schizophrenia.com

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I'm shifting any discussion on this topic to a new thread because I don't want to detract any further from the discussion that was already taking place in the thread where this offshoot developed.

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teejai: I would not go as far as saying the behaviour of the mods there is particularly 'cult like' though i do not disagree that you offer up some valid points.

I'm okay with agreeing to disagree, although I also feel some of your comments only strengthen my assessment. Notably...

<blockquote>four basic cult behaviors that influence our thinking:

1) compliance with a group: In this case, the group is composed of a specific mindset that you already identified: the ''genetic'/medicine model of schizophrenia with most posters adhering to that model

2) dependence on a leader: Also identified within your response: Many there are great supporters of Fuller Torrey to a point that if Fuller Torrey announced that standing on your head and singing the 'Ballad of the green berets ' was an effective treatment for schizophrenia they would most probably believe it.

3) avoiding dissent: My experience and the experiences of others, such as the individual identified as lunar_wire, are an excellent testament to this point. The last time I looked at that discussion, the members themselves we're getting into the fray. lunar_wire was accused of being a "scientologist" who should "get off you ***" and "stop posting all your crap". Apparently, these same actions have been taken against him before and he only returned because he's concerned about others not getting the opportunity to be exposed to anything other than the genetic/medical model.

4) devaluing the outsider: This was evident in the very first response the moderator made to me: you don't actually read or understand. The implication is that I'm dumb; I'm stupid; I don't know how to read; I'm the new kid on the block and they're going to push me around. The problem was, within the Them &amp; Us model, I identified myself as a "Them" by my unwillingness to comply with their model and this has been confirmed by the local authority -- the moderator. From here on in, it's open season... on me.
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Within a healthy environment a range of differences are easily tolerated within a broad spectrum. Within an unhealthy environment however, the spectrum narrows considerably and any deviation must be punished. The dissenter must be brought back under the control of the prevailing mindset for the mere fact that he/she is different could lead others away from the fold, and this would weaken the stability of the core group. For this reason, different is equated with threatening.

I highly recommend the Them &amp; Us article to everyone for this exact same dynamic unfolds in numerous relationships that are themselves, not necessarily cultlike. Such relationships always rely on a power imbalance as a means of either forcing compliance or punishing non-compliance. In the old days, town authorities might round up a posse while townsfolk would start to gather stones. Within the online environment, moderators-as-authorities use their tools of selective censorship, banning, and scapegoating, while those within the community begin to gather into a henpeck. There is a price to be paid for being different.

Does that mean that individuals who find the "genetic/medicine" model to be most relevant for them shouldn't get together to swap notes, share stories, and offer support. Not all all. The problem here is that the site presents itself as a model of inclusiveness when it isn't -- it's highly exclusive. If it would advertise itself as the exclusive model it is it might not get as many members and not only would that reduce the potential membership, it might even go so far as to affect ad-generated revenue that the site might be dependant upon to function.

Meanwhile, how many individuals might wander in there who are a little bit different and find themselves bullied, scapegoated, hounded, silenced, and pushed around as a result? I think it's particularly reprehensible when these kind of actions take place in environments that are supposed to be "healing" -- those kind of environments tend to produce a lot of scars.

What's really interesting about this particular little scenario is that right away, I picked up on the theme that "scientologists" are the bad guys, because they're a cult. What the moderators seem blithely unaware of is that they have internalized this exact same dynamic and are possessed by it; their very behavior mirrors that which is the mainstay of a cult dynamic.

Not healthy. Nope. No way.

Meanwhile, I'll be back in a bit to address some of the other excellent points you've made in your post -- I suspect we're very much in agreement in a number of ways.

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Before I responded further to the points teejai had made, I thought I'd drag in this article excerpt that I came across the other day because I think it's relevant to the conversation.

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... Harding said that her findings, and the notion that people with schizophrenia recover, is greeted generally with skepticism. "People look at me like I am from another planet," she told Psychiatric News.

Harding is director of the Institute for the Study of Human Resilience and senior director of the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation at Boston University.

She added that the skepticism is not difficult to understand given that few studies on the course of schizophrenia have taken a longitudinal approach. "What happens in most research strategies is that the investigators follow a cohort of convenience for a short time while they are still in treatment," Harding said.

Consequently, the literature tends to corroborate what psychiatrists see on a day-to-day basis: chronic disease and recidivism. But Harding said that impression is a classic example of the "clinician’s illusion"—a misapprehension about the nature of disease, common to any number of chronic conditions, that is an artifact of a physician’s practice: The physician tends to see only those patients who are sickest and who do not respond to treatment, while those who are less infirm and respond are—naturally enough—seen less frequently or not at all. In time, the physician cannot help but form an impression of nearly incurable chronicity.

"Any clinician worth his salt will tell you it happens," Harding said. "You get inured to what the range is because you keep seeing these [chronic] people right in front of your nose."

And the short-term clinical reality of schizophrenia is frequently dismal. "The day-to-day experience is heavily crowded caseloads and shelters where it doesn’t look like anyone is getting better," she said. "The expectation is that you do stabilization and maintenance with medication and entitlements, and that’s the best you can do."

Yet Harding said that outside the range of the "clinician’s illusion" are uncounted patients who have passed through and out of systems of care, gotten married, and are holding jobs. "Most of them are not even known in the community as having mental illness," she said. "They have gone about their lives and are embedded in society."

Source: Skepticism &amp; Recovery


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Three points strike me as particularly insightful. The first is that clinicians who provide care often see only a very small segment of that individual's life -- most often, when they are at their worst -- and this can shape their beliefs in regard to treatment and recovery. When we look over the long-range however, a different picture emerges that relates to recovery and different forms of treatment, including quite frequently, the abandonment of drug treatment.

The other point that is especially interesting is, there is a certain percentage of people who never enter into psychiatric treatment. They go through their experience, they put themselves back together, and they go on in their lives. As a result, their experiences are not included in published studies that help establish treatment guidelines and forms of care.

The important thing to remember is that whenever we're looking at a study, we have to pay attention to what has been seen but also to what has not been seen. Only by allowing both can we begin to grasp the information the study has to offer and apply it in the best manner.

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teejai: I personally support the medical model approach to a degree(Antipsychotics work with a varying degree of success but are not the 'magic bullet' that some would laud them to be) though not with the avid rabidity of some. Where i draw the line is with the overemphasis on medicine as a solution at the exclusion or playing down of other approaches.

About a week ago I got into a discussion with someone in relation to Roky Erickson. Roky was a talented musician who shot to stardom with a hit single You're Gonna Miss Me. A front man for the band 13th Floor Elevators, he was considered to be the creator of psychedelic music and the muse of Janis Joplin.

It was the 60's and then, as now, numerous drugs were available to those doing the star circuit. Roky apparently did a lot of drugs. In 1968 he was arrested for possession of one joint. The legal system thought they'd make an example out of him and were calling for ten years of hard labor. Given all the drugs he'd taken over the years, his lawyer thought he could make a good case for an insanity plea. The plan backfired.

Roky was sent to the Rusk State Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane where he received multiple electroshock treatments and thorazine. By the time he emerged, three years later, friends say he was a changed man.

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Clementine Hall blames electroshock treatments, done against Erickson's will at Houston's Hedgecroft Hospital, for making Erickson snap. "Roky escaped from Hedgecroft and Tommy brought him to stay with me in San Francisco," Hall said. "He was different. He said the Russians were talking to him through his teeth and that they wanted him to do bad things." In the documentary, Clementine Hall talks about taking Erickson to the beach and letting waves crash into him, the only thing that would quiet the voices.

Source: The Comeback of Roky Erickson


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Roky was eventually released into his mother's care. He didn't want to take medication and she supported him in his decision. I'm not clear on her motives, it may have been related to the treatment he'd already received. Roky spiralled downwards and was pretty much forgotten on the music scene until a journalist decided to hunt him down for a documentary.

In the course of the filming that spanned a few years, one of Roky's brothers successfully challenged his mother's custody. Roky's care was transferred to his brother and for the first time in many years, he began to receive drug treatment.

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"It's really a miracle," said younger brother Sumner Erickson, who was awarded legal guardianship of Roky from their mother, Evelyn, in a 2001 court decision. Roky Erickson was in a badly deteriorated state at the time, a junk-mail packrat with rotted, abscessed teeth and a need to sit between walls of white noise to make the voices inside his head go away. Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, Erickson refused to take medication, a decision his mother supported.

For decades, a bearded, wild-eyed Erickson wouldn't let anyone touch him, but at his London debut in April, he leaned over the rim of the stage to shake fans' hands and afterward spent two hours signing autographs and posing for pictures.

Source: The Comeback of Roky Erickson


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In the course of the discussion that unfolded, one of the participants noted: This reinforces, my opinion, that medication can be an opening to life when living without it takes away what makes life worth living for a person.

And he's right, but he's also wrong because it wasn't just medication that made a difference to Roky's life. I noted at that time...

<blockquote>I'm going to take a bit of a different stance. I read this great statement somewhere that medication encourages "magical thinking" and this is because the impression that so many people have of medication is that it's a magic bullet -- give a schizophrenic medication and it's all uphill from there. It is true that medication certainly helps some people, but for others it makes things worse. There's also the issue of compliancy and side effects. For example, in the recent CATIE study, 74% of the participants dropped out of the study because they could not tolerate the side effects of the drugs. While the older drugs were more likely to create neurological dysfunction the newer atypicals seem more likely to create metabolical dysfunction, such as diabetes, obesity and pulmonary complications. And let's not get into the expense of the new atypicals which have not been proven to be any more effective than the older, much more affordable drugs.

Did medical treatment help Roky? Yes, I think his experience is a testament to good treatment, but his personal history also demonstrates the results of bad treatment. Psychiatry has its dark side and no where is it darker than in the treatment of schizophrenia.

I think what really made a difference in Roky's recovery is other people, beginning with the journalist. Whatever dynamic had been at play in Roky's family relationships had been going on for decades and likely would have continued until his death. Perhaps what prompted his brother to challenge his mother was that investigative eye looking in upon the wreckage that shouldn't have been. It appears that the documentary itself reconnected Roky to his former identity and then, along with plenty of support, encouragement, non-coercion, therapy, the re-establishment of personal meaning and purpose, medical care, and medication, he began to move into recovery. Medication alone didn't produce that although it certainly appears to have assisted. As I understand it, Roky's no longer on medication and he is still doing well. Good on him, is all I can say.

Personally, this story demonstrates the way I think medication should be used and that's only when necessary for as short a term as possible to assist the individual to get back on their feet. We know that over the long term, and even over the short term, anti-psychotic medication can produce results that there is no recovery from. It is one tool of many and should be used sparingly. But too many think it's the only tool.

In other words, although we might agree to disagree in other areas, I think we're in firm agreement on this one.

See also:

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teejai: Indeed it is my firm belief that the rabidness and intellectual posturing inherent on both sides of the pro and anti meds schools of thought does a great disservice to those sufferers caught up in it's crossfire.

I certainly do not agree with the clamping down on alternative view points there that are sensibly presented which may not be the same thing as necessarily agreeing with them.

If I could imagine the ideal sort of place where these kinds of discussions would unfold, it would include a place for everybody. The thing is, we all have something to contribute.

People who take medication can offer personal insight and experience to others who are doing the same and perhaps, looking for the best fit.

People who go into therapy can offer insights from their experience with various therapeutic treatments: Bach Flower Remedies, CBT, Massage Therapy, Art Therapy, Music Therapy, Spiritual Practice, Depth Psychology -- any and all of these might be helpful to an individual.

Likewise, people who are working with alternate treatments (i.e., Vitamin therapy) can share their insights and experiences.

The thing is, an absolute cause has yet to be determined: Genetics, trauma, stress, food additives, allergic reactions, drug use -- all these and more have been identified as potential causes. The most effective treatment is always the one that works for that specific individual. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to treatment or recovery.

Therefore, I also agree with you that we lose something of value when we divide ourselves into separate camps. It shouldn't be this way, at all. But I can guarantee you, I've probably been banned from more discussions because I'm different than the mainstreamer has. It's not that I don't appreciate their voice; more commonly, they don't want to hear mine... at all.

What does disturb me about the way these discussions go when they get shut down is that I keep pushing the work of John Weir Perry and Jaakko Seikkula -- both of whom had an 85% recovery rate. You would think that anyone who was suffering or whose family member was suffering would jump right on that. But they don't. As far as they're concerned, there is no such thing as recovery so anyone who produces it must be a quack.

Meantime, I sit back and I watch them run those studies into the ground, I watch as they paint me as an anti-psychiatrist, anti-science, a scientologist-wanna-be so they can ensure that whatever I might say is considered the equivalent of trash and not worthy of listening to, and when they say that they'd do absolutely anything to help themselves or their family member...

I have my doubts.

And now, I'm going to pop back over to schizophrenia.com and see if I've yet to be cast in the role of Satan or the equivalent. These things start to get pretty damned predictable after awhile.

With reference to the points 1-4 of 'cult behaviour' i am not sure that one can (1)necessarily equate by itself 'adherence to a specific mindset' with 'compliance' . It may be that rightly or wrongly some are adhering to that mindset because they personally believe in it as opposed to being ' brainwashed' into doing so or indeed have experienced a free willed 'conversion on the road to Damascus'.

Without knowing how many have changed their mindset due to the psychological effects of being bombarded with one official mindset it is hard to say how much 'compliance' is proof of a cult effect. though it can not be dismissed out of hand.

(2) I am not sure you can necessarily equate a " Fuller Torrey is God" attitude with dependence on a leader(though again it can not necessarily be dismissed)
as much as you could equate it with an inability or unwillingness to question whether what is being said is valid or not.

(3) With regards to 'dissent' i would agree that schizophrenia.com is not good at embracing 'alternative voices'.
Unfortunately the behaviour of scientologists and their tactics has met with a somewhat McCarthyite 'Scientologists under the bed' defensiveness whereby it can be too easy to automatically equatre alternative psychiatric thinking with being 'an adherent of Scientology.
It is indeed possible to be both anti psychiatry and Scientologist but it is not mutually inclusive.

For my part i believe that there are mental illnesses or what ever alternative phrases one may choose to use and am not 'anti psychiatry' but due to many negative experiences am not enamoured of many who work in the psychiatric profession.
I am probably best described as anti psychiatrist/mental health professional as opposed to 'anti psychiatry itself.

(4) I would tend to agree with in that alternative viewpoints are not allowed to be discussed in a healthy and open manner but are indeed often suppressed with a 'You are clueless and that's that ' approach.

I certainly think that the site could accommodate a forum for the discussion of alternative thinking with regards to schizophrenia and that such a forum would not be a case of the 'Huns entering the gates of Rome'

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teejai: I am probably best described as anti psychiatrist/mental health professional as opposed to 'anti psychiatry itself.

I have heard this more aptly described as critical psychiatry.

See also: Critical Psychiatry in Practice [PDF File]

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spiritual_emergency said:
<
The thing is, an absolute cause has yet to be determined: Genetics, trauma, stress, food additives, allergic reactions, drug use -- all these and more have been identified as potential causes. The most effective treatment is always the one that works for that specific individual. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to treatment or recovery.

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This of course points to schizophrenia being a heterogeneous set of disorders with overlapping symptoms that are potentially induced by differing factors that are subsumed under the singular rubric 'schizophrenia.'

It may indeed be that to treat a heterogeneous condition that one needs a multi faceted approach.

From my own experiences i certainly have a strong belief in stress as a factor for psychosis( something which i think is less of a yes/no thing but lying on a contiuum)
For example when in a emotionally stressed state i can easily slip into what is an irrational/rant and rave type of mind set whereby my thought processes become less balanced and ability to think clearly is reduced with my paranoiac tendencies being heightened at such times.
Although i would not call this Psychotic in a full blown way i am not adverse to accepting that in certain situations i am prone to a measure of psychotic like thinking.

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teejai: With reference to the points 1-4 of 'cult behaviour' i am not sure that one can (1)necessarily equate by itself 'adherence to a specific mindset' with 'compliance' . It may be that rightly or wrongly some are adhering to that mindset because they personally believe in it as opposed to being ' brainwashed' into doing so or indeed have experienced a free willed 'conversion on the road to Damascus'.

Did you read the article I linked teejai? I'm going to assume not so I'm going to drag a few quotes into this discussion.

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As I studied the psychological mechanisms that made the cult experience possible, I began to recognize uncomfortably familiar processes. A little reflection provided many specific instances of my own compliance&amp;#8209;conscious and unconscious&amp;#8209;with the values and preferences of my peers, compliance that I had rationalized or ignored because I preferred to think of myself as very independent. Since no radical change or disruption of my life occurred and I was not acting at the behest of a charismatic leader or occult group, it had not occurred to me that I might be behaving like one who has been captured by a cult. Nevertheless, I now realize that the motivations and manipulations constituting cult behavior are present in varying degrees in my own life and that they play a role in the lives of most of us as they operate in our educational systems, the business world, religion, politics, and international relations. Just as many of the more notorious cults have proven to be costly and destructive, so ordinary cult behavior is damaging and harmful to some degree wherever it occurs, no matter how normal its outward appearance.

When the seminar began I viewed cults as pathological entities alien to my everyday life. By the time it ended, I realized that the dynamics of cult behavior and thinking are so pervasive in normal society that almost all of us might be seen as members of invisible cults. In fact, as I will argue, society can be viewed as an association of informal cults to which everyone belongs. Yet the groups most of us belong to do not appear strange, flamboyant, esoteric, or unnatural, nor do they defy society with lurid and violent behavior. Social infrastructures and behaviors that are similar to those of the People's Temple go unnoticed.

Surely, the reader may ask, while it is true that serious consequences result from membership in extreme cults, how can you say harm comes from the groups that make up normal society? I certainly don't recognize such effects in groups to which I belong. I am indeed talking about normal society, in which the damage resulting from cult&amp;#8209;like behavior is not as obvious as that headlined in the newspapers. Our own cult story is much less pronounced, with no noticeable beginning and no end; our perceptions, beliefs, and critical judgments are affected nonetheless.

We Americans live in a constitutional democracy, priding ourselves on the freedoms we have achieved. We live, travel and work without internal passports; we have free choice of job or profession; we may hold any belief and, within wide limits, do anything, say anything, write anything, and protest anything. We choose our governing officials from a list we have ourselves determined.

Democracy is based on an "eye&amp;#8209;level" world in which we look directly at each other; every citizen is a peer. Political power is delegated, not inherited, not taken, not given by divine right, but bestowed by each of us. However, I believe that a danger exists even in democracies that the omnipresent authoritarian impulse will manifest itself in disguised form, will lead us toward a world in which we are always looking up at those who must be obeyed or down at those who must obey us. This is so because authoritar*ianism draws its strength from the same source that supports cult behavior: dependency on groups and leaders.

I believe that we need to bring into awareness the unconscious motivations and excluded information that influence our behavior and thought at the personal, national, and international levels. This requires that we first understand the dynamics of obvious cults and then address similar processes in ourselves and in ordi*nary society. Such understanding can provide us with tools for detecting cult behavior — our own as well as that of others — and enable us to step outside the cult circle.


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What I always found fascinating about that article was its emphasis on cult behavior as opposed to cults themselves. I think I've done a pretty good job of demonstrating where cult behavior is taking place at schizophrenia.com. That doesn't mean people are being brainwashed, they may well be gathering with their own kind where the prevailing mindset takes precedence.

Meanwhile, in some of the conversation that later took place at schizophrenia.com, I saw the term "medical model" being bandied about quite a bit and a few people insisting that it was the established norm and how dare anyone come in and deliberately upset the status quo.

And then I saw other people, such as lunar_wire who stated that he had no clue what he was walking into. He originally came to share his own thoughts and experiences and was treated very badly which is part of the reason he's back. He already knows how those who are different will be treated.

I wondered why schizophrenia.com doesn't just make it blatantly obvious that they are a site that subscribes solely to the medical model. It would certainly make it a lot less painful for people like lunar_wire. Then I got to wondering if maybe, the folks at schizophrenia.com want to have the opportunity to try and convert as many people to their way of thinking as they can. They think it's the right way of thinking so they certainly don't see any harm in their conversion efforts -- they probably think it's a kind thing to do, maybe even their duty to find people like myself and lunar_wire who just don't know that we have a brain disease that there is no recovery from unless we take medication... forever.

Meantime, I caught a post of lunar_wire's earlier tonight in which he stated that he's off medication and he's doing okay; still pulling A's in school. As for me, I've never had any medication. I've been working for four years. I don't think either of us needs to be converted but I can understand why we're considered a threat to that specific mindset.

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teejai: It may indeed be that to treat a heterogeneous condition that one needs a multi faceted approach.

I agree. I've previously defined recovery as needing to take place on a minimum of five levels: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and relational. Medication and therapy might play an important role but so to do factors such as nutrition or exercise.

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From a link teejai: posted earlier.

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The diathesis-stress model is a psychological theory that explains behaviour as both a result of biological and genetic factors ("nature"), and life experiences ("nurture"). This theory is often used to describe the pronunciation of mental disorders, like schizophrenia, that are produced by the interaction of a vulnerable hereditary predisposition, with precipitating events in the environment. This theory was originally introduced as a means to explain some of the causes of schizophrenia (Zubin & Spring, 1977).

Vulnerability / predisposition
In the diathesis-stress model, a genetic vulnerability or predisposition (diathesis) interacts with the environment and life events (stressors) to trigger behaviors or psychological disorders. The greater the underlying vulnerability, the less stress is needed to trigger the behavior/disorder. Conversely, where there is a smaller genetic contribution greater life stress is required to produce the particular result. Even so, someone with a diathesis towards a disorder does not necessarily mean they will ever develop the disorder. Both the diathesis and the stress are required for this to happen.

Reformulation
The diathesis-stress model has been reformulated in the last 20 years as the stress-vulnerability-protective factors model, particularly by Dr. Robert P. Liberman and his colleagues in the field of psychiatric rehabilitation.

Effects
This model has had profound benefits for people with severe and persistent mental illnesses. It has stimulated research on the common stressors that people with disorders such as schizophrenia experience. More importantly, it has stimulated research and treatment on how to mitigate this stress, and therefore reduce the expression of the diathesis, by developing protective factors. Protective factors include rigorous and nuanced psychopharmacology, skill building (especially problem solving and basic communication skills) and the development of support systems for individuals with these illnesses. Even more importantly, the stress-vulnerability-protective factors model has allowed mental health workers, family members, and clients to create a sophisticated personal profile of what happens when the person is doing poorly (the diathesis), what hurts (the stressors), and what helps (the protective factors). This has resulted in more humane, effective, efficient, and empowering treatment interventions.

Source: Wikipedia


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I thought that was very interesting. I'd never heard of it before. I can see some aspects of it fitting my own experience quite well. For example, do you know that spot behind the knee, where if you just give it a little poke, it will bring your whole body down? I think I had a weakness like that although I'm not so sure that it was genetic -- I think it was environmental, although I did get it from my father. That spot in me lay hidden for years but once it was exposed and touched, down I came. I call that one the collapse of the self-identity (ego) model. It's describes my own experience quite well.

I've read elsewhere that psychosis can be brought on in anyone with the right combination of factors -- meaning stressors. This is probably most commonly seen in sleep deprivation, but stress and trauma can do the same. Typically, when this does happen in conjunction with stress and trauma, it's considered a brief psychotic disorder.

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spiritual_emergency said:
... I can guarantee you, I've probably been banned from more discussions because I'm different than the mainstreamer has. It's not that I don't appreciate their voice; more commonly, they don't want to hear mine... at all.

What does disturb me about the way these discussions go when they get shut down is that I keep pushing the work of John Weir Perry and Jaakko Seikkula -- both of whom had an 85% recovery rate. You would think that anyone who was suffering or whose family member was suffering would jump right on that. But they don't. As far as they're concerned, there is no such thing as recovery so anyone who produces it must be a quack.

Meantime, I sit back and I watch them run those studies into the ground, I watch as they paint me as an anti-psychiatrist, anti-science, a scientologist-wanna-be so they can ensure that whatever I might say is considered the equivalent of trash and not worthy of listening to, and when they say that they'd do absolutely anything to help themselves or their family member...

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spiritual, can you discuss why you feel it useful to engage in the places that don't seem to give you much respect?

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pachyderm: spiritual, can you discuss why you feel it useful to engage in the places that don't seem to give you much respect?

Overall, pachyderm, I don't. I usually leave those places fairly quickly. I think my actual term at schizophrenia.com was just over 24 hours. In just those 24 hours, I saw more posts edited, radically modified, outright deleted and locked threads by moderators than I've seen in the entire history of some sites. There's a part of me that can't help but be curious about that kind of behavior .

I'm also a little mystified as to why some people become so reactionary when the topic of schizophrenia and recovery is raised. I can't help but think that this would be encouraging information -- information that people would want to share with others. What I have found however is that some people find the very idea to be deeply threatening. They react with hostility and often will attempt to do everything in their power to keep you from "speaking" or "being heard".

One of the most common methods is to discredit what you have to say or to portray you as some particularly heinous kind of person. For example, here's what the moderator had to say about my brief run through the schizophrenia.com community.

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Similarly, we've had this person "spiritual emergency" come here and starting to spam the web site with all his blog posts, anti-science and anti-psychiatry invective. He quotes research from old and disproved people (Szazz for example - the lone psychiatrist of the past 100 years that stated in 1950 that schizophrenia didn't exist)...


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Notice how my name has been linked with Thomas Szasz? What's interesting is that I have never read Thomas Szasz and I don't think there is a single link or quote to him on any of my blogs, but that's not the important thing. The important thing is that the moderator seeks to discredit me and he does so by deliberately linking my name with the sworn enemy of the medical model and further, labelling me as "anti-science" and "anti-psychiatry". In his case, because he has moderator powers, he also edited my posts, deleted my posts and banned me.

Which begs the question... if what I might have to say is so worthless that no one should hear it, why did they go to such efforts to silence me?

Meanwhile, I'm going to keep on doing my thing which includes talking to people in places like this. At some of those places, I'll be allowed a voice. At some of them, I won't. But I don't recommend that people ever stay long in a place where they're not treated with basic respect.

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spiritual_emergency said:
I'm also a little mystified as to why some people become so reactionary when the topic of schizophrenia and recovery is raised. I can't help but think that this would be encouraging information -- information that people would want to share with others. What I have found however is that some people find the very idea to be deeply threatening. They react with hostility and often will attempt to do everything in their power to keep you from "speaking" or "being heard".

... if what I might have to say is so worthless that no one should hear it, why did they go to such efforts to silence me?

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I think you have answered your own question.

Why in the 17th century did many "authorities" reject the "new information" that Galileo offered? Why in the 19th century were the findings of Semmelweiss rejected by the majority of obstetricians in Vienna -- at the cost of the lives of the patients whom they were obliged to help?

I hope it's OK to post this:

http://spiritualrecoveries.blogspot....hreniacom.html

I have taken the plunge and am looking at schizophenia.com. I have not checked out the message forums there. My impression is that there is some useful information there, but also that there is so much "information" that one can easily get swamped. How much of it is information and how much "noise"?

This link on the causes of schizophrenia

http://www.schizophrenia.com/hypo.php

includes environmental effects including some thoughts about child abuse being one cause:

http://www.schizophrenia.com/sznews/...es/003511.html

but on the other hand, on the front page is a link to "New Study Shows Stronger Link with Cat Parasite (T.Gondi) with Increased Schizophrenia Risk"

Take your pick.

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pachyderm: My impression is that there is some useful information there, but also that there is so much "information" that one can easily get swamped. How much of it is information and how much "noise"?

I suspect that in 100 years the headlines will still be the same -- someone will have discovered a new gene or a new chromosome or a new way of interpreting some old study, all of which promises a breakthrough treatment... viritually any day.

This is why I've focused on those who are producing recovery. I don't care how many studies you've done -- what's your recovery rate? I don't care how fancy your hypothesis -- what's your recovery rate? I don't care if you spent 24 years immersed in twin studies -- what's your recovery rate? Without recovery, it's all noise.

Meantime, when E. Fuller Torrey can produce a recovery rate in the range of 85% -- and by that, I do mean full recovery -- I will personally kiss his ***.

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Philip Dawdy of Furious Seasons had an excellent piece in regard to schizophrenia, medications, and E. Fuller Torrey that I thought complimented this thread. Here's an excerpt...

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In recent weeks, I've really had mental disorders and how widely varied are individual responses to standard treatments shoved into my face. But much of what I have encountered at the shelter has confirmed what I've known for a long time: some people who genuinely have schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder (these are fairly clear cut clinical cases) have it to completely different degrees, and for some of them meds are a very good answer while for others meds either don't work at all or are toxic to their bodies. By toxic I mean that the meds cannot be tolerated by the patients' bodies and as a result they cannot take meds consistently. I've spoken with several clients at the shelter who've been on a host of different meds and their response is virtually the same across all meds. That's frustrating as hell for them of course. These things are supposed to work, doctors press them to take them because they will work, the system makes them available to them because they will work, so they take them and they get sick and can't take them anymore.

I understood this dynamic before working at the shelter, but working there it is truly a visceral experience in a way that I wish more doctors and researchers would experience. I know they see it on the ER and psych unit end of things, but by then things are very out of control and the texture of what's going on day-to-day is lost.

I think that's led to the silly tautology bandied about by Fuller Torrey, his Treatment Advocacy Center and others in mental health circles that goes like this: the patient has a serious mental disorder; the patient must take meds at high doses to cure this disorder or the disorder will get worse; the patient doesn't take their meds because they claim that they make them sick or the patient is in denial about having a disorder; let's give this dynamic a fancy Greek name so it'll sound authoritative and scientific; we'll call it "agnosia"; these patients just don't know how beneficial treatment with meds is; they must be forced into taking meds because we know and they don't.

Source: The World Isn't Flat


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> these patients just don't know how beneficial treatment with meds is; they must be forced into taking meds because we know and they don't.

That's the mantra of some. Not all. I wonder how widely respected Torrey is amongst the mental health community in general. I do not have an impression of whether he is or not. I have read that some consider him to be "controversial."

For me personally, no medications have helped; they have not been toxic to me, but they have not helped. In that sense they led me astray. I still get "pressured" occasionally to take them, and to resist that causes me some anxiety.

Here is an example of what I thought was interesting information on schizophrenia.com:

http://www.schizophrenia.com/hypo.php

"Experts now agree that schizophrenia develops as a result of interplay between biological predisposition (for example, inheriting certain genes) and the kind of environment a person is exposed to. These lines of research are converging: brain development disruption is now known to be the result of genetic predisposition and environmental stressors early in development (during pregnancy or early childhood), leading to subtle alterations in the brain that make a person susceptible to developing schizophrenia. Environmental factors later in life (during early childhood and adolescence) can either damage the brain further and thereby increase the risk of schizophrenia, or lessen the expression of genetic or neurodevelopmental defects and decrease the risk of schizophrenia. In fact experts now say that schizophrenia (and all other mental illness) is caused by a combination of biological, psychological and social factors, and this understanding of mental illness is called the bio-psycho-social model.

"Neither the biological nor the environmental (psycho-social) categories is completely determinant, and there is no specified amount of input that will ensure someone will or will not develop schizophrenia. Moreover, risk factors may be different for different individuals - while one person may develop schizophrenia due largely to a strong family history of mental illness (e.g. a high level of genetic risk), someone else with much less genetic vulnerability may also develop the disease due to a more significant combination of prepregnancy factors, pregnancy stress, other prenatal factors, social stress, family stress or environmental factors that they experience during their childhood, teen or early adult years.

"Research has now shown that children's and teen's brains are very sensitive to stress (up to 5 to 10 times more sensitive than adult brains) and can be damaged by frequent or ongoing stress. What seems like mild to moderate stress for an adult, may be very severe stress for a child. This stress-related brain damage can greatly increase risk for many types of mental illness later in life."

On the other hand, this at

http://www.schizophrenia.com/sznews/...es/003511.html

"There are a couple of psychologists who think that child abuse is a significant cause, if not the major cause, of schizophrenia and began strongly publicizing this theory recently. However main-stream schizophrenia researchers say that there are no rigorous studies that support this theory.

"Increasingly however, leading psychiatric researchers have told us that they think it is likely that child abuse is one type of stress and trauma (of many) that is a contributing factor in schizophrenia (especially for people biologically or genetically predisposed) - though as yet there is no definitive long term studies that have proven this. (leading, mainstream researchers have told us of recent (fall, 2006) unpublished studies where the data supports the theory that child abuse can be a factor in risk for developing schizophrenia, but it is unlikely to be a factor in "most" or "many" cases of schizophrenia)."

A "couple of psychologists"? Well, at least they are addressing the possibility.

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<center><font color=red>CAUTION: Potentially triggering and I can't find the trigger icon. (Found it, but left this in place anyway.)</font></center>

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It's worth emphasizing that psychosis is a component of numerous "disorders" and has numerous causes. Given enough stressors, you can produce psychosis in just about anyone. Stress and trauma are two well recognized means of reaching that space.

Some people have one bout of psychosis and then recover, never to have another. Other people have repetitive bouts of psychosis. Schizophrenia is, essentially, reoccurring episodes of psychosis.

The model that best describes my own experience is that of "ego collapse" or more precisely, "collapse of one's sense of self-identity". I think trauma can weaken the structure of one's personality, whether it occurred in childhood or adulthood. When the structure of the personality collapses, contents from the personal and collective unconscious flood forth. In my opinion, it's this content, as coupled with the fragments of ego structure, that produces the experience recognized as psychosis in this culture.

The abuse I went through in my childhood was a long time ago. Whatever wounds I carried as a result lay dormant for many years until two critical things happened: the first was that my mother died and the second was that within days of her death, I met someone who possessed a number of the same characteristics as my birth father. I didn't recognize that at the time, I just knew that I didn't like the person. I didn't like being around them. There was something about them but I couldn't put my finger on it.

The difficulty was, the trauma that had occurred had been dissociated and buried. I never dealt with it because it was painful and frightening. But I also didn't need to deal with it because I had a mother who would protect me. As long as she was alive, the world felt like a safe place. When she died, I became terrified. Only later, after my experience, did I understand why I had reacted the way I did: the protector was gone and somewhere in me, was a terrified child whose terror had never been addressed.

At the time however, I couldn't place where the terror was coming from. It was in me but because it had been safely encapsulated, dissociated many years previously, I couldn't find it in me. I could only project it upon the world around me. And so, the larger world itself became a terrifying place. Meanwhile, because I couldn't trace the source of my fear, I continued to stay in a dangerous situation. I wasn't able to recognize the risk. But all the while, there was some part of me that could; my adrenal glands were pumping: "Get out! Get out!" for months. It didn't make sense to me so I didn't go. I began having nightmares at that time. Horrible nightmares, always revolving around the same themes. One of those themes was home invasion and that was appropriate because a home is a symbol of one's self identity, and my home (sense of self-identity) was being invaded, usurped by that unconscious content that was threatening to burst through my floorboards.

All of this occurred within what would be called "the prodromal phase". Not really psychotic, but cracked enough that unconscious content could seep through and was catching my attention via the various pieces of music and prose that kept calling me, that kept hooking something in me.

It's quite possible I could have stayed in that phase for years, never feeling quite right but not able to figure out what was quite wrong. Once more, the larger world reflected back my inner turmoil in the form of catastrophe as summed up in the phrase "multiple losses as accompanied by trauma" and down "I" came. My sense of who I was "died" along with the others who had also died.

This is why medication would not have been a good choice for me. Medication would have suppressed the content that was seeping forth but what I needed to do was to bring that content to the surface so it could become conscious. As long as it was unconscious it could control me; only by bringing it into consciousness could I begin to master it. My experience of psychosis was the process of bringing that content up. This was why I also needed to have that experience. If I had not gone through my experience of psychosis, I don't believe I would be well today.

There is no doubt in my mind that child abuse can produce psychosis. But it doesn't have to be abuse -- it doesn't have to be a terrible parent -- anything that seriously challenges one's sense of self identity to the extent that the personality structure cracks or fragments will do the trick. Once the structure of personality is cracked -- bang! -- you're into unconscious territory, including it's symbolic and metaphorical expression. While you're there, you have no ego boundaries, no sense of where you end and the other begins, so whatever comes up, you identify with. I know all about "being" Jesus.

If that psychosis is not resolved -- which is to say, if the unconscious content is not brought to the surface and dealt with -- it will keep coming back and coming back and coming back. I think that's how this culture produces chronic psychosis, and chronic psychosis is what we call "schizophrenia".

I don't expect my experience to apply to everyone. But it has given me insight into how John Weir Perry managed to produce that 85% recovery rate among first time "schizophrenics" without medication. He let them have their experience. He let them express that content but offered support through it, so it wouldn't be so frightening. He also helped them to see where their experience of psychosis was relevant to their "real-world" experience. As a result, they understood that there was meaning, purpose and value in their "crazyness". They weren't simply hapless victims of genetic circumstance who could never recover.

See also: The Far Side of Madness