[spiritual_emergency]

<font color="blue">The psychotherapy of schizophrenia is, in my opinion, as much in the mind of the observers as in the mind of the patient. We must change before he can change. He has long been incurable because we have been hopeless.

-- Dr. Karl Meninger</font>

<font color="red">Most Americans are unaware that the World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly found that long-term schizophrenia outcomes are much worse in the USA and other developed countries than in poor ones such as India and Nigeria, where relatively few patients are on anti-psychotic medications. In undeveloped countries, nearly two-thirds of schizophrenia patients are doing fairly well five years after initial diagnosis; about 40% have basically recovered. But in the USA and other developed countries, most patients become chronically ill. The outcome differences are so marked that WHO concluded that living in a developed country is a strong predictor that a patient will never fully recover. </font>[/b]

<font color="green">In 1999 Ronald F. Levant EdD told a group of fellow psychologists how recovery from a major disorder such as schizophrenia was not only possible, it was happening regularly. “Recovery from schizophrenia, a colleague snorted, “Have you lost your mind too”?

Source: Why Can't They Recover?</font>

<font color="purple">In the early years of the nineteenth century, when psychiatry was just beginning, a furious argument raged between people with very different opinions about the nature and course of mental disorders. On the one hand, psychiatrists like Eugene Bleuler believed that recovery was possible and indeed likely for the vast majority of people suffering from serious mental disorders like schizophrenia (then called dementia praecox).

On the other hand, psychiatrists such as Emil Kraepelin insisted that recovery was impossible and that sufferers would never recover. Indeed he believed that their condition would get worse throughout their lives. Kraepelin won the debate and the idea of permanent illness and disability formed the basis of mental health services for almost two centuries.

Source: Understanding Recovery</font>

<font color="orange">Psychiatrist Naren Wig crossed an open sewer, skirted a pond and, in the dusty haze of afternoon, saw something miraculous.

Krishna Devi, a woman he had treated years ago for schizophrenia, sat in a courtyard surrounded by religious pictures, exposed brick walls and drying laundry. Devi had stopped taking medication long ago, but her articulate speech and easy smile were eloquent testimony that she had recovered from the debilitating disease.

Source: Culture & Mind: Psychiatry's Missing Diagnosis</font>

<font color="blue">I have entitled this presentation, "Long Term Outcome for Rehabiliated Psychiatric Patients: Reasons for Optimism". The plan this morning is to look at recovery and the evidence for it among people with very serious mental illness. Let us look at some things that we've learned about rehabilitation and also a little bit about resilience. I'm going to present seven of the ten world studies this morning.

Now, when we talk about subjects who are recovered, we're talking about no medications, no symptoms, being able to work, relating to other people well, living in the community, and behaving in a way that you would never know that they had had a serious psychiatric disorder. And if you have heard of that old belief that one third get better, one third get worse, and one third stay the same, we found that it was not true. In the Vermont Longtitudinal Study, we took the bottom third of this population and found that two-thirds of them also turned around. So that our old views of schizophrenia are considerably different than they have been for the last hundred years.

-- Dr. Courtenay Harding

Source: The Recovery Vision</font>

<font color="red">Dr. Harding’s data are all the more powerful because she was studying the bottom 19% in the functional hierarchy in a large state hospital. Some of the people in her study had regressed to speaking in animal like sounds. Most had been in the institution for 10 or so years, many had been in and out repeatedly. The cohort is the least functional ever studied in world literature on schizophrenia. Nevertheless, of this bottom 19%, 62% to 68% fully recovered or significantly improved.

-- Dr. Edward Knight

Source: Recovery</font>

<font color="green">The first study was done by [Dr.] Manfred Bleuler, whose father Eugene Bleuler renamed dementia praecox and studied schizophrenia. And his son,Manfred took over the hospital at Burgholzi in Zurich, Switzerland and he did what his father did not. He followed 208 people for 23 years and found that 53-68% of his subjects significantly improved or recovered.

"I have found the prognosis of schizophrenia to be more hopeful than it has long been considered to be."
-- Manfred Bleuler </font>

<font color="darkblue">...85% of our clients (all diagnosed as severely schizophrenic) at the Diabasis center not only improved, with no medications, but most went on growing after leaving us.

- Dr. John Weir Perry

Source: Trials of the Visionary Mind</font>

<font color="purple">Gerd Huber and colleagues in Germany followed 502 for 22 years after their episode of schizophrenia and found 57% significantly improved or recovered.

"Schizophrenia does not seem to be a disease of slow progressive deterioration. Even in the second and third decades of illness, there is still the potential for full or partial recovery."

-- Dr. Gerd Huber</font>

<font color="orange">There have now been three World Health Organisation studies showing that the outcome for schizophrenia in Developing countries is better than in the Industrialised world. This is extraordinary. How can places without psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, psychiatric facilities, rehabilitation programs, medication and therapies come up with results considerably better than our sophisticated, scientific industrialised world? A country such as the USA spends 1% of its GNP on one illness, schizophrenia, and has results far worse than countries that don’t spend anything!

-- Dr. Simon Baker

Source: The Developing World Experience</font>

<font color="blue">Luc Ciompi and Christian Muller in a medium-sized city in Lausanne followed 289 people for 37 years ... they found 53% significantly improved or recovered.

"The long-term evolution of schizophrenia is much more variable and considerably better than heretofore admitted."

- Drs. Luc Ciompi and Christian Muller </font>

<font color="red">The WHO Study of Schizophrenia is a long-term follow-up study of 14 culturally diverse, treated incidence cohorts and 4 prevalence cohorts comprising 1,633 persons diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses. Global outcomes at 15 and 25 years were assessed to be favorable for greater than 50% of all participants. The researchers observed that 56% of the incidence cohort and 60% of the prevalence cohort were judged to be recovered. Those participants with a specific diagnosis of schizophrenia had a recovery rate which was close to 50%. [...] The course and outcome for persons diagnosed with schizophrenia were far better in the “developing countries” than for such persons in the “developed” world of Western Europe and America.

-- Dr. Brian Koehler

Source: Long Term Follow-Up Studies</font>

<font color="green">[Dr.] Ming Tsuang and the Iowa 500 study had the strictest criteria for schizophrenia but found 46% improved. Using the DSM III diagnosis, we found 62-68%. Dr. Ogawa et al. in Japan found 57% and Michael DeSisto in Maine found 49%.</font>

<font color="orange">Among those who went through the OPT program, incidence of schizophrenia declined substantially, with 85% of the patients returning to active employment and 80% without any psychotic symptoms after five years. All this took place in a research project wherein only about one third of clients received neuroleptic medication.

Source: Dialogue is the Change</font>

<font color="blue">When I was a staff psychologist at a neuropsychiatric institute in 1965, I conducted an experimental interview with an 18-year-old woman diagnosed as "acute paranoid schizophrenic." I'd been influenced by the writings of Carl Jung, Thomas Szasz, and Ayn Rand, and was puzzled about methods for training psychiatric residents that are unreported in the literature. I prepared for the interview by asking myself questions. I wondered what would happen if I listened to the woman as a friend, avoided letting my mind diagnose her, and questioned her to see if there was a link between events in her life and her feelings of self-esteem.

-- Dr. Al Seibert

Source: How Non-Diagnostic Listening Lead to Cure</font>

<font color="red">A person receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia loses hope and enters a state of anguish caused by an experience of meaninglessness, hopelessness and helplessness. Much of this hopelessness is not due to the disease but to the mental health systems designed to treat it. Mental health systems are set up for maintenance and usually communicate that life is without hope of significant accomplishment once serious mental illness has set in. Yet, experience shows that recovery from mental illness is possible.

-- Dr. Edward Knight

Source: Recovery</font>

<font color="blue">Hello, my name is Judi Chamberlin and unlike the two previous speakers, I am not a mental health professional. I was a person labeled with a serious mental health illness - I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was 21 years old, and I'm a person who's recovered. So I'm an example of what we're talking about today. And I think it's very important to recognize that recovery is not something that happens to a few exceptional, privileged or lucky people ... recovery is possible for everyone who's been diagnosed with a major mental illness.

Being told that you have schizophrenia is a devastating experience. Especially when I was told this, I was also told that I would always be ill, I was going to need treatment and it was terrifying. This happened in a time in my life when lots of things were going wrong and to be told that they weren't going to get better ... that things weren't going to come together for me, was taking away hope at a time when I needed, more than anything else, people believing in me. And I needed support, I needed someone to say that there are ways out of this morass you find yourself in and I wasn't hearing that. And what compounded it was that these people were the experts. They were the ones who were supposed to have the answers. So it was a terrible blow to be told by these experts that I was never going to get better.

Source: Confessions of a Non-Compliant Patient</font>

<font color="purple">We who have recovered from mental illness know from our personal experience that recovery is real. We know that recovery is more than remission with a brooding disease hidden in our hearts. We have experienced healing and we are whole where we were broken. Yet we are frequently confronted by unconvinced professionals who ask, "How can you have recovered from such a hopeless situation?" When we present them with our testimonies they say that we are exceptions. They call us pseudoconsumers. They say that our experience does not relate to that of their seriously, biologically ill, inpatients.

I recently re-experienced this negative attitude about recovery. A friend of mine, during a discussion in a psychology class, said she knew someone who had schizophrenia, recovered and became a psychiatrist. "He must have been misdiagnosed," was the professor's response. So my friend reviewed my earlier symptoms with me. I met the DSM IV criteria for schizophrenia in the interval from 1969-74. When she presented my history to her professor, he reversed his position and said that the diagnosis of schizophrenia must have been correct. He doubted I had recovered and said, "we now have a case of an impaired physician."

By having earned board certification in psychiatry, having worked as medical director of a community mental health center for 11 years and having directed the National Empowerment Center for 3 years I have proven that I am not an impaired physician. This episode reveals the depth of negative expectations which are taught to students. After all, mental illness is considered a terminal condition for which there is no cure. Therefore anyone who appears to have recovered must not have been sick. This leaves no one with first hand experience of what helps and what hurts to speak for those who currently cannot speak due to their distress.

-- Dr. Daniel Fisher

Source: Healing and Recovery are Real</font>

<font color="red">There have been many studies in the USA and other countries that point out that treatment - if practiced in a way that provides patient training leads to a normal life style - that includes jobs, education, and social skills training and relieves the guilt and loneliness associated with these conditions - then even the lowest level of schizophrenia can change and be reduced or eliminated from the lives of those who suffer this condition. The tragedy is that somehow - professionals - all over with some exceptions do not believe this is a reality.

What’s wrong with them?

Source: Why Can't They Recover?</font>

[spiritual_emergency]

This fits nicely here...

<center>Away From the Sun

It's down to this ...
I've got to make this life make sense
Can anyone tell what I've done?
I miss the life
I miss the colours of the world
Can anyone tell where I am?

Cause now again I've found myself
So far down, away from the sun
That shines into the darkest place
I'm so far down, away from the sun again
Away from the sun again

Well, I'm over there
I'm tired of living in the dark
Can anyone see me down here?
The feeling's gone
There's nothing left to lift me up
Back into the world I've known

Cause now again I've found myself
So far down, away from the sun
That shines into the darkest place
I'm so far down, away from the sun again
Away from the sun again

That shines to light the way for me
To find my way back into the arms
That care about the ones like me
I'm so far down, away from the sun again

It's down to this ...
I've got to make this life make sense
And now I can't tell what I've done
And now again I've found myself
So far down, away from the sun
That shines to light the way for me

Now again I've found myself
So far down, away from the sun
That shines into the darkest place
I'm so far down, away from the sun
That shines to light the way for me
To find my way back into the arms
That care about the ones like me
I'm so far down, away from the sun again

</center>

[pachyderm]

[findebsoon]

Hello Spiritual emergency, I've really got to hand it to you the quality and inspiration I have come to know and
the information on all these varied conditions and sources that seem to flow so unconditional from your knowledge on
psychiatry and schizophrenia has and will for sometime to
come point us all towards the greatest goal to live without
the shame and confusion we must all at one time have to battle against. You have made it possible for me and no doubt countless others to think victoriously about our
illness and to finally be able to say, We Won!

Thank-you.

DB

[spiritual_emergency]

Thank you findebsoon. I'm always pleased to know that something I've done has helped someone else. This particular thread is one of my favorite ones so I'm glad to see it resurrected once more. I have a few other favorites too, and thought maybe I'd drag a piece in here as a better means of responding to the kindness of your words.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>

The hero as world redeemer is a common theme in humankind’s myth-making. But the hero is not someone remote from us, only found in a book or up on the silver screen, Campbell would say. The hero is us.

In 1984 Eugene Kennedy, then professor of psychology at Loyola University Chicago, published an interview with Joseph Campbell in the New York Times Magazine, called “Earthrise -- The Dawning of a New Spiritual Awareness.” There Campbell talks of the same passing from one age to another in our own world, of the peril that faces our world and of the hero’s task to which we are all called -- nurturing a new spiritual awareness.

Campbell later wrote Kennedy, telling him it was that interview that brought Joseph Campbell to the attention of Bill Moyers, whose televised interviews put Campbell into the nation’s living rooms. These interviews were watched by millions, and the book that accompanied them,
The Power of Myth, became a runaway best seller.

The end of the world
Joseph Campbell was a serious scholar, teacher and thinker about religion who achieved enormous popularity. Campbell addressed the disenchantment of modern life with a message of renewal and hope. His message had great influence. Today when you hear someone say:
I’m spiritual but not religious, Campbell is partly to blame.

In the interview with Kennedy, Campbell talks about the famous image of the earth rising over the moon’s horizon taken by astronauts that first appeared during the 1970s. The space age, he felt, had brought us an awareness that is still slowly sinking in: The world as we know it is coming to an end.

“The world as the center of the universe, the world divided from the heavens, the world bound by horizons in which God’s love is reserved for members of the in-group: That is the world that is passing away,” said Campbell. “Apocalypse is not about a fiery Armageddon and salvation of a chosen few, but about the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end.”

Campbell further explains: “Our divided worldview, with no mythology adequate to coordinate our conscious and unconscious -- that is what is coming to an end. The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth -- that is the world as we know it that must pass away, and is passing away.”

Today when books about the end times and the anti-Christ soar to the top on the bestseller lists, Campbell’s view is as timely and helpful as ever.

Although the word is commonly used to denote a falsehood, “myth” -- as Campbell taught us -- is as relevant to today as current headlines. A New Yorker, Campbell was fond of saying this: “The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the light to change.” Campbell’s message was that these stories are about our common religious experience. They are not old museum pieces with little relevance. Myth is about our life today. Myths, he said, are the “masks of God.”

One of the most beloved teachers of our time, Campbell was a reliable guide through the mysteries of the ancient texts of Beowulf, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Egyptian mysteries, the Iliad and Odyssey, the Arthurian romances, the American Indian myths, stories from the Hindu, Buddhist and Christian religions, as well as modern myth makers like James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Pablo Picasso. These stories from world cultures are, he felt, “the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.” He was convinced that religion boils up from the “basic, magic ring of myth.”

After being raised Catholic and attending Catholic schools, Campbell eventually formally rejected Catholicism. “All the meditations have to do with something that happened two thousand years ago somewhere else to somebody else,” he explained. “Unless those can be read as metaphorical of what ought to happen to me, that I ought to die and resurrect, die to my ego and resurrect to my divinity, it doesn’t work.”

...

Campbell’s comparative approach to mythology, religion and literature concentrated on similarities. He was convinced that there is a fundamental unity at the heart of nature. “Truth is one,” he said, “and the sages speak of it by many names.” The common themes and images in our sacred stories and images transcend the cultures from which they come. He believed that a reviewing of such primordial images and themes in mythology such as death and resurrection, virgin birth, the hero’s quest and the promised land -- the universal aspects of the soul, the blood memories -- could reveal our common psychological roots. “They could even show us, as seen from below,” Campbell wrote, “how the soul views itself.”

They can even heal and renew us, today and tomorrow.

Eugene Kennedy’s long acquaintance with and interest in Joseph Campbell and his work led to the groundbreaking New York Times interview. Just recently Kennedy edited a book, titled Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, that brought together some of Campbell’s unpublished work.

...

Campbell’s primary message was that religious stories are about us, about how we live today, says Kennedy. “The story of a Virgin Birth reminds us of the spiritual possibilities and fecundity in each of us. The Promised Land is about realizing some of those spiritual possibilities. Religion is far richer in this sense than a literal interpretation of the stories can provide. We can exult in the freedom of having a spiritual life that does not follow a blueprint but is open to the geography of the universe,” Kennedy said.

...

The hero’s journey required of us now is the fostering and developing of this new spiritual vision. Each one of us, like little Frodo in the hit movie, is charged with a noble and heroic task: implementing this new spiritual vision, giving birth to it in our lives and institutions. “If the universe is no longer divided, then we can no longer divide humans into upper and lower,” Kennedy said. “We can no longer separate spirit from body. When we see the wholeness everywhere, wounds will be healed, especially the sexual wounds.”

...

In the interview with Kennedy, Campbell talks about the Stanley Kubrick film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” particularly the opening scenes that depict our ape-like ancestors millions of years ago, snarling and squabbling with each other, then cowering together in fear at night while predators lurk outside their cave. “Yet there is one among them,” Campbell points out, “who is slightly different, one who is drawn out of curiosity to approach and explore, one who has a sense of awe before the unknown. This one is apart and alone, seated in wonder before a panel of stone standing mysteriously upright in the landscape. He contemplates it, then he reaches out and touches it cautiously in the way the first astronaut’s foot approached and then gently touched down on the moon.

“Awe, you see, is what moves us forward,” said Campbell.

It’s the same awe that sends chills up and down our spines as we sit in rapt wonder watching the perilous travels of a little furry-footed hobbit. It’s the same awe that dwells at the heart of our religious experience.

“We live in the stars,” says Campbell, “and we are finally moved by awe to our greatest adventures.
The kingdom of God is within us.”

Source: The Hero is Us

<See also: Schizophrenia & The Hero's Journey[/b]


</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

[spiritual_emergency]

Thank you findebsoon. I'm always pleased to know that something I've done has helped someone else. This particular thread is one of my favorite ones so I'm glad to see it resurrected once more. I have a few other favorites too, and thought maybe I'd drag a piece in here as a better means of responding to the kindness of your words.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>

The hero as world redeemer is a common theme in humankind’s myth-making. But the hero is not someone remote from us, only found in a book or up on the silver screen, Campbell would say. The hero is us.

In 1984 Eugene Kennedy, then professor of psychology at Loyola University Chicago, published an interview with Joseph Campbell in the New York Times Magazine, called “Earthrise -- The Dawning of a New Spiritual Awareness.” There Campbell talks of the same passing from one age to another in our own world, of the peril that faces our world and of the hero’s task to which we are all called -- nurturing a new spiritual awareness.

Campbell later wrote Kennedy, telling him it was that interview that brought Joseph Campbell to the attention of Bill Moyers, whose televised interviews put Campbell into the nation’s living rooms. These interviews were watched by millions, and the book that accompanied them,
The Power of Myth, became a runaway best seller.

...

Although the word is commonly used to denote a falsehood, “myth” -- as Campbell taught us -- is as relevant to today as current headlines. A New Yorker, Campbell was fond of saying this: “The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the light to change.” Campbell’s message was that these stories are about our common religious experience. They are not old museum pieces with little relevance. Myth is about our life today. Myths, he said, are the “masks of God.”

One of the most beloved teachers of our time, Campbell was a reliable guide through the mysteries of the ancient texts of Beowulf, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Egyptian mysteries, the Iliad and Odyssey, the Arthurian romances, the American Indian myths, stories from the Hindu, Buddhist and Christian religions, as well as modern myth makers like James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Pablo Picasso. These stories from world cultures are, he felt, “the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.” He was convinced that religion boils up from the “basic, magic ring of myth.”

After being raised Catholic and attending Catholic schools, Campbell eventually formally rejected Catholicism. “All the meditations have to do with something that happened two thousand years ago somewhere else to somebody else,” he explained. “Unless those can be read as metaphorical of what ought to happen to me, that I ought to die and resurrect, die to my ego and resurrect to my divinity, it doesn’t work.”

...

Campbell’s comparative approach to mythology, religion and literature concentrated on similarities. He was convinced that there is a fundamental unity at the heart of nature. “Truth is one,” he said, “and the sages speak of it by many names.” The common themes and images in our sacred stories and images transcend the cultures from which they come. He believed that a reviewing of such primordial images and themes in mythology such as death and resurrection, virgin birth, the hero’s quest and the promised land -- the universal aspects of the soul, the blood memories -- could reveal our common psychological roots. “They could even show us, as seen from below,” Campbell wrote, “how the soul views itself.”

They can even heal and renew us, today and tomorrow.

...

In the interview with Kennedy, Campbell talks about the Stanley Kubrick film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” particularly the opening scenes that depict our ape-like ancestors millions of years ago, snarling and squabbling with each other, then cowering together in fear at night while predators lurk outside their cave. “Yet there is one among them,” Campbell points out, “who is slightly different, one who is drawn out of curiosity to approach and explore, one who has a sense of awe before the unknown. This one is apart and alone, seated in wonder before a panel of stone standing mysteriously upright in the landscape. He contemplates it, then he reaches out and touches it cautiously in the way the first astronaut’s foot approached and then gently touched down on the moon.

“Awe, you see, is what moves us forward,” said Campbell.

It’s the same awe that sends chills up and down our spines as we sit in rapt wonder watching the perilous travels of a little furry-footed hobbit. It’s the same awe that dwells at the heart of our religious experience.

“We live in the stars,” says Campbell, “and we are finally moved by awe to our greatest adventures. The kingdom of God is within us.”

Source: The Hero is Us

See also: Schizophrenia &amp; The Hero's Journey


</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

[spiritual_emergency]

*bump*

[longnow]

I keep coming across your posts and your blog from time to time.
I have scz and am no longer a "consumer" of meds. I could care less
about the politics of Big Pharma because I am not against meds
or p-docs. Don't care if I have trauma instead of scz. Don't care what the
proscribed terms are or about chemical imbalances or the lack of same
because you are still left with stupid imbalances, anxiety, and a lack of
initiative at the end of the day. What to do after you've left the
medical model behind? Everyone gets a little vague at this point.
1-meditation
2-Find a skilled legit Clinical Nutritionist
3-Men and women with scz should get there adrenal hormones checked.
4-Get on nutrient therapy.
The above is not necessarily the Orthomolecular model and does not
necessarily include IV treatments with massive amounts of vitamins.

Have you heard anything good about Psych-K? I've been to the site
but would appreciate any input you might have.
Have you seen this:

http://metasphere.org/

[spiritual_emergency]

<blockquote>
Hello longnow. It's nice to hear your voice here. I haven't checked out Psych-K but when I have a bit more time (maybe later today) I'm going to come back and check out your link. Thanks for sharing what's worked for you.

[spiritual_emergency]

<blockquote>
longnow:
What to do after you've left the medical model behind? Everyone gets a little vague at this point.
1-meditation
2-Find a skilled legit Clinical Nutritionist
3-Men and women with scz should get there adrenal hormones checked.
4-Get on nutrient therapy.
The above is not necessarily the Orthomolecular model and does not necessarily include IV treatments with massive amounts of vitamins.

I've heard some people have enormous success with the Orthomolecular model so it wouldn't bother me if it was. After all, even those who follow the medical model to a T can accept that one form of medication may work better for some people than other forms of medication. Therefore, why reject the possibility that vitamin and nutrition therapy might work better for some people than neuroleptics? To me, the important thing is, is the treatment helping that specific individual? Is it helping them move into recovery? As long as the answer is yes, I don't see any problem with the treatment.

I gather that you found the above to be helpful for you and was wondering if you could share how it's helped you. I'm also keen to hear what you might have to say about the adrenal glands -- I think I burnt mine out in that process and do see them as playing a role in my experience.

Have you heard anything good about Psych-K? I've been to the site but would appreciate any input you might have.

I hadn't heard of it before but I checked out the link and watched the interview of Robert Williams. It seems to me that he's blended two therapeutic modalities, namely Cognitive Belief Therapy -- which requires you to look at your belief systems, and Depth/Transpersonal Psychology -- which requires you to examine where your belief systems came from. I can envision it being quite helpful to a number of people, not just those who have gone through the experience of psychosis. As always, the most effective treatment is the one that helps that specific individual.

Have you seen this:
http://metasphere.org/

I checked out that one too. The initial images reminded me very much of the chakra system. Unfortunately, the voice-over was computer generated, a bit robotic even. I couldn't hear it clearly nor emotionally connect to the voice. I confess, I didn't stay long as a result.

In terms of the general field of metaphysics however, I do know that a number of individuals who have gone through the experience of psychosis often express religious or spiritual content. This can spark a desire to explore these concepts in greater depth in the aftermath of that experience. This is certainly something I've done but I recognize that not everyone feels a need to do so.

[clskrock]