Another of my rants on Facebook about psychosis, therapy and what is mental health

Someone else defending psychiatrist.
"
I don't think the problem is that they haven't experienced it. To the
extent that we're talking natural human experiences, they have. And IMO,
this is the problem.

The shrink I mentioned, who gave a talk, obviously was not at all
prepared for anyone to question her statements, and it was actually
painful to watch her immediate reaction when I objected to her statement
that it was impossible, sometimes even dangerous, to join and be with
someone else in their "psychotic" universe. To be "psychotic" is to be,
to the greatest extent a human being is capable of, in touch with (and
being overwhelmed by) oneself, by (one's) human nature, which is a state
of woundedness. You can only be with somebody in this state of extreme
woundedness, if you don't fear your own woundedness. This woman was as
afraid of herself, of her own trauma and pain, as could be. The pain she
was in, alongside with her fear of it, was almost tangibly filling the
room for a few short moments. That's, IMO, often what drives them to go
into the business. Psychiatry is a war machine fighting human nature.
So, if you're afraid of your own human nature, of facing and accepting
the fact that you're a traumatized, hurting human being, if you're
afraid of the pain, become a shrink! It allows you to project your own
"madness" into those, who have become overwhelmed by theirs, and fight
it in them.

If it's a CBT therapist, or the postman, so to speak, doesn't make a
difference. The important thing is, whether someone has the
self-awareness and fearlessness to face and explore even the most
extreme states of existence, others' as well as their own, imaginable,
or whether they're controlled by fear. Therapy techniques and expert
knowledge can be, and often are, abused as a weapon to fight human
nature, and as a shield to protect oneself against it. And, if you ask
me, CBT here maybe even has a greater potential than other kinds of therapy.
!

My response.
£
I agree with a lot of what you've said. However let me make a long
response that might, I hope, open your mind up a little.

I'd add that psychosis may also be a connection with a part of the
universe we can't describe by science - call it god or spirits or
whatever. The "it's a resilt of trauma" is one interpretation but there
are so many.

Consider schizotaxia - a genetic pre-state (unproven as yet). (Meehl)
This may indicate that there are types of human being. It's what happens
to them and how society judges them that creates the pathology of
schizophrenia. It may not truly be a disease of the indiivudal but a
disease created by society, just like homosexuality used to be
considered a mental illness.

I agree with the idea that's in an unsual or extreme state of
consciousness but the pathology itself exists through society (and
through psychiatry's) constructs. There's the paradox of how people in
the developing world do better than the developed world. IMO it's
because the society is constructed different. There was never "The Great
Confinement." (Foucault)

Biomedical psychiatry only understands it from the outside. It's not
impossible to engage with what the individual is going through. There's
a story of RD Laing seeing a patient lying naked on the floor. Typical
psychiatrist would have called that madness. He strippped down and
joined the pateint.

"expert knowledge" in psychosis is something that makes me smile. No
offence to professionals and people like Rufus who've spent their lives
trying to understand and help people. I think we're all babes in the
wood when it comes to psychosis. It truly is one of the great questions
of humanity.

I had the 'pleasure' to go through intense psychosis and read about it.
I read far and wide. I still do. I read all sorts of stuff including the
stuff where people think it's the government trying to control their
thoughts or a connection with god as well as the psychiatric stuff
which, historically, has explained the 'delusions' as meaningless
artifacts of a brain illness.

I'm not so ready to let psychiatry off the hook though. Lobotomies,
leucotomies, camphor injections, insulin induced coma and, of course,
the still used ECT. Oh, and the massive overdiagnosis of black men in
the US and UK.

Compassion is one of the paradigms of what mental healthcare is. I
agree. Another is socio-political and about defining norms and forcing
people to be like them. There are two other paradigms two but my memory
ain't great. The best book to get into this theorectical view is the
first chapter of
Mental Health Promotion: Paradigms and Practice by Keith Tudor.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mental-Health-Promotion-Paradigms-Practice/dp/0415101069

As for CBT...I'm not part of the bandwagon that belives that this is the
sole therapy that's effective for people. In fact I don't really
consider it a psychological therapy per se. It's a talking therapy more
akin to behavioural modification. The aim is to change the way people
think and behave.

Can I use the word epistomolgy? It's a big word that basically means how
do you know what you know? The only truth I've found from the empirical
evidence on psychological therapies and psychosis is simply: different
things work for different people. Social contact or the Hawthorne effect
may be more important than the theory of the therapy. Certainly in the
high quality reviews CBTp ain't so good.

IMHO, society needs to change. It's that simple. Anti-stigma is part of
it but it goes far deeper. (Mind)
"

Link to the NHS Evidence page on defining mental health

http://www.library.nhs.uk/mentalhealth/viewresource.aspx?resid=105867

They name check my favourite book on the topic.
Tudor K (1996) Mental Health Promotion: Paradigms and Practice. London:
Routledge.

The first chapter is extraordinary and took me days to understand. The
NHS Evidence page ain't bad but doesn't come close to the breadth of
Keith Tudor's attempts to cover the different conceptualisations.

Antidepressants for the acute treatment of bipolar... [J Clin Psychiatry. 2010] - PubMed result

Review shows placebo effect to be as strong as antidepressants for bipolar
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21034686

"
CONCLUSIONS: Although antidepressants were found to be safe for the
acute treatment of bipolar depression, their lack of efficacy may limit
their clinical utility. Further high-quality studies are required to
address the existing limitations in the literature.
"

The evolution of revenge and religion

Revenge is one of the most dangerous human reactions to an event.

Pre-Judaism revenge was unlimited. It was like something out of a
gangster film. You hurt me and I hurt you, your family and your friends.
Revenge could just keep going.

Some people perceive an eye for an eye as a bad solution to revenge but
it marked progress. It provided a limit on revenge.

Then along came the Christian faith and Jesus's teachings. I have no
idea how he did it but he made people give up on revenge entirely. It
may be his (possible) trip to India during those missing years. Turn the
other cheek was an insane thing to say at the time. If a Roman soldier
asks you to carry his back pack ask, "how far?" were teachings that I
guess few could stomach. I'm totally into those teaching but it's bloody
hard.

I don't know what Mohammed thought about revenge. I'm not sure if it got
any better than what Jesus said.

Revenge gets a person nowhere. The current action against the banks by
attempting to create a run on the banks is revenge that serves no
purpose but to harm the people. The bankers are very wealthy and won't
become poor. They'll just be less rich. Whereas without the banking
system, the tax revenue and the bank jobs there's less money floating
around, less tax and therefore less money for the state.

It's the sort of thing that could bankrupt the economy unnecessarily.
The consequences of revenge can be far reaching.

The bankers fucked up now the people fuck up

In anger at the bankers people may cause a run on the banks. The aim?
I'm not sure. If people think the destruction of the financial system is
the way forward then that's fine by me because I think it's a crap
system. If they've really thought this plan through and are going to be
there to support each other when there's no jobs, no welfare system and
we're living in a Mad Max-style dystopia then fantastic. If the
rebellion is about changing society so it becomes equal and we learn to
look after each other rather than rely on selfishness and greed to get
what we want then fantastic.

If there's been no thought about the consequences and this is just a
short term thing to vent the pain of the public on the bankers then this
is pretty fucking dangerous. The silent majority still want a financial
system. The silent majority don't want chaos. They don't want people
homeless and jobless. I think they'd be will to ensure that this didn't
happen while the current protest is aimed at making people homeless and
jobless.

Well, it's not. It's just an unintended consequence. It's unavoidable
for those who are so angry they're blind to what they're doing. They're
angry and like angry people they think the resolution of their anger is
more important than the lives and welfare of the people.

Fucking socialists. I hate being one of them.

I'm a failure

I spent most of this year reading anything I could find on schizophrenia
and clozapine. I've read so many papers it's stupid. I worked as a
writer and thinker for a mobile phone technology company to survive but
in my spare time I read research and tried to understand what could be
an alternative to this dangerous drug, a drug which is beloved by the
psychiatric profession but kills patients quickly and slowly.

After all my efforts I have nothing. I can criticise the evidence base
and the measures. I can dispute the significant effectiveness,
especially on what are patients measures and quality of life measures
rather than psychopathological measures. It may be enough perhaps to
challenge the current practice of using clozapine after the trial of two
antipsycotics. But I found no real solution. Polypharmacy and high does
of other antipsychotics aren't really a solution.

I found a lack of research. I found a lack of will to try something
else. I found a medical bias even outside the psychiatric profession.
The dreaded schizophrenia can be treated by this amazing drug, this most
powerful of chemical coshes. The initial studies into clozapine were
very powerful and were well received by the medical community whereas
Dr. Joanna Moncrieff's critical paper as well as the high quality
systematic review from the Cochrane Colloboration seems to have been
ignored. The ease of a chemical straitjacket in pill form means the
psychiatric profession will still keep using this drug and look for ways
to use it more often rather than less.

I was lucky to be excluded because I had the time to put to work on
this. I'm not sure I have the energy to keep searching nor the money to
keep doing this in my spare time. I'm very tired and very ill.

I hate failing like this. But I know that if I can find a solution then
people will live longer. I will keep struggling but I'm so empty. I've
not had the pleasure of success in this quest. My white whale still
roams free.

There is a solution. I just know there is.

No one needs to die, not for the 'treatment' of schizophrenia nor
anything else. Apart from if they want to.

Injustice will also increase as a result of the economic crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/16/legal-aid-cuts-law-access

This is what I'd feared. A good friend of mine is a director at a social
justice firm, one of the largest in the UK. They provide high quality
legal support to many of the most disadvantaged in society.

I've been ranting at her to get a proper campaigns person but it's hard
for a legal charity to do this. They follow their regulations strictly.

They're expecting to pass on this work to Citizen's Advice Bureau's and
other advice giving services that don't used qualified solicitors. They
may even go to a call centre approach like NHS Direct.

This is yet another change that affects the poorest in society. The
justice system is made just through the legal aid system. But Lady
Justice is becoming blinded by the measures the government are taking to
ensure the UK survives the crisis.

The legal aid system provided a safety net so people could get what they
were legally entitled too. My friend told me what would happen with
their clients. They'd come in with one problem but after speaking to
them they'd have lots more areas where they weren't getting the help
they needed. When the system was changed it made it impossible for
lawyers to give the extra time to contact social works or other welfare
staff to make sure the individual was getting their entitlement. CAB
staff are good but they're not lawyers and they don't always have that
sense of diligence either.

The state welfare system is complex and many social justice firms helped
their clients navigate it. Getting advice and support from a solicitor
is significantly different from a CAB or other advice service. Her
organisation helped me with my debt situation and I don't think I would
have survived without their help. I just wasn't in the state to do it. I
just wanted to die.

There are so many bad things happening because of the economic crisis.