language instead can amount to the same kind of put-down that goes with cultural supremacy and racist insult.… [click on title for the rest of the post]
And so I embarked on the darkest journey of my life, one for which neither I nor my husband were prepared. I soon found out that there was no one who could help us. The psychiatrists, even the more sympathetic ones, were not making sense to me. I was coming from the business world and I was not used to accepting superficial answers. They could not tell me what was wrong with Helia and why this had happened to her. They could not answer my challenging questions about the scientific research in the field. The best doctors, the honest ones, would tell me: “We really don’t know what this is, but we are sure that something is wrong with her brain.” But why? “Why are you so sure that it is her brain?” I asked. Their response was, “because it can’t be anything else.”
And that is exactly where the problem lay. They could not get out of the box that they were forced into by their guild. Biological psychiatry, in my opinion, suffers from a flawed and reductionist conception of how the human mind works and what might be needed to help it to function optimally when it is not doing so. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
The notion of very poor prognosis among those with psychosis is a myth, this psychiatrist tells us. He still comes from an overly scientific (reductionistic) perspective at moments but overall he's a pretty darn good guy who seems to get it. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
