I think this article makes a lot of important points on what we face when diagnosed with thought disorders. I think it’s important that no one is grouped or categorized, and it’s easy for the mental health system to fall into that trap. Hopefully healthcare reform might change this sometime in the future.
I liked what you wrote about human coping mechanisms. Like soldiers who return who are also suddenly afflicted with mental illness, there are a lot of factors.

Perhaps “thinking outside the box” is an evolutionary trait…in fact I would say humans wouldn’t be humans or “conscious” above the other animals if we didn’t think outside the box. That’s what makes us who we are. So of course if someone was faced with an impossible situation they would go into overdrive and think too creatively or out there…of course there are many different kinds of people with different responses to the world. We should learn to recognize the individual not the label or group we associate them with.

Rossa Forbes,
Thanks for the reply you are right. Though that wasn’t directed at anyone in particular. Something I’ve noticed is that I’m a very multi-faceted person, and I am very sensitive to people’s thoughts and the environment. This sensitivity could also play a role. When we have an ego breakdown or grow up from our shells we have to face that nothing always goes our way, and sometimes this leads to crisis.

I agree with the author that it can be detrimental to always think you should take medication. I’ve noticed I don’t get the same effects from something if I don’t need it. Like food, you don’t feel as good if you eat when you aren’t hungry. With meds, they don’t do anything when I don’t need them but meds are difficult to gauge with how they’re working.

I was off meds for three months and I learned to cope and the auditory hallucinations stopped, but the uncertainty led me to start again….and I became conflicted because the chemical change actually made my symptoms come back. Then, when I am in a different place or state of mind and I think I need them it works..

Then I look at my mother who is suffering right now from mania and delusions. I think she would be using the denial mechanism to cope. But what with? We’re all being so nice to her and she’s just so upset and out of touch. That’s where it’s hard to know where to draw the line.

I know what you mean about vitamins not really working all the time. I started taking a vitamin for depression and it has helped though. Sam-E. I’m pretty logical, down to earth, etc. when I’m stable. Though this comes and goes with or without meds. The depersonalization feelings off of meds is one reason I stay on them, and another reason why I worry about them being a psychological response not a chemical one. But I’m probably wrong, I’ve probably been helped in the long run.

Sue – I am all in favor of vitamin therapy, too, but I feel that, that like medications, it is still restricting madness to faulty biochemistry. Many people are disappointed when they change their diet and add vitamins, and they still have problems. A lot of people, including my son’s holistic psychiatrist, seem to think that it was all about balancing the biochemistry. Even I was amazed when my son went “bonkers” again after he had been taking vitamin supplements and restricting his diet. I had to do a “re-think” in his case and I concluded that he had issues he was continuing to resolve. We could give him all the vitamins in the world, and he still wanted an escape hatch (psychosis). You also mention that we accept that certain cancers and other diseases have a link to toxins, etc. so shouldn’t we apply that thinking to mental health conditions as well? That is a valid question. I actually go further. If we say that mental health has a psychospiritual dimension, then why not also apply the psychospiritual dimentions to physical conditions? Here, I reference people like Bert Hellinger, a former Jesuit priest who has popularized Family Constellation Therapy in Germany and Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger, a French psychologist (The Ancestor Sydrome). Most of us have a hard time accepting the idea that a child’s illness can be a response to the family situation, because it seems to unfair and let’s face it, spooky. It’s also not very North American in its outlook. Both Hellinger and Schutzenberger make these links, and for both physical ailments and mental illness.

I am saddened to read about people who say they tried vitamins, etc. and it didn’t work. What then do they do? They are still mentally ill, unfortunately. Dr. Dietrich Klinghart has what he calls a healing pyramid. He says, pump everything you can into Level 1 (vitamins and meds) and if that doesn’t work, then your problems are at Level 4, psychospiritual, and other interventions are needed.

I see myself as a person pretty much like Al Galves (he’s a friend) but I don’t deny the effect of stuff like toxins on creating mental health problems, or good nutrition in helping to solve them. Certainly, one of the fastest ways to create psychosis is to use a toxin like meth for an extended period of time.

What I am saying is that I think psychosis is an evolved response to stressful situations where it seems urgent to gain control yet one sees no clear way to do so. Using this understanding, it is clear that toxins can trigger this response, both by increasing stress and by reducing mental clarity, making it harder to see how to gain control and/or when one could just as well let go. And conversely, getting good nutrition, just like getting good sleep etc., can reduce stress and improve clarity, making it less likely that this response will be triggered.

What I don’t accept is the notion that psychosis always results from stuff like toxins or failure to meet physical health needs. I think the real picture is much more complex than that. If you see psychosis as strictly physical, then if your physical correction doesn’t work, you have no alternatives but hopelessness. (Just as, if you see it as a “biochemical imbalance” and then your drugs don’t work, you are hopeless.) But if you see it in this more complex way, you will still support physical health, but then additionally have a perspective from which you can address the psychological and even spiritual angles, which are I believe the primary factors in a great many cases.

I am so happy and proud of you for what you’re doing and writing these days! It seems to me, even in the short time I’ve known you (via the Net) that you’ve matured and developed so much. I hope you keep on writing and talking and trying to inject a little common sense into our benighted “helping” professions. Do you have a book in the works?? I hope so!! Mary

We know so much more about the effect of environmental toxins such as heavy metals, food additives, and the ubiquitous synthetic poisons that are rife in the tissues of everyone on this planet. We accept that they cause cancer, diabetes, whacked hormones and obesity to the body–but find the high flying mind immune. But is it so, and if not, how relevant is this information? See Dr. Sherry Roger’s DEPRESSION: CURED AT LAST. She cites only primary sources of research: articles from toxiciological journals, allergy MDs, etc. All of this poison truly does affect mood and behavior. Hence, it seems cruel to ignore these incredible findings, to insist that the mind must toil on finding alternate “defenses” when in fact, gasp, it could become truly well.

But the root of your romantic argument–for I’ve found that people like Al Galves won’t even look into the nutritional/environmental causes–is the mistaken notion of the Brain Disembodied. We think ultimately our minds, our will, our holy spirits can rise above it all. I too believe strongly in the human spirit. But to downplay the serious dismantling of the health of the body (which, yoo hoo, includes the brain) by the Industrial Revolution through post-modern techno culture…this really chagrins me.

I keep waiting for more mental health activists to catch on, but understand that to embrace the work of the likes of Mark Hyman, MD or Harvard’s Martha Herbert is scary. It takes courage to accept we’re all in this together because we’ve all poisoned the planet/ourselves/our minds. If “mental” as a separate category goes away, whither our advocacy, our blogs, our adversaries, our identities? We need the vision to see what we can become instead: warriors for wholeness, within and without.

Good luck and I hope you dont take this personal. I try not to say things…but then it all comes out. the sad part is I wanted to experience my madness without ‘them’…that’s why it hurt. I defied…I stood up and said I didn’t want to take the pills and look how I benefited!

I have little idea how to stop medical schools from teaching a disease model, nor how to get hospitals to less frequently traumatize and alienate people they attempt to treat: but I know a beginning is to get more of us talking about the problem, talking about possible solutions, and forming alliances with each other.