You...

If you read the comments to this blog with any regularity, you know that I am enormously grateful for your feedback. They are a rich dialogue between you and with me, because I try my best to answer as many comments personally. Often, ideas evolve through the comments that further the discussion in the main posts. They're synergistic. Like brainstorming session because your ideas and reactions and experiences are so stimulating and inspiring to me.

WITHOUT YOU, I WOULDN'T BE HERE

The main point is, without you, I wouldn't be here. And between you and me, I love being here. This blog is my passion. I love writing it. It's the most satisfying journalistic experience of my 38-year professional journalistic career. (I started young, very young. Trust me.)

You, as veterans of the mental health system, know more than most people - especially doctors and psychiatrists and neuroscientists - about how it feels to be on the other end of a "notebook." Collectively, your expertise, your insights, your experiences in the mental health world is monumental. 

So, today, I'm going to muse about why, share the spotlight with you, and share some insights that have come my way in particularly in personal correspondence from those of you who struggle with and have learned so many "truths" travelling along their roads to Recovery, but are a little shy about being in the limelight.

I REMEMBER HOW ANXIOUS I WAS COMMENTING FOR THE FIRST TIME

Believe me, I empathize. I remember how anxious I was commenting for the first time on Liz Spikol's high-profile and multiple award winning Philadelphia Weekly bipolar blog The Trouble With Spikol. 

Liz hooked me immediately because she used to post short videos of herself and she seemed so friendly and down-to-earth and lacking in ego, which she is, by the way. But she also has a huge following and she monitors her comments, so I didn't know if mine would make it. This was nerve-wracking for me. 

At the time, I knew nothing about blogging. It was in April 2008, just after we launched HealthZone and Coming Out Crazy - this link is my inaugural post, which ran on April 9 of that year.

Back then, I was just getting my feet wet as a blogger. (Until I began blogging, I had never read a blog and knew little about the blogosphere. In our embryonic days, we were not live and interactive, so being interactive and engaging publicly and openly with the Internet was scary. I didn't know, then, that the blogosphere could be very forgiving, but at the same time, risky, too.

You put yourself out there, less so in The Comments, than in my main posts. Still, it's a daunting experience until you've done it a few times. As Malcolm Gladwell asserts in his controversial, highly readable and bestseller Outliers, The Story of Success, it takes practice. Not 10,000 hours, but a few.

This week, one of my regular "anonymous" readers sent me the following note in response to Wednesday's post.

"So sorry to hear you are still under the weather, but I hope you can give in to your 'rest' regimen. Thank you for your most recent effort on your blog, despite ill health.

"A HOT BATH AND GREAT LITERATURE AS A SLOW CURE FOR DEPRESSION" 

"I had a laugh about you mentioning the comparison between diabetes and depression, often put forth by every garden variety shrink. I had a similar experience with a well-meaning but distinctly insipid psychiatrist, soon after returning from living abroad. I told her I was a great follower of The Greeks. The Greeks suggested a hot bath and great literature as a slow cure for depression. 

"I find at the depths of sadness, one must go inside oneself, that the remedy comes from within. We slowly come back to our essential self or soul, and there we find peace.

"Yet in our rapid age, no one seems aware that quick cures are often only superficial. So far, I have avoided antidepressants, yet I suppose they work for some people. I think I am with Tennessee Williams who reportedly once said, 'If I lose my demons, I may lose my angels, too.'"

In a subsequent note that arrived a few minutes later, this reader added:

"Couldn't resist firing off this quote to you. Seemed somehow relevant in the light of my last message.

"'All great truths begin as blasphemies.' This, from George Bernard Shaw. I guess he was a bit of a contrarian, and somehow when I question the status quo on mental health I feel like one, too. Something to ponder. I found it an interesting quote."

And ponder, I did. I love pondering.

YOU GIVE ME SUCH RICHES

See? You give me such riches. This is just one recent example. I have dozens in my inbox. I hope one day this exquisitely enlightened person will be able to make the leap into the Comments so her wisdom, insight and literary largesse will be seen and shared with everyone in our community. So she can engage with all of you who are similarly thoughtful, understanding, empathetic, in endlessly diverse and fascinating ways. Experts on mental health and wellness and Recovery.

Now, you know why I am so beholden to you. All of you. Why I thank you constantly.

I'll rest my case. And rest, too.

Have a great weekend. For me, school starts on Monday morning at 8 a.m. I have much to do. I need my energy.

Be good to yourselves and speak soon.

Is Texting versus Talking destroying the human dialogue?

Yesterday, I started blogging about the question: "Is Text Messaging vs. Talking emotionally healthy?" 

A couple of weeks ago, lunching with a friend, she confided that she had never spoken on the telephone to her current amour. They communicate entirely by email and on Facebook and Twitter – texting rather than talking to each other or hearing each other's voices.

"But we've had a lot of face-time," she said, sensing, I think, my surprise and dismay.

I must admit I was shocked. Has interpersonal communication – romance – come to this? If it has, how sad. 

What's happened to interpersonal communication?

Then last evening CBC broke the story about the University of British Columbia medical research finding a 10-fold increase in the use of atypical antipsychotics in young children – drugs not intended for use in children, not tested with children, and potentially dangerous or even lethal. You should see the comments. They go on for more than 20 pages and counting. Over 100 of them.

First. Let me say that I've taken antipsychotic drugs since the 1960s – though never a steady diet of them. I was given them mostly when I was hospitalized. Sporadically. From Chlorpromazine, also known as "the chemical lobotomy" and Haldol when I was a teenager. Those drugs hit me like a sledgehammer and deadened me emotionally. They also caused side-effects. Facial ticks for which I needed to take another drug, Cogentin. This went on for years, even after I was started on a steady prescription of Lithium at the age of 27 and repeatedly, almost annually hospitalized for mania. 

Later, I was given several of the atypical antipsychotic drugs sited in the CBC story – Seroquel and Risperdal – but only "as needed" which turned out to be rather infrequently and only in miniscule doses – and I was in my late 40s and early 50s. I haven't taken or needed any antipsychotic medications of any kind for the last 9 years.

During the early years, the 1960s, I was given these antipsychotic drugs in hospital – never a steady diet of them – because I had episodes of psychosis. I was having delusions and hallucinations. I couldn't sleep. I wasn't thinking clearly. At one time, for four months in hospital, I was catatonic. The psychotic episodes started when I was 17 years of age. 

At no time, to the best of my knowledge, did I ever "act out" in school or become violent or threaten a teacher or another student. Members of my family described me as "histrionic" – dramatic, theatrical, emotional, larger-than-life. Attention-seeking. Clearly, I did not conform. 

It occurred to me that there may a connection between my original question regarding "texting versus talking" and young children today – why they're acting out so violently and being prescribed drugs that could seriously and permanently hurt them. Drugs that numb them emotionally but do nothing to get at the real reasons causing their behaviour. 

Something is very wrong. It's all wrapped up, I believe, in our ultimate loss of humanity. The change in the nature of our interpersonal communications. Our social world. People are using their eyes, but what about their ears and their hearts? Listening, actively, intelligently, emotionally and with empathy?

The difference between animals and humans is that humans can talk to each other. Animals can't. Animals communicate, but they don't use words and spoken language, and they don't engage in verbal conversation or thoughtful, rational, articulated, cerebral communication with each other.  

The keyword is engage. You cannot call texting talking because it's not. Nor is email. They're both toneless. Flat. Dead. There's no real spark. No real human excitement or demand for live, engrossing, involving, absorbing, demanding thought, articulation, conversation. Simultaneously and emotionally.  

There's no engagement. Think about what's happening. Instead of talking with each other, more and more people are texting. What does that mean?

According to loads of communications research, texting and email through whatever means you wish is a cause for serious concern in academic circles because it is seen as negatively affecting the way we communicate. It's "causing anti-social behaviour, reducing face-to-face communication and making it less personal."

Rick Pukis, an associate professor of communications at Augusta State University, has said that texting may affect the way we interact with each other. In one of many articles on how communication is breaking down, written in August 2008, Pukis states, "Text messaging has made us a very impersonal society today. People are not communicating, not using facial expression, like smiling so when they get back into a situation where they're talking to someone, they don't smile."

We may be constantly "connecting" but are we "communicating"?

In that same article, William Shea, a university student, adds that he "feels widespread cell phone use and text-messaging is hurting human communication, not helping it. "Rather than face interpersonal dealings head on, we can hide behind our phone until we can talk at our convenience – or not talk at all.'" People can text instead, which is not well-thought out sentences, but abbreviated communication which can be problematic when trying to express our feelings, he says.

"Is there a real problem with replacing 'you' with 'u'? It isn't as though we are going to forget how to spell the word, but we may forget how to communicate in intelligent, thought-out sentences," Shea said.

In another story, Pukis stated that emails are also a problem: "Someone can whip one out in thirty seconds and they're like, 'Ahh, I took care of this, I communicated. You didn't really communicate, you just shot out a one-line sentence over to me and didn't really convey any thoughts."

We may be forgetting or never learning how to engage in real, thoughtful, articulated, nuanced interpersonal conversations about ideas – live speech. Interactive, real, emotionally coloured communication. If you can't articulate your feelings, what do you do, I wonder? Do you know who you really are?

Communication takes practice. Conversation is an art. Who's teaching that? Twitter? Facebook? MySpace? Email? Even if it's in real time?

If you're a young kid, without a way to "process" your feelings verbally, to understand and express them accurately, to be heard and listened to, you can get so frustrated you lash out and act out. If you're used to engaging with a computer or cellphone – an inanimate object – I guess you don't get any practice in dealing with real emotions in a thoughtful rational human interpersonal way. That can cause anxiety, stress, frustration, anger. Built up emotions that explode when you're confronted with someone who doesn't respond to you the way you want or expect them to.

Telephones, even landlines and not cellphones, I suggest, have their purposes. 

The first contact I had in July 1999 with the man that I married almost nine years ago was a voicemail message quickly followed by a telephone call. His voice mail message was lovely, but it was our live telephone conversation that did me in.

In a split second, I fell in love with the sound of his voice. It was, and remains, a deep, resonant, smooth and warm bass inflected with his charming sense of fun. The most mellifluous voice I've ever heard. 

When I asked him, thinking he was around my age, how old he was, he quipped, "I'm 63, but I don't know how I got here." 

So he's 13 years older than I. Who cares about numbers with a man of such wit? I adored him even more and desperately wanted to meet him, which I did the following week. It was love at first sight and in about three weeks, we'll be celebrating the 10th anniversary of that meeting. We've never looked back.

How can one gauge sincerity, warmth, charm through bald black words on a white screen? With emotions? Give me a break.  

I venture to guess that had this exchange happened not on the telephone, but on email or Facebook, I would never have considered going out with him in the first place. That number – 63 – would have scared me off. 

Today, I cannot imagine my life without him. And the sound of his voice still thrills me.

But kids today are denied the richness of this quality of communication and on top of all that, parents want fast results. Quick fixes. Pop a pill, get results. That's how we're being conditioned.

This is all part of the "McDonaldization" of psychiatry and life in the 21st Century. Pills that numb minds and erase symptoms – Bandaid solutions that do nothing to help gain an understanding of where a child's real problems may lie. A diagnosis is made in 20 minutes and out comes the prescription pad. This can be potentially and severely harmful to these children. Their brains and bodies are developing and growing. These drugs are meant for adults. And they cause adults severe problems, too.

Who are these drugs really helping? Parents? Teachers? All of whom want compliant children. Square Pegs.

Don't believe me?

Have a look at the 2008 PBS documentary The Medicated Child. Children who used to be labelled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and given Ritalin are now labelled Bipolar and given cocktails of atypical antipsychotics. Thanks in part to the non-scientific, highly anecdotal research of psychiatrist (not child psychiatrist) Demitri Papolos and his wife Janice, authors of a 1999 book, The Bipolar Child. 

Massachusetts General Hospital child psychiatrist Joseph Biederman is currently under investigation for his unorthodox ties to the drug manufacturers. He is credited with making the quantum diagnostic leap and changing ADHD in children to Bipolar Disorder, thus sanctioning the use of an entirely different class of medication.

He's also one of a growing list of academic psychiatric researchers who have pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars for substantiating highly unethical research practices which advocate many new ways and growing populations, including children, to whom drugs can be prescribed. 

Don't even ask me, right now, to go into the kerfuffle brewing over the up and coming revised edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses. That's for another post, but when the DSM-V is released in 2011, watch for all kinds of new "disorders" and "pre-conditions" for which drugs can be used. 

Needless to say, the drug companies are laughing all the way to the bank. Greed. So what else is new?

What are these root causes? There's no easy answer.

They can be many – including genetic, environmental, intrauterine, biochemical, social, cultural, psychological and even parental. Abuse comes in many forms, including neglect. And what has technology done to improve the childhood experience, I wonder.

First of all, the whole notion of "play" has changed dramatically. Socialization of children has changed. I think it's been sacrificed so that kids can accelerate through school. Before they're physically and mentally developed to handle the material they're expected to absorb.

When I was in nursery school and kindergarten in the early 1950s, we played. We socialized. In the sand box and outside in the fresh air. We had naps on mats and had snacks – juice and cookies. We played musical instruments like the triangle and drums. We finger painted and did lots of arts and crafts. We had recess. It was fun.

Now kids go into day care and then nursery school and junior kindergarten and their childhood is compressed. They start learning numbers and the alphabet long before they hit grade one. After school, they're rarely if ever are allowed to run freely around their neighbourhoods playing simple games without constant supervision. Understandable, but sad. Neighbourhoods have become dangerous for kids.

Also, kids see their parents on computers for hours and are given play computers at the earliest of ages. They mimic their parents. They watch more television. Computers can become their closest companions and by the time they can use a real one, they often are. 

Between video games and then later on, email, they learn to engage with a machine far more easily than they do with each other. Play is about free engagement. Being social. Face-to-face social. Talking and engaging social activities together. 

But, many children, not all, are denied that unless their parents actively plan "play-dates" – a term that didn't exist when I was a kid.

Free, social engagement – not planned activities and lessons – seems to have diminished enormously today. I won't even begin, as well, on all the nutritional changes – the fast foods and processed foods – that have replaced the home made-from-scratch meals that I was given throughout my childhood. Balanced meals. In my case, my histrionic behaviour cannot be blamed on nutrition or the lack of play and/or the lack of a loving, caring, stay-at-home mother. I'm still histrionic, by the way. That's my nature.

Too much has changed and we're not much happier. In fact recent research has shown that women are less happy than they've been in years. 

With the advent of digital technology, the computer, the cellphone, voicemail, email, Facebook and the subsequent demise of what we used to call interpersonal communication and the lost art of conversation, children are invariably being seriously affected along with their parents.

In 1969, I studied Applied Communications Media at Seneca College, where I now teach. We studied all kinds of communications – journalism, television, advertising, public speaking, radio, photography, film, drama, including a required course in communications theory. Our text was called "The Human Dialogue" and one of its two editors was the late Ashley Montagu. I treasure that book. This is a brilliant anthology of 49 essays by some of the greatest thinkers of all time, including – Marshall McLuhan, Martin Buber, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Albert Camus, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Anatol Rapoport and Hannah Arendt. Reading it changed my life and I'm going to reread it. I feel I need to refresh my memory today.

I can't help but think that the human dialogue is dying out. Taking with it a quality of our basic humanity. Kindness, caring, tenderness, compassion. No wonder depression is on the rise. This is a human tragedy. Things are breaking down. I'm worried.

Is anybody in our society really interested in listening? In hearing and interpreting the sounds of our voices? Especially the voices of our children? 

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.