[pachyderm]

Maybe somebody is waking up?

"For decades it has been assumed within mainstream psychiatry that psychosis has a genetic basis and that the social environment has little influence.

"But this conventional wisdom is now being challenged."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-and-psychosis

[costello]

Originally Posted by pachyderm

Maybe somebody is waking up?

"For decades it has been assumed within mainstream psychiatry that psychosis has a genetic basis and that the social environment has little influence.

"But this conventional wisdom is now being challenged."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-and-psychosis

I hope someone is waking up. I know I was completely sold on the medical model when my son had his first episode. I thought I'd get him to the doctor, get some meds in him, and everything would be hunky dory.

Six years later it makes less and less sense.

I picked up a a book by a guy named Silvano Arieti on the last day of the library book sale a month ago - the day they give the remaining books away free. I guess Arieti was considered an expert on schizophrenia in his day. The book was published in 1974 and he died in 1981. Certainly not that long ago, yet I'd never heard of him. Anyway the book, The Interpretation of Schizophrenia, makes so much more sense that most of what's written today.

And he's empathetic with his patients! He sounds like a genuinely kind man. I'm convinced most people who have slipped into psychosis need a caring relationship more that a handful of drugs.

[KUREHA]

No - it's all government testing, it's well known to me.

[RunningEagleRuns]

Originally Posted by costello

I hope someone is waking up. I know I was completely sold on the medical model when my son had his first episode. I thought I'd get him to the doctor, get some meds in him, and everything would be hunky dory.

Six years later it makes less and less sense.

I picked up a a book by a guy named Silvano Arieti on the last day of the library book sale a month ago - the day they give the remaining books away free. I guess Arieti was considered an expert on schizophrenia in his day. The book was published in 1974 and he died in 1981. Certainly not that long ago, yet I'd never heard of him. Anyway the book, The Interpretation of Schizophrenia, makes so much more sense that most of what's written today.

And he's empathetic with his patients! He sounds like a genuinely kind man. I'm convinced most people who have slipped into psychosis need a caring relationship more that a handful of drugs.

yes, but if a person is psychotic they may not realize someone is trying to be kind and help them. just saying

[costello]

Originally Posted by RunningEagleRuns

yes, but if a person is psychotic they may not realize someone is trying to be kind and help them. just saying

They might not, but I would start with the assumption that they could and would. My son has had too many un-empathetic workers in the mental health system. He has experienced some of their "treatments" as traumatic events. Then he's expected to accept that the traumas he's experienced were for his own good - that there was no other way of handling the immediate crisis.

It seems to me we treat people this way when we see them not as fellow humans suffering and in distress but as bags of chemicals which have got out of balance somehow.

[Shoe]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

[JohnCampbell]

I think this is very exciting, ref. new thesis below.... would be very interested in any views.... best wishes, John Campbell

OVERVIEW

We believe that, contrary to surface appearances, many individuals make a rational decision (the ‘Bargain’) to move into a psychosis state – to avoid a state that to them seems even more awful.
(This view is supported by variance of schizophrenia prevalence rates in line with variance in the local likely emotional and material support that individuals will receive if they take the schizophrenic route).

Recovery is often characterised by a change in the ‘Bargain’- a change in the individual’s perception of the forces, or an actual change in the forces, that they are experiencing.

It may be possible to help the individual move back towards a normal mental state by
(a) helping them change their perceptions of the forces they are experiencing,
and/or
(b) changing the actual forces they are experiencing.
(Use of REBT i.e. elimination of ‘awfulizing’, or ACT, on core fears - not on symptoms - may be particularly fruitful.)

(from bargainthesis.blogspot.com)

[Shoe]

You should check out J. Michael Mahoney's theory

Originally Posted by JohnCampbell

I think this is very exciting, ref. new thesis below.... would be very interested in any views.... best wishes, John Campbell

OVERVIEW

We believe that, contrary to surface appearances, many individuals make a rational decision (the ‘Bargain’) to move into a psychosis state – to avoid a state that to them seems even more awful.
(This view is supported by variance of schizophrenia prevalence rates in line with variance in the local likely emotional and material support that individuals will receive if they take the schizophrenic route).

Recovery is often characterised by a change in the ‘Bargain’- a change in the individual’s perception of the forces, or an actual change in the forces, that they are experiencing.

It may be possible to help the individual move back towards a normal mental state by
(a) helping them change their perceptions of the forces they are experiencing,
and/or
(b) changing the actual forces they are experiencing.
(Use of REBT i.e. elimination of ‘awfulizing’, or ACT, on core fears - not on symptoms - may be particularly fruitful.)

(from bargainthesis.blogspot.com)