Integral/Holistic view & approach to schizophrenia

[Being]

MIA's Article on all this -

Results of a large government-funded study call into question current drug heavy approaches to treating people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The study, which the New York Times called “by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States,” found that patients who received smaller doses of antipsychotic drugs with individual talk therapy, family training, and support for employment and education had a greater reduction in symptoms as well as increases in quality of life, and participation in work and school than those receiving the current standard of care.

http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/10/...-more-therapy/

[Being]

http://disinfo.com/2015/10/can-madness-save-world/

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/...ave-the-world/

by Paris Williams

Over the years of my explorations into psychosis and human evolution, a very interesting irony became increasingly apparent. It is well known that people who fall into those deeply transformative and chaotic states typically referred to as “psychosis” often feel at different points throughout their journeys that they have received a special calling to save the world, or at least the human race. Indeed, this experience played a particularly prominent role in my own extreme states, as well as within those of at least two of my own family members. From a pathological perspective, this is often referred to as a kind of “delusion of grandeur,” though in my own research and writing, I have come to feel that the term “heroic (or messianic) striving” is generally more accurate and helpful. The great irony I have come to appreciate is that while I think it’s true that these individuals are often experiencing some degree of confusion, mixing up different realms of experience (for example, mixing up collective or archetypal realms with consensus reality, or confusing unitive consciousness with dualistic/egoic consciousness), I have come to feel that perhaps the key to saving the world, or at least the human species, may in fact actually be revealed within these extreme experiences. To better explain this, let me first go over some key concepts.

[Rest in Link]

[Being]

Seth Farber has also written extensively on these areas - as have others -

http://www.sethhfarber.com/

[Being]

Restoring Study 329 -

Scientific Integrity Through Data Based Medicine

http://study329.org/in-the-news/

[Being]

Evolutionary Advantage to Schizophrenia? -

https://psychneuro.wordpress.com/201...schizophrenia/

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/0709...s070903-6.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2632450/

[Being]

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/artic...08/4327692.htm

[Being]

An interesting & balanced article on an integral approach to spiritual emergency -

http://www.brantcortright.com/articl...merge ncy.pdf

[Being]

"Our essence is beyond space and time, aware of itself as a part of infinity. I'll call this Spirit

This essence puts a very small part of itself - the soul - into the world of space and time, incarnation, and so develops its consciousness through experiencing duality.
After hundreds or even thousands of incarnations, the soul is ready to merge into its spirit and continue its evolution in worlds beyond our imagination.

The soul itself creates another layer - the personality or ego - which is the vehicle of consciousness for the soul in one particular life time.

In Western culture the soul is strongly encouraged to forget its own identity, and to identify itself solely with its personality. This makes for a cheap, obedient workforce.

Spiritual emergence in this model occurs when identification with the personality/ego is broken, even for only a moment. The personality/ego has to come to terms with the realisation that there is much more to life than it had realised (made real).

Once this limited identification is broken, the ego will desire to return to its old way of life, yet usually has to concede it has a bigger purpose than it wants to know about. Consensual reality no longer works for it, so it must experiment and create a larger map of reality.

Often ego inflation occurs at this stage. The ego has a strong sense of separation, yet has had a glimpse of the immensity of the universal mind. It may then decide it is the messiah or God or a chosen saviour. As a spirit, it is indeed God, however as a soul and ego, it is still evolving to become God incarnate.

A spiritual emergence is a part of the evolutionary process when awareness shifts from ego to soul. With mindfulness, we can observe if our thoughts, emotions and actions arise from our ego - that strong sense of a separate me - or from the soul.

Eventually, the ego has had enough of suffering, and is ready to accept it is a part of a much greater being than it believed itself to be, and to be grateful for that."

[Being]

what implications does this have for mental health?

http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/12/1...ontrols-genes/

The fascinating and recent discovery of a new, second DNA code last week further lends credence to what metaphysical scientists have been saying for millennia — the body speaks two different languages.

Since the genetic code was deciphered in the 1960s, researchers have assumed that it was used exclusively to write information about proteins.

But biologists have suspected for years that some kind of epigenetic inheritance occurs at the cellular level. The different kinds of cells in our bodies provide an example. Skin cells and brain cells have different forms and functions, despite having exactly the same DNA.

[Rest in Link]

[Being]

http://jca.asn.au/wp-content/uploads...andMadness.pdf

http://theshakespeareblog.com/2012/0...its-treatment/

Shakespeare was clearly fascinated by mental illness, many characters displaying a variety of symptoms from Lear’s madness, Jaques’ melancholy, Timon’s bitter cursing, Macbeth’s visions and Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking, to the obsessiveness of Leontes.

It’s usually accepted that Shakespeare was influenced in medical matters by his son in law, the renowned doctor John Hall. Some of his patients suffer from a kind of mental illness which he calls “hypochondriac melancholy”, combined with physical symptoms such as fever. According to his Casebook, patients were offered his usual combinations of bloodletting and purgatives, as if curing the physical symptoms would also cure the mental ones.

[How far we've progressed. lol]