Biologically speaking, how our pets heal us...

I cannot fathom the number of hours I spend here in my book-lined study in front of my iMac – writing for you! 

Under my desk, a simple pine Parsons table with no drawers, lies Riley, my five-and-a-half-year-old Dandie Dinmont Terrier. Always.

He makes all my work, which is also my passion, perfect. I love being here because he's always here with me, lying at my feet – a warm cuddly reminder of his loyalty and love for me. 

Sometimes he gives my toes a bath with his affectionate licks. Other times, he sleeps curled up, contentedly. If I get up, he raises his head. If I leave the room, he follows me. He is always with me, body and soul, wherever I am, whatever I do. Steadfast. My constant companion. Joined, latched on, like a baby. 

He loves me. Adores me. Not just because I feed him and groom him. He depends on me. And I adore him. I find holding him in my arms and stroking him the most relaxing activity in the world. We have the perfect bond. 

Right? Wrong!

It's all chemistry. Neurochemistry. Oxytocin. The hormone of love. 

I remember first reading about oxytocin and writing a story about it for The Toronto Sun in 1993, sparked by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times science writer Natalie Angier's November 2, 1993 story What Makes a Parent Put Up With It All?

Meg Daley Olmert read that same story – and it changed her life.

Back then, neuroscientists were on the threshold of their investigations into brain chemistry and, in this case, human parental-social bonding.

"Oxytocin is familiar to doctors as the hormone that spurs birth contractions and milk production in women... But lately scientists have realized that the power of the hormones extends far beyond physiology," Angier wrote.

"'Nature is conservative, and this a beautiful example of that... The same peptides that are important for things like uterine contradictions and feeding an infant are also important for monogamous social bonds and parental behaviour,'" Angier quoted National Institute of Mental Health (NIMI) neuroscientist, and now NIMI director Dr. Thomas Insel as saying.

Angier was reporting primarily on what scientists were beginning to discover about human-to-human bonding, through their studies of animals and in some cases, "measuring women's blood levels of oxytocin before and during pregnancy." 

But she concluded then, that many of these findings were still highly speculative.

Meanwhile, Meg Daley Olmert, a native New Yorker, was always fascinated with animals. She was born with a natural way with them. She worked with veterinarians, and later with National Geographic Television, watching how people and wild animals interact. Endlessly fascinated.

In 1993, actress and conservationist Stephanie Powers hired her to develop a series on the history of animals and humans. Olmert's research led her to scientists who were studying the therapeutic healing effects of having people with heart disease and mental illnesses engage with animals.

She witnessed how young boys with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders were calmer and more attentive when paired with or even just in the company of rabbits, turtles, gerbils and doves. She started asking questions and discovered what we all now know and almost take for granted. 

That our interactions with animals can lower our heart rate and blood pressure. 

She started asking why? How did this biologically happen?

No one knew. Olmert, it seems, was the first person to seriously ask those questions and pursue the answers.

That's when she read Angier's 1993 New York Times story. 

Instead of following Angier's lead and tracing the scientists investigating human-to-human bonding, Olmert began her own personal odyssey – an investigation of the human-animal bond and the power of the hormone oxytocin in this immutable bond.

She contacted the same scientists Angier had interviewed, those working with animals who released oxytocin, but invariably got only so far, before hitting dead-ends. 

In 1993, research into neurochemistry and human behaviour was booming. (Today, it's booming even louder.)

More and more questions were haunting Olmert. 

Why did animals have this obvious calming effect on humans? How did it happen biologically? What was the history of this bond? How did humans first domesticate wild animals? 

Oxytocin, it would seem, was the key, she surmised, but no one was studying this particular phenomenon scientifically. 

It was years before she finally found the scientific hook she needed. 

In 2003, in South Africa, two researchers had actually measured blood pressure levels and chemistry in 18 humans and dogs before, during and after warm, friendly interactions.

They found that oxytocin in both humans and dogs practically doubled. That meant that pets are one of the most powerful triggers of oxytocin, this "hormone of love" in humans.

I've known that since I was 17 in the Spring 1966 – though I certainly had no idea why. Could barely think clearly about almost anything. My mother had bought me my first dog, a two-year-old retired Yorkshire Terrier show dog. Derry was the sweetest, gentlest, kindest little fellow I've ever known. She felt, instinctively, that having the responsibility of caring for him would help me recover – heal me – after seven tumultuous, mind-numbing months in The Clarke Institute of Psychiatry after my first and by-far worst-ever psychotic episode.

Mother knew best. 

Derry did. From then on, I was utterly smitten with dogs. I've had six, including Riley and his mischievous female companion, Lucy. 

Their amazing predecessor, Murphy the Wonder Dog, a poodle/shih-tzu cross was a St. John's Ambulance Therapy Dog. For several years, we went to the adolescent and adult psychiatric wards at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre – no one else had the nerve – where I witnessed first-hand how he calmed agitated and anxious patients by simply rolling over on his back and luxuriating as they rubbed his tummy.

I cannot live without a dog in my life.

For those of us living with psychiatric diagnoses, the repercussions of emotional trauma and mental health issues, our pets have long been our most loyal living companions. Stroking them calms us more easily and effortlessly – more safely – than any psychotropic drug. While mental illnesses have a sorry history of socially marginalizing us, our pets are oblivious to this discrimination and prejudice. It doesn't compute with them. 

All they want is to connect with us. Bond with us. To be touched and to touch us.

Animals, especially our pet dogs and cats, are often our significant others. They love us more divinely than any human possibly can. Without explanation. They understand us on a visceral level that cannot be matched by any psychiatrist or psychotherapist or even close relatives. Even, dare I say, a spouse. Without words. Babies. Like little children who never grow up. No wonder we anthropomorphize them.

Spell the word "dog" backwards and you have "god". The origin of the word "dog" remains one of the greatest etymological mysteries of the English language. I wonder why.

There's more to the animal-human bond than biology and neuroscience, I'm sure. Just as there's more to the human-human bond than biology and neuroscience. But, we are still on the threshold of our understanding of these complex, always unique relationships. Still learning. There's so much more to learn, with each new discovery. 

Our world of knowledge is expanding exponentially and it's often overwhelming for me. But I'm curious. That's why I keep an open mind.

The healing power of dogs has been studied and celebrated, but Meg Daley Olmert's landmark book, Made for Each Other (The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond) published in February 2009 (Da Capo Press,$30) is the first to seriously examine the biology and neuroscience in the manifold bonds between animals and us.

She will be giving an exclusive lecture about her research findings on Saturday, June 6 from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Pawsway Pet Discovery Centre near Toronto's Harbourfront Centre on the shore of Lake Ontario, at 245 Queen's Quay West. 

Tickets are $40 before June 5 and $45 at the door. Call (416) 360-PAWS (7297) to reserve. Seating is limited. 

Signed, specially discounted copies of her book will be there.

And so will I.

P.S. Good News: Commenting is fixed. I long to hear from you. All is well with the world! :–)

Flying-High on "Next to Normal" ...

I'm Broadway-bound and here's the scoop! It's cool. 

On May 12, the publicist for the Broadway musical "Next to Normal" sent me a personal email. 

"This show, which was recently nominated for 11 Tony awards, has a very unlikely subject matter for a musical – it focuses on a woman living with bipolar disorder and the effects it has on her family," he said.

He attached a link to a fascinating "must-read" New York Times story about the show's depiction of mental illness and then added: "I think your readers would be interested in this show and we would love to invite you and a guest to see the show, if you are in the NYC area anytime soon."

How about that?

Besides being a mite shocked as to how he found me, I couldn't agree more. You would be very interested, I'm sure, in Broadway's first mainstream musical – a rock musical, actually – about manic depression. 

But... until I received his invitation and two complimentary tickets, I hadn't planned to be in NYC "anytime soon," though I already knew all about Next to Normal. 

Originally, it opened at the 2005 New York Musical Theatre Festival, titled Feeling Electric – Up the Dose – "Darkly funny and brutally honest, this powerful new musical chronicles one family's personal battle to cure a mother of her long-term depression, with the controversial help of one hotshot young doctor who prescribes electric shock therapy as her last resort treatment."

One of my cousins who lives in Manhattan and frequents the theatre saw that production and said "it blew me away."

It's come along way, since then, when tickets were $15 each and it ran for only six performances. 

When the newly-named Next to Normal opened at the off-Broadway Second Stage Theatre in February 2008, Ben Brantley, chief theatre critic of the New York Times, wrote: "To watch this tale of a haunted housewife (beautifully played by Alice Ripley) and the household she in turn haunts is to ride a speeding roller coaster of responses. One minutes you're rolling your eyes; the next, you're wiping them. When the show ends, you're probably doing both at the same time."

With direction by Michael Grief, who also directed Rent and Grey Gardens – I saw the latter on Broadway in 2007 – the current revamped Broadway production of Next to Normal at the Booth Theatre is a "brave, breathtaking musical," Brantley wrote in his April 16, 2009 New York Times review. It "focuses squarely on the pain that cripples the members of a suburban family, and never for a minute does it let you escape the anguish at the core of their lives."

  

It's not "your standard feel-good musical" he said, which is probably why I was offered a couple of complimentary tickets. Ticket sales have vastly improved since the show received 11 Tony Award nominations – all the major ones, including Best Musical. 

That's not why I've decided to fly down to Manhattan for the day to see this show. I want to share my impressions with you. Brantley, to the best of my knowledge, has never been diagnosed with a bipolar disorder. I want to judge for myself. Through my experience. Not the least of which is that I, too, am a suburban housewife (well, sort of) with a husband and 22-year-old stepdaughter. 

And also... winging to New York for the day to see a Broadway show is nothing new for me. In 1969, I flew down to see the original Broadway production of Hair, which opened in 1968 and is now another Tony-nominated revival on Broadway. Theatre producer Marlene Smith hired me to write the program notes for Toronto's first 1985 production of Cats which had opened on Broadway in 1982. On both occasions, I jetted down to La Guardia early in the morning, taxied into Manhattan, had lunch and caught a matinee – then went back to the airport and was home before midnight. It's a kick, believe me.

So, I'm pulling the same routine and I'll be reporting and giving you my own review. By the way, I've reviewed theatre before – I'm not a neophyte – but this time, I'll be watching closely for authenticity. Hollywood has an abysmal record recreating characters with mental illnesses who are remotely close to real. I'm a huge fan of Tara in the new HBO series United States of Tara – but she's an artist. (Think Vincent Van Gogh.) In this show, we have a suburban housewife and the creative team did their homework, apparently, and created genuine characters. We'll see.

This show cuts even closer to the bone, for me. 

Stay tuned. I'll be getting back to you.

*    *    *

On the British front – I jwant to report that I've become a member of Rethink and Time to Change and I've made connections with the heads of several other agencies there, thanks to social activist Robert Ashton. In the coming weeks, I'll be branching out even further – to Australia and New Zealand. 

Wish me luck. And let me know what you think and what you're interested in learning about:

• How other countries' approach mental health and wellness, and mental illnesses  
• How they challenge discrimination  
• How people like us, with psychiatric diagnoses, emotional problems, mental illnesses and disorders are "treated" 
• How we can "heal" 
• How they define "Recovery" 

As far as I'm concerned, you never know, unless you ask. Here, in North America, we think we're the centre of the world – and we're not. I'm curious about other G8 countries with national mental health strategies. I know Australia and New Zealand are even more evolved than Britain. Certainly more evolved than the U.S. and Canada – where the neurosciences currently rule, along with the drug companies.

Something's gotta give. Let's keep the dialogue going. I want to hear your thoughts and ideas. 

I would love your comments, but there is a problem with the blog commenting function right now. If you have a comment that you would like posted, please contact me by email – let me know – and I'll arrange it, until this situation is resolved. 

Trust me, the powers-that-be at The Toronto Star are working on it.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Have a great meantime!

My adventures "across the pond" ... (part two)

This is the continuation of my post on Tuesday. It's about what happened as a result of my early morning curiosity getting the better of me and my overwhelming desire to broaden my perspectives on mental health and wellness... beyond North America.

You'll recall that I've been feeling claustrophobic. Itching to go beyond North America and join up with other non-profit agencies in Britain challenging mental health discrimination and "Working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life."

Here, there are too many barriers to change, too many old stereotypes, too many unfounded fears. There is still too much discrimination and prejudice. It's time to start dismantling them in a way that's healthy and productive. To look beyond our own borders to other countries and learn from them. We can be a global community.

To be honest with you, I'm not convinced that turning mental illnesses and mental health issues into brain diseases is the way to go and that's the direction we're going here.  

You will remember, on Sunday morning, I awoke after a wonderful night's sleep. I typed "mental health recovery" in the BBC news search engine and found myself on BBC's Mental Health page.

I ended up on Skype, clad only in my pink nightie, talking to the renown social and business entrepreneur Robert Ashton. Let us say that when he appeared on my 24-inch iMac screen in full-colour, live and staring back at me, barely awake, and barely covered-up, my face blushed to matched the colour of my pink night gown. 

Here's Part two...

Robert Ashton and I had a good chat, despite my embarrassment. He smiled a lot, but he's going to help me to join Rethink, a 30-year-old charity dedicated to "working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life."

He's also linking me up to other British mental health charities that for decades have been fighting discrimination and prejudice, fear and ignorance while helping the one in four of us who live with mental health issues every day.

I discovered that Rethink – one of the largest of these charities – only allows Brits to join. So, I'm hoping Robert will help me join, as a Canadian. That will give me and you, too, a totally different perspective on Mental Health and Recovery. Robert has important connections with the British mental health community because he's involved in "spreading the word" – one of his social entrepreneurial passions. He also lives with depression.

Robert's definition of "entrepreneurship" is very enlightened:

"I'm a business writer, speaker, broadcaster with a passion for all that enterprise can deliver," he wrote to me in a Facebook exchange. "You don't have to start a business to be entrepreneurial, just get it into your head that you are in control of your life and stop letting others lead you where you don't want to go!"

One of his connections is British mental health activist Dawn Willis, Vice Chair, Regional Committee, at Rethink, Mental Health Services.

Robert arranged for us to meet on Facebook and we've already become "friends" – we have 13 mutual Facebook "friends", I discovered. The international community of activists and advocates is remarkably small. I'm hoping Dawn will help me and perhaps, I can help her. We can help each other. Communicate and collaborate. Share our ideas and learn from each other.

Synergy. 1 + 1 = 3. You know. Two heads are better than one. 

We have to do something, here, on this side of the Atlantic. Talking Therapies are big in Britain. There's more to mental health there than PILLS. I'm getting very bored and increasingly upset with the neuroscientific approach that's overpowering psychiatry here in North America. 

ENOUGH! We've got to make some changes. How to go about that process? We have to voice our concerns. And if not us, who will? We have to raise our voices. Collectively. We have to start agitating for changes. Healthy changes that include all approaches to mental health, including group therapy and peer support. 

Like a thoughtful and careful and prolonged period of diagnosis and a 60-minute hour psychotherapy session instead of 15 minutes – The McDonaldization of Psychiatry, according to my friend, Tufts University author, poet and clinical psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ron Pies. He's also Editor-in-Chief of Psychiatric Times, the world's largest online psychiatric journal with more than 41,000 readers worldwide.

Pies is sounding a call for the survival of his profession. In Great Britain, there's a strong post-psychiatry movement afoot with psychiatrist Philip Thomas at the helm. I attended several sessions with Dr. Thomas last June at a Toronto International Alternatives to Recovery Conference.

Even my York University "friend" Julie Gazzola is excited about this prospect of my linking up with the British Rethink movement and other British organizations committed to change through education and communication.

Here's her reaction via Facebook – "Good for you, that's great! I worked as a social worker on a children-with-disabilities team. I loved my time in England. And yes, talking therapies are much bigger there. It's an interesting place."

So, I await word of my pending membership in Rethink. In the meantime, let's move forward. Let's branch out and expand our community here at Coming Out Crazy. Let's see what's happening 'across the pond'. Let's go global. Isn't that what blogging is all about? Social Media for Social Change to benefit the greater good of society. Community.

We can learn so much from each other. It's about time. Don't you think? Let me know! Comment, please! 

(In all honesty, I cannot answer all your personal emails, though I'm thrilled to receive them. I wish I could. That's what the comments on this blog are for. If you wish to remain anonymous – and I understand why – create a special email address, or a different username or identity. But, please, comment and keep on commenting.)

I want to hear your voices! Your ideas and perspectives. How else can we become a strong community and a force for change? That's what must happen. That's my vision for this blog! 

Change through the exchange of information, ideas, suggestions, experiences. All are valid when it comes to healthy recovery and healing. It's called "talking therapy"!

Thanks so much, in advance, for your support.

Speak soon!

sln

My adventures "across the pond" ... (part one)

This past Sunday morning, after a really good, long, healing night's sleep, I awoke, walked into my office and logged onto BBC News. I've just started to subscribe. 

I've been feeling a bit claustrophobic lately. All this neuroscience for mental health is beginning to get to me. I'm itching for new perspectives. Fresh ideas. The North American biomedical approach to mental health is beginning to seem oppressive to me.

Out of curiosity, I decided to explore, so I typed "mental health recovery" into the BBC search engine, where I easily found a link to its bright purple and white Mental Health page with a big picture of a dozen or so people of diverse ages and races, smiling, plus dozens the following (unsponsored) section and links:

1. Emotional health 
2. Disorders and conditions 
3. Coping Techniques 
4. Supporting and caring 
5. Therapy and therapists
6. Understanding drugs 
7. See also (This page is filled with all kinds Useful Contacts.)

(I tried this with CBC News and one unsponsored story appeared. Dated May 23, 2008. The headline? More education needed about schizophrenia in teens years: experts.) 

I clicked on every link and my mouth was watering. I knew Britain took a different, more enlightened stand on mental health, but I had no idea it was so dramatically different than what's going on here in North America. Neurosciences and drugs therapies are practically the only option available to people seeking help. No wonder 75% of Canadians who could be helped by some form of therapeutic treatment never seek it. That daunting statistic used to be 66% about 10 years ago. Now it's up 11%. Something is drastically wrong here.

But what really caught my eye on the main BBC.news Mental Health page, right at the top, was this main message. You couldn't miss it:

Maintaining a balance. 

One in four of us will have some sort of mental health problem in our life. This means there are millions of people in Britain who are either encountering problems themselves or know someone else who is experiencing them.

Here's what jumped out at me. The first five words. "One in four of us..." 

Not one in four people. One in four of us.

Now that's inclusive. I love inclusive – it's one of my guiding principles. This message was so humane and inviting. 

I started exploring this front page, clicking on all the links and eventually found myself at Rethink. This national British charity, founded 30 years ago, to give a voice to people affected with severe mental illnesses, now has more than 8,300 members and helps more than 48,000 people every year through a variety of services, support groups and the dissemination of helpful information. 

This enlightened initiative has this mission:

"Working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life."

(Rethink is only one of several large and longstanding Mental Health charities that are "challenging discrimination" and helping and celebrating people with mental health issues. Among them, Time to Change –  Let's End Mental Health Discrimination and Mind for Better Mental Health., which gives out an annual award for Journalist of the Year.

"For excellence in reporting mental health issues in the media... high quality, informed reporting on these issues goes a long way to increase public understanding about mental health. People with mental health problems consistently tell us that negative media coverage only adds to the challenges they face. We hope that this award paves the way to breaking down any remaning taboos around mental health reporting."

I was drooling. Wow, do we have a lot to learn from the Brits.

May I remind you that Canada is still the only G8 country without a national mental health strategy. That, finally, is in the works, thanks to the work of the Canadian Mental Health Commission.

But it's very slow. I'm impatient. My concern is that with several senior psychiatrists there, wedded to the traditional biomedical approaches to mental illnesses, there's an innate bias. I could be wrong.

Back to Rethink, which I first heard about from a British gent named Robert Ashton. He is a veritable "one-man industry" with his own blog, Robert Ashton Unlimited and he's all over YouTube. He accurately describes himself on his website as an established author, broadcaster, experienced social and business entrepreneur, and an engaging speaker. Somewhat unconventional. 

He lives with depression.

Let me scroll back for a moment...

Back on February 18, 2008, I received an email from a man named Robert Ashton. I didn't know him. Never heard of him. It was a few months before I had started blogging here for Healthzone.ca at The Toronto Star. I was teaching part-time at Seneca College. And I was dabbling in blogging and had just launched my own personal blog. Perhaps four people had found it. One of them was Robert Ashton. He had emailed me and said that his Google-Alert on "anti-stigma" had picked me up along with my Groucho Marx quote. That's how we met – through Groucho. 

I wasn't spending much time blogging back then – mostly developing and teaching my then-new Leadership in Society course. I knew how to do it – but hadn't a clue how to teach it. Also, I was far less cyber-savvy. I'm no great shakes, now, but I'm learning fast. So, I confess, I didn't do much homework on Robert. 

However, all that changed on Sunday morning, sitting here in my nightie, my blogging uniform, fresh out of bed at 6:15 a.m. That's when my Dandie Dinmont Terriers wake me up. After taking them out and feeding them, I decided to check out BBC news, re-discovered Rethink and tried to join.

But I couldn't. Only Brits allowed. 

I knew that mental health recovery, rarely discussed here in the North America mainstream media, is big in England. I could see, judging by the BBC Mental Health page, that Talking Therapies are big there, too. Much bigger than Drug Therapies. You know, I'm a strong advocate for "talking therapies" to mental health recovery and very concerned about the pervasive emphasis on drug treatments here in North America.

So, since I have Robert's Skype address, I decided to ring him up and ask him if he could help me join Rethink. 

I never, for a moment expected him to answer. Sometimes I forget about time zones. Timing is Everything, I know, but timing has never been my strong suit!

Anyway... rrrriiiinggggg... and there Robert was – live and in full colour! All dressed and respectable, in his charming brick-walled office, wearing his pale blue Rethink T-Shirt. It was about noon in England. It was 6:15 a.m. here. Oh, dear. He could see me, too, in my pink nightie, my hair unbrushed, barely awake. I forget that I have a camera on my iMac and I don't Skype very often, either.

Oops! I was caught, unawares. Oh, well. What the hell....

But I've gone on too long, so this is going to be a two-instalment post. I know, I'm leaving you here, hanging. I promise on Thursday, I'll continue my story of my conversation with Robert Ashton and my adventures "across the pond..." in Part Two. 

Thanks for your patience. Stay tuned.

A concerned mother responds...

On Saturday, May 9, the day before Mother's Day, I received the following personal email in response to my Friday post on Mothering and mental health... I responded immediately and the writer gave me permission to publish it anonymously. 

It's been on my mind ever since. The links, by the way, are mine.

Hi Sandy,

Thank you for your article today. Certainly you raise the red flag for children who are funnelled through the mental health system, but what do we do with highly anxious children who simply cannot fit into a mainstream environment?

Increasingly there is reduced emphasis on play in childhood. The Junior Kindergarten and Senior Kindergarten environment both my children are in right now focuses on benchmarks of school readiness, even when my five-year-old daughter (already labelled with ADHD and a severe anxiety disorder) is clearly in need of play and relationship skills.

For our part we are lucky enough to have the financial resources so that my daughter will switch from the current system into a private Montessori school. But what of the other families? And what of families like us, who despite having the financial and educational resources lack the emotional ones?

For example, while university educated and from a middle class background, I was diagnosed with ADHD at 37 after a lifetime of failures at school and career, which brought on depression after depression. My coping skills are substandard to say the least, and I know now that I lack the higher level processing required to keep myself organized and calm without lots of self-prompting built into my day.

I openly admit that my difficulties related to my child might well be a contributor to her current behaviour. I learned TOO LATE of the role that interactive play and engaged relationships have in healthy brain development – she's only five-and-a-half!

Evidence supports the growing school of thought that stressors in a child's environment – be they inadequate relationship support, inadequate nutrition, inadequate stimulation – before the age of six (or even three) create an overdeveloped limbic centre in the brain and thus literally create a "stressed" brain which is then much less responsive to cognitive interventions.

Is there any way we can create a formalized network of wellness and relationship-based initiatives based in play, sport, the arts and nutrition which might support healthy brains by identifying the science and getting this info out to the community?

I'm game to support this as a parent and as an employee in the childcare system. Any chance you could write a blog as an informal tool to gauge public interest? I know many academics in Canada including child and adolescent psychiatrist Jean Clinton of The Offord Centre – and the mother of five children –and her colleagues (associated with McMaster University and McMaster Children's Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario) might be willing to support an application to get this kind of network going in communities across Canada.

Looking forward to seeing your thoughts in blog format or by reply to this email. 

What an intriguing synthesis of neuroscience sounding a call to turn back the clock for the sake of our youngest children.

And talk about red flags! This email raised dozens for me. Alarms went off. Bells started ringing. Whistles began blowing. Mind-blowing sounds.

I had hoped the comments to this blog would erupt with these concerns, but alas, this didn't happen, proving my point. Young children do not and cannot speak up for themselves. They desperately need advocates who can listen to them actively and empathetically – listen with their eyes, their ears and their hearts.

Especially very young children, most vulnerable to their emotional and physical environments – their relationships, their mental, emotional and physical stimulation, their nutrition – as their young minds and brains, as well as their bodies, are rapidly growing, developing and changing. 

I just watched Dr. Jean Clinton's PowerPoint presentation. Have a look. It's based on a broad variety of sources – medical, scientific and other researched-based programs that will give you a quick overview of the complexities of the developing brain – from conception to age 12. Yes, the pre-natal brain/mind. It includes the ground-breaking work of Toronto-based children's advocate Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy, a program with which I am most familiar. 

There is a great deal of "evidence" suggesting many things in our information-driven technological age. But what do we really know for sure about the workings of the brain, especially the childhood brain? 

Terms like neuroscience and neuroplasticity are transforming our understanding of how the brain works, but for young children upon whom studies are never performed, the first three to six years of life are and should be sacrosanct. 

That's why I think "gauging public interest" across Canada about the level of concern for the mental health of our very young, even unborn children, as this young mother suggests, is so crucial. Why not mounting a movement to reclaim play in childhood, especially in junior and senior kindergarten.

Why are we rushing childhood? Why tamper with kindergarten? Very young children are not mentally and emotionally equipped to learn numbers and the alphabet at the ages of three or four or five. It's too stressful for them. 

When I was in kindergarten, in the early 1950s, all we did, was play. Socialize. Eat snacks of cookies and milk. Rest on mats. Cut paper and paste it (with that icky flour and water kind of paste) and play – with wooden blocks, in sand boxes. Simple toys. We learned to share. We ran around outside or we sat in circles and sang sweet simple funny songs with rhymes and riddles. We did all kinds of art like finger-painting and water colours on big easels. Kindergarten was engaging and playful. Our minds were free to explore and develop. It was creative. We learned to relate to other little kids. That's what it was all about.

Building relationships.

I'm sure there was more to it than that, but I know we never had to learn to the alphabet or count. Homework? You must be kidding. That wouldn't have been healthy for our little developing brains. That was for the big kids in Grade One.

Sometimes, old traditions stand up better than all the new fangled ideas. Kindergarten was created in 1840 in Germany so children could learn to communicate, play and interact appropriately with each other. 

Today, kids learn to interact more through technology, computers, television, in a virtual world. How can these cool media be healthy for developing brains? 

Consider The Mothercraft Movement. 

It was started 1907 by a New Zealand doctor Truby King who pioneered a system of early childhood care for new mothers in a bid to combat high infant mortality rates. He published a Mothercraft Manual and mothercraft nurses, specially trained in his methods, were dispatched all over the country to teach new mothers.

King prescribed "Twelve Essentials" for the raising of healthy infants. At that time, they were considered revolutionary, but they're still relevant today and worth revisiting: air and sunshine, water, food, clothing, bathing, muscular exercise and sensory stimulation, warmth, regularity, cleanliness, mothering, management and, rest and sleep.

How many of you fit all 12 "essentials" into your daily routine – especially "muscular exercise" and "rest and sleep" with "regularity"? I know I don't!

By 1923, New Zealand had the world's lowest infant mortality rate, and two years later, Dr. Truby King was knighted for his vision of standardized "mothercraft" care and the way it was universally administered. His methods were adopted throughout the British Commonwealth.

One mothercraft nurse, Barbara Mackenzie, moved to Toronto in 1931 and married Irving Robinson, the president of the board of the Hospital for Sick Children. Together, they founded the Canadian Mothercraft Society.

There have been other experts. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the renown pediatrician and psychoanalyst published his landmark book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care in 1946. It's still in print today.

I'm hoping my HealthZone.ca editor Brandie Weikle, who also edits and blogs at ParentCentral.ca along with Ann Douglas who writes The Mother of All Parenting Blogs will have a look at this email and consider raising these concerns with their online communities.

Perhaps all three of us can raise these questions and help to create a groundswell of interest in a proposed pan-Canadian "network" of individuals and childcare experts with a variety of resources to consider the issues raised so passionately by this young mother.

Healthy children have a much better chance of growing into healthy adults. Isn't health the best legacy you can give your child?

What do you think? How do you feel about this? We were all children. I'm inviting you to share your ideas, your memories of your childhood. How were you mothered? Schooled? Raised? How has it affected you? What are your concerns about your children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, friends' children? How do these questions resonate with you?

Let us put our heads together. We may not all be "mothers" or "fathers" but we're all sons and daughters. Let's empathize with today's children and help them reclaim their childhood.

Don't you think they deserve it?

 

Yesterday, I lost my mind ...

Yesterday, I woke up exhausted. I neglected to take care of number one. Me! 

So here's what happened.

I forgot to take my medication until 2:50 p.m. I neglected to brush my teeth all day. I didn't get dressed. I didn't brush my hair. I grabbed unhealthy food and gobbled it down without tasting it. Like a robot. Just to fill a void caused by frustration.

I was struggling with a post for this blog. Inspired by you. It was driving me crazy.

Ideas were flooding into my mind. All day. I had trouble focusing. I was hitting dead ends and desperately turning around re-routing my thinking.

This went on and on and on until 12:14 a.m. this morning, when I gave up and went to bed with a couple of 0.5 mg tablets of clonazepam – which I take only when needed. It helps calm my mind and turn off my thoughts when they're running wild.

No. I do not get depressed. I get the opposite. I get revved up. I cannot turn off my brain. I cannot stop my thoughts. Ideas in words and pictures flood my consciousness. Crazy quilts of ideas. Conflicting ideas. Picture fragments. Images. Blasting away the cerebral quiet needed to fall into sleep.

I don't have the switch that most people have when they get overtired. That's what's wrong with me. That's the root of my "mental illness" and there really isn't a name for it, other than chronic hypomania with a vulnerability to full blown mania if I don't ensure that I sleep.

Sleep is the antidote for my sanity. Everyone's really. But I cannot do it without a little help. Maybe I should learn to meditate, mindfully. But I don't have time. 

That's why I'm better on medication. Including my mood stabilizer. 

That's what I've learned.

I slept, dreamlessly. Deeply.

At 6:15 a.m. I was awoken by my dogs nipping at my side of the bed and wanting to be let out.

This morning, after five and a half hours of sound, deep, fast sleep, I woke up and guess what...

My mind was back.

Miraculous.

Anyway, that's the miracle, the blessing, the healing of sleep!

Go figure.

Anyway, I want you to know that I'm working on a couple of amazing posts for you. Inspired, as always, by you. 

However, I need a break. So today, as it happens, while my husband is having a colonoscopy, I'm going to be spending a long overdue hour with... guess who?

DOCTOR BOB! My wondrous shrink. After spending an hour with him, always, without exception, I leave magically transformed. Always better, more calm, more at peace with myself, than when I did at the beginning of that hour.

Feeling better than when I did.

So, I'll be back tomorrow. With the post I wanted to finish and see up today. I need a break. I need to take care of myself. We all do! 

This is the first and most important lesson of a life lived well. 

Have a great day!

Speak soon!

sln

On mothering and mental health...

Children of all ages often blame their mothers for all their problems. 

Today, I come not to blame my mother, but to honour her.

If you've ever wondered why I'm so comfortable talking openly about my mental health issues, my psychiatric history and any of my mental and emotional experiences, I credit my mother. 

She was and is very enlightened, considering she was only 21 when I was born in 1948 and her mother died when she was 28, at the age of 60. My mother was pretty well on her own with a child who didn't conform. (That was a buzzword back in the 1950s and 1960s – conformity.)

When I was a kid, and a very dramatic, theatrical, stagy and rather "unusual" one, my nickname around the house was Sarah Bernhardt. I was described as histrionic – not to be confused with hysteria.

One way my mother handled my early emotional "acting out" was to channel it. From the age of nine, she sent me to drama classes – not to be confused with drama therapy. In the 1950s, these classes were a wonderful outlet for me. I'll never forget the fun I had at the Jack Medhurst Acting Studio. His classes sparked a lifelong love of the theatre, many exciting and successful acting experiences in skits and plays at camp and school, and led to my graduating with a BA in Drama and English Literature from Queen's University.

In the early 1960s when I started seeing my first psychiatrist, my mother used to say: "If you break a leg, you go to a doctor who puts it in a cast so it can heal. If there's something wrong with your mind, you talk to a psychiatrist, so you'll feel better."

Of course, those were the days when children were never diagnosed with bipolar disorders or anxiety disorders or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or any of the hundreds of disorders available today. Those disorders didn't exist. There was basically a "one-diagnosis-fits-all" for troubled children – schizophrenia.

In the 1950s and 1960s, children were never prescribed powerful drug cocktails of anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, mood stabilizers and who knows what else. Many of those drugs didn't exist. Then and now, all drugs are tested on adults because it was and remains unethical to do drug testing on children whose brains and bodies are growing and developing. 

I have no regrets about this. If you want to understand what can happen when children are prescribed these powerful neuroleptic drugs, have a look at The Medicated Child. 

Back in my youth, psychiatrists knew almost nothing about childhood mental health or mental illnesses, but my mother did the best she could at the time. For this, I am enormously indebted to her. When I was a kid, it was relatively rare for a child to be seen by a psychiatrist. Childhood psychiatry was in its infancy. On the other hand, starting then probably helped me enormously. Early intervention often does.

As far as I'm concerned, today most psychiatrists still know very little about mental health in general and childhood mental health in particular. They know about serious mental illnesses because that's what they study and see. 

They know about symptom management and control. They know about creating square pegs with medications, which control symptoms. Without some form of psychotherapy, medications alone never impart insight or help people of any age to understand and overcome their emotional issues.

Also, and this is really a big issue for me – who advocates for children with mental health issues or psychiatric problems? They have tiny voices. They cannot speak up for themselves. If they try, they are rarely heard or listened to or taken seriously. 

There are no quick fixes in healing emotional and mental health disturbances, even though that's what many people demand. 

My mother has often said that all children are geniuses until they go to school. Today, what happens, especially in the public school system, when a child "acts out"? Often, not always, a teacher who is not trained as a psychologist, who has no mental health expertise of any kind and is ill-equipped to make any kind of psychiatric or psychological diagnosis, will make the first call. 

Parents will be called in and told that their child isn't like the other children, is disruptive, is acting out and that there's something wrong and the child should get help or be seen by a doctor, perhaps a psychiatrist.

Kids are not square pegs, yet too many teachers try to turn them into square pegs. 

A child is sensitive and emotionally fragile. 

There are other ways to help children who appear to be acting out or unhappy or troubled, other therapies that do not involve medications which are highly invasive and have often serious side-effects.

Trust me, I know of what I speak. I lost my only kidney to Lithium toxicity in 1991 and although I've received a kidney transplant, I will never be physically healthy. I survive on a diet of drugs all of which have side-effects, several of which are highly carcinogenic.

The word therapy means "to heal" and there are many non-medicinal, non-psychiatric therapeutic approaches that have proven to be remarkably helpful and healing in children – Theraplay, play therapy, art therapy, dance therapy, music therapy. Sports is a popular and very therapeutic activity – though few people think of "hockey" as a form of therapy. Physical activity is healthy and healing. Its benefits are widely accepted as teaching teamwork, imparting self-confidence, and numerous other emotional and physical benefits.

The advantages of keeping a child out of the mental health system are manifold. 

They avoid being labelled, perhaps the most emotionally deleterious consequence of going to a psychiatrist. Labels are internalized and take years to overcome. Some people never do. Adults often suffer from the aftershock of negative stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination if they are labelled with a psychiatric diagnosis. 

It's taken me 49-years of psychotherapy and I'm still struggling with feelings of inadequacy because I grew up in the mental health system – with the misdiagnosis of schizophrenia. Yes, psychiatrists make mistakes. Why chance that with your child. 

Labels have a habit of sticking. 

In the 1960s, after a nine-month hospitalization at The Clarke Institute of Psychiatry for psychosis, where I was given Chlorpromazine, the first anti-psychotic, known then as "the chemical lobotomy," a diagnosis of catatonic schizophrenia and my first course of ECT – my psychiatrists told my mother there was "no hope for me and that I would be a revolving door case. Sick for the rest of my life." 

My mother chose not to believe them. She chose to believe in me. She became my advocate and taught me how to advocate for myself. One of her greatest gifts to me.

I often say in my speeches and always in my classes where "celebrating difference and diversity" is our motto, that there is only one label that I will accept, if there must be labels. Human. If you must label me anything, label me human.

Most mothers and fathers do the best "mothering" they can. Everyone makes mistakes. Our mothers were mothered, too. Their mothers made mistakes. The knowledge about and norms of parenting have evolved over the years. Sometimes for better, sometimes not.

I have never given birth to a child – not unusual for many mothers today – however, I have two stepdaughters. The youngest was 12 when I met her father and 13 when we were married. The eldest is 20 years older, from a previous marriage, and is a happily married professional.

My youngest stepdaughter's mother died when she was eight, so you can imagine how she felt with me intruding on her exclusive relationship with her father. 

There were fireworks, but on the advice of my psychiatrist, we did not send her for help – her father and I went for help. Weekly group sessions with other parents of difficult children, facilitated by a noted child psychiatrist in a group called Parents for Youth. (Now, sadly defunct.)

We learned how to stay on the same page, how to give our daughter appropriate opportunities to prove she could be responsible and that grounding and curfews simply didn't work for her. This year of "therapy" for us was the best investment in her happiness and in the health of our marriage. Today, she is a lively, independent, self-sufficient young woman finishing her BA in drama.

All I know is that my mother did the best she could for me at the time. 

And who can ask for anything more?

Mum, Happy Mother's Day! 

A few days in the life of a nutty professor...

At 1:07 a.m. on Tuesday morning this week, my friend Dr. Ron Pies, a psychiatrist at Tufts University in Boston sent me the following note:

"Hi, Sandy–I hope you are well. I just wanted to say thanks again for your early read and assessment of this one....Best, Ron"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/health/05case.html

I was asleep when it arrived. An hour earlier, exhausted and nervous, I had hit the sack after days preparing and hours cutting a workshop I was giving later that day from two hours down to my allotted 90-minutes. In my proposal, I had promised an interactive, fast-paced, fascinating, fun-filled session of instructive activities, laced together with lecturettes of theory that would help teachers in their classes. (All this from a novice teacher who submitted this proposal, never dreaming it would be accepted. It was. What had I been thinking?)

My inspiration came from my favourite teaching motto – this Chinese Proverb:

Tell me, and I forget.

Show me, and I remember.

Involve me, and I understand.

What I had to do was compress one of my 13-week courses into one double period class. I had no idea if the participants would learn something. Anything at all. It was a first.

(For weeks, my mother's culinary words of wisdom had echoed in the back of my mind. "Never serve anything at a dinner party you've never tested first." I ignored her – breaking her cardinal rule of entertaining. This was not good. One should never ignore one's mother, especially four days before Mother's Day. This did not augur well.) 

Meanwhile, back at my computer, at 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, I was checking my email before dressing and setting off for Seneca College and this portentous academic forum. There were two identical notes from Ron. He knows I'm a night-hawk and quick to respond. As I hadn't, he resent his email at 1:16 a.m. 

Now, a little more rested, but no less stressed, I clicked onto his URL and there was his column in the Health Section of The New York Times. The headline was unfamiliar: A Guy, a Car: Beyond Schizophrenia. I vaguely remembered reading a draft months ago, but nothing else. No assessment I'd made. No reason for him to thank me. Just that it was a typically fascinating piece by this brilliant, generous, kind man, a psychiatrist who has become my friend and ally. 

(Back in September, I had posted about another of his regular contributions to The New York Times. He countered graciously in a comment about some serious misinterpretations I had made. We started corresponding and the rest is history.)

Blindly, without reading his column, I sent the following reply:

Congratulations, Ron.

Brilliant piece. I always thought it would be fodder for the NYTimes! I hope they pay you well.;)

Would you mind if I use this column as a spin off for a blog post?

Today, please wish me luck. I'm presenting at a Seneca College Faculty Forum on "Enhancing Learning Through Creating Classroom Communities." A first for me. Finished preparing at 12 midnight last night. All my chairs, supervisors and even a Dean or two are attending, plus faculty. I'm scared stiff. 41 people have registered for my session. Any help from your direction would be wonderful. Good positive thoughts would be good.

This has nothing to do with mental health. It's all about "Leadership in Society and making a difference for the greater good." That's one of the courses I teach. I developed it. Am still developing it.

Anyway, take good care! And Mazel Tov!!!

xox

sln

Off I went to my conference. It was exhausting and fascinating and nerve wracking because I was presenting in one of the last of the day's breakout sessions – at 2:30 p.m. I couldn't calm down all day.

At 2 p.m., I went back to my office to pick up my roll of chart paper, my markers and post-it notes, my masking tape and coloured chalk and chalk holder – all the paraphernalia I'd need for my "activity-filled" workshop! I took a minute to check my email – and there was Ron, again! His email was sent 86 minutes earlier, at 12:24 p.m. 

Many thanks, Sandy... you really played a big part in this piece. By now, you have probably already done your forum... so advice at this point is probably not of much use... but I am confident you will have done a fine job, because your heart is really in the concept of "communities," teaching, and learning. Best Ron.

Feeling a blush of confidence, I marched back to the classroom where I was to present. Walked in. Took a deep breath and faced my colleagues.

It went off like a dream. Without a hitch. Perfectly-timed. Everyone had fun. And maybe even learned something. They left smiling. I went home exhausted and elated. 

Then, yesterday, I was back to business at this iMac, blogging for you. And struggling. All day long. I had a brilliant idea. Serendipitous. Involving several interviews and some important information gathering. Plus reacquainting myself with some major and original research I had done more than two years ago. My mind wasn't focusing. I was too tired. I couldn't write, though I kept trying until 12:46 a.m. this morning, when I finally gave up. Defeated.

I had promised my editor two posts by 8:30 a.m. this morning, but all I had was what I considered gobbledygook. I kept rewriting myself, a sure sign that my mind was working overtime, heating up. Not functioning. I had to renege and send her a note saying that I wanted to delay those two "promised" posts until next week, when I was less exhausted. 

I fell into bed, a complete failure.

This morning, at 6:15 a.m., I woke up refreshed and recharged. Blessed by the healing of sleep. I decided to revisit Ron's article and the original assessment I had given it back on January 6 of this year, in response to his "request for a favour." I was increasingly curious about why he was thanking me.

Originally, he had emailed me a draft. I had no idea then, where he was planning to send it. I had read it twice and I had one serious concern. Something bothered me. My feminist sensibility was kicking in. I wasn't sure why.

When he responded, he explained the problem in detail and the root of my concern, which boiled a simple omission and this universal truism. "Timing is Everything." 

When I read the version published in Monday's May 4 edition of The New York Times, he had corrected this problem and cleared up my concern completely. The story was clear and made a very powerful point.

Finally, I understood why Dr. Ronald Pies, a brilliant psychiatrist and clinician, a literary polymath who has written medical texts on clinical practice and psychopharmacology, as well as volumes of poetry, short stories and plays, laced with humour and infused with philosophy, and most recently, Everything Has Two handles: The Stoic's Guide to the Art of Living was thanking me.

 

Now, for the first time in weeks, I feel everything is going to be okay. Maybe I'm okay, too.

Ron, I thank you!