I recently received an email from a friend of mine, Robert Walter, who has really been through the mill with his depression treatments. Robert is a winner! In his email to me he gave me a list of some books and a short description of each which he says “helped me to get a better perspective of the mental health industry and the current medical model”.
He then went on and spoke about many matters relating to depression and the subconscious. If you would like his complete email just ask me for it by pressing reply and putting in the subject box – “Send me Rob’s complete email”. In this Mind Matters News I am including only part of Rob’s email and the short synopsis of the books to which he referred.
After Some Preamble Roberts’ Email Continued:
“Psychiatry, psychiatrists-medical doctors, medically treating the mind. Treating ‘disorders’ of the mind. Disorders- the statistical classification of observed symptoms (eg the USA, the DSM- the Diagnostic Statistical Manual) simply puts a label on a group of observed symptoms, a subjective noun. The aim of psychiatric treatment is to relieve symptoms, not to get to the root cause or solve the underlying cause or problem (this is plainly stated by the US National Institute of Mental Health, that medications only relieve symptoms, “So you can just get on with it”). Psychiatry does not have its foundations built on hard evidence based science but is a belief system, as was recently described by Beyond Blue. I’ve attached short précis of a few books that have helped me get a better perspective of the mental health industry and the current medical model”.
Anatomy of an Epidemic – Why has the number tripled in the last two decades?
Mad in America
Doctoring the Mind
The Myth of the Chemical Cure
Thinking About Suicide
Gods and Diseases.
“Gods and Diseases covers Jungian theory and the role of the subconscious/spirit/quantum in understanding our existence.
It appears to me, we in the West ignore the subconscious at our peril.
I’m thinking that our current understanding of mental health/mental illness may be stood on its head within the next 10 years. The change won’t come from psychiatry/medical profession but the grass roots and perhaps the science of quantum physics”.
Anatomy of an Epidemic – Robert Whitaker
In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States “tripled “over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nation’s children. What is going on?
“Anatomy of an Epidemic “challenges readers to think through that question themselves. First, Whitaker investigates what is known today about the biological causes of mental disorders. Do psychiatric medications fix “chemical imbalances” in the brain, or do they, in fact, “create “them? Researchers spent decades studying that question, and by the late 1980s, they had their answer. Readers will be startled–and dismayed–to discover what was reported in the scientific journals.
Then comes the scientific query at the heart of this book: During the past fifty years, when investigators looked at how psychiatric drugs affected long-term outcomes, what did they find? Did they discover that the drugs help people stay well? Function better? Enjoy good physical health? Or did they find that these medications, for some paradoxical reason, increase the likelihood that people will become chronically ill, less able to function well, more prone to physical illness?
This is the first book to look at the merits of psychiatric medications through the prism of long-term results. Are long-term recovery rates higher for medicated or unmedicated schizophrenia patients? Does taking an antidepressant decrease or increase the risk that a depressed person will become disabled by the disorder? Do bipolar patients fare better today than they did forty years ago, or much worse? When the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) studied the long-term outcomes of children with ADHD, did they determine that stimulants provide any benefit?
By the end of this review of the outcomes literature, readers are certain to have a haunting question of their own: Why have the results from these long-term studies–all of which point to the same startling conclusion–been kept from the public?
In this compelling history, Whitaker also tells the personal stories of children and adults swept up in this epidemic. Finally, he reports on innovative programs of psychiatric care in Europe and the United States that are producing good long-term outcomes. Our nation has been hit by an epidemic of disabling mental illness, and yet, as “Anatomy of an Epidemic “reveals, the medical blueprints for curbing that epidemic have already been drawn up.
Mad in America – Robert Whitaker
Schizophrenics in the United States currently fare worse than patients in the world’s poorest countries. In Mad in America, medical journalist Robert Whitaker argues that modern treatments for the severely mentally ill are just old medicine in new bottles, and that we as a society are deeply deluded about their efficacy. The widespread use of lobotomies in the 1920s and 1930s gave way in the 1950s to electroshock and a wave of new drugs. In what is perhaps Whitaker’s most damning revelation, Mad in America examines how drug companies in the 1980s and 1990s skewed their studies to prove that new antipsychotic drugs were more effective that the old, while keeping patients in the dark about dangerous side effects.
A hunting, deeply compassionate book—now revised to reflect the latest scientific research—Mad in America raises important question about our obligations to the mad, the meaning of “insanity,” and what we value most about the human mind.
“This is such an important book that every psychiatrist should be compelled to read at least the preface, every year, And everyone else should then insist on them describing in writing, every year, what they are doing about it.”—New Scientist
“A passionate, compellingly researched polemic, as fascinating as it is ultimately horrifying.”—Mother Jones
“[A] valuable and meticulously documented study.”—The Journal of the American Medical Association
“Robert Whitaker takes on no less than the medical establishment and the pharmaceutical industry in his tough indictment of mental-health philosophies and treatments in America…He does an intelligent and bold job of stitching together historical events to make his case that too many unsafe treatments and overpriced pills have been forced on too many patients for too flimsy reasons.”—Seattle Times
Doctoring the Mind – Richard Bentall
Why is the Western world’s treatment of mental illness so flawed? Who really benefits from psychiatry? And why would a patient in Nigeria have a much greater chance of recovery than one in the UK?
In Doctoring the Mind, leading clinical psychologist Richard Bentall reveals the shocking truths behind the system of mental health care in the West. With a heavy dependence on pills and the profit they bring, psychiatry has been relying on myths and misunderstandings of madness for too long, and builds on methods which can often hinder rather than help the patient.
Bentall argues passionately for a new future of mental health, one that considers the patient as an individual and redefines our understanding and treatment of madness for the twenty-first century.
The Myth of the Chemical Cure – Joanna Moncreif
This controversial book overturns the claim that psychiatric drugs work by correcting chemical imbalance, and analyzes the professional, commercial and political vested interests that have shaped this view. It provides a comprehensive critique of research on drugs including antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers.
Thinking About Suicide – David Webb
Contemplating and comprehending the urge to die.
The literature of suicidology has studiously ignored the voice of those who actually experience suicidal feelings. David Webb suggests this is no accidental oversight but a very deliberate and systematic exclusion of this critically important first person knowledge. The only thing that is banished with even more vigour from suicidology is mention of the spiritual wisdom that set the author free from the persistent urge to die.
Webb rejects the dominant medical model that claims suicide is caused by some notional mental illness. “Thinking About Suicide” calls for the broad community conversation on suicide that is required to bring it out of the closet as a public health issue.
In 2006 David Webb completed the world’s first PhD on suicide by someone who has attempted. Prior to his PhD David worked in the computer industry as a software developer and university lecturer. He has been a board member of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and currently works part-time as a research/policy officer with the Australia Federation of Disability Organisations.
Gods and Diseases – Dr David Tacey
There are many problems in today′s society that cannot be resolved by the applications of reason, logic or medical science. These include child abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide. Numerous mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, and phobias, are rising dramatically and there seems to be no solution in sight. In this book, David Tacey argues that the solution lies in breaking free from the confines of modern medicine. Instead we must turn to spirituality, and to what Tacey calls ′meaning-making′, to make sense of our physical and mental wellbeing.
About The Author. Dr David Tacey is Associate Professor and Reader in Arts at La Trobe University, where he teaches literature, spirituality and Jungian psychology. He is the author of five books on spirituality and culture, including Edge of the Sacred and Re-Enchantment: The New Australian Spirituality. He lives in Melbourne.
This is worth repeating
“Gods and Diseases covers Jungian theory and the role of the subconscious/spirit/quantum in understanding our existence.
It appears to me, we in the West ignore the subconscious at our peril.
I’m thinking that our current understanding of mental health/mental illness may be stood on its head within the next 10 years. The change won’t come from psychiatry/medical profession but the grass roots and perhaps the science of quantum physics”.
So – pass this on to others and remember if you want Robert’s full email then just ask me.
All the best
Sandy
“Your gift from God is your potential – Your gift to God is to use it.”
