Recovery from "schizophrenia" and other "psychotic disorders"

The City of Eugene, Oregon just this evening passed an official resolution affirming that it is a human right for people to have choice in mental health treatment, including choice of non-drug alternatives.  It also affirmed the right to treatment oriented toward complete recovery.

I have special reason to be proud of this resolution, as I initiated work on it and my friends and colleagues in Eugene helped get it passed!  Now I hope some of you out there ask your own city councils & other bodies to pass your own resolutions, affirming these same rights.  You can read the text of this resolution here.  You can also find some background and references for some of the claims made in the resolution here.

I also want to describe the process we went through to get this resolution passed, for those who might be curious.   More »

Congratulations to Eleanor Longden, who just graduated from college with honors, years after she was told that her ”schizophrenia” was hopeless and all she could do for it was to take medications.  Fortunately, she then went to a different psychiatrist, someone who actually knew something about recovery.  Read more…..

You wouldn’t expect to find it in the Wall Street Journal, but writer Jeanette Winterson does an eloquent job of talking about valuable aspects of existence that lie outside of mental stability, in her article, In Praise of the Crack-Up

[Note:  The document below is just a part of the proposed consumer empowerment guidelines for Lane County.  I'm posting this separately here, because it is the part of the document that would be of most general interest.]

Recovery from many kinds of problems is affected by beliefs about the possibility of recovery.  Consider a hypothetical example of a person who has received an injury which affects the person’s ability to walk, but which is not necessarily permanently disabling if strong efforts are made to recover.  If the person is led by medical authorities to believe that the disability is permanent, efforts at rehabilitation will probably not be made, and the prediction may become a self fulfilling prophecy.  Since the disability at that point is a result of the inaccurate prediction rather than the injury itself, the disability becomes a medical system induced condition.

The mental health system faces the same kinds of issues.  In fact, none of the major mental health disorders have been shown to be reliably permanent, and no studies have shown mental health professionals being able to determine who will definitely have the disorder for the rest of their lives.[i]  For each disorder, at least a sizable minority are found to fully recover, without need of further medication or other mental health treatment.[ii]  Consumers who do recover typically credit others who helped them believe they could recover, and their own efforts at recovery, as essential parts of that recovery.[iii]

And yet, many consumers have been led to believe by the mental health system that they will always be “mentally ill” and that their need for treatment, in particular treatment by medication, will inevitably be lifelong as well.[iv]  More »