Recovery from "schizophrenia" and other "psychotic disorders"

Martin Luther King often made the point that it is better NOT to be “adjusted” to injustice, and that psychologists often over-emphasize the value of “adjustment.”  He even called for the establishment of a group to champion “creative maladjustment.”  In a talk later broadcast on public radio in Eugene Oregon, three activists including myself talk about what often goes wrong in mental health care currently, and how it might be different if the system really respected the human rights of the people it tried to help and if it acknowledged that being “adjusted” is not the only way to be healthy – and that at times being “maladjusted” is actually more important!

Hear David Oaks, TC Dumas, and myself  at http://www.klcc.org/audio/cityclub2010_01_15.mp3

[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 »

(Note, this is a very old post, and at least many of the problems reported with the EAST program no longer exist, as they have been open to making some changes.  This post however does still describe problems that exist with many suppposedly “progressive” programs which really still follow an excessively narrow and inaccurate “medical model.”)

The following exerpt is part of an email I wrote to Kathy Savicki, the director of an early intervention in psychosis program in Oregon called EAST.  (You can find out more about EAST by checking out www.eastcommunity.org.)  While this program can be praised for at least bringing up the issue of recovery, it also apparently suffers from very serious flaws due to the way it pushed a biological explanation for psychosis – both common sense and research tell us that when people believe their mental problems are biological, they feel less able to do anything about them.  Since empowerment is a key factor in recovery, and since biological theories are highly speculative, then biological theories should never be presented as fact.  ”I found some things about your program that I liked very much, but also some apparent problems which I would like to discuss with you.  Since you have taken a forward looking approach in being involved in new programs, I am hoping you are open to hearing different and probably controversial ideas, even if critical of some aspects of your program!