I have heard many ways people can connect deeply.
One is just an intuitive, empathetic connection that sometimes happens when people understand each other.
I also believe we can cultivate an ability to listen and connect deeply, to set aside judgments about how other people express themselves or react to a situation. When I do that, it often makes a real conversation possible. I’m not always successful at it, but I keep trying to learn.
Programs that Help People Connect Deeply
Soteria helps people connect deeply.
Ombudsperson programs, Soteria, and Open Dialogue all seem like practices that have
Continue reading Tina Minkowitz on How to Connect Deeply and Relate to a Person
NAMI started when it became too common to demonize parents for their children’s problems.
This originally came from a post on Mad In America, about Jani, a six year old with a schizophrenia diagnosis, who has gotten much media attention which was sought by her parents. The comments link to the parents’ admission of child abuse, which may have pre-dated the psychosis. But the question is, is it fair to publicly criticize these parents? Is it fair also to put a child’s health information online?
My blog is directed at parents, not ex-patients who are well-represented in the recovery
Continue reading By Rossa Forbes – Let’s not demonize parents, and work together
People need good information. and less fighting over medication..
Editor’s note: As the author says, Wellness Wordworks is for good mental health information, and truly informed consent regarding psych meds. That must include information about alternatives to medicine, and dangerous long-term side effects. IT MEANS TRYING ALTERNATIVES TO MEDICATION FIRST, NOT AS AN AFTER-THOUGHT.
We are against “diagnosis and medication first for everyone for life,” which is still standard practice in mental health today. We believe most so-called mental illness comes from previous trauma, isolation, invalidation, and loss, which are not diseases, and do not respond to psych
Continue reading By Elvia Knoll – I’m for Good Information, Not For or Against Psych Meds
Treating trauma is a community problem, not personal.,
A woman is beaten in the United States every 15 seconds. Society pays the cost in mental health budgets. courts , cops, corrections, substance abuse, and children’ services. The real social cost of trauma has been well known to people who work in those systems for years, but there is no consensus about what to do, or how to build political support, for treating trauma.
treating trauma is essential. People like Cheryl Sharp and Shery Mead are bringing the role of treating trauma in mental health to the forefront, nationwide. Shery
Continue reading By Sarah Knutson – Treating Trauma is an Urgent Public, Not Personal, Need
A blind person did not choose to be blind, but can choose limitations blindness places on his life. That’s even more true of limitations caused by emotional distress. We can’t prevent the trauma that triggers it, but can choose limitations it imposes on our lives. Many people enjoy reliving their negative experience. To see their experience as somehow positive would seem would absurd to them.
There’s a saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
If you’re not ready to see or accept that we don’t choose to be blind, crippled, or post-traumatic, but can choose limitations such
Continue reading By Imogene Joseph – We can’t choose handicaps, but can choose limitations
Editor’s note: We got this recovery story from Jared, the webmaster of SchizLife.com. He’s a true mental health escapee or psych survivor, but we were his first contact with the recovery movement. We’ll repost his blog here with mental health civil rights information in brackets. This will be an interesting note to show the difference between mainstream mental health information, which was all Jared had found to this point. He’s progressing rapidly, though, now that he’s got contact with advocates who know a different type of schizophrenia recovery story.
We Fall to Gain a Frame of Reference – My Schizophrenia
Continue reading Jared – My Schizophrenia Recovery Story
Editors note: This is an essay written by Yvette McShan taken with her permission from a Facebook discussion group. For a comprehensive treatment of this topic, along with many personal stories, check out http://www.psychdiagnosis.net/
Labeling is Harmful because It Costs People Rights: Parental rights Right to bear arms Right for employment in certain fields. Social stigma.
Introduce yourself to a prospective mother-in-law with a mental illness label. Tell the police that you are X disease, and you want them to know. It’s dangerous being known as a club members of the DSM.
I do not hide that I am in
Continue reading By Yvonne Smith – Why Mental Illness Labeling is Harmful
Editors note: We recently got challenged by one of our supporters who is a medication user and wants people to stop invalidating medication users. We are going to intersperse our challenger with data to make sure people can weigh both sides of the story.
Our challenger:
Psych med critics who practically say all psychiatric medications are bad for everyone all the time –dismiss the experiences of apparently millions of people, who take psych meds, as merely personal anecdotes. Psychiatric survivors talk about their negative personal experiences with psych meds all the time.
So, yes, there is another side of the
Continue reading Medication users call for respect from psych med critics
Editors’s note: Many people think that building websites and computer programming is hard. Most programmers say that anyone can do what they do. But then why aren’t we doing it? Well, it does take some time to learn. These are questions and ideas to keep in mind if you are planning to hire a computer programmer or take a programming class. This was taken from an email to us by a volunteer programmer who helped us at Startup Weekend.
I would definitely encourage you to attend a conference on computer programming.. Even if you never personally utilize the technical information,
Continue reading How to Talk to Computer Programmers
It is critical to remind each other and ourselves as often and with as much charitable love as possible of how “whole” health requires being a critical cog/voice/contributer to something greater than ourselves. I have not yet found the basic ways to “realistically” ever be a parent quite yet.
I have not totally given up, it’s not all that matters to me, but I’m getting a little bit old to be a brand new parent. This is in spite of getting younger in so many practical ways as I learn more about how to contribute to society… As tough as
Continue reading Ann Burgess – We all need to contribute to society
Volunteering for International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry (ISEPP) is my way of giving back. I feel I have been very blessed. It was very difficult for me to find providers who offered alternatives to mainstream psychiatry, and it was even more difficult to find a psychiatrist who would work with me s to try to taper off psych meds. ISEPP helps people connect with alternatives to mainstream psychiatry and psych meds.
ISEPP supports alternatives to conventional psychiatry and medication.
Volunteering for ISEPP gives me an opportunity to help provide support to mental health professionals who are open-minded
Continue reading Maria Mangicaro – ISEPP is My Type of Mental Health Advocacy
This is a comment originally posted on http://MadinAmerica.com that deserved some further attention.
If we consider the broad spectrum of issues regarding mental/behavioral/emotional health care, we start to realize there are many shades of grey in the “mental illness” epidemic and debate. But what if mental health advocates could identify certain issues that are purely black and white, right or wrong, and focus on just a few we agree on?
Mental health advocates should unite around a few issues they agree on.
We could start to create transparency among advocates. For example, I am sure you are familiar with
Continue reading Maria Mangicaro – Can Mental Health Advocates Advocates Agree on a Message?
We are one as humans, all infinitely interconnected. Therefore, we are certainly responsible for ourselves, and need to reduce the normal, human emotional distress people have created and can solve. Our true voice would never leave us if we were all treated as worthy, not “sufferers,” or victims, who have been labeled, ridiculed, or violently squashed in forced treatment — who currently can’t hear their true voices.
We want the healer within us, that others have available.
Elegant, almost scientific, evidence that there is no real separation between you and me, that we are interconnected infinitely with all humans (and
Continue reading Ann Burgess – Why Only Some Emotional Distress is Called a Disease
Editor’s note: This came from a discussion in an email group for all the peer support centers in Missouri. Bonnie Castro is a peer support specialist.
Some Peers Change Lives
So many folks in the system right now still remain in the “life is limited” stage despite consumer-run programs or clinical services that are offered to them. It’s not the services destroying the system so much. It’s the people delivering those services that change lives.
Recovery Rocks 2011 – Conference with many peer specialists where Bonnie was a speaker
I have met case managers that are really good
Continue reading Bonnie Castro – People, Not Treatment Models, Change Lives
Editor’s note: This is a discussion that came from our UnDiagnosing Emotional Distress Facebook group.
Ken Braiterman: I think psychiatrized is when mental health professionals turn normal human feelings and behaviors that they would have themselves into symptoms of a psychiatric disease. It’s their way of not dealing with WHY you’re angry or depressed, and calling the anger and depression your “sickness.” It’s thinking all your problems come from a “chemical imbalance,” and psychiatric chemicals will make you well.
JF: The use of the medical profession to deal with non-medical problems of life. Denying women’s issues and instead applying derogatory
Continue reading Discussion: What Does “Psychiatrized” Mean?
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