Integral/Holistic view & approach to schizophrenia

[Being]

Originally Posted by Scommstech

I quite agree. My brother, now sadly gone was schizophrenic. He was plagued with "voices" and only managed to have some sort of life due to the "dampening" medication he took daily.
Many cases of schizophrenia can be controlled by medication but I have never seen or heard of any genuine cases of schizophrenia being completely cured by medication alone. Even lobotomy, which was considered the last resort and practiced at the hospital that I worked at appeared to have limited success.
There have been cases of people using social drugs that have triggered off schizophrenia and after kicking the habit the schizophrenia has disappeared but I would not really class them as having a genuine schizophrenia problem.

It is a very complex picture with what comes under mental health, the psychoses & schizophrenia.

i'm diagnosed with schizophrenia, & went through a very severe case of it all.

It seems to be individual in ways concerning etiology & prognosis, & there is still a lot within certain areas to know, But in regards to far more humane & compassionate treatment of people suffering mental health difficulties, i do feel that far far more could be done to help people in kind & practical ways.

[Scommstech]

Originally Posted by Being

It is a very complex picture with what comes under mental health, the psychoses & schizophrenia.

i'm diagnosed with schizophrenia, & went through a very severe case of it all.

It seems to be individual in ways concerning etiology & prognosis, & there is still a lot within certain areas to know, But in regards to far more humane & compassionate treatment of people suffering mental health difficulties, i do feel that far far more could be done to help people in kind & practical ways.

The problem is that doctors are taught how to treat disease with little understanding as to the cause of disease. The medical profession is strongly influenced by the drug company's who make billions from sales.
They would never endorse a treatment that was free if it meant a loss of profit for them. That is the real reason that the medical profession is encouraged to shy away from non standard treatments. They can even go as far as to ridicule a treatment if it poses a threat to their system. Unfortunately it would probably also void a doctors medical insurance if they prescribed non standard treatments.
In time a more constructive approach will emerge that puts fact before fiction.
Always think positive, it is one of the best treatment that you can have.
All the best

[Being]

Originally Posted by Scommstech

The problem is that doctors are taught how to treat disease with little understanding as to the cause of disease. The medical profession is strongly influenced by the drug company's who make billions from sales.
They would never endorse a treatment that was free if it meant a loss of profit for them. That is the real reason that the medical profession is encouraged to shy away from non standard treatments. They can even go as far as to ridicule a treatment if it poses a threat to their system. Unfortunately it would probably also void a doctors medical insurance if they prescribed non standard treatments.
In time a more constructive approach will emerge that puts fact before fiction.
Always think positive, it is one of the best treatment that you can have.
All the best

A quarter of the UK population suffer some form of mental health difficulty at some point in their lives. 20% of the UK is diagnosed with a mental illness & is on permanently prescribed psychiatric drugs, & 50% of the country are on one or more permanently prescribed pharmaceutical drug for either / & general & mental ill health. 10% of them / the UK also suffers some form of dual diagnosis (addiction with co-morbid mental illness), Not to mention the 'separate' staggering levels of alcoholism & addiction. It's at epidemic levels. In the USA it's even worse, 40% of them are diagnosed as mentally ill & on psychiatric drugs - a total of 80% of their population is on one or more permanently prescribed pharmaceutical drug for either / & general & mental ill health.

These figures are set to massively increase. It's all incredibly good for the profits of drug companies (over 100 Billion pounds a year) & medical professionals, But is all this really sane, balanced, healthy & 'normal'?

i find it a shocking state of affairs.

[Scommstech]

Originally Posted by Being

A quarter of the UK population suffer some form of mental health difficulty at some point in their lives. 20% of the UK is diagnosed with a mental illness & is on permanently prescribed psychiatric drugs, & 50% of the country are on one or more permanently prescribed pharmaceutical drug for either / & general & mental ill health. 10% of them / the UK also suffers some form of dual diagnosis (addiction with co-morbid mental illness), Not to mention the 'separate' staggering levels of alcoholism & addiction. It's at epidemic levels. In the USA it's even worse, 40% of them are diagnosed as mentally ill & on psychiatric drugs - a total of 80% of their population is on one or more permanently prescribed pharmaceutical drug for either / & general & mental ill health.

These figures are set to massively increase. It's all incredibly good for the profits of drug companies (over 100 Billion pounds a year) & medical professionals, But is all this really sane, balanced, healthy & 'normal'?

i find it a shocking state of affairs.

In the late 50's when I doing my RMN training a psychiatrist said that for men 1 in 10 would have mental problems at sometime in their lives. I seems far worse today.
It is a sad fact that few drugs have no side effects and a cocktail of drugs prescribed or social probably introduce further complications. I still firmly believe that medical science is on the wrong tack. The non drug but "mental" understanding of disease including mental problems is in my opinion the only way forward.
Be positive, firm, and confident. You do have the inbuilt fortitude to overcome these sort of challenges, it is part of our core design.
Regards
Harry
Regards

[Being]

Originally Posted by Scommstech

In the late 50's when I doing my RMN training a psychiatrist said that for men 1 in 10 would have mental problems at sometime in their lives. I seems far worse today.
It is a sad fact that few drugs have no side effects and a cocktail of drugs prescribed or social probably introduce further complications. I still firmly believe that medical science is on the wrong tack. The non drug but "mental" understanding of disease including mental problems is in my opinion the only way forward.
Be positive, firm, and confident. You do have the inbuilt fortitude to overcome these sort of challenges, it is part of our core design.
Regards
Harry
Regards

i have been medicated most of the past 27 years. i have battled for 38 years with serious mental health difficulties.

It's hard. It's Not easy in this society for people with long term, severe & enduring mental health difficulties. There is very little in the way of proper & appropriate understanding & support. There is a plethora & myriad of opposing views, agendas & polemics on mental health, a lot on the internet, but also a lot within society itself. There is the whole Austerity / Welfare 'Reform' / Cuts agenda in the UK, that has made things incredibly difficult for people classed as mentally & / or physically disabled.

You have different people / groups arguing all kinds of opposing opinions & treatments on mental health - from biomedical, anti, critical / pro psychiatry, materialism & spiritual explanations, psychological, sociological, traumagenic - an endless argument & wrangling of different World views, agendas & ideologies. With the people actually suffering severe mental illness stuck in the middle of it all.

Personally i have been labelled crazy in a World that i see as Mad. In many ways i think that i am more sane than most people. But i have certain difficulties in functioning & coping & do need help & support.

[Scommstech]

Originally Posted by Being

i have been medicated most of the past 27 years. i have battled for 38 years with serious mental health difficulties.

It's hard. It's Not easy in this society for people with long term, severe & enduring mental health difficulties. There is very little in the way of proper & appropriate understanding & support. There is a plethora & myriad of opposing views, agendas & polemics on mental health, a lot on the internet, but also a lot within society itself. There is the whole Austerity / Welfare 'Reform' / Cuts agenda in the UK, that has made things incredibly difficult for people classed as mentally & / or physically disabled.

You have different people / groups arguing all kinds of opposing opinions & treatments on mental health - from biomedical, anti, critical / pro psychiatry, materialism & spiritual explanations, psychological, sociological, traumagenic - an endless argument & wrangling of different World views, agendas & ideologies. With the people actually suffering severe mental illness stuck in the middle of it all.

Personally i have been labelled crazy in a World that i see as Mad. In many ways i think that i am more sane than most people. But i have certain difficulties in functioning & coping & do need help & support.

I am inclined to agree with you about the state of support or understanding being offered by the medical profession. You do you seem a very intelligent and sensible person, which must make it even more frustrating for you.
I think that I will have a chat with the person who runs the local spiritual church. He is an ex RMN and a councillor and was the one who "cured" my friend's mental problem. The church have a healing session every Wednesday and he is very knowledgeable.
Stick in there,
Regards
Harry

[Being]

Originally Posted by Scommstech

I am inclined to agree with you about the state of support or understanding being offered by the medical profession. You do you seem a very intelligent and sensible person, which must make it even more frustrating for you.
I think that I will have a chat with the person who runs the local spiritual church. He is an ex RMN and a councillor and was the one who "cured" my friend's mental problem. The church have a healing session every Wednesday and he is very knowledgeable.
Stick in there,
Regards
Harry

Thanks Harry - i have been following a more disciplined recovery / healing / spiritual path for the past 16 years, & there has been progress. i have tried & looked into 'everything' - there isn't really any more of any categorical answer or resolution than there was. i just accept the condition / illness / diagnosis, take the pills & plod on as best that i can.

There hasn't been & isn't access to what i would consider a genuinely appropriate & comprehensive psychological help / support, & find it hard to see that there ever will be. People simply don't understand my experiences.

Within my life & on-line it has largely just been an endless stream of different opinions, judgements & projections. A few people / things have been more helpful but the endless polemical nature of these areas doesn't & hasn't helped. i have tried to raise awareness on far more comprehensive & humane integral / holistic understandings & approaches, been critical of the current society / system & tried to get a more open dialogue going, & to try & get people to look more at alternatives & possible solutions / better ways of doing things. i have undertaken a huge amount of social activism in many various ways.

The result of all that seems largely Zero - it hasn't / doesn't change the society / system. It doesn't alter the positions, opinions, agendas, assumptions & attitudes people already have. i have had a very small handful of people thank me for sharing information & links to resources that they have found personally helpful in their own healing, but largely i have come under a vast amount of criticism & personal attack for taking the position that i have.

i feel a bit better when i just drop all of it. i have been researching & collecting some playing card decks & various dice, & also looking more into science; astronomy, astrophysics, maths / calculus - just anything to focus on something different.

[Scommstech]

Originally Posted by Being

Thanks Harry - i have been following a more disciplined recovery / healing / spiritual path for the past 16 years, & there has been progress. i have tried & looked into 'everything' - there isn't really any more of any categorical answer or resolution than there was. i just accept the condition / illness / diagnosis, take the pills & plod on as best that i can.

There hasn't been & isn't access to what i would consider a genuinely appropriate & comprehensive psychological help / support, & find it hard to see that there ever will be. People simply don't understand my experiences.

Within my life & on-line it has largely just been an endless stream of different opinions, judgements & projections. A few people / things have been more helpful but the endless polemical nature of these areas doesn't & hasn't helped. i have tried to raise awareness on far more comprehensive & humane integral / holistic understandings & approaches, been critical of the current society / system & tried to get a more open dialogue going, & to try & get people to look more at alternatives & possible solutions / better ways of doing things. i have undertaken a huge amount of social activism in many various ways.

The result of all that seems largely Zero - it hasn't / doesn't change the society / system. It doesn't alter the positions, opinions, agendas, assumptions & attitudes people already have. i have had a very small handful of people thank me for sharing information & links to resources that they have found personally helpful in their own healing, but largely i have come under a vast amount of criticism & personal attack for taking the position that i have.

i feel a bit better when i just drop all of it. i have been researching & collecting some playing card decks & various dice, & also looking more into science; astronomy, astrophysics, maths / calculus - just anything to focus on something different.

I do sympathise with you. Of all the forums and post that I have read (not that many actually)yours are the most logical and constructive I've seen. I find it hard to imagine you with any "mental" problems.
From what I can gather many people who suffer this way have dabbled in areas best left alone. But this in itself gives a clue as to some cause and effect. If "mental" activity can cause something then mental activity can undo it.
Unfortunately to my knowledge my brother never dabbled or had any interest in spiritual type activity. He was not religious or such. The person who was "affected" and cured did dabble in spirituality, but there appears to be no obvious connection.
After reading Quantum's descriptions of how the brain functions and how the "wiring" connect and disconnect due to thought activity, I can only presume that many schizophrenics will have similar wiring problems irrespective of the root cause. I am still convinced that the right thoughts aimed at "normalising " the brains wiring can win the day. I don't want to sound too "way out" but Your body is flooded with stem cells just waiting to be programmed. If, and I say if you have a "doggy" wiring connection then stem cells are perfectly capable of rebuilding that connection. Just ask yourself why the body has stem cells. They are the body's spare building blocks. Doctors are using mechanical means to transport them but the body itself is far too sophisticated for this to have been the "designed" route. Mind is the real answerer. In time mind will deploy stem cells to repair any damage sustained. It is just that unlike some lobsters or lizards who do grow spare parts for themselves, we have never been taught that skill, but it is there.
All the best
Harry

[Gem]

What I looked at mostly in my studies in mental health was the relationship between normalcy and social order. I find the best articulation of this is exampling childhood diagnosis, where children who behave in ways that disrupt the social order of the classroom structure are deemed, in that context, to be abnormal, and will very likely receive a diagnosis and be medicated, once identified by the teaching staff and referred to a mental health specialist. One remarkable social experiment I read described the researcher striking up conversations with strangers and behaving in a way which was only very slightly uncommon. He merely rested his gaze on the person's ear instead of on their face in the 'normal way'. He reported that this slightly shifted gaze caused the person to behave strangely as they shifted their position in an attempt to make his gaze fall on their face, ie. they tried to 'normalise' the situation. In his conclusions, the researcher described how behaving in this slightly altered way was highly distressing for both him as the researcher and the individual he interacted with. It demonstrated that the anxiety surrounding madness concerns distressing the 'sane' just as much as it does the real lived distress of those who behave abnormally - or in other words, the one behaving abnormally caused abnormal behaviour in others, and hence is perceived as disruptive to normalcy, and in turn, the social order.

[Gem]

The main point the researcher made, as I interpreted it, was, he behaves in a way which slightly unusual, but the the people's response behaviour was more unusual than his. For example, he described people who turned a full 360 degrees as they tried to correct the social situation - and other examples where his slightly skewed gaze incited disproportionately unusual reactions. In the public view, within the tacit agreement of normalcy, it is still perceived the slight alteration of gaze is locale and cause 'madness', and not because the gazer was inane, but due to the inanity it incited in 'normal people'.

The experiment implies that madness might be the experience of an individual, but it isn't individually located. It is located beyond the narrow limits of the intricacies of social normalcy that enables our complex social order. Though it does imply something further.

Hence, we know know someone who experiences what are considered to be symptoms of a mental illness, and we might feel sorry for them, fear them, or something else, but on the whole, the social gaze turns to them and seeks the cause and location of the madness, attempting to assign it to a point somewhere, a neuron, a traumatic event, a chemical compound... a person... or in any case, uncover the reason for the madness.

I won't go too deeply into how reason is used to articulate madness, but all the power structures in current mental health systems place the 'knowers' within the voice of reason and the 'known' in the voice without reason... to become the discredited in contrast to the accredited.

This whole discourse of reason is the dictate of 'what's normal', and in that power structure, the school of psychiatry (and psychology) defines in structural terms what 'normal' looks like. Thus we have the very essence of sanity, the school of reason on insanity, deeming what is madness and what isn't in schools, in courtrooms, in hospitals, prisons, government departments and so on; structures which require tightly disciplined behaviours so as to maintain their procedural order.

As the limits of normalcy contract to be more narrowly defined, that deemed abnormal lies in the infinitely larger realm outside those confines, largely defining the normalcy within those confines, and the social structure disciplines itself internally as each individual internalises, as their personal normal, the shapes of their socio-structural environment. In modern times, the disciplinary mode is framed in terms of mental health, and the social problems, the structural problems, thus located in and caused by the individual - bodily and/or psychologically - rather than in ideologies, epistemologies, and indeed, cosmologies, of reasonable discourses.

This opens up the issue of madness, not as its location and cause, but as a non-local apparition with temporal and spacial dispersion, which further extends beyond space and time to conceptual and epistemological dimensions... as what we call knowledge, our cosmological conceptions, relegate truth as the foundation for normalcy - and where the truth is concerned, we open the moral dimension...