How to cure Mental Illness

This article is gong to be a little difficult to write. Nevertheless, I think I should give a little feedback. I’ve been getting comments on other sites, like Facebook, and I’ve pasted a couple here to see if it would stimulate conversation. Time will tell. To let you know, I’m being read in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, the UK and in Chile.

Chile? Yeah, I guess that page translator comes in handy. This subscription thing is all so new to me; I don’t really know how it works until I try it out. So far, there are people who have been kind enough to subscribe and this will probably be the first article to hit their emails.

The big comment I get is that people want me to interview street people. They want to hear from the homeless and get their point of view. A lot of people have ideas on attacking or managing homelessness and it’s very important to hear the views from the street and incorporating that into management business plans. And, believe me, there are people who are surveying the views of the homeless. It may be inconsistent or not incorporated, but nevertheless, there are people out there trying to solve the problem of homelessness and listening to the views of the street.

I’ll get there; I promise. But first, I have to do the homework. If I’m talking to some poor incoherent man, I have to have a purpose to it. I want to be pretty clear in my head where I’m going with the interview and to give the guy a voice. I also want you to be prepared.

Now, I’ve been saying all along that mental illness can be cured, or in the words of the feds, people can recover from it. There are certain steps to be taken in order for it to work. But it does work.

I’ve been hunting the net and the library and talking to shrinks and psych nurses and there is a wide spectrum of analysis on the subject of mental illness. Some say you are born that way and that’s the way you are going to stay. Usually it is put to the patient that mental illness is like diabetes; you just have to stay on your meds for the rest of your life and so long as you are on the meds you are normal.

My response is that diabetes is a disease of the pancreas wherein not enough insulin is produced to digest sugars. Mental illness is a disease of the mind. If you don’t know the difference between the pancreas and the brain, please refer to your medical journal. The pancreas is located somewhere below the stomach while the brain is somewhere between your ears. If you keep looking, you’ll find it.

Nevertheless, there is medication. And if you’re to have any hope of dealing with mental illness, you’re going to have to deal with meds. There is simply too much evidence about the incredible benefits of psychiatric medication to rule it out. The problem is not the meds, it’s the fact that the meds are seen as a silver bullet, a cure-all. They are over-prescribed, harming the patient, and they’re seen as a way of not having to deal with the patient. The shrink becomes nothing more than a drug pusher on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies. He/she reads DSM-IV, looks up symptoms, matches them as best as possible to what seems to be going on with the patient and proscribes the meds. Then closes the book on the patient other than to ensure the meds are being taken and the patient seems to be on an even keel.

There is the constant admonition that if you stop taking your meds, you will end up back in the hospital, where perhaps drastic action will need to be taken.

This is pretty well the state of the art in modern psychiatric therapy and has been for the past 15 years or so. Why they aren’t allowing the homeless mentally ill access to a secure supply of meds, is somewhat beyond me. If they buy into this prognosis, how come they aren’t using it?

However; and here’s the key, after ten or 15 years of people taking meds and having regular visits to their shrink, some are actually recovering. It’s rare, but it happens. And the feds have picked up on it.

Time to start quoting form this thing – from The Face of Mental Illness, page 47:

Treatment to assist in recovery from mental illness must reflect its complex origins. A variety of interventions such as psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, medication and occupational therapy can improve an individual’s functioning and quality of life. Since mental illnesses arise from disorders of brain functioning, medication is often an important part of treatment.

So, each patient is going to be different. I don’t think that’s saying anything new, but if everybody’s different, then we’ve got to stop treating everyone the same. There’s more:

Assumptions about Recovery

1. The task of consumers is to recover. Professionals do not hold the key to recovery: consumers do. The task of professionals is to facilitate recovery; the task of consumers is to recover. Recovery may be facilitated by the consumer’s natural support system.
2. A common denominator of recovery is the presence of people who believe in and stand by the person in need of recovery. Seemingly universal in the recovery concept is the notion that critical to one’s recovery is a person or persons in whom one can trust to “be there” in times of need.
3. A recovery vision is not a function of one’s theory about the causes of mental illness. Recovery may occur whether one views the illness as biological or not. The key element is understanding that there is hope for the future, rather than understanding the cause in the past.
4. Recovery can occur even though symptoms reoccur. The episodic nature of severe mental illness does not prevent recovery. As one recovers, symptoms interfere with functioning less often and for briefer periods of time. More of one’s life is lived symptom-free.
5. Recovery is a unique process. There is no one path to recovery, nor one outcome. It is a highly personal process.
6. Recovery demands that a person has choices. The notion that one has options from which to choose is often more important than the particular option one initially selects.
7. Recovery from the consequences of the illness is sometimes more difficult than recovering from the illness itself. These consequences include discrimination, poverty, segregation, stigma and iatrogenic effects of treatment.

Adapted from Anthony WA. A recovery-oriented service system:
setting some system level standards.
Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 2000;3:159–68.

So, there ya go. It all makes perfect sense.

1. Get on the right meds, and take the minimum dosage that will still kick in. Don’t overdose and don’t rock your meds. Stay steady over a couple of years at a time. Reduce it when you feel it’s right and under the supervision of a shrink. It’s your meds, not the shrink’s.
2. Get a shrink you can relate to. It’s very hard and it’s rare. The greatest attribute a shrink can have is empathy. There are very few who have it. Usually you get a new shrink every couple of months. Be patient, a good one will come around and then you hang onto ‘em.
3. Get your finances in order. Forget work, get on social assistance, and believe me, you qualify. Get the social worker to fill out the forms for you. Tell them you’re too sick to fill out the forms. They’ll understand. If at all possible get onto a federal disability pension. It’s made for people like you.
4. If you’re on a disability pension, there are usually free courses and programs you can get into. Get into them. You’re going to be down for a few years so you may as well make the best of them.
5. Quit smoking. Yes you can. If you have the incredible courage and self-control to get this far, you can quit smoking like falling off a log.
6. Quit drinking, quit drugs. See point 5.
7. Constantly build up a system of support. They’re your real family. As a result of mental illness, you have pushed everyone away and now you’re alone. Time to turn that around and accept help and love from everyone. There’s a lot of it out there. Hang with sane people; they’re on your side.
8. Be happy. Write, read, paint, go for walks, study, and make up for lost time. Enjoy your new life.

The big thing, is you have to decide to get better. Forget about admitting you're mentally ill. That's too hard. Nobody is goingto admit they're mentally ill. But wanting to get better? Hey, everyone can do that.

Ok folks. Thanks for hanging in there.