Two Views on Global Mental Health - Evidence-Based vs. Cultural Sensitivity

The two articles cited below were referenced in one of the weekly "best of" lists that I read, sorry that I can't remember which one. But these two articles offer very different takes on the topic of mental health as a global health concern.

In 2010, a team of scholars from the Harvard School of Public Health and the World Economic Forum issued a report on the current and future global economic burden of disease.

In 2010, the report’s authors found, noncommunicable diseases caused 63 percent of all deaths around the world, and 80 percent of those fatalities occurred in countries that the World Bank characterizes as low income or middle income. Noncommunicable diseases are partly rooted in lifestyle and diet, and their emergence as a major risk, especially in the developing world, represents the dark side of the economic advances that have also spurred increased longevity, urbanization, and population growth. The scale of the problem is only going to grow: between 2010 and 2030, the report estimated, chronic noncommunicable diseases will reduce global GDP by $46.7 trillion.

One surprise was that the report predicted that the largest source of future financial costs would be mental disorders, which the report suggested would account for at least a third of the global economic burden of "noncommunicable diseases" by 2030.

Taken together, the direct economic effects of mental illness (such as spending on care) and the indirect effects (such as lost productivity) already cost the global economy around $2.5 trillion a year. By 2030, the team projected, that amount will increase to around $6 trillion, in constant dollars—more than heart disease and more than cancer, diabetes, and respiratory diseases combined. 


The above quotes are taken from a very recent article in the Jan/Feb 2015 issue of Foreign Affairs, "Darkness Invisible: The Hidden Global Costs of Mental Illness." The article is written by Thomas R. Insel (Director of the National Institutes of Mental Health), Pamela Y. Collins (Director, Office for Research on Disparities & Global Mental Health National Institute of Mental Health), and Steven E. Hyman (Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research and a core member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard).

All three of these authors have skin in the game, so to speak - their jobs are based on the existence of mental disorders on a wide scale that must be treated. That makes me suspect of their opinions. 

Still, their article is worth a read.  

In the post that referenced that article, the author also mentioned an alternative view presented by Doerte Bemme and Nicole D’souza at a collaborative website called Somatosphere, "Global Mental Health and its Discontents." Their article was spurred by a then-recent series of articles and conferences on the topic of Global Mental Health.

Recently, an article in Nature entitled “Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health” (2011) identified mental health priorities for research in the next 10 years, sparking controversy and debate about the appropriate methods for establishing priorities, research themes, and interventions in GMH. This year’s annual Advanced Study Institute (ASI) and Conference, hosted by McGill’s Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry (July 5-7 2012) in Montreal, Canada, sought to address these concerns and focused on ways to generate critique of the GMH movement to ensure that its goals and methods are responsive to diverse cultural contexts.

Here is the rest of the introductory paragraph from their article:

The ASI workshop and conference entitled “Global Mental Health: Bridging the Perspectives of Cultural Psychiatry and Public Health.”, was chaired by Laurence Kirmayer and Duncan Pedersen, and was animated with intense discussions about various themes related to the GMH endeavour. The three-day ASI series sought to address ongoing controversies and tensions between a public health approach to mental health (grounded in current evidence-based practices largely produced by high-income countries and exported and adapted to local situations) and a culturally-based approach (which emphasizes local priorities and community-based resources and solutions). The first two days took the form of a workshop bringing together experts in cultural psychiatry, public health and medical anthropology for a consideration of ways to bridge various perspectives on GMH.

The authors present their coverage of the conference discussion "in the form of a debate, giving voice to those in attendance." It's definitely worth the time to read.

Broader Topic

This topic points out one of the many issues with the standard position taken on tackling mental health issues, locally or globally - the opposition between one-size-fits-all, "evidence-based" models approach and an individually and culturally sensitive approach that may not fit the "evidence-based" standards of the NIMH.

Living and working in Tucson has provided me with an opportunity to see this conflict in my daily work. A large percentage of our clients are Hispanic, many of whom are Catholic, but others hold beliefs tied to their indigenous heritage (pre-Spanish influence). Even within our Anglo clients there are wide differences in cultural beliefs, religious beliefs, and socioeconomic status, all of which affects their understanding of themselves and of their place in the world.

The treatments favored by the authors of the first article are very often psychopharmacological, i.e., medications, many (if not most) of which create more problems than they solve. For example, antipsychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenia (the costliest of the mental health issues faced in any nation) actually perpetuate the problems they are meant to treat.

During the mid 1990s, MRI studies found that antipsychotics can cause basal ganglion structures and the thalamus to swell, and the frontal lobes to shrink. Then, in 1998, Raquel Gur at the University of Pennsylvania reported that the swelling of the basal ganglia and thalamus was "associated with greater severity of both negative and positive symptoms." In other words, this research showed that the drugs cause morphological changes in the brain that are associated with a worsening of the very symptoms the drugs are supposed to treat. (Robert Whitaker, Psychology Today, May 18, 2010)

The effects of long-term pharmacological interventions are often cited to explain the apparent disparity between outcomes for psychosis between developing nations (better outcomes) and developed nations (poorer outcomes). The research cited by Whitaker supports that belief.

In a longitudinal study of schizophrenia outcomes by Harrow, Jobe, and Faull (2012), it was found that "SZ patients not on antipsychotics for prolonged periods were significantly less likely to be psychotic and experienced more periods of recovery; they also had more favorable risk and protective factors. SZ patients off antipsychotics for prolonged periods did not relapse more frequently."

In his Psychology Today article, Whitake cited another study, in Lapland, Finland, which treated first-time psychosis with a very conservative degree of pharmacological interventions- and the results are striking.

Since 1992, the medical community in the western Lapland region of northern Finland has been using antipsychotics in a selective, cautious manner. At the end of five years, only about one-third of their first-episode psychotic patients have been exposed to antipsychotics, and only about 20% are regularly maintained on the drugs. This is a "continual use" rate similar to the rate for schizophrenia patients from developing countries in the second WHO study, and here are the long-term outcomes for western Lapland's first-episode psychotic patients: Eighty-six percent are working or back in school at the end of five years, and only fourteen percent are on long-term disability. These outcomes are far better than the norm in Western Europe and the rest of the developed world.

Because Finland is a developed nation, this research supports the belief that the deciding factor in why people in developing nations have better outcomes in psychosis is not necessarily due to cultural factors (such as wider family support or better social support), but may largely be due to the pharmacological interventions that are the primary line of treatment in developed nations.

In fact, Parmanand Kulhara (2009), whose research suggests that the difference in outcomes between developed and developing nations is real, notes in his review that “culture should not be used as a synonym for unexplained variance” (Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 2(2); 55-62) - further, "exact factors and the mechanisms subsumed under “culture” that influence outcome and course are still hidden; thus, the “black box” still remains unopened."

It is unlikely that treatment methods in the U.S. are going to change any time soon - pharmacological interventions are considered the primary method, and the only beneficial treatment, for schizophrenia and psychosis.

If you develop symptoms and are lucky enough to find a therapist who understands that psychosis is "a natural though very risky and haphazard process initiated by their psyche in an attempt to cope and/or heal from a way of being in the world that was simply no longer sustainable for them" (Paris Williams; Brain Blogger, Full Recovery from Schizophrenia?, May 29, 2012), you will have a much better chance of maintaining a full-recovery.

Reflecting on the 50th Anniversary of "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden"

Kelsey Osgood is the author of How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia (2013), and in this article for The New Republic she takes a look back at 50 years since the publication of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, written by Joanne Greenberg.

One of the issues raised about the book since it first became widely known about 5-6 years after it was published, is that the heroine gets well ... from schizophrenia. The argument since then is that she must have been misdiagnosed, since it's well-known that no one recovers from schizophrenia. The fact that she did, and has gone on to lead a productive and drug-free life runs counter to the disease model of mental illness that has become so popular over the last 60+ years. 

However, the fact that she got well fits perfectly with a trauma model of psychological difficulties. In the trauma model, the "symptoms" are seen as survival adaptations to intolerable pain or circumstances. Deal with the trauma and the adaptations (symptoms) are no longer necessary. That is what Frieda Fromm-Reichmann did for Joanne Greenberg. It's what all therapists working with clients expressing symptoms of psychosis should be doing.

Why We Don’t Like Stories in Which the Mentally Ill Heroine Recovers

The surprisingly stable afterlife of the author of 'I Never Promised You a Rose Garden'

By Kelsey Osgood | The New Republic
June 3, 2014

THIS YEAR MARKS the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, the YA classic written by Joanne Greenberg based on the years she spent committed to a psychiatric ward as a schizophrenic teenager. The impact I Never Promised You a Rose Garden made upon its release in 1964 was fairly quiet. No excerpts were placed in periodicals; reviews, though complimentary, were printed on back pages. The book sold slowly until around 1969, when high schools and colleges began incorporating it into curricula.

Librarians and high school teachers and parents were all justifiably nervous that American youth were willfully courting madness as a means of rebellion. Charismatic figures like R.D. Laing and Timothy Leary preached a version of lunacy-as-transcendence, and educators and parents wanted to offer vulnerable young students a more realistic tale of insanity—one that took place in a locked ward rather than a field of flowers. Sales of the books shot up. It became a particular kind of classic, embraced not primarily for its prose, but for putting its finger on the pulse of a certain set of collective anxieties. Greenberg, who, by the mid-’60s was living symptom-free in Colorado, watched her sales rise. This year it sold nearly six million copies.

But not long after I Never Promised You a Rose Garden became canonical, it also became a lightning rod, and it is the contours of that controversy that make the novel still relevant today. Greenberg claimed full recovery, and many psychiatric professionals worried that this would inspire a false and dangerous hope. Schizophrenics, they said, simply cannot recover. German psychiatrist Emil Kraeplin, who coined the early version of the diagnosis “dementia praecox,” described the disease as “terminal.” The introduction of Thorazine in the 1950s offered some reprieve from the symptoms, but the best a schizophrenic could hope for was what Swiss psychiatrist Eugene Bleuler called “recovery with defect.” Doctors wrote articles that evaluated the novel as if it were a case history and re-diagnosed her autobiographical protagonist as a hysteric. In The New York Times an article headline read: “Schizophrenia in Popular Books: A Study Finds Too Much Hope.” One psychiatrist even repeatedly called Greenberg at her home to try to force her to admit she had been misdiagnosed.

It would be difficult to imagine mental health professionals going to such lengths to put Virginia Woolf’s corpse on the couch, or to attempt to determine a DSM code for Diane Arbus. Even Anne Sexton, whose laundry list of symptoms baffled her caretakers, didn’t inspire such heated speculation. In many ways, this is because these women reaffirm our modern belief about mental illness, namely, that it is biologically innate, all-consuming, and only in the best cases, manageable. Greenberg, by contrast, refutes the disease-centric model; her life continues to be full and stable—without the use of psychotropics. And while we tend to think of the disease-centric model as more humanitarian at its core—the aberrant behavior is not the fault of the sick person—one could easily see how it might actually contribute to, rather than negate, stigma against the mentally ill: a brain endemically miswired cannot be controlled, and the mentally ill, therefore, are bound to their labels for life.

THE STORY OF MODERN psychiatry, for many, is triumphant one. The quick-and-dirty history goes like this: Human ingenuity and scientific advances led us from the dark ages of hydrotherapy and solitary confinement to cognitive-behavioral therapy and expertly prescribed medications. While we used to believe the mentally ill were unwell as a result of wayward behavior or demonic possession, we now know that psychic anguish is the result of brain chemistry and nurture, and we’re working harder to analyze the former. We moved, in other words, from mental illness as a moral failure to mental illness as a medical condition.

But if you zoom in on the late 1940s through the early ’60s, a different battle is being waged—a battle between those who believed mental illness was biologically located in the brain, and those who thought mental illness was a matter of emotional disturbance. Back then, those intent upon transforming psychiatry into a reputable science (as opposed to a touchy-feely art) worked tirelessly to develop new methods of medical intervention for the mentally ill. The best-known method was “psychosurgery” (aka lobotomy), which was introduced by neurologist Egas Moniz in 1936. In 1949, Moniz won the Nobel Prize for his work on psychosurgery, and by 1951, the operation had been performed close to 20,000 times.[1]

Contrast this obsession with the physical brain—slicing it, shocking it, or tranquilizing it—with the ethos held by Chestnut Lodge, the elite private institution where Joanne Greenberg began treatment in 1948. The clinicians at Chestnut Lodge fervently believed that no patient, however psychotic, was impervious to psychotherapy. The champion of this viewpoint was the Lodge’s most famous employee, the gifted psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. Fromm-Reichmann was Greenberg’s primary analyst and, in both the novel and in real life, led her from insanity to wellness. In the book, Fromm-Reichmann is “Dr. Fried,” and Greenberg so positively depicted the humble German that for years she received letters from struggling fans desperate to track down Dr. Fried and undergo analysis with her.

Fromm-Reichmann immediately recognized something special in her teenaged patient: Greenberg was quick-witted, well-read, and seemed to retain an appetite for life that many of the doctor’s older, chronically ill patients had lost long ago. Greenberg’s symptoms were often referred to as “florid”—interpretable, extravagant, and suffused with meaning, like a story. When Joanne was struggling, Fromm-Reichmann openly empathized. When she began to retreat, the doctor begged to follow. “Take me along with you,” Dr. Fried tells Deborah during a session. She insisted to her young patient that they must pose a united front. “I believe that you and I,” Greenberg has her say in Rose Garden, “can beat this thing.” And, together, that’s just what they did.

This narrative is a little too pat for our contemporary sensibilities. Perhaps that’s why the book is not as well known as, say, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. (The Bell Jar still sells briskly; the fiftieth-anniversary paperback edition is ranked 1,730 on Amazon, compared to Rose Garden’s 21,792[.2]) But Rose Garden does not appeal for another reason: It’s easier to think of the psychiatry of yore as entirely backward and as the poetic casualties of it—Plath, Arbus, Sexton—as victims of that ignorance. Their tragic stories, paradoxically, make us feel more secure in the march of psychiatric progress.

The demise of these women—and the subsequent autopsy of past mental healthcare failures that their paper trails encourages—permits us to rest serenely in the knowledge that the world is moving steadily toward a more scientific, humane psychiatry. But, one has to wonder if this is entirely the case. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann spent four years with Joanne Greenberg; she hiked up to the Disturbed Ward to see patients when they were lying limp in restraints. Now, psychiatrists evaluate patients for 45 minutes before diagnosing them and sending them off to fill prescriptions, and many patients go months between appointments. Efficiency is the goal here; medication the cure, meaningful human connection a distant second priority. It is increasingly rare to find a psychiatrist who also performs talk therapy, despite its many proven benefits.

This might be an even greater tragedy with regard to treatment of schizophrenia, where holistic treatment—that is, one that recognizes both the medical and the emotional components and allows for feedback between the two—might hold particular promise. According to Dr. Allen J. Frances of Duke Medical School and the author of Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life, “Cognitive therapy and social skills therapy are very valuable in treating schizophrenia, but they are rarely available.” And the idea of “complete recovery” is downplayed.

I don’t know what Greenberg’s “actual” diagnosis should be—perhaps she was not a schizophrenic—but I was so interested in her success story that, one day, three years ago, when I was about to release my own, highly personal memoir about my teenage effort to become anorexic (which I “succeeded” at, and then recovered from completely), I decided to write her a letter—an old-fashioned one that I sent in the mail. It wasn’t terribly difficult to track her down. Within weeks, a reply arrived, typewritten on textured, sky-blue paper. Her words to me were kind, smart, and so obviously honest. We struck up a correspondence. We’ve written letters to each other now for nearly two years. She was unabashed but not militant in her views on psychiatry. She told me about her experience writing Rose Garden, but also her daily life, which is filled with events at her synagogue, teaching at the Colorado School of Mines, dealing with the problems endemic to being eighty-something and an active EMT. She is a living example of someone who refused the fate prescribed to her and chose instead to be many other things: clever, attentive, kind, iconoclastic, and the author of more than fifteen books on wildly varying topics. Her life as a recovered patient is not a glamorous or a tragic or a particularly scary one—but it might be a truer one.

1. Gail Hornstein, Professor of Psychology at Mount Holyoke and author of Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness, wrote that lobotomy was “a lucrative sideline for many physicians,” which gives me an icky feeling similar to the one I have when I walk into my gynecologist’s office and see the walls plastered with advertisements reminding patients that Botox Available Here.

2. Plath’s death even spawned a theory that young female poets are more likely than other populations to suffer from mental illness, called, naturally, The Sylvia Plath Effect. (The existence of such a thing begs the question: The Joyce Carol Oates Effect? The Adrienne Rich Effect?)

~ Kelsey Osgood is the author of How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia.

Sam Polk - For the Love of Money (Wealth Addiction)

This is an excellent first-person account of one man's struggle with addictions, first drugs and the wealth and power on Wall Street. This comes from the New York Times Sunday Review.

For the Love of Money

By SAM POLKJAN. 18, 2014

Launch media viewer Owen Freeman

IN my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted.

Eight years earlier, I’d walked onto the trading floor at Credit Suisse First Boston to begin my summer internship. I already knew I wanted to be rich, but when I started out I had a different idea about what wealth meant. I’d come to Wall Street after reading in the book “Liar’s Poker” how Michael Lewis earned a $225,000 bonus after just two years of work on a trading floor. That seemed like a fortune. Every January and February, I think about that time, because these are the months when bonuses are decided and distributed, when fortunes are made.

I’d learned about the importance of being rich from my dad. He was a modern-day Willy Loman, a salesman with huge dreams that never seemed to materialize. “Imagine what life will be like,” he’d say, “when I make a million dollars.” While he dreamed of selling a screenplay, in reality he sold kitchen cabinets. And not that well. We sometimes lived paycheck to paycheck off my mom’s nurse-practitioner salary.

Dad believed money would solve all his problems. At 22, so did I. When I walked onto that trading floor for the first time and saw the glowing flat-screen TVs, high-tech computer monitors and phone turrets with enough dials, knobs and buttons to make it seem like the cockpit of a fighter plane, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It looked as if the traders were playing a video game inside a spaceship; if you won this video game, you became what I most wanted to be — rich.

IT was a miracle I’d made it to Wall Street at all. While I was competitive and ambitious — a wrestler at Columbia University — I was also a daily drinker and pot smoker and a regular user of cocaine, Ritalin and ecstasy. I had a propensity for self-destruction that had resulted in my getting suspended from Columbia for burglary, arrested twice and fired from an Internet company for fistfighting. I learned about rage from my dad, too. I can still see his red, contorted face as he charged toward me. I’d lied my way into the C.S.F.B. internship by omitting my transgressions from my résumé and was determined not to blow what seemed a final chance. The only thing as important to me as that internship was my girlfriend, a starter on the Columbia volleyball team. But even though I was in love with her, when I got drunk I’d sometimes end up with other women.

Three weeks into my internship she wisely dumped me. I don’t like who you’ve become, she said. I couldn’t blame her, but I was so devastated that I couldn’t get out of bed. In desperation, I called a counselor whom I had reluctantly seen a few times before and asked for help.

She helped me see that I was using alcohol and drugs to blunt the powerlessness I felt as a kid and suggested I give them up. That began some of the hardest months of my life. Without the alcohol and drugs in my system, I felt like my chest had been cracked open, exposing my heart to air. The counselor said that my abuse of drugs and alcohol was a symptom of an underlying problem — a “spiritual malady,” she called it. C.S.F.B. didn’t offer me a full-time job, and I returned, distraught, to Columbia for senior year.

After graduation, I got a job at Bank of America, by the grace of a managing director willing to take a chance on a kid who had called him every day for three weeks. With a year of sobriety under my belt, I was sharp, cleareyed and hard-working. At the end of my first year I was thrilled to receive a $40,000 bonus. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to check my balance before I withdrew money. But a week later, a trader who was only four years my senior got hired away by C.S.F.B. for $900,000. After my initial envious shock — his haul was 22 times the size of my bonus — I grew excited at how much money was available.

Over the next few years I worked like a maniac and began to move up the Wall Street ladder. I became a bond and credit default swap trader, one of the more lucrative roles in the business. Just four years after I started at Bank of America, Citibank offered me a “1.75 by 2” which means $1.75 million per year for two years, and I used it to get a promotion. I started dating a pretty blonde and rented a loft apartment on Bond Street for $6,000 a month.

I felt so important. At 25, I could go to any restaurant in Manhattan — Per Se, Le Bernardin — just by picking up the phone and calling one of my brokers, who ingratiate themselves to traders by entertaining with unlimited expense accounts. I could be second row at the Knicks-Lakers game just by hinting to a broker I might be interested in going. The satisfaction wasn’t just about the money. It was about the power. Because of how smart and successful I was, it was someone else’s job to make me happy.

Still, I was nagged by envy. On a trading desk everyone sits together, from interns to managing directors. When the guy next to you makes $10 million, $1 million or $2 million doesn’t look so sweet. Nonetheless, I was thrilled with my progress.

My counselor didn’t share my elation. She said I might be using money the same way I’d used drugs and alcohol — to make myself feel powerful — and that maybe it would benefit me to stop focusing on accumulating more and instead focus on healing my inner wound. “Inner wound”? I thought that was going a little far and went to work for a hedge fund.

Now, working elbow to elbow with billionaires, I was a giant fireball of greed. I’d think about how my colleagues could buy Micronesia if they wanted to, or become mayor of New York City. They didn’t just have money; they had power — power beyond getting a table at Le Bernardin. Senators came to their offices. They were royalty.

I wanted a billion dollars. It’s staggering to think that in the course of five years, I’d gone from being thrilled at my first bonus — $40,000 — to being disappointed when, my second year at the hedge fund, I was paid “only” $1.5 million.

Launch media viewer Owen Freeman

But in the end, it was actually my absurdly wealthy bosses who helped me see the limitations of unlimited wealth. I was in a meeting with one of them, and a few other traders, and they were talking about the new hedge-fund regulations. Most everyone on Wall Street thought they were a bad idea. “But isn’t it better for the system as a whole?” I asked. The room went quiet, and my boss shot me a withering look. I remember his saying, “I don’t have the brain capacity to think about the system as a whole. All I’m concerned with is how this affects our company.”

I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. He was afraid of losing money, despite all that he had.

From that moment on, I started to see Wall Street with new eyes. I noticed the vitriol that traders directed at the government for limiting bonuses after the crash. I heard the fury in their voices at the mention of higher taxes. These traders despised anything or anyone that threatened their bonuses. Ever see what a drug addict is like when he’s used up his junk? He’ll do anything — walk 20 miles in the snow, rob a grandma — to get a fix. Wall Street was like that. In the months before bonuses were handed out, the trading floor started to feel like a neighborhood in “The Wire” when the heroin runs out.

I’d always looked enviously at the people who earned more than I did; now, for the first time, I was embarrassed for them, and for me. I made in a single year more than my mom made her whole life. I knew that wasn’t fair; that wasn’t right. Yes, I was sharp, good with numbers. I had marketable talents. But in the end I didn’t really do anything. I was a derivatives trader, and it occurred to me the world would hardly change at all if credit derivatives ceased to exist. Not so nurse practitioners. What had seemed normal now seemed deeply distorted.

I had recently finished Taylor Branch’s three-volume series on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, and the image of the Freedom Riders stepping out of their bus into an infuriated mob had seared itself into my mind. I’d told myself that if I’d been alive in the ‘60s, I would have been on that bus.

But I was lying to myself. There were plenty of injustices out there — rampant poverty, swelling prison populations, a sexual-assault epidemic, an obesity crisis. Not only was I not helping to fix any problems in the world, but I was profiting from them. During the market crash in 2008, I’d made a ton of money by shorting the derivatives of risky companies. As the world crumbled, I profited. I’d seen the crash coming, but instead of trying to help the people it would hurt the most — people who didn’t have a million dollars in the bank — I’d made money off it. I don’t like who you’ve become, my girlfriend had said years earlier. She was right then, and she was still right. Only now, I didn’t like who I’d become either.

Wealth addiction was described by the late sociologist and playwright Philip Slater in a 1980 book, but addiction researchers have paid the concept little attention. Like alcoholics driving drunk, wealth addiction imperils everyone. Wealth addicts are, more than anybody, specifically responsible for the ever widening rift that is tearing apart our once great country. Wealth addicts are responsible for the vast and toxic disparity between the rich and the poor and the annihilation of the middle class. Only a wealth addict would feel justified in receiving $14 million in compensation — including an $8.5 million bonus — as the McDonald’s C.E.O., Don Thompson, did in 2012, while his company then published a brochure for its work force on how to survive on their low wages. Only a wealth addict would earn hundreds of millions as a hedge-fund manager, and then lobby to maintain a tax loophole that gave him a lower tax rate than his secretary.

DESPITE my realizations, it was incredibly difficult to leave. I was terrified of running out of money and of forgoing future bonuses. More than anything, I was afraid that five or 10 years down the road, I’d feel like an idiot for walking away from my one chance to be really important. What made it harder was that people thought I was crazy for thinking about leaving. In 2010, in a final paroxysm of my withering addiction, I demanded $8 million instead of $3.6 million. My bosses said they’d raise my bonus if I agreed to stay several more years. Instead, I walked away.

The first year was really hard. I went through what I can only describe as withdrawal — waking up at nights panicked about running out of money, scouring the headlines to see which of my old co-workers had gotten promoted. Over time it got easier — I started to realize that I had enough money, and if I needed to make more, I could. But my wealth addiction still hasn’t gone completely away. Sometimes I still buy lottery tickets.

In the three years since I left, I’ve married, spoken in jails and juvenile detention centers about getting sober, taught a writing class to girls in the foster system, and started a nonprofit called Groceryships to help poor families struggling with obesity and food addiction. I am much happier. I feel as if I’m making a real contribution. And as time passes, the distortion lessens. I see Wall Street’s mantra — “We’re smarter and work harder than everyone else, so we deserve all this money” — for what it is: the rationalization of addicts. From a distance I can see what I couldn’t see then — that Wall Street is a toxic culture that encourages the grandiosity of people who are desperately trying to feel powerful.

I was lucky. My experience with drugs and alcohol allowed me to recognize my pursuit of wealth as an addiction. The years of work I did with my counselor helped me heal the parts of myself that felt damaged and inadequate, so that I had enough of a core sense of self to walk away.

Dozens of different types of 12-step support groups — including Clutterers Anonymous and On-Line Gamers Anonymous — exist to help addicts of various types, yet there is no Wealth Addicts Anonymous. Why not? Because our culture supports and even lauds the addiction. Look at the magazine covers in any newsstand, plastered with the faces of celebrities and C.E.O.'s; the superrich are our cultural gods. I hope we all confront our part in enabling wealth addicts to exert so much influence over our country.

I generally think that if one is rich and believes they have “enough,” they are not a wealth addict. On Wall Street, in my experience, that sense of “enough” is rare. The money guy doing a job he complains about for yet another year so he can add $2 million to his $20 million bank account seems like an addict.

I recently got an email from a hedge-fund trader who said that though he was making millions every year, he felt trapped and empty, but couldn’t summon the courage to leave. I believe there are others out there. Maybe we can form a group and confront our addiction together. And if you identify with what I’ve written, but are reticent to leave, then take a small step in the right direction. Let’s create a fund, where everyone agrees to put, say, 25 percent of their annual bonuses into it, and we’ll use that to help some of the people who actually need the money that we’ve been so rabidly chasing. Together, maybe we can make a real contribution to the world.


~ Sam Polk is a former hedge-fund trader and the founder of the nonprofit Groceryships. A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 19, 2014, on page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline: For the Love of Money.

A First-Person Account of Schizophrenia and Recovery

From Salon, this is an interesting first-person account of one man's descent into and recovery from schizophrenia.

I thought I was a prophet

After my schizophrenic break, I couldn't even trust my own mind -- and it would be a long road back from the abyss

Friday, Aug 2, 2013 | Michael Hedrick


A photo of the author.

On the day I realized I was a prophet, I left my home in Colorado and began to hitch-hike to the U.N. I needed to save the world from its various evils. And I needed to go — now.

I spent the next several days wandering around the northeast, trying to decipher messages. I found codes in places where codes didn’t exist. I finally found my way back home, thanks to a quiet and generous woman who lived somewhere in rural Massachusetts, and when I got back, I explained to my parents that I was on a mission and this was God’s will. I’m sure there was some stuff about aliens and conspiracies in there, too.

And so, a week after my adventure began, I woke up in the psych ward of Boulder Community Hospital, and I spent the next seven days condemned to a hospital bed with waterproof sheets in a ward with eight other people who either didn’t talk or rambled so incoherently that it was impossible to understand them.

My parents came every day at 2 o’clock, when visiting hours began, and they brought me pillows and a down comforter and my favorite hoodie. Anything to make me more comfortable. Still, their visits were marred by hour-long screaming and crying matches in which I accused them of throwing me in a mental hospital to rot. Why was it so hard for them to understand? I was a prophet, and this was my magnum opus.

My parents didn’t know what had happened to their son. For that matter, I didn’t know what had happened to me either. And all of us wondered: Would I ever make it back?

Four and a half percent of all adults in the United States suffer with a serious mental illness. That equates to 14,125,500 people who struggle, day in and day out, not sure if they can trust their own thoughts. Many find support and do recover, but many more don’t. They become homeless, they languish on the fringes of society where they aren’t given the slightest thought, let alone assistance. I could have been one of them.

When I got out of the hospital, nobody knew what to do with me. (And I certainly didn’t know what to do with myself.) I moved back into my parents’ house and was treated with nervous caution. Mental illness was a foreign concept to them. Before I broke, they had blamed my strange behavior on marijuana. Now, they regarded me with a silence reserved for things they feared. And they were probably right to fear me. I was still sick and dangerously delusional.

It’s hard to explain the logic of a cracked mind, but I found personal threat in every tiny action or event. Once, I was seated at the piano, and my mother reached over me to lower the register, her hand brushing my lower stomach, and I was convinced she was trying to molest me. Another time, my dad and I were in the garage, trying to put new brake pads on my car, when I decided he was going to sabotage me so that I would lose control of my car, crash into a tree and die.

My mistrust of people was intense. Sometimes it felt like they existed only to harm me.

For instance, I was certain my psychiatrist was a quack. This is the psychiatrist who, over the course of the next six years, would guide me into stability, but when I first walked into his office I knew it was a ruse designed by my parents to convince me I was crazy. He wasn’t a real doctor. This was a set with props and actors. I remember being in the waiting room, seeing those magazines that stretched back two years, listening to the calm music and the sound of ocean waves on the speakers, sitting in the couches that seemed so real, looking at the diagnostic surveys and medicine prescriptions, and thinking: “Wow, they really pulled out all the stops with this one.”

Slowly it dawned on me: My thoughts were not real.

My initial diagnosis was bipolar. (Later it would be changed to schizoaffective disorder, and then schizophrenia with periods of depression.) And we began the long and frustrating battle to pinpoint the right medication. The first medication I tried gave me akathisia, a side effect in which you have an intense and extremely uncomfortable urge to move at all times. For weeks, I stayed in this particular hell, and I would spend hours on the treadmill or walking around the neighborhood in an attempt to shake the feeling that I could rip off my skin at any point.

We switched that, and switched it again, a process that took years. Eventually, we found a medication that worked on my mind, though sadly, not with my body. I gained about 100 pounds, took up smoking and was too tired most days to get out of bed.

My parents became a source of strength during this time. They began attending support groups and integrating themselves into the local mental illness community. They fought bureaucracy and headaches to secure me government assistance.

I moved into my own place, and for years I kept my diagnosis a secret. I still longed to live a normal life, even as I struggled with my paranoia. So I spent my time alone. I was afraid to leave my house, afraid to go into stores, because I was so quick to interpret random comments as criticism and ostracism. I just knew everyone was saying nasty things about me. I couldn’t even order a pizza without worrying that the delivery guy would get back into his car, think about that one expression I made, and tell all his friends what a freak I was.

To be unsure of your own mind is a prison, one that can break some of us. It simply becomes easier to slip into homelessness or drug abuse, but I fought against that. I began studying normal behavior. I read books on psychology, body language, dating technique — anything that would help me build a repertoire of healthy social interactions and somehow guide me into acting like a functioning human being.

I got better. Sometimes, I’m so much better that I question if I really have any illness. I’ll have a good month — no paranoia, no depression, lots of joking around — and I think, have I nipped this in the bud? Am I the first person in the history of medicine to cure myself of schizophrenia? The seductive thought arises: Maybe I could skip my meds tonight and see how I feel in the morning. The meds make me so miserable. Maybe I could actually be free of this stuff.

Those are the nights when I feel empowered enough to go to some bar where hipsters are trying to have sex with one another, but in every conversation I start to worry that the other person has found something wrong with the way I look, or the way I move, or the way I talk. I get so overwhelmed that I have to go outside and smoke, and I think: God, I just want to go home. And then when I get home I take my meds and go to bed — the habit that will keep me sane — and when I wake up in the morning I feel fine, and that’s pretty much all I can ask. The truth is, the meds make me feel OK, and OK is always better than bat-shit insane.

I’m pretty stable these days. I have good health care and a good family who watch out for my red flags. I have the semblance of a career. I do wish my prospects for love were better. Every piece of romantic advice says you should just be yourself, but it’s hard to do that when your self is a 400-pound schizophrenic. I’ve been on dates before, but it’s hard to snuff out the fear that everyone in the café is laughing at me. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over that hurdle, but I hurt for companionship. I want someone besides my mom to rub my shoulders when I’m tense, to talk me down from my scary thoughts, to give me a hug when I feel low.

My parents tell me, “It’ll happen if it’s meant to be.” So maybe it isn’t meant to be. I can live with that, I guess, though it still stings when I see my friends getting married on Facebook or when I catch a rom-com on TV. But I’ve had to adjust a lot of my expectations for having a normal life. I realize that my challenge, ultimately, is to simply be all right by myself.

The only cure for paranoia is self-assurance, which comes from an intense and radical self-acceptance. You have to learn to accept yourself and everything you fear. You should try it sometime. You don’t have to be schizophrenic to find it useful.

It isn’t easy to be crazy. But my seven years on this path have taught me that people with mental illness are some of the most resilient and courageous people there are. They don’t pretend to be someone else. They have a raw authenticity that can scare people, and I see why. They show you their warts — demonic voices and all.

The media hasn’t helped in portraying mental illness as something to fear. After any massacre or inexplicable tragedy, you can count on a slew of pieces that explain how the killer was a quiet man who kept to himself and exhibited some strange behavior in the past. But endless studies have shown that people with major mental illness are much more likely to be victims of senseless crimes than to be perpetrators. Still, we struggle with the idea that we are monsters.

Maybe it’s up to me, and articles like this, to change minds.


~ Michael Hedrick is a writer and photographer based in Boulder, CO. He is currently a regular contributor for Thought Catalog but dreams of being paid to write a regular column for some big publication. His book "Schizophrenic Connections" is available here.

More Michael Hedrick.

Rice Protein as Good as Whey Protein for Exercise Recovery and Improving Body Composition

For a couple of decades now, the "experts" have maintained that animal proteins are superior to plant-based proteins. More specifically, whey protein has been considered the premier source of protein supplementation for athletes and weight lifters (or sometimes egg protein).

However, a new study shows that rice protein is just as good as whey protein for exercise recovery and generating changes in body composition. This is great news for vegetarians and vegans who want to be sure they get adequate protein.

Full Citation:
Joy, JM, Lowery, RP, Wilson, JM, Purpura, M, De Souza, EO, Wilson, SMC, Kalman, DS, Dudeck, JE, Jäger, R. (2013, Jun 20). The effects of 8 weeks of whey or rice protein supplementation on body composition and exercise performance. Nutrition Journal, 12:86 doi: 10.1186/1475-2891-12-86

The effects of 8 weeks of whey or rice protein supplementation on body composition and exercise performance

Jordan M Joy, Ryan P Lowery, Jacob M Wilson, Martin Purpura, Eduardo O De Souza, Stephanie MC Wilson, Douglas S Kalman, Joshua E Dudeck, Ralf Jäger

Background 

Consumption of moderate amounts of animal-derived protein has been shown to differently influence skeletal muscle hypertrophy during resistance training when compared with nitrogenous and isoenergetic amounts of plant-based protein administered in small to moderate doses. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to determine if the post-exercise consumption of rice protein isolate could increase recovery and elicit adequate changes in body composition compared to equally dosed whey protein isolate if given in large, isocaloric doses.

Methods 

24 college-aged, resistance trained males were recruited for this study. Subjects were randomly and equally divided into two groups, either consuming 48 g of rice or whey protein isolate (isocaloric and isonitrogenous) on training days. Subjects trained 3 days per week for 8 weeks as a part of a daily undulating periodized resistance-training program. The rice and whey protein supplements were consumed immediately following exercise. Ratings of perceived recovery, soreness, and readiness to train were recorded prior to and following the first training session. Ultrasonography determined muscle thickness, dual emission x-ray absorptiometry determined body composition, and bench press and leg press for upper and lower body strength were recorded during weeks 0, 4, and 8. An ANOVA model was used to measure group, time, and group by time interactions. If any main effects were observed, a Tukey post-hoc was employed to locate where differences occurred.

Results

No detectable differences were present in psychometric scores of perceived recovery, soreness, or readiness to train (p > 0.05). Significant time effects were observed in which lean body mass, muscle mass, strength and power all increased and fat mass decreased; however, no condition by time interactions were observed (p > 0.05).

Conclusion

Both whey and rice protein isolate administration post resistance exercise improved indices of body composition and exercise performance; however, there were no differences between the two groups.

The article is open access - read it here.

Received - Integral Recovery: A Revolutionary Approach to the Treatment of Alcoholism and Addiction by John Dupuy

I recently received a review copy of Integral Recovery: A Revolutionary Approach to the Treatment of Alcoholism and Addiction by John Dupuy from SUNY Press (release date is May, 2013). As the publication date nears, I hope to get a review posted here.

Excelsior Editions
SUNY series in Integral Theory

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Why Another Book on Recovery from Addiction?

1. Recovery from What?
2. The Integral Map
3. Stages and Spiral Dynamics
4. Working the Lines
5. Integrating Healthy States of Consciousness
6. Understanding Types
7. Bringing It All Together: Integral Recovery Treatment
8. Building the Body
9. Transforming the Brain
10. Healing the Emotions and the Power of the Shadow
11. Healing the Spirit
12. Practice and the Path to Mystery
13. The Family Component
14. Relapse Beings When You Stop Practicing

Afterword
Appendix 1. On Becoming an Integral Treatment Provider
Appendix 2. Integral Recovery and the Greater Field of Addiction Treatment.
Appendix 3. Integral Recovery: An AQAL Approach to Inpatient Alcohol and Drug Treatment (A Case Study)
Appendix 4. Integral Recovery Twelve Steps

Notes
References
Index
Price: $75.00
Hardcover - 312 pages
Release Date: May 2013
ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-1-4384-4613-4

Price: $24.95
Paperback - 312 pages
Release Date: May 2013
ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-1-4384-4614-1

Price: $24.95
Electronic - 312 pages
Release Date: May 2013
ISBN10: N/A
ISBN13: 978-1-4384-4615-8

Freedom from Craving: Buddhist Practice and Recovery with Kevin Griffin

Kevin Griffin, author of One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps (Rodale Press 2004) and A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery (Hay House 2009) will be in Tucson in March for an evening lecture and a one-day retreat hosted by Tucson Shambhala Meditation Center & Tucson Sarpashana.

Freedom from Craving: Buddhist Practice and Recovery with Kevin Griffin

Fri March 23rd: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Sat March 24th: 9:30 AM - 5:30 PM

 Price: $50 (No one will be turned away for lack of funds)

St. Francis In The Foothills - 4625 E. River Road * Tucson, Arizona 85718

Tucson Shambhala Meditation Group & Tucson Sarpashana are pleased to announce Kevin Griffin will be teaching in Tucson at St. Francis in the Foothills

The Buddha said craving is the cause of suffering. Craving may manifest in compulsive behaviors, habitual thought and emotional patterns and/or addiction to substances. Buddhists practice to let go of craving; recovery programs work with the deepest forms of craving - our addictions. How can these traditions work together?

Join us for a public talk Friday evening, March 23, and for a daylong retreat Saturday, March 24, combining traditional Buddhist meditation practices and recovery work.  All paths - Buddhist and recovery - are welcome; newcomers and those new to meditation are very welcome!

Friday, March 23, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. ($10 suggested donation)
Saturday, March 24, 9:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. ($40 suggested donation)
No one will be turned away for lack of funds.  We will also be practicing the principle of dana (the practice of cultivating generosity) for Kevin’s gift of teaching.

Event Location: St. Francis in the Foothills • 4625 E. River Road (River and Swan) • Tucson, AZ 85718

There will be a lunch break on Saturday.  While there are some restaurants in the vicinity of St. Francis, the break will not be long and bringing your lunch is encouraged.

Pre-registration is encouraged.  You may register from the event webpage [located here] on the Tucson Shambhala Website.

For more information or to ask questions regarding the event, please send email to tucson.shambhala@gmail.

Kevin Griffin is the author of One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps (Rodale Press 2004) and A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery (Hay House 2009). A longtime Buddhist practitioner and 12 Step participant, he is a leader in the mindful recovery movement and one of the founders of the Buddhist Recovery Network. Kevin has trained with the leading Western Vipassana teachers, among them Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and Ajahn Amaro. His teacher training was as a Community Dharma Leader at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, CA.

Click Here to Register

OCD Recovery by Sandra Kiume at Channel N

This is an interesting video of people with OCD talking about their disease, their treatment, and their recovery. The video was posted by Sandra Kiume at Channel N, a PsychCentral production. It's short at less than 10 minutes, so give it a look.

OCD Recovery

By Sandra Kiume

Living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Four people describe what it’s like to have OCD, describing their symptoms and how things changed in recovery.

Length: 00:08:36
Video Link: http://youtu.be/rkQIDCKbFus

Shrink Rap Radio #263 – An Intuitive Approach to Treating Trauma with Sage Breslin, PhD

David Van Nuys speaks with Sage Breslin on the most recent episode of Shrink Rap Radio. Breslin is the author of Lovers & Survivors: A Partner's Guide to Living With and Loving a Sexual Abuse Survivor (ignore the pseudonym).

#263 – An Intuitive Approach to Treating Trauma with Sage Breslin PhD

Sage Breslin, Ph.D. is a licensed California psychologist and consultant with nearly two decades of diverse experience. She did her doctoral work at Northwestern University and went on to do post-doctoral study at Harvard. She reports that she has lived and worked in all regions of the United States and in Europe, developing an appreciation for many cultures, languages, faiths, and personal and professional styles. Dr. Breslin works both with individuals and consults to corporate executives.

Her individual work has frequently focused on trauma recovery. As a consultant, Dr. Breslin works primarily with corporate executives and high-security government personnel. She has provided forensic evaluation, assessment, debriefing, and consultation to all branches of the armed services as well as to employees of other security organizations.

While trained analytically, Dr. Breslin reports that she now infuses traditional training with contemporary, innovative techniques for a powerful, transformational approach.

Dr. Breslin has also taught at both college and graduate school levels for nearly a decade. She also speaks on such diverse issues as Domestic Violence, Sexual Trauma, Integrative Medicine, Intuition, Stress Management, Women’s Issues, Infertility and Eating Disorders.

Her real passion, though, lies in the transformational journeys that she leads in the United States and Mexico, through her Beyond Insight program.

Dr. Breslin has published numerous articles and has a book entitled Lovers & Survivors: Living with and Loving a Sexual Abuse Survivor. And she has authored inspirational chapters in a number of the Chicken Soup For The Soul book series. Beyond this, she has both authored and edited over three dozen courses for Zur Institute, providing online Continuing Education courses for clinicians worldwide.

A psychology podcast by David Van Nuys, Ph.D.

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Posted on May 7, 2011

Tags: Shrink Rap Radio, podcast, #263, Intuitive Approach, Treating Trauma, Sage Breslin, David Nan Nuys, Psychology, trauma, sexual abuse, recovery, relationships, Domestic Violence, Sexual Trauma, Integrative Medicine, Intuition, Stress Management, Women’s Issues, Infertility, Eating Disorders

Tucson Recovers - Upcoming Events

As Tucson and its people begin to recover from last week's tragic events, the community is coming together in various events - I will post some of them as I become aware of them - if you know of events that I have missed, please drop me a note.

There are still people gathering and leaving candles, prayers, pictures, offerings and tears at University Medical Center and at Gabriel Giffords' office. The above picture is from UMC.

In an effort to avoid negative impact on private funerals, the Tucson Memorial Project and Wingspan (the LGBT support and community group) have organized this first event - today at 12-2 pm.

Peace and Solidarity Gathering

If you don't want to fight traffic, parking, shuttles, and deal with crowds, there is an alternative venue that is gathering. We highly encourage that everyone considers attending alternate venues to alleviate the impact of the funeral on the community, area businesses, and residences. See below for more information. Thank you, and please spread the word.

Time: Thursday, January 13 · 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Location: Demeester Band Shell - Reid Park, Country Club and 22nd St.
Tucson, AZ

Created By: Wingspan

More Info: In collaboration with the "Angel Project," Wingspan AVP has organized a peace and solidarity gathering for community members to come together and promote non-violence and healing.

Please join friends and neighbors as we challenge acts of violence with kindness and community.

Bring messages of hope and well wishes to the families of those affected by this week's tragedy.

Gain strength and mend hearts through kinship.

If you are interested in helping with the event as a peacekeeper, please contact Oscar Jimenez at ojimenez@wingspan.org

For the Buddhist community here (and anyone else who like to attend), which is quite large and diverse, the Tucson Shambhala Meditation Group is offering a tonglen and loving-kindness event on Saturday.

Tonglen & Loving-Kindness Practice Opportunity For Sangha and Friends

When: Saturday, January 15, 2011 at 10:00 A.M.

Tucson Shambhala Meditation Group would like to invite everyone who is interested to gather at the Center this coming Saturday at 10:00 a.m. for the opportunity to practice tonglen and loving-kindness together for all those people involved with and connected to this week's sad events in our city.

There will also be a chance to practice tonglen on Sunday at the regular 9:00 a.m. practice period, which will be followed at 10:00 a.m. by a Community Meeting as previously announced.

Tucson Shambhala Meditation Group
3250 N. Tucson Blvd.
Tucson, AZ 85716

Tags: mourning, grief, recovery, loss, Wingspan, Tucson, Arizona, Peace and Solidarity Gathering, Tucson Shambhala Meditation Group, tonglen, Buddhism, Angel Project

A New Language for Mental Illness - Jane Pauley

I didn't know she had been diagnosed with bi-polar - interesting to hear her perspective on her illness.

Jane Pauley
Museum of Broadcast Communications: Pauley profile

About the Lecture

Mental illness needs a “new narrative,” says Jane Pauley. Just as cancer has moved from the shadows to pink ribbons and races for the cure, mental illness must shed its public aura of fear and shame. “Shrewd move; let’s do that,” says Pauley.

In a revealing and self-effacing talk, Pauley describes her own passage a decade ago from poster girl for NBC News to psychiatric patient. At 50, she was well aware of her reputation: “I could make no credible claim to being the best, hardest working, most beautiful in the industry. But honest, I owned normal. Or I thought I did.” So the “bombshell diagnosis” of bipolar disorder, brought on by steroid treatment for hives, and antidepressants, rocked her world.

It was a long struggle to crawl back from “the dark precipice of mental illness,” which included a period of hospitalization. And it did not help that her doctor was shocked that Pauley, who was writing an autobiography, wanted to discuss her condition in the book. In spite of such anguish and anxiety, Pauley says she “had hope” even from the beginning. Medicine helped, but Pauley also credits the capacity to open up about her situation with family and increasingly, in public forums. “When I’m heard talking comfortably about mental illness, as comfortably as talking about triple bypass surgery, I think I’m helping normalize mental illness. Normalizing is a much better word than destigmatizing. Change vocabulary, narrative; change minds, save lives,” she says.

Today Pauley sees a shift in how people regard mental illness, a new candor. Her own kids call her “crazy woman.” Knowledge is the antidote to fear, she believes, and work “demystifying the brain is a step toward destigmatizing mental illness.” Her personal goal, she concludes, is to “banish ugly, out-of-date attitudes” and replace them with “new neural connections, positive associations. As they say, consciousness once raised cannot easily be lowered again.”

Tags: A New Language for Mental Illness, Jane Pauley, MIT World, McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Psychology, mental illness, culture, recovery, bipolar, normal, stereotypes, stigma, Change vocabulary, change narrative, change minds

The 12-Step Buddhist Podcast Episode 014 – Larry Christensen, Ph.D. on Zen and Psychotherapy

Darren Littlejohn is author of The 12-Step Buddhist - he also does a podcast at his site, which is quite good.

The 12-Step Buddhist Podcast Episode 014 – Larry Christensen, Ph.D. on Zen and Psychotherapy

June 30th, 2010 by Darren Littlejohn --> · No Comments
Visited 52 times, 4 so far today

Larry Christensen, Ph.D is the resident Zen teacher at the Portland Zen Center Larry discusses Zen, Psychotherapy, Recovery and Spirituality and offers his Three A’s prescription for integrating all.

Special thanks to Clay Giberson for the podcast intro.

Subscribe to the 12-Step Buddhist Podcast on iTunes. (If you click this link iTunes will open)

Download the file here:
Episode 014 – Larry Christensen on Zen and Psychotherapy

Or listen with the mp3 player:

VN:F [1.9.2_1090]

Tags: The 12-Step Buddhist, Podcast, Episode 014, Larry Christensen, Zen and Psychotherapy, Buddhism, Psychology, recovery, Spirituality, Portland Zen Center

One City Podcast - Interview with Darren Littlejohn

One City founder and blogger Ethan Nichtern interviews Darren Littlejohn, author of The 12-Step Buddhist: Enhance Recovery from Any Addiction.

Podcast: Interview with Darren Littlejohn

Friday June 25, 2010

This week on the ID Project Podcast, ID Project founder Ethan Nichtern interviews Darren Littlejohn, author of The 12-Step Buddhist. Together they explore Buddhist practice as it relates to addiction recovery.

You can download the episode here, or subscribe via itunes here or RSS here.

If you like the podcast you can support our efforts by becoming an IDP Global Member. Every bit helps!

posted by Patrick Groneman @12:53pm

Tags: 12 step Buddhist, addiction, Darren Littlejohn, Ethan Nichtern, meditation, recovery, Buddhism, books, Dharma, Four Noble Truths, Noble Eightfold Path