REVIEW OF TALKING CURES FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA

REVIEW OF TALKING CURES FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA –

THE BASIS OF PSYCHOSIS



ALISTAIR CAMPBELL describes his own mental breakdown as him knowing something was dreadfully wrong, and finding that everything he could think of to put it right, only made it worse. There was a lump of mental furniture right in the middle of his mind, at that time, which blocked him from implementing any sensible resolution. This, as explained below, is ‘denial’ at work – an item becomes too painful to be tackled unaided. Simple social support has repeatedly been shown to cure psychoses. I was trained in the “Therapeutic Community” approach, in 1963, an optimistic, successful approach which present day psychiatry abandoned around 1980. Its equivalent was implemented at the Quaker Retreat in York 1796 to 1850, and yielded better results at curing psychosis than ever since, as did the Soteria movement – see sample below. In contrast the so-called ‘antipsychotics’ have consistently been shown to prolong psychosis, since the late 1950s [see ‘Mad in America’ by Robert Whitaker, Perseus, ISBN 0738203858 www.madinamerica.com].



The Soteria movement, proven to be effective in curing psychosis, tells a wonderfully descriptive story. One young man with psychosis told the friendly but untrained Soteria support staff that Martians were arriving at Los Angeles airport at 4 a.m. the following morning. So they went. When the aliens failed to materialise, he said that they must have got the date wrong – I suggest this was the first time he had ever been taken seriously – his ‘consent’ mattered. He was, for the first time, getting relevant assistance for his mental stresses. Compare that with the appalling destruction of civil rights in today’s psychiatry, and you can see quite how bankrupt contemporary psychiatric has become. Human rights are therapeutic.



1) WHAT’S WRONG Before 1900, the ‘germ theory of disease’ struggled – microscopes were few, and bacteria remained invisible to the naked eye. Male midwives notoriously refused to wash their hands between deliveries. Psychiatry today is in a similarly profound and damaging state of ignorance. This time the cause of the trouble is not only invisible – it’s also that the customer (aka the patient) is unable to say what’s really gone wrong, as with Alistair above. This derails the standard medical expectations. Whereas medics are used to solving problems posed to them – here they are asked to solve problems which are determinedly tangential to the main pathology. Psychiatry is offered the wrong end of the stick, is presented with a plausible red-herring, and being unaware of the pathology of ‘denial’ the orthodox practitioner grabs it, with calamity all round.



2) WHAT’S RIGHT Sufferers from psychiatric symptoms decline to say what's wrong, simply because they don’t want to know. And the reason they don't want to know is equally simple – it’s because it’s too frightening. They wax voluble on the painful symptoms, while remaining resolutely mute (even violently combative) on where these really come from. The root of this paradox is childishly simple. It comes directly from the standard response of any infant to trauma or abuse – i.e. denial – “this isn’t happening to me”. They grow into adult life, and cannot say “this has stopped happening to me”. Often of course they can, and the problems evaporate – but for those that cannot, the symptoms they suffer – phobias, panics, hysteria, psychoses, bipolar, personality disorders of all types, anorexia, self harm, suicidality – all arise, and can be evaporated, by tracing their origin back to a ‘frozen terror’, an infantile seizure when the infant decided that the end had come, and they did not want to know reality anymore. Persuade them to ‘grow up emotionally’ and the cure is 100% guaranteed, provided they finish the course.



3) WHAT TO DO NOW. Restore dignity and respect to sufferers from emotional distress. They are adult human beings, with full human rights, except they are currently operating on infantile survival strategies. They need help to pull themselves together – they’ve done what they can, and now need help with the remainder. In other words, it is essential to enlist the determination of the sufferer to deal with the problem from the inside. This is Emotional Education or Cognitive Emotional Therapy. There is no danger that the individual does not wish to rid themselves of the painful symptoms – they just need help, support and guidance as to how to do this. Truth, Trust and Consent are essential ingredients, since the co-operation and determination of the sufferer is crucial to any re-evaluation of the ‘frozen terror’. Bring the emotional survival strategies up to date, and the symptoms evaporate. The key is to appreciate and convey that every emotional resource is being used by the customer to prevent the dreaded truth coming out – the process of denial is heaviest in the best endowed mentally. The customer is fooling themselves as to the true root of the pain – whence fooling inept medics is child’s play. You and I know that any and all infantile damage is well and truly over – but the sufferer does not. They still inhabit a nursery nightmare where abuse or trauma is going to happen ‘next’ and the only remedy they know is not to look – to deny. Reverse this, and the glories of adulthood blossom.



Dr Bob Johnson Consultant Psychiatrist,

P O Box 49, Ventnor, Isle of Wight, PO38 9AA UK Sunday, 26 October 2008