"If You Have The Will There's A Way"

My husband and I live in a town of about 30,000 population. He's an insurance salesman, and I do the office. While the children were young I was "Mom" -- oranges for soccer and wrestling, checking math and spelling, driving to piano, guitar, and violin lessons, and baking bread. We camped and hiked the Sierra Nevada in the summer and downhill skied those same mountains every winter. The three boys rode bikes, played with friends, trapped water snails and frogs, and collected cuts and bruises building tree houses and forts. We read Richard Scary, Dr. Seuss, and C.S. Lewis, and attended church and summer camp, They finished high school, headed for college, and my husband and I readied ourselves for life without them.

That was before the phone call came about our son; the shadow world of mental illness at twenty-six spawned fear, embarrassed silences, too many questions, no answers, blame, and dread, and brought to light nonexistent community support, and an uncertain future. Books I checked out at the library terrified me and bashed what little hope I was hanging onto. The following two years we struggled as our son endured five hospitals, two jails, one criminal state facility, a county mental health unit, and numerous psychologists and psychiatrists who without exception told us he was mentally ill. His brain was broken, permanently damaged.

"Is there a family history on either side of clinical depression or mental illness?" No. "Was it a traumatic birth?" No, easiest of the three. I was in the hospital ten minutes before he was born." "Does he have allergies?" No, never. He's healthy. No health problems. "Any indications of mental instability as a young boy?" None.

They searched for a physical cause because mental illness and its symptoms (voices, depression, mania, hallucinations, paranoia, illusions of grandeur) are thought to have a physical basis (genetic, a chemical imbalance, or degeneration of brain tissue, as with Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and other seizure conditions). Since so many believe there is no cure for this physical disease practitioners use neuroleptic drugs (drugs acting directly in the brain) to suppress psychotic symptoms.

We faced the unknown and bewildering world of biologic psychiatry and its medication-is-the-only-answer dogma. Even though my husband and believe in the body's ability to heal itself, we pressured our son to take medication. He refused. He didn't want to lose control of his mind, and he, hated the effects of the drugs which made him feel he'd lost himself and wanted only to sleep. Without drugs he was fine for months at a time before another episode hit. Then manic energy drove him to travel: through California, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and the southernmost tip of Mexico (the American Consulate in Tijuana returned him to the States from a back-street substation that time.)

In late 1996, after a particularly dangerous episode, a hospital called from Oregon. He was labeled Schizo-Affective, "exhibiting traits of schizophrenia along with disturbance of mood. He came home to live. He agreed to medication.

The medication, lithium, and a neuroleptic - Risperdol, controlled the voices, paranoia, and psychosis. For three weeks he worked full-time, cared for our garden, jogged each morning, played guitar, and exercised at the college -productive and busy.

When did I notice changes, stuttering speech and forced smile? Three weeks after returning home from Oregon he began having a hard time getting out of bed, emotions were "flat." He was listlessness, and without his old sense of humor. "Something's happening to my mind. can't remember a paragraph right after I read." Short-term memory loss, paranoia, and dread. He was a passionate sort and wanted to fight for causes he cared about, but a zest for life had gone. "I don't care about anything any more." Only with "gritting-teeth" determination was he able to finish a workday before retreating to bed. We called the local mental health center, and the psychiatrist added an antidepressant, zoloft, to his other drugs.

Worse; it got worse. Depression deepened, and fear became a constant companion. He had been athletic; now he struggled up the stairs to the kitchen, eyes blank, head down, feet shuffling. He had graduated from a small liberal arts college cum laude, in four years never off the Dean's list, bookcases lined with Dostoyevsky, Poe, and Kafka. Now he couldn't remember a short paragraph right after reading. No interest in the garden, art, or music, all of which he had loved before We watched him shrivel. One night on his way to bed he mumbled, "Mom, I'm losing ground." My heart, leaden within, knew he was right. He was slipping from us, and there was nowhere to turn for help.

We didn't realize it then, but our mental-illness paradigm had to change. Medication cajoled down his throat, instead of bringing health, was progressively erasing personality, gifts, strengths, and personhood. But we knew of no help for him outside psychotropic medication.

Frightened as we were we leaped into an abyss, against all advice, with no guide book, no local support, and no plan of action, only a desperate player for help. "There must big a way to healing that won't dismantle him." Someone has said, "When the learner is ready the teacher will come." We were ready. The teacher came.

We leaped and serendipitously found on a "marked-down" table Dr. Peter Breggin's little volume in which he fights overuse of psychiatric medication Talking Back to Prozac. Talking Back… led to another of his books, Toxic Psychiatry and confirmed our suspicions our son's decline was not illness-based, but caused to a great extent by the very medications prescribed to help. At the same time Toxic Psychiatry took me, through an internet class at the local college, to Breggin's web page. Champions of child rights, Ginger and Peter Breggin are not part of mainstream psychiatry. They are openly critical of psychiatry's liberal prescribing Prozac for depression and Ritalin for children's hyperactivity, ADD and ADHD.

On their web page I clicked "Questions?" and typed in, 'Tell me what you know about Risperdol, lithium, and Zoloft." The next day Ginger Breggin answered, "Contact Dr. Kevin McCready at The San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center, Clovis, California, the only clinic of its kind in the United States treating mental illness without medication."

"We'd found the "needle-in-the-haystack."

McCready, the Breggin's, and supportive colleagues see mental problems as springing not from a damaged, broken brain, but as symptoms of emotional spiritual crises precipitated by life stress. Loss of a boy friend, divorce, college, graduation with no career path, for example, may bring instability. College can give life purpose but, "What happens when I graduate? What if I don't find the right profession? Where do I start looking?"

In some highly sensitive individuals these doubts are threatening enough to trip underlying emotional instability and bring on classic symptoms of "mental illness" (voices, paranoia, psychoses, depression, and mania). And, there's evidence symptoms are the result of protective mechanisms of the mind. According to psychologist Dr. Ty Colbert, himself a friend of McCready of the San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center, symptoms protect self awareness "Human consciousness can willfully separate itself from any direct contact with the physical body ... if there is a conscious need to hide from the awareness of an insult." And the more our self awareness is injured the stronger the protective subconscious is." "When violations are not healed our minds and bodies adjust by keeping the pain of those violations separated from the full awareness of our selfhood. Symptoms of mental illness arise as a result of an overload of hurt and loneliness, anger, and shame ..."

The Center has no locks, no, what McCready terms, "paramilitary staff," no barred windows, They force no one into treatment and they use no drugs. "On the other hand, we don't force anybody to not use drugs either don't stick our fingers down people's throats to make them purge whatever drugs they're taking. We have a very non-controlling attitude ... Our basic sense is to treat people respectfully and expect mutual respect from our clients."

Without medication the mind is able in time to cooperate with the practitioner in its own healing. The client begins to understand himself, and recognize symptoms as responses to woundedness. Biomedical psychiatry, on the other hand, ignores intrinsic healing mechanisms within each person. Medications subtract voices, paranoia, psychosis, depression, and mania. They disable the brain in order to reduce these symptoms, but since they don't address foundational emotional problems they add nothing. Indeed, in our son's case his mind was so clouded he himself was being subtracted!

Our son's been at the Center for six months, fighting to make a new life, and it's been an uphill struggle. Real healing is difficult, because our pleasure-seeking culture denies pain. ("The religion of America," according to Kathleen Norris, The Closer Walk, is optimism and denial.") Symptoms of emotional pain are expressions of personal needs. Since part of being human is suffering, suffering and pain have meaning and hold potential for growth. Fear of these symptoms drives us to hand over control of our lives and our healing to professionals, to put someone else in charge. But responsibility for personal healing lies with each of us. Clients at the Center recognize they hold control; they have choices.

"Your brain is not broken and you're not mentally ill." The Center affirms rational thought and fosters personal trust. "Voices you hear are not real; do not listen. They're not real."

"One of the primary mechanisms of this healing process is expression .The purpose of the program (at the Center) is to provide an enriched environment or 'milieu' in which the patient's own healing resources can activate and thrive," according to McCready, director

. He walked away from a for-profit psychiatric hospital in 1989 and got himself a loan to open the out-patient facility "Approximately 60-70 percent of the individuals the center works with have extensive histories of repeated and severe psychiatric treatment, ranging from a few months to 20 years. Many  have been told they are 'untreatable,' and may come to the center taking from six to ten different psychotropic medications. Almost all have been told they have a chemical imbalance and must be on medications the rest of their lives."

Our son lives in his own apartment in Clovis. He does his own cooking and laundry, walks daily to the Center for group therapy from 9:00 to 3:00 and sees an individual therapist weekly. He's taking no medication, and he's reading again: historical novels and spiritual books. He's sketching and playing guitar and taking responsibility for his life. Former damaging reactions are helpful insights; feelings previously disowned, sources of guidance. He's almost finished at the Center and soon will relocate to pursue a lifework. He has several career options, and he will be productive, not "schizophrenically-functional" in some scaled-down, made-to-order job.

Psychotherapy is only a tool, a discipline. The client can choose or reject the tool. Once chosen, he determines how much to use the tool and to what end. According to M. Scott Peck "it is possible for an individual to be extremely ill and yet at the same time possess an extremely strong will 'to grow,' in which case healing will occur. The will to grow is the one crucial determinant of success or failure in psychotherapy." We can't say the path our son is taking to wholeness is the path for everyone. We know for him it is.

He now has hope for a future; and is understanding himself. He has learned to use problems and pain as tools for growth. With therapists at the Center in Clovis he's healing emotional spiritual wounds and preparing to contribute to society.

Ref:

1982 Peter Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry, Talking back to Ritalin, Talking Back to Prozac.

Ty Colbert, Broken Brains, Wounded Hearts, Why Do I Feel Guilty When I've Done Nothing Wrong?, Depression: Its Causes

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled.