I was just listening the NPR podcast Invisibilia. The episode was called "The Solution Problem". It was very interesting. They were talking about a town in Belgium called Geel. In this town they take mentally ill people and have them live with families in the town. The families take in the boarders, and nobody does anything to try and "cure" them. They just accept them. The families believe it's totally normal and don't understand why anyone wouldn't do that. The doctors who decide which families to send the boarders to stay with never tell the families anything at all about the boarders who will stay with them. There was one guy who was so nervous, he twisted all the buttons off his shirt. The American who was there studying this town suggested she use fishing wire, so that the button guy couldn't twist them off every single day. The woman, who hosted the button guy was almost offended. She said he needs to twist those buttons off. So of course she would sew them back on every single day. It was just what the people did. They only accepted the behaviors. Nobody would ever think of trying to stop the behaviors. The crazy thing is that it actually helps the boarders get better. Some families have had their wallets stolen, or boarders get violent. But none of the families ever thought it was actually a burden even with these things. It's just the way they are, and they accepted it. They would move the violent guests outside, and told them when they calmed down they could come back in, or would chase away hallucinations the boarders thought were happening. The whole town learned how to deal with the behaviors of the folks. One thing they've found is that families can't really do this with their own family members. It works better with strangers. Many professionals have said something like that won't work in the United States, because everyone wants to have a solution and "fix" the problem. I was just curious if anyone had listened to this, heard of Geel or anything like that? Sadly Geel is possibly disappearing. The participation is way down. There are some attempts at community healing places in the U.S. Either way it's worth a listen. It's about an hour long.
320 million people, way too many more chances for a full-blown catastrophe like suicide, murder or weird influences or incidents with children. Even if not necessarily statistically, that's exactly how the hosts will see it.
Here's an article that tells a bit about it. It isn't as in-depth as the podcast from Invisibilia, but it gives a nice over view. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/psychiatric-community-care-belgian-town-sets-gold-standard-1.2557698
I posted about this community (of over 700 years doing this) briefly in another thread. I believe there is also a woman in NYC that has been emulating this with a non-profit housing complex. Will try to find link and post later.
Great info man. Thanks for this. I spoke to a Peruvian guy once who told me that way back in history they used to actually rely on the unique strengths of people with mental conditions to help society, and that made everyone feel connected and appreciative of each other. The example I remember is that people with paranoia (presumably from schizophrenia) would be entrusted with thinking about security for the tribe. The sense of belonging seemed to help people with mental conditions hone their skills for positive influence. It's amazing how little we think about this. My brother in law is dealing with something right now as a result of being prescribed some of the most dangerous anti psychotics and then coming off them suddenly without consultation. Now doctors tell us he never needed to take it in the first place, they should have waited for symptoms of trauma to disappear. When I started reading up about other people who took this medicine I seriously came to realize that the industry is completely lost about what to do about all this but they won't stop pushing the massively flawed and damaging drugs. Stories like this are fairly common. I have 0 sympathy for alternative medicine but in this particular area the statistics seem to point to there being lots of instances of absolutely no advantage taking pharmaceuticals over trying natural remedies and just meditation. A great example is people who see things or hear voices. We often forget that the problem is not that you see or hear things. The problem is that you can't control it. If you could actually decide when to create voices and visions and actually experience them, and you could decide to stop whenever you wanted.. you're actually a superior human being. But are we really looking at these issues in the right way? Why are our methods aimed at reverting everyone to a fake "normal" when the correct approach would be to learn how to control these things. Pharmaceutical drugs are not going to help you control these things. Anyways, sorry for the long post, just thought I'd share my experience as I've been struggling and stressed about this.
::Most clients to this town must be Swiss , social interventions is helpful with severe Behaviour Disorder but I'm not sure that's the case with mental disorders ...the two often overlapped when it comes to treatment and diagnoses. Best demonstration of Behaviour social intervention is mainly approached by the Churches and religious affiliations, it work by gaining Trust,diverting self perception and understanding . but it becomes more stubborn as you reach into mental disorders ,mainly genetics ,hormonal imbalance ,often triggered by emotion and stress .vary from one individual to another and though medication is so effective .....until the patient decided when his/her situation become better to abandon it. A person X diagnosed with mental illness ,felt better after taking medication for 2 weeks, skipped his medication later on by the next month or two for different reasons but mainly thinking medication is not needed, believing drug is poisonous ,doest like side effects like gaining weight, breast milk, drowsiness etc, ....which leads back to Block 0 shortly after skipping medication . The cycle above is very common. This why I think an extra social intervention is needed more after that person feel better and because most psychiatric are't going to gain their patients trust for a long time, it's always deteriorated after a few episodes or so
Certainly that can be the case with medication and what happens when people take or don't take it. What's interesting about this model of "care" is that the people aren't trying to cure or fix the mental illness at all. The doctors who send the patients to the families never tell the families anything of the illness, or what they should try and do or avoid. The people in the town simply accept the condition of the person and deal with it. There is no effort to get the person better at all. What's crazy is that they did a study that shows when a person's mother tells people with various mental illnesses something, the part of their brain that deals with listening and problem solving, shuts down, and they just get stressed. The thing that seems to actually help the folks Geel is that nobody tells them how to fix the problem. They are just accepted. That acceptance actually ends up doing a lot of good for them.
It really depend on the level of severity , a person with mild symptoms will recover optimally in such environment , but in more severe cases when usually female have tendency to physically harm them self (starvation ,cutting part of their body, knocking their head against the wall ) while male have the tendency to harm other ( knifes or sharp objects etc) ,this when forced medical intervention is needed.(as many they will spit out medication or won't comply ). So yes in some cases In milder forms I do agree with you, relaxed life style,good food and company will do magic to most of us I seen cases of a mixture of both situation : like a repeated medication quitter ,diagnosed with severe schizophrenia subjected her self to anorexia ( which required surgical intervention ) and attempts of suicides ,drugs overdosage . Family history of mental illness along with trauma triggers like frequents death of beloved one. with help and support from the church + close friends monitoring to medication intakes , that person managed to pursue BS+MSc degree and successful career with a few set backs .
I don't think you can control these things (create or stop them). Drugs attempt to do that? No idea. But from a mental aspect, the real power is not to control them, but to let them not control you. How you react to it is your power. Beside, all of us all constantly under something that is not in our control. We just don't often realize it. The brain is a thought makers. Try and see if you can stop it from making thoughts. Try to see if you can immediately have the thoughts you want. You can't. It makes whatever thoughts it want at any interval it wants based on ... well, not sure. If a crazy thought come up to kill someone, you just laugh at it. But if you take it as seriously you and have to act on it --- you have lost your power to not react to craziness and the brain is one crazy beast.
So I just listen to the podcast. Love it. Thx for sharing. And the lady I was thinking about is in the podcast. Ellen Birskire(sp)? She is the one with the mentally ill mother and seek for a better solution (started the apt complex where 60% are mentally ill and 40% are not living together in harmony).
Ahh, it was the Ellen Berkshire person who they talked about... Very cool. I'm going to try and read up on that as much as I can. It seems harder in an isolated situation like one building. I think the one of the things that helps it work in Geel is that the whole community is like that. They can go to coffee shops, bars, stores parks, and everyone will be accepting of who they are. But I'm curious to see how the one building version of it could work.
I think you can control the visions/sounds, though there is no consistent evidence for what helps and what doesn't. Some people are able to conquer it partly. However, the evidence is not strong. It's the kind of thing a desperate parent would believe and cling on to, but in reality we are nowhere near there yet. Faith healers in south america I would say have displayed the greatest mastery of the counselling and herbal treatment required to make a difference and still the results are wildly inconsistent, and in rare instances dangerous. The anti psychotic drugs (I think in our case it was something called zyprexa) essentially get you stoned out of your mind is how my brother in law described it. He would not hear voices or see things, but everything was in slow motion. He said every minute of the day felt like he had just taken a massive bong rip (I know that sounds like fun, but again not if you're not in control). It would literally take him 10-15 seconds to answer a question of start a conversation. It doesn't solve anything, almost no one ever has come off these drugs healed. The addictiveness of these drugs is also an important factor, I would rather do crystal meth than take one of those pills after I read about it. As far as stopping your thoughts goes, yes of course you can do that. People have been doing it for centuries. It's called meditation. It takes a few months of daily practice to get there (more or less for some people) but I can do it within 45 minutes now. And no I'm not thinking "no thoughts" or "don't think anything". It's actually just blank. And it's kind of beautiful bro, you should try it. You become so much more in control of your thoughts afterwards. You are right though that if you can't stop your thoughts then you are not controlling your thoughts. You're just being pulled by various internal and external forces without any thoughtful priorities or direction. It's a terrible thing, and IMO most people are in that situation. With so many external forces competing to take control of our internal forces, I feel like meditation is more relevant and necessary now than it has ever been.
Those drugs are very dangerous. My coworker took anti szch drug. She was prescribed that for her depression! LOL doctor. She said after a few days, her arms and legs didn't feel like they were part of her. She got off that and never wanted to try it again. She said if she ever develop szch, don't ever let her take that stuff. She rather be crazy. I think that's a common "mistake" of meditation (emphasis strongly IMO); but it's a pretty popular school of meditation. What you are talking about is focus on one thing so much that thoughts stop. But that's not what happen. Thoughts still occur, but is in the far background. However, meditation do help slow down thoughts - it settle the body and mind so much that "extra" thoughts cease to exists. There is also a point where you are so in tune with what's going on, that you notice thoughts "bubble" and as soon as you do, they "pop" and vanish - thus, the thought didn't get a chance to fully develop. And yes, the state can be blissful. But, that's not the goal of meditation - if you get attached to that state, you are in trouble . Pretty amazing stuff. The other school of meditation is open awareness and so "thoughts", feelings, senses are being aware of, but never interrupted. You don't get entangle in them. No reaction. Thoughts then are powerless to control you. Eventually, they also do settle down.
