Considering the Alternatives

SANDY NAIMAN

It’s called a “turnaround moment.”

You discover there's hope. For the first time you realize there is Recovery from a serious mental illness. Even schizophrenia, if that’s your diagnosis. Even bipolar disorder.

It can be the most mind boggling realization you’ve ever had if, for years, you’ve been told, brainwashed, that you have a mental illness and it’s a chemical imbalance in your brain and you’re never going to get better and it’s chronic and there’s nothing you can do but manage it with drugs, like you would manage diabetes by injecting insulin. And it's a deteriorating state.

Then you discover Mental Health Recovery.

I just walked in the door after an exhausting day at the “International Recovery Perspectives: Action on Alternatives” conference. More than 340 people from all over North America gathered at the University of Toronto’s Hart House to engage with more than 40 speakers from Ireland, the UK, Germany, Sweden, Ghana, the US and all over Canada as they explored “critical and creative leading edge approaches” to Mental Health Recovery.

“There is hope for people in mental distress,” one of the conference organizers Brian McKinnon said. “Even for those who have been given a bleak prognosis."

Recovery is a different paradigm. It's not only a departure in many ways from the biomedical, mainstream medical model of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology, it's expanding all the time.

It's an exciting body of alternatives that question long-held, entrenched, yet unproven assumptions about mental illnesses:

Consider...

• an alternative to the traditional, paternalistic mainstream medical model where doctors know best and their “patients” are treated as if they have no insight.

• an alternative to the same-old way governments fund and make policy decisions.

• a more critical, less complacent approach to problems within the medical model.

• access to more psychological supports and a re-integration of psychological training within psychiatry.

• Recovery-oriented peer-driven, diverse, responsive services that respect human rights and personal dignity.

There is a caveat. As empowering, user-friendly and effective as these alternatives are and can be, recovery is not simple or straightforward. It’s a different journey for everyone. Challenging for survivors, family members, and those working in the field.

“People struggle long and hard for personal recovery. Creating and sustaining alternative supports is an uphill-battle. Much of the good work is under appreciated and unsupported by mainstream mental health,” McKinnon said.

Stay tuned for more about this conference.  My mind is spinning.

Comments

[Andrew McDonald]

Sandy -

First - What a great blog! I've read a few posts and comments and haven't finished reading the rest due to the excitement I feel at this moment.

A few comments have struck a chord within me:

1) Those with mental health issues DO whisper to the 'safe' people.

2) Those with mental health issues DO tend to hide behind a pill and NOT talk about it. Talk/writing IS permanent. A bottle of pills can be hidden.

This takes me to my point (especially on my choice of threads to post on): Awareness. The general 'normal' "non-mental health patients" of the public......the 83% of them out there have no idea what many mental health issues are, what they mean, how they affect individuals and how they affect those around the patients themselves. The general public only knows what they see on television or on a street corner: The man who is homeless downtown talking to himself. The 'jumper' talked down from a highrise. The 'crazies' out there.

I find your article on Mental Health Recovery quite reassuring.

It shows that new initiatives on assistance and education are continually forthcoming. YOU are making a difference in public education and new programs will make a difference in patient's lives.

Thank you for making this effort.

[Harold A. Maio]

I am very pleased that this blog does not employ labels.

I reviewed the language of the conference on recovery, and found far too much of it adopted from the systems in need of change, humanizing.

This was my comment to one of the speakers, a friend from Germany, and an organizer:

From what I have read of the language, we have made no real progress. Given the opportunity to express ourselves, we continue the labels pasted upon us, ourselves applying the glue.

[Don McKay]

Great Blog!
It has been taboo for so long to speak about mental health. I grew up with a mother in small town Saskatchewan who hid her issues while we labelled them--manic/depressive, obsessive/compulsive, "twisted"....
No more--Sandy speaks to the real people who deal with loved ones who simply have difficulty coping in the real world. It's not an easy discussion but one that we all need to address.
My mother's issues are not gone, just a little more frail and fractured at 88 years of age. For our generation, trying to love and care for someone who has never been able to reciprocate is a difficult/precarious time.
Thank you, Sandy, for helping us understand just how little we can do but how much we need to give. I feel better reading your blog and knowing that there are others out there who care and contemplate the consequences of mental illness and the side issues.

[Mrs. Onion]

Hello Sandy,
I wrote to you before and signed myself "Onion" – not ashamed but not sure what I was getting into.
Now after following your eye opening and enlightening research, I can't tell you the relief I feel to know that I'm not crazy!
What IS crazy is that two generations of people have been "brainwashed" into thinking that, "If you have one or both parents who are bipolar YOU ARE 99% guaranteed to have the genetic chemical imbalance for which there is no cure and it will get worse as you age. Why will you not accept this? We have medication to help you! If you were diabetic wouldn't you take insulin?"
Sandy, I went home from each appointment feeling like I was a broken doll. I would sob and drive through tears blurring my windshield like rain. I would "buck up" and peel potatoes and put supper on for my family. Fortunately doing chores out in the barn let me TALK OUT LOUD TO MY PET HORSES AND MY POT BELLY PIG. They won't tell anyone that I'm a manic depressive! They love me, just because... Now, it is dinnertime back inside the house and I can smile and be a solid stable mother and wife and not show that my confidence is shattered each time I come home from my appointment.
Why did I put myself through all that mental anguish for three years? A depression hit at menopause, I had had baby blues with my first son's birth but not the second. I had been depressed for a few months through my divorce and I thought I should get some PROFESSIONAL help. I had heard about anti-depressants and thought why not try and see if they work. Well, isn't it odd that I would tell the psychiatrist every spring that I didn't notice any change and wanted off these three different prescriptions over a three year period. And no, I didn't think I wanted to go on Lithium yet. I knew he thought I was in denial and that made it feel even worse.
Sandy, I am so proud I had the strength to trust my common sense and take a break from those dreaded appointments and try an experiment with myself. I basically said, "OK, girl, let's just see how crazy you can get. Don't govern your thoughts or actions and see if you do anything outlandish, arrogant or at the other end of the pole, hole up in bed or not be able to function."
Well, guess what! It has been five years and I have never run up credit cards or gotten into family scenes. I work hard, sleep well, eat well and thank God every day for giving me the gumption to believe in myself. Sometimes I think it was anger and a burst of adrenalin that made me fight for myself and not let myself be pigeon-holed by the professional "thinkers of the day."
I remember thinking once that if this is the way I am and God loves me, then why do I care what Dr. So-and-so thinks. He said that one percent of the world is bipolar and regardless of Sun or climate, that is just the way it is and "they" don't know why. Well, how come it seems like everyone in my town of Orillia seems to have been diagnosed. Is it something in the water, or are we so complacent that we let psychiatrists play God with our hearts and souls?
If there is an increase in mental illness as reported on www.mentalhealth.com? If so, then we had better be focused on why, instead of thinking that it is normal to be giving our young people antidepressants!
I have a feeling that you will one day be awarded the Order of Canada for having the guts to open Pandora's Box and in so doing help give courage to so many people, to help bring about change and enlightenment that will alleviate the emotional and mental pain that so many people are suffering in silence.
I hope our paths will cross someday. Keep up the good fight.