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Resources

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Please use the above links to browse some resources I hope you’ll find useful. These include organisations, websites, journals and books.

DVD Resource of the Month

Healing Homes:  An Alternative, Swedish Model for Healing Psychosis by Daniel Mackler

http://www.iraresoul.com/dvd2.html

 Healing Homes, a feature-length documentary film directed by Daniel Mackler, chronicles the work of the Family Care Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden — a program which, in this era of multi-drug cocktails and psychiatric diagnoses-for-life, helps people recover from psychosis without medication.

The organization, backed by over twenty years of experience, places people who have been failed by traditional psychiatry in host families — predominately farm families in the Swedish countryside — as a start for a whole new life journey.

Host families are chosen not for any psychiatric expertise, rather, for their compassion, stability, and desire to give back.  People live with these families for upwards of a year or two and become an integral part of a functioning family system.  Staff members offer clients intensive psychotherapy and provide host families with intensive supervision.

The Family Care Foundation eschews the use of diagnosis, works within a framework of striving to help people come safely off psychiatric medication, and provides their services, which operate within the context of Swedish socialized medicine, for free.

Healing Homes weaves together interviews with clients, farm families, and staff members to create both a powerful vision of medication-free recovery and an eye-opening critique of the medical model of psychiatry.

Print Resource of the Month

The Body Remembers:The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment

Rothschild, B (2000). W. W. Norton & Co.

Traumatised people hold a memory of that trauma in their brains and bodies. This is the first book to link this phenomenon of somatic memory and the impact of trauma on the body. Reducing the chasm between scentific theory and clinical practice, Rothschild presents techniques for addressing the memory in the body.

Recovery From ‘Psychosis’

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In making sense of what has been deemed as ‘psychosis’ it is essential that we see so called symptoms as profoundly meaningful attempts to survive overwhelming and distressing life experiences.  There is inherent meaning in madness which is inextricably bound up in unresolved, traumatic experiences. These meanings may be communicated in a number of highly symbolic, metaphorical and literal ways and need to be untangled, teased out and examined within the context of the person’s life history. Each voice is an echo of the person’s experience so an attitude of curiosity, understanding and compassion towards all voices is the best stance as it will encourage and support internal communication and ultimately, self acceptance.

This work demands seeing the world and human experience in new ways including an understanding that reality is shaped by experience. This, combined with a willingness to view life through the lens of the person’s subjective experience enables the co-creation of a shared meaning to emerge, deepening mutual understanding and leading to increasing acceptance of self and other.  To support and nurture healing from ‘psychosis’, faith in the possibility of recovery is vital.

The Tale of An Ordinary Little Girl

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Psychosis Journal CoverThe Tale of an Ordinary Little Girl won the 2010 Award for Best Paper in the Second Volume of Psychosis (Category B: Experienced-based articles).

Hearing voices, self-harm, eating “disorders” and dissociation, when viewed objectively, are frequently classified as symptoms of serious mental illnesses and disordered personalities that require treatment, eradication and cure.

This convenient societal solution to the complex problem of endemic childhood abuse requires that victims of abuse endure further insult to injury and become the problem to be dealt with.

By tracing the roots of so-called “symptoms” back to their origins in traumatic childhood events and having the courage to bear witness to painful truths, a more accurate, humane and respectful picture emerges which reframes “symptoms” as essential survival techniques.

The mark of a responsible society and responsive services is the willingness to share collective responsibility for these experiences, to honour them, support them and learn from them at all levels.

Living With Voices: An Anthology of 50 Voice Hearers Stories of Recovery

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Living With Voices Book CoverA new analysis of the hearing voices experience outside the illness model resulted in accepting and making sense of voices. This study of 50 stories forms the evidence for this successful new approach to working with voice hearers.

At the heart of this book are the stories of fifty people who have recovered from the distress of hearing voices. They have overcome the disabling social and psychiatric attitudes towards voice hearing and have also fought with themselves to accept and make sense of the voices. They have changed their relationship with their voices in order to reclaim their lives.

All the people in this book describe their recovery; how they now accept their voices as personal, and how they have learnt to cope with them and have changed their relationship with them. They have discovered that their voices are not a sign of madness but a reaction to problems in their lives that they couldn’t cope with, and they have found that there is a relationship between the voices and their life history, that the voices talk about problems that they haven’t dealt with – and that they therefore make sense.

Survival Techniques

/1 Comment/in , /by

Being proud of my experiences and being able to share them with others, challenges the stigma of having what are considered to be mental health problems, and means becoming a part of a collective voice to improve mental health services for all. This is both empowering and liberating, in itself.

Reclaiming Experience

/0 Comments/in , /by

Many of us who have received psychiatric treatment have found that it’s ‘blame the individual and blame the brain’ emphasis, has limited the way we can think about ourselves and our potentials. We are expected to be the silent recipients of treatment for disorders, and often, medication is the only option.  No-one asks, what do you think would help? – Our own expertise and wisdom about our lives is denied or ignored. Like naughty children we are told what to do, and then given contradictory opinions – that the only way to get better is to take medication, but that actually, we wilI never really get better anyway.

The bad brain emphasis in contemporary mental health ideology is that distress and confusion are best explained as unhealthy conditions, products of brain and cognitive faults. For example, personality disorder diagnosis implies that the chaos we can experience is due to a character fault and schizophrenia is presented as a terrible disease that we are passive victims of. We have progressed from blaming the behaviour of the child who is bullied and withdraws to blaming his brain and mind. Our attempts to find meaningful ways to live in an often distressing and confusing world, are not understood as creative, human responses to be valued and shared. Instead, the individual is pathologised, labelled and medicated.

Pages

Resources

/by

Please use the above links to browse some resources I hope you’ll find useful. These include organisations, websites, journals and books.

DVD Resource of the Month

Healing Homes:  An Alternative, Swedish Model for Healing Psychosis by Daniel Mackler

http://www.iraresoul.com/dvd2.html

 Healing Homes, a feature-length documentary film directed by Daniel Mackler, chronicles the work of the Family Care Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden — a program which, in this era of multi-drug cocktails and psychiatric diagnoses-for-life, helps people recover from psychosis without medication.

The organization, backed by over twenty years of experience, places people who have been failed by traditional psychiatry in host families — predominately farm families in the Swedish countryside — as a start for a whole new life journey.

Host families are chosen not for any psychiatric expertise, rather, for their compassion, stability, and desire to give back.  People live with these families for upwards of a year or two and become an integral part of a functioning family system.  Staff members offer clients intensive psychotherapy and provide host families with intensive supervision.

The Family Care Foundation eschews the use of diagnosis, works within a framework of striving to help people come safely off psychiatric medication, and provides their services, which operate within the context of Swedish socialized medicine, for free.

Healing Homes weaves together interviews with clients, farm families, and staff members to create both a powerful vision of medication-free recovery and an eye-opening critique of the medical model of psychiatry.

Print Resource of the Month

The Body Remembers:The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment

Rothschild, B (2000). W. W. Norton & Co.

Traumatised people hold a memory of that trauma in their brains and bodies. This is the first book to link this phenomenon of somatic memory and the impact of trauma on the body. Reducing the chasm between scentific theory and clinical practice, Rothschild presents techniques for addressing the memory in the body.

Recovery From ‘Psychosis’

/6 Comments/in , /by

In making sense of what has been deemed as ‘psychosis’ it is essential that we see so called symptoms as profoundly meaningful attempts to survive overwhelming and distressing life experiences.  There is inherent meaning in madness which is inextricably bound up in unresolved, traumatic experiences. These meanings may be communicated in a number of highly symbolic, metaphorical and literal ways and need to be untangled, teased out and examined within the context of the person’s life history. Each voice is an echo of the person’s experience so an attitude of curiosity, understanding and compassion towards all voices is the best stance as it will encourage and support internal communication and ultimately, self acceptance.

This work demands seeing the world and human experience in new ways including an understanding that reality is shaped by experience. This, combined with a willingness to view life through the lens of the person’s subjective experience enables the co-creation of a shared meaning to emerge, deepening mutual understanding and leading to increasing acceptance of self and other.  To support and nurture healing from ‘psychosis’, faith in the possibility of recovery is vital.

The Tale of An Ordinary Little Girl

/3 Comments/in , /by

Psychosis Journal CoverThe Tale of an Ordinary Little Girl won the 2010 Award for Best Paper in the Second Volume of Psychosis (Category B: Experienced-based articles).

Hearing voices, self-harm, eating “disorders” and dissociation, when viewed objectively, are frequently classified as symptoms of serious mental illnesses and disordered personalities that require treatment, eradication and cure.

This convenient societal solution to the complex problem of endemic childhood abuse requires that victims of abuse endure further insult to injury and become the problem to be dealt with.

By tracing the roots of so-called “symptoms” back to their origins in traumatic childhood events and having the courage to bear witness to painful truths, a more accurate, humane and respectful picture emerges which reframes “symptoms” as essential survival techniques.

The mark of a responsible society and responsive services is the willingness to share collective responsibility for these experiences, to honour them, support them and learn from them at all levels.

Living With Voices: An Anthology of 50 Voice Hearers Stories of Recovery

/1 Comment/in , /by

Living With Voices Book CoverA new analysis of the hearing voices experience outside the illness model resulted in accepting and making sense of voices. This study of 50 stories forms the evidence for this successful new approach to working with voice hearers.

At the heart of this book are the stories of fifty people who have recovered from the distress of hearing voices. They have overcome the disabling social and psychiatric attitudes towards voice hearing and have also fought with themselves to accept and make sense of the voices. They have changed their relationship with their voices in order to reclaim their lives.

All the people in this book describe their recovery; how they now accept their voices as personal, and how they have learnt to cope with them and have changed their relationship with them. They have discovered that their voices are not a sign of madness but a reaction to problems in their lives that they couldn’t cope with, and they have found that there is a relationship between the voices and their life history, that the voices talk about problems that they haven’t dealt with – and that they therefore make sense.

Survival Techniques

/1 Comment/in , /by

Being proud of my experiences and being able to share them with others, challenges the stigma of having what are considered to be mental health problems, and means becoming a part of a collective voice to improve mental health services for all. This is both empowering and liberating, in itself.

Reclaiming Experience

/0 Comments/in , /by

Many of us who have received psychiatric treatment have found that it’s ‘blame the individual and blame the brain’ emphasis, has limited the way we can think about ourselves and our potentials. We are expected to be the silent recipients of treatment for disorders, and often, medication is the only option.  No-one asks, what do you think would help? – Our own expertise and wisdom about our lives is denied or ignored. Like naughty children we are told what to do, and then given contradictory opinions – that the only way to get better is to take medication, but that actually, we wilI never really get better anyway.

The bad brain emphasis in contemporary mental health ideology is that distress and confusion are best explained as unhealthy conditions, products of brain and cognitive faults. For example, personality disorder diagnosis implies that the chaos we can experience is due to a character fault and schizophrenia is presented as a terrible disease that we are passive victims of. We have progressed from blaming the behaviour of the child who is bullied and withdraws to blaming his brain and mind. Our attempts to find meaningful ways to live in an often distressing and confusing world, are not understood as creative, human responses to be valued and shared. Instead, the individual is pathologised, labelled and medicated.