I am a psychology graduate with extensive experience of psychosis. I’ve had 15 episodes over the course of 25 years. I write, therefore, as a someone with lived experience, who has been through the psychiatric system but also as someone with someone who has studied brain and behaviour and abnormal psychology at university. I have been hospitalised, sectioned, as well… Read more →
Stansilov and Christina Grof coined the term Spiritual Emergency: when a spiritual emergence becomes too intense and becomes an emergency. They founded the Spiritual Emergence Network and their books The Stormy Search for the Self and Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis certainly validated my own spiritual experiences that were diagnosed as ‘psychosis’ by the medical profession. But is… Read more →
Filmmaker, Dean Puckett, interviewed Emma Goude, author of My Beautiful Psychosis as part of his research for a script he was writing. He wanted to know what it was like to experience psychosis for a character he was portraying. The result is this frank author interview. What is it like to experience psychosis? How do the psychotic episodes begin? What… Read more →
Catherine G Lucas, co-founder of the Spiritual Crisis Network UK published her first book In Case Of Spiritual Emergency, which validates non ordinary states of consciousness. Transpersonal experiences are usually pathologised by the mental health system. Catherine’s book is an essential read for anyone who has been through a transformational crisis, especially if this has been seen as a psychosis… Read more →
Robert Whitaker is a medical journalist who used to write articles about the brain chemical imbalance theory, believing it to be true. When the World Health Organisation claimed that living in a developed country was a strong predictor of a poor outcome for those diagnosed with schizophrenia he wanted to know why. Why, if you’re diagnosed with schizophrenia, are you… Read more →
When Sascha Altman Du Brul was eighteen years old he was locked up in a psychiatric ward for two and a half months. He was told he had a biological brain disease that he would have for the rest of his life and there was little hope for him. But Sascha stepped outside of this view and looked into the… Read more →
Open Dialogue is revolutionising the way people are treated in the mental health system. This new system of healthcare emerged in Finland after their mental health service collapsed under the weight. Finland used to have the worst statistics in Europe for schizophrenia. Now it has the best.
After the mental health service collapsed, a group of family therapists got together and asked how can they do it better? Open Dialogue is the answer. It is based on a totally different model to the current one, which adopts the brain chemical imbalance theory. Instead, it sees mental health problems as a symptom of the social network breaking down and so it aims to repair that. Bringing together the social network of the person at the centre of concern (they are not called the patient) the job of the practitioner is not to diagnose and treat but instead to encourage all of the voices to be heard. It taps into the power of the social network, so that everyone takes an active part in the healing of the family member. It is a social model that believes in the power of the individual to heal with the help of the collective.
Open Dialogue is being introduced into the NHS by Dr Russell Razzaque author of the radical book Breaking Down Is Waking Up. And Green Lane Films (my production company) has been asked to film it. My personal and professional life have finally joined and had children! And this video is the offspring.
Melinda Messenger features in this clip that I shot at the Open Dialogue Conference in London earlier this year. Melinda is doing a Transpersonal Psychotherapy training and is the Patron of the UK Spiritual Crisis Network.
If you want to know more about Peer Supported Open Dialogue sign up to the POD Bulletin.
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