[Being]

Hi all.

i've had a 30 year history of mental health difficulties (also some strange experiences in childhood) & a diagnosis of severe paranoid schizophrenia.

i have been exploring & more focused on an alternative healing path with it all for the past 13 years.

i personally take an integral/holistic view of my condition/experiences - bio/psycho/social/spiritual - that things are mediated across spirit - soul/psyche - physical body/brain - social/environmental. i don't see any either/or with it all, but rather that everything is interrelated & interdependent.
imo Carl Jung spoke a lot of sense on all these matters, as have others.

Current mainstream psychiatry primarily focuses on the physical - the physical body/brain. Psychological & social elements often seem secondary to that, & the areas of the soul & spirit are usually excluded.

Obviously it is impossible to argue a case for the spiritual with a materialist, as many now appear to be. Many people also seem fixed on the idea that 'functional' (no known/identifiable biological aetiology [cause]) mental health disorders are brain conditions - i don't think they primarily are - Not to exclude the physiological (biologic) aspects of them - although imo primarily in the vast majority of cases i think the primary aetiology is psychogenic (cause in the mind/psyche).

i've spent the past 10 years on-line trying to raise awareness of & explore the spiritual in mental health, to little avail. Am interested in other people thoughts on the matter. Thanks.