A Mad Miscellany

Hello everyone!

I am pleased to announce that I'm feeling much better. In fact, totally better. After five consecutive weeks of weekly therapy sessions with Dr. Bob and some time, reflection and a lot of "processing," I seem to have weathered the bumpy patch in my recovery journey and arrived at a better place – a more peaceful place. More self-accepting.

When I left his office on Monday, I felt light and buoyant. I didn't book another appointment for next week, but rather next month. I didn't make any notes and didn't have any homework. This latest layer of the onion has successfully peeled away. I've shed a few tears and now I won't be seeing him until the end of July!

The passage of time was very healing. And YOU had a lot to do with my progress, too. More than you know. I am very grateful for all your supportive and empathetic messages and comments. Though I was feeling very isolated and fragile, I knew I wasn't alone. This doesn't happen to me very often. Most of the time I have to grapple with the manic end of the spectrum. 

So, now I have a renewed sense of purpose. And a plan. No matter what happens, I am determined to carry on and succeed and I'm looking forward to either exigency – and prepared. 

Today, I'm simply going to share a miscellany of thoughts with you. A little grab-bag of ideas. A gallimaufry, if you will. I hope you don't mind.

1. The television show Mental is off my list. We are no longer recording it and I'm no longer interested in wasting my time watching it. Last week's episode, quite frankly, was so outlandish, I fell asleep. About a young boy who was obsessed with a video game show. Too silly for words. Too bad. It would be lovely to see a network television show, or better still, something on HBO without commercials, that focused intelligently on emotional and mental health difficulties. This one isn't it. 

2. I have been asked to participate or be interviewed for a documentary film called "The Bipolar Project" – that's the working title. I'm hesitating, though. I have done these filmed interviews before and I've found you're at the mercy of the filmmakers and their own visions and biases. They can make you look and sound like anything they want. Editing can distort any message.

Gianna Kali who has an excellent bipolar blog called Beyond Meds had a similar experience recently with 20/20 and she declined as well. For similar reasons.

My husband, a professional screenwriter and producer doesn't agree. That's okay. We can agree to disagree. Quite frankly, I'm not that anxious to "get my message out" when it will be in the hands of a couple of Los Angeles documentary filmmakers with whom I am not familiar and may not be "my message." Especially as I am anti-label, as you all know so well by now.

So, I won't be headed for stardom this time.:-) Also, and this is really the clincher. I am evolving all the time. If I say something on film in July, chances are I might have moved on by the film is completed and released in two years. You never know.

This blog has seen an evolution in my ideas. I think that's healthy. I welcome change and I'm always learning new things and exposing myself to new ideas and perspectives.

3. And speaking of labels, Mad Pride Week in Toronto is from July 13 to July 19, 2009 and it begins at 3 p.m. on Monday, July 13 with a DSM Bonfire:

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM "we are mentally ill if we are addicted to coffee – Caffeine-Related Disorders, page 231. Having struggles reading – Reading Disorders, page 51. If we don't think we are crazy then we are suffering from Non-Compliance with Treatment, page 739.

Who else is there?

"Enough with the labels, bring on the marshmallows!" The organizers of this years Mad Pride Week invite you to a symbolic bonfire "where we burn labels and all words that limit who we are as human beings and celebrate our abilities."

Although there will be no real fire, there will be hot chocolate and a sing-along.

Have a look at all the Mad Pride Day Toronto activities planned for that week. Subscribe to the Mad Pride Toronto Blog and stay in touch with people through Facebook by searching for Mad Pride Day Toronto.

I'll keep you posted here, with notices of different activities during that week. Just mark your calendar! Stay tuned. 

Consider using the word "madness" and "mad"... it's quite common in Britain. Lately, I've been listening to Madness Radio – voices and visions from outside mental health. Have a look and a listen. You might find these weekly interviews by Will Hall, who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia and is in recovery, utterly fascinating. Gianna Kali was interviewed in February about her experiences coming off 30 different psychiatric drugs and last week's interview with Jacqui Dillon director of the England's Hearing Voices Network will open your eyes to ears to new perspectives and alternatives to traditional ideas about this challenging issue.

It will open your minds to new realities.

New possibilities.

Take care. And stay cool. Summer has finally arrived. Enjoy!

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! :–)

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

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!

The Family's Resident Nut Case

Last night, I was talking to one of my cousins. I'm the eldest of three girls. As far as I'm concerned, he's as close as any man I've ever known to being my brother. We're just a year or so apart – I'm older – and we grew up together every summer at The Family Cottage. He is one of only three people who gets away with calling me by my real name – Sandra Lee. The other two are my sister, Glorianne, and his sister, Linda Sue. Don't get me started.

Anyway, in the context of a conversation about our family, I told him that "I know I'm the family's resident nut case." He laughed and said, "The whole family's filled with nut cases." 

Very sweet and kind of him. But, in truth, it's quite true. This role belongs solely to me, and always will. I can't seem to stop that particular old record from playing. Currently, I lead the pack. Others may have preceded me. Others may come along. Right now, however, this is my starring role in my family. Nothing else I do ever seems to dull my glow in the family constellation. 

Later that evening, I sent him an email and signed it, "The Family's Resident Nut Case," and boy, did that feel good.

That's the power of "Coming Out Crazy" – as far as I'm concerned. I shared a little laugh with my closest cousin. I didn't take myself too seriously. (Rare, trust me.) In fact, I joked about myself. And guess what? It felt fantastic.

Try it sometime. You might like it.

*   *   *

Now, on to bigger and better things.

The print edition of The Toronto Star is to be congratulated for brilliantly deciding to enlist the genius, wisdom, knowledge, humour, medical expertise and humanity of Dr. Rob Buckman as a regular Friday Living section columnist.

Bravo, Toronto Star! With this kind of decision, your print edition will last forever!

Rob and I are long time friends. We've known each other since 1986, when I profiled him for The Toronto Sun. He is a leading oncologist at Princess Margaret Hospital/University Hospital Network, with professorships at the department of medicine at the University of Toronto and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas. He has an ecclectic list if outstanding accomplishments and he authored a long list of books.

He is also my "spirit doctor" – but that's another story. 

Read him. I promise you that he will not disappoint you.

Today, his column is called Of bats and balls and baptisms and the first line is amazing, especially for me, as I teach a Community Service course at Seneca.

"Nothing provides a sense of community better than a community." 

That's Rob. Concise. A man for all seasons and reasons. A Humanist. A master of language. An original thinker. A true Renaissance man. We just spoke on the phone for about a half an hour and I am promoting him because I know how much integrity he has. I cannot recommend him highly enough. Aside from the fact that I absolutely adore him!

He's soul tonic.

• • •

I found an interesting blog, The Healthy Skeptic. 

I found it from my sweet, literary, New Jersey friend Susan Schechter, on her fine, often funny bipolar blog – If You're Going Through Hell Keep Going.

This blog is "published" – his word, not mine – by a fresh-faced and fascinating fellow named Chris Kresser. Right now, he's studying at the Acupuncture & Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley, California. 

I respect Kresser's goals for writing his blog and the way he expresses them. Particularly in terms of psychiatry, which needs to be held in check, I believe, for its unbalanced emphasis right now on the neurosciences. I find this is very problematic. 

"I launched The Healthy Skeptic last year to help others see through the common myths and misdirections peddled by the media and medical establishment. It is my sincere hope that the information on this blog will lead to greater health and well-being for you and those you love."

I love his last three words – "and those you love."

You should know where Kresser is coming from.

He is well-travelled, well-informed, well-read and passionate. Personal experience with a serious illness will do this every time. In his case, a mysterious tropical illness he contracted turned chronic. Twenty doctors around the world and thousands of dollars later, still sick, he decided to heal himself. Not by becoming a doctor, though he considered it, but by studying Chinese medicine, "which has been successfully used for over 2,000 years to promote health and longevity in addition to treating disease," he explains.

Our conventional, mainstream Western biomedical model cannot always make that claim.

This is a definition of Integrative Medicine. It's more than allopathic, alternative and complementary. Its synergistic. The whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. I attended a conference on Complementary and Integrative Medicine in Mental Health in Toronto last June. Every presenter had an M.D. from a leading university medical school – like Harvard – but sadly, few medical doctors touch these methods and I didn't meet any at that conference. Most tend stick with what they know. What they've learned and how they've been taught. More invasive treatments. Surgery. Radiation. Side-effect causing drugs and chemicals. Often good. But not always. Why not use every tool in the world's biggest international tool box?

(Again, Dr. Rob Buckman – a researcher and clinician – thinks outside the box. In 2005, he launched a low-dose chemotherapy with no side-effects that, in some cases extends the lives of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and vulva Squamous cell cancer patients. He is about to introduce it in melanoma patients. It's called DalCM-P.)

Here's one of my favourite Kresser posts, which starts with this quote: "A theory that is wrong is considered preferable to admitting our ignorance." – Elliot Vallenstein, Ph.D.

The "chemical imbalance" myth. 

By the way, Vallenstein is a professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan and the author of Blaming the Brain and about four or five other books on this subject. This is a man who knows of what he speaks. 

Kresser adds: "Even the most prestigious medical journals (dealing with mental health issues and psychiatric issues) have become nothing more than sales brochures for the pharmaceutical industry."  

Philip Dawdy on his award-winning, often-quoted-and-rarely-credited blog Furious Seasons, is consumed with posts supporting what Kresser goes on to observe: "I saw massive conflicts of interest between drug companies, doctors and researchers every I looked. I learned that errors in medical care are the third leading cause of death in the U.S. each year."

One more thing...

As you know, I'm a print journalist at heart. Can't help it. Old habits die hard. I love research. So, it seems, does Kresser. Sources are very important to me and to him. At the bottom of each post, he lists his recommended resources – not websites – books.

For The "chemical imbalance" myth, one book is by Vallenstein. Another – The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment by J. Mondrieff, a medical doctor herself, recently received rave reviews in the British press. I really wanted to add it to my library, but it costs $75.96  at Amazon – a little too rich for my blood. 

The point is, Kresser does his homework and I like that about him.

So, have a look. Let me know what you think. I may muse more on The Healthy Skeptic sometime myself, but now here, not now.

Though I am going to review a book. Another book. 

Believe it or not, for about two years, I reviewed books full-time for The Sunday Sun. It was the toughest beat of my entire journalistic career. No one knows how hard it is to review a book, until you are told you're expected to deliver a book review a week, at least, one ... in no more than 800 words and preferably less. It almost killed me, but I loved it because it was so challenging. And for the first time in 35 years, I put the English Literature half of my Queen's University B.A. to good use. (The other half is drama.)

Except I just did a word count, so I'm not going to review this book right now. But I'm going to tease you and recommend it now. Review it next time. By then, perhaps you'll have read about it and we can discuss it. Have a little "Coming Out Crazy" book club chat.

The book I was going to review is called The Center Does Not Hold – My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks. 

She has "battled" – her word, not mine – schizophrenia all her life. And is in remarkable recovery. Primarily through psychoanalysis and medication, which she fought taking for years. Also, she is in recovery because of the love of her husband, which I completely understand. Her sheer will. And her beautiful mind.

My psychiatrist, Dr. Bob, recommended this book to me. Something he rarely does. I cannot recommend it enough. And you'll find out why. Here's a sneak preview and a riveting YouTube speech of University of Southern California Gould Law Professor Elyn R. Saks, talking and reading from her book.

Now, it's Spring and I'm going to take my dogs for a well-deserved walk.

This is the perfect day for Resident Nut Cases like me to be legitimately a little nutty! And that's how I feel. And I'm allowed. That's my role. One of them, anyway!

Enjoy your weekend.

Educating the Educators...

Last week, for the first time ever, I went to Kingston to speak to about 100 Queen's University first year medical students, the Class of 2012, during their Mental Health Awareness Week.

I was invited because of a question one of these students posed here about my ongoing campaign against the use of the word stigma. As I'm a Queen's alumna, Class of '74, she asked me to speak and I was happy to accept.

I was pretty nervous. I've never spoken to medical students before. I'm no scientist nor was I prepared to lecture. I wanted to initiate a dialogue. Engage these students. Challenge them. Get them asking questions.

After all, they're the next generation of doctors, perhaps psychiatrists. I was told that they hadn't heard one word in their classes about mental health/illnesses/psychiatry until the four 50-minute lunch time presentations last week. Mine was the last. 

It went very well. I had a full house and 95 per cent of them were medical students, along with a few psychology and occupational therapy students.

My introductory remarks were short – a quick overview of my mental health history, all my different diagnoses, my subsequent kidney problems caused by 16-years of badly monitored Lithium and the fact that despite "overcoming every psychiatric indignity short of a lobotomy, I'm still here."

I was hoping they'd be open to thinking about mental health outside the medical model. Consider the recovery model. I assured them that I was not anti-psychiatry but I wanted them to hear about the possibility of change. Desperately needed change in the way medical doctors are trained. So I chose to speak briefly about recovery, the power of language and mental health and why I detest the word "stigma" – and then open the floor up to them. They asked a steady stream of good, intelligent questions, especially about labelling.

"Isn't calling yourself crazy a label?"

Sure, but I asked, "What do you think crazy means?"

"Being out of control."

Don't you get out of control sometimes?

"Yes."

So, we're all capable of being crazy sometimes. That's one word I think we all use. I happen to like it. In the same way the many people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered like to call themselves queer.

I told them that I also love the word "mad" – because madness has always been part of the human condition. Long before it was pathologized into the sphere of medical/mental illnesses. Since biblical times, people who behaved irrationally or too differently were seen to have what are today considered mental or psychiatric problems.

Invariably, though, people perceived as mad were, and still are, dismissed and disregarded. Marginalized. Perceived as less than human. With no voice. And because we have no voice, change is slow to happen. No one wants to listen to us or take us seriously.

I cannot remember many other specifics about my talk – I don't use a script – my presentations are spontaneous. The students were very attentive and according to the feedback I received they found me refreshing. They were very surprised that I was so open about my psychiatric history.

This always amazes me. I have no reason to feel anything but proud of my life. With all its ups and downs.

Before my presentation, I met with Heather Stuart, a Queen's professor of community health and epidemiology. She gave a very informative and thoughtful lecture a few days before mine on "Mental Health Stigma and Health Care Delivery."

Stuart is a world leader in the field of "stigma" as it is associated with mental illnesses. She told me that only three medical students attended her talk, which is too bad because they would have benefitted enormously from her research and experience, her empathetic approach and her wisdom. She is a scientist, yet she is as passionate as I am about changing the public perception of people with mental health difficulties, their treatment and maltreatment 

One statement shocked me. She said that people are afraid to come to seek treatment for their mental health problems, because of the negative stereotyping of and discrimination against people with mental illnesses.

"Three quarters of people in Canada and worldwide who meet criteria for mental health diagnoses do not receive care," she said.

In 1998, when I first started publicly presenting my story, putting these issues of stereotyping and discrimination out in the open, that figure was 66 per cent. Now, it's 75 per cent. What's happened?

That's the subject for another post.

Stuart was very receptive to my ideas about problematic use of the word stigma. As I see it, that word is part of the problem.

As well, she said that in terms of change, "We know contact counts. When we put people with mental health problems with those that don’t and allow positive interaction, we can see the difference that it makes. We need to do that. More contact. And we need to focus. We shouldn’t be going about spraying the public population. We need to target groups. Here are some groups that can be targeted ... worthy of targeting. Understanding what they need is the important way to proceed: School, police, health care workers."

I say, start with the health care workers, especially the doctors.

Especially the doctors who are training doctors in medical schools.

Medical school curricula must be revamped so that health is considered. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social. Holistically. Surely health is more than absence of disease. Yet, healing and doctoring by today's standards are very different.

Today, we are a series of body parts and systems. Medicine is so specialized and technological that the essence of the person seems lost. That's where complementary medicine, and other schools and approaches to health have so much to share.

Not in today's medical schools, where one model is taught. The biomedical model. Not the recovery model. Doctors are scientists. Psychiatrists are neuroscientists.

What about our minds?

Nothing in medicine is purely objective – writes psychiatrist Ron Pies in his fascinating essay "Psychiatry Clearly Meets the 'Objectivity' Test." According to Dr. Emmanuel Persad, psychiatry can be an intellectually vigorous and rich specialty if talking therapies are a mainstay of its practice. If they aren't, I would think psychiatry must be boring as hell.

How can the neurosciences – biochemistry, pharmacology of the brain and nervous system – help people with issues that relate to their life experiences? Their traumas? Their minds?

Brain disease? No way.

Drugging people is a quick fix that doesn't always work well. It can help, but pharmaceuticals can also have serious side effects. Without the insight that can only come, in tandem, with psychotherapy, the neurosciences are only a partial fix. They're only one set of tools in a therapeutic tool box filled with many other potentially more effective tools. Certainly, handing out drugs without any human, therapeutic support isn't the only answer.

You need to have an open mind. That was my parting shot to these future medical doctors.

An open mind.

My Queen's University keynote – a preview

Yesterday, during their first-ever Mental Health Awareness Week, I gave a keynote to approximately 100 Queen's University first-year medical students, plus several psychology and occupational therapy students.

And it all started right here with a comment one of my posts at "Coming Out Crazy"...

I plan to tell you all about it – but not today. I'm exhausted.

Next week, I promise to fill you in:

* On the fascinating discussion that followed my talk – titled "Coming Out Crazy" – what else?
* On the warm reception I received from these doctors and educators of the future and their reaction to what I had to say – which challenged what they're learning about "health", which seems to neglect the synergy between the mind, the body and the spirit.
* On spending a fascinating hour prior to my talk with Queen's epidemiologist Dr. Heather Stuart, a world renowned researcher in community-based mental health care. She's also co-founder and co-chair of the scientific section on Stigma and Mental Disorders for the World Psychiatric Association. On Tuesday, she delivered a talk, as part of this series, on "Mental Health Stigma and Health Care Delivery." Dr. Stuart is currently scientific adviser to the Mental Health Commission of Canada's Anti-stigma: Campaign.

It was a whirlwind trip. I was in Kingston for 25 hours.

It was also a trip down memory lane. I attended Queen's from 1971-1974, where I graduated with a BA in English and Drama, was the entertainment editor of the Queen's Journal and was a stringer, writing theatre and film reviews for the Kingston Whig-Standard, then a fine old Canadian newspaper, founded in 1834 as The British Whig.

When I worked there, the family of Robertson Davies owned the Kingston Whig-Standard.

By the way, my psychiatric diagnosis during this time was schizophrenia. Just thought I'd throw that in. I did not have one psychotic episode during my Queen's years.

But I digress. Next week, you'll hear all about my Queen's and Kingston adventure.

Have a great weekend.

My homage to February...

I don't know about you, but this month has just about "done me in" as Liza Dolittle said on her first run as a "Lady" at Ascot! That was her hilarious euphemism for "killed" in My Fair Lady.

I don't mean to complain, and I know I'm supposed to offer you inspiration and hope and insight, but sometimes it works the other way round.

You inspire me! Yes. True.

This morning, I was trying to think of something to tell you that would make you laugh. After all, my last post was pretty rough.

I drew a blank. And it's not just because it's February.

Forget the weather. February is always dreadful in this climate. Blaaaaaaaah!

Not enough sunlight. SADs. Air that's so sharp it sears your lungs. Forget walks in the park. The ice along the sidewalks will throw you if the subzero, wind-chilled temperatures don't.

Who knows? This year, there's been so much snow and for the first time we equipped our 10-year-old Honda Accord with snow tires! I should be delirious, but I'm not. Even though my husband keeps reminding me that they've saved his life numerous times on his 100-kilometer ride to and from Humber College where he teaches. Why am I so blaaaaaaaaah?

Wasn't Family Day supposed to give me a lift? All it did for me was deplete my paycheque, since I wasn't paid for two classes I usually teach on Mondays.

Ho hum!

On Sunday night, Instead of watching the Academy Awards, an annual ritual, I marked my students journals. (Actually, many of them were inspiring.) I didn't really care who wore what or who said what or even which films won. I had seen only a couple. I just didn't care.

Actually, The Spirit Awards for Independent films on Saturday night were more fun. My husband taped both shows. On Monday, we whizzed through the Oscars in about 10 minutes – stopping only to see Tina Fey, Steve Martin and Jerry Lewis. Then we zipped through The Spirit Awards which took place in San Diego. Everyone was dressed down. Looked like you and me, well, that's a stretch when it comes to Penelope Cruz. But you get my drift. No one looks like Penelope Cruz.

Anyways, she won for Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and cracked me up with her acceptance speech on the earthy and expletive-filled and bleeped-out award show. It seems, she said in her acceptance speech, that Woody stopped production of his film for one entire day because he had to run to a dermatologist. Apparently he found a new freckle on his hand.

That's the last time I can remember laughing.

Forget my oral surgery. My messy looking smile. My emotional lability. I'm getting used to eating baby food and porridge and not being able to brush my all my teeth. I'm craving salads. Anyone who knows me, knows this is cause for serious concern.

Forget all the financial mishaps – plugged toilets, my dog Riley needing expensive uninsured periodontal work on his gums which necessitated his vet having to give him a general anaesthetic, surprise tax assessments – that's just money. (Riley's fine and financially we'll manage.)

Forget the textbooks that didn't arrive for four weeks, making my teaching at Seneca treacherous or to put an upbeat spin on it – a new and valuable learning experience.

All this is peanuts in the big scheme of things. I would say that 364 days a year, I wake up greeting the day with a joyous, "Well, I'm still here!" No joke, considering my health history, Waking up is a minor miracle.

Yet, occasionally, even I wake up with the blues. Or on the wrong side of the bed, as my mother used to say.

Curiously, today is not one of them. Yesterday was.

It's sunny today. The sky is my favourite shade of periwinkle blue. There are only four days left in February. Next week is Reading Week. I didn't lose any weight at Weight Watchers last night – but I didn't gain any, either.

So, here's the point. The days are getting longer. All things do pass. I'm still here, in my nightgown, writing to you – for one main reason. To thank you. Your emails and comments are my tonic. Better any antidepressant – which, by the way, I cannot take as they make me manic – nor would I, even if they didn't.

On Facebook, this morning, I started following the blog of Ron Unger, a therapist in Eugene, Oregon. I heard him speak at an international mental health recovery conference in Toronto last June and he was rivetting.

In his description of his blog Recovery from "schizophrenia" and other "psychotic disorders", Unger describes what he calls the "life" model as opposed to the medical model.

"People's life experience and their interpretaions of their experience can lead them into some strange and often distressing mental states, in which they often get stuck, but from which they can find their way out."

He says, "finding the way out is what we call recovery." (I love this defnition.) "Like poeple who have been inadvertently taken on a risky adventure, those who do find their way back often bring back a gift of some kind or other for the rest of us."

We all have gifts to share. And adventures. I really believe this. That's my cockeyed optimism rearing it's little head, again. Can't help it. I can see March – and almost see Spring!

Take care.

Being a little labile...

I'm beat. So much is happening. Mostly good. Some challenging. All stress-inducing.

So, you won't be seeing much of me next week! (Except on "Facebook." I'm a neophyte and learning it is fun and relaxing for me.) I'll be teaching at Seneca but laying as low as a college teacher can, with six classes a week with 42 students on two campuses.

Did I mention to you that Queen's University's Faculty of Medicine, Class of 2012 -- second year students -- have invited me to speak during their Mental Health Awareness Week next month? Based on "Coming Out Crazy"? 

It's a little scary. I love an audience, but medical students? This is a first for this pajama or in my case, "nightgown" journalist cum blogger.

As a Queen's alumna, B.A. (Drama and English) Class of '74, I'm relishing a return trip to Kingston. Tammy MacKenzie, a regular commenter here, lives in the area and she's kindly agreed to be my guest and moral supporter. (I always need moral support when I speak, especially to a daunting audience like 100 "medical students.")  It will be a fascinating new experience, even if I bomb.

"I won't think about that right now," as Scarlett O'Hara would say. "I'll think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrrow is another day." 

On Tuesday, I'm having some major gum surgery. Because of my kidney transplant and my three different immunosuppressants to prevent rejection, this surgery is complicated. It involves using some foreign material to do the repairs. Not my own tissue. Hence ... the possibility of rejection.

After consulting with the periodontist, my transplant specialist said I must go off one of my three anti-rejection drugs. And hike up dosages of the other two, by about 40%. These drugs interact with my mood stabilizer.

(A Word of Warning... if you're taking Lithium Carbonate, please be certain your Lithium blood levels are being carefully and regularly monitored. I developed Iatrogenic End-stage Kidney Failure due to Lithium toxicity 1991 -- because mine were not! Latrogenic means "treatment or doctor-caused." It can mean negligence. I didn't know my Lithium levels were not being properly monitored. As a result,I lost my health, forever. A kidney transplant is no cure in the relatively rare cases, like mine, with no signs of diabetes. It's a treatment with critical, life-changing complications.) 

Back to this week. Monday, I began my new drug regimen. It's very short term. Dr. Bob didn't know if anything would happen, but wasn't too worried. In 1999, when I needed a major, permanent adjustment to these drugs, I had to spend a week in a private room in the psychiatric ward at The Toronto General Hospital. I was a little high, but that wasn't why Dr. Bob hospitalized me. Working with the transplant team, I had to have daily blood tests at 6 a.m. so the blood levels for all my transplant drugs could be monitored and re-adjusted. They affect each other and I take seven different medications in varying doses each day. It's really complicated.

This time, I'm just a little labile. Great word. It means your moods "easily change or alter....they're easily aroused or freely expressed," according to my online dictionary. "They tend to alter quickly and spontaneously; you're emotionally unstable."

Mine are slipping and sliding slightly all over the place. One minute I'm "thinking pink." The next, just colour me "purple" or "blue." Then, "daffodil yellow." My husband is having a little trouble with me right now.

To be honest, so am I! 

So, "Coming Out Crazy" is going on hiatus for a week, returning after "Family Day," on Monday, February 16. 

Please don't forget to be good to yourself and on Valentine's Day. Love comes in many colours! Let me share with you a gift my husband dropped on my desk this week.

"When love is not madness, it is not love."

-- Pedro Calderon de la Barca, the celebrated Spanish dramatist and poet -- 1600-1681

xoxox

sln

Being "Better" versus Being "Well"

I must make something very clear. I am not anti- psychiatry. Not by a long shot. Were it not for my psychiatrist, Dr. Bob, I wouldn't be the person I am today, sitting here at 6:48 a.m. writing to you, which, by the way, I consider an enormous privilege.

However… I just wish that Psychiatry would more openly and genuinely embrace Recovery.

Too many people tell me their psychiatrists insist that they have bipolar disorder and they'll never be well. That it's a chronic disease like diabetes which must be controlled by medication, like insulin, that they must take for the rest of their lives. I hear this all the time. It really upsets me, especially when the medication these people are prescribed often makes them feel awful.

This doesn’t have to be true. Medication is a tool. In many cases, it doesn't need to be taken for life. That's a decision the person who is taking their medication must decide. Often the decision rests between two polarities.

Are you going to be ill for the rest of your life? Or are you going to begin your recovery journey to wellness.

That journey may involve your taking some medication, for a while. Or not. It's your body. It's your life. You decide.

Recently, Dr. Bob and I had this discussion because I was thinking about going off my medication. He left the decision up to me and I decided, for now, to stay on my Tegretol, an anticonvulsant, which is my mood stabilizer and keeps me from becoming manic. Had I decided to go off it, Dr. Bob would have taken me off the drug very gradually, as it has dramatic implications on the way the other drugs I take for my kidney transplant react in my body. It’s a tricky business.

Dr. Bob is a most unusual psychiatrist. He cares about the whole person – all of me. Mind. Body. Soul. Spirit. My health and wellness. He treats me, and I'm sure all the people with whom he works, with enormous respect and dignity. He is a humble man despite his enormous accomplishments.

Let me tell you a story. It's true.

Once years ago, he was planning an academic one-day conference for all the in-patient doctors, nurses, psychologists and occupational therapists working at the hospital where he is clinical head of the psychiatric  in-patient ward. The topic of this conference, I recall, was how to improve the in-patient unit and in-patient care. Dr. Bob asked me if I would be willing to speak for about 10 or 15 minutes at the beginning of the day about what I thought might make things better for in-patients, as I had been a guest on his unit several times.

Not only that, he offered to pay me for my time.

The point is, how many psychiatrists in his position would turn to one of their patients to enlighten doctors, nurses, and all the professionals working on a psych ward about how to improve conditions for their in-patients?

Brilliant idea, when you think about it.

Who knows better than a patient? But how many patients are invited to present at medical or psychiatric conferences about this, our field of expertise?

I cannot remember what I said, but apparently, my remarks set the tone for the day. Have things changed? I don't know. I haven't been back, but knowing Dr. Bob, they probably have.

Recently, I was reading John McManamy's wonderful blog on at BipolarConnect and he made a fascinating point.

If you haven't read John, I recommend him. He's one of the "experts" writing at BipolarConnnect and as you'll see from his profile, he is eminently qualified to write about bipolar disorder as he's the author of Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You... That You Need To Know, the first and most comprehensive book on mood disorders from a patient's perspective. He has several different online venues and he’s definitely worth a look.

In one of his postings about Recovery, here's what John wrote about psychiatric medication – getting better and being well – which are not the same.

"Meds will make us better, after all, but they will not necessarily make us well," McManamy wrote. "Psychiatry is very good at getting us to 'better.' The success rates for 'better' are very high, backed by impressive research. 'Well' is far more problematic. Virtually no research exists. There is no evidence base, no way of determining how successful psychiatry is in this regard, if at all."

Do you want to be better? Do you want to be well?

You can be both, but it takes time and a lot more than popping pills.

Tomorrow, I turn 60. I've been in psychotherapy of several different kinds over the last 48 years. I've been hospitalized about 20 times for mania. I've read a great deal about the mind and mental illnesses and mental health. I am constantly learning and open to new ideas. I've also spoken at a variety of conferences all over Canada and in some spots south of the border. Knowledge about psychiatry and mysteries of the mind and the brain is growing exponentially. It's hard to keep up, but I'm learning all the time.

This is a life-long journey. I'll never graduate with my PhD in me, but the course is fascinating because there's so much to learn. It's never ending. How exciting!

Be well!