[lbo-talk] let's argue about the cause of mental illness

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Wed Aug 26 23:29:19 PDT 2009


The effectiveness of drug therapy varies dramatically depending on the individual and the specific disorder. Miles Jackson

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Here's more. I've been intimately involved in a whole spectrum of people struggling in the Foucault-Goya nightmare of mental illness---my whole life.

Here is the best wisdom I can come up with. It takes a magician, witch-doctor turned into a regular family practice physician with philosophical tendencies to figure out an equation. The equation is the question, who can benefit most from which of all the possible directions available to deal with mential illness or what is in the current diagnostic lists.

Does this person before me show the ability to figure out his or her own problems and can they be trusted to follow a non-drug route to possible recovery?

And the really wild thing is you can just ask them. Do you believe your problems can be solved without drugs?

The real problem is that a certain percentage of people can not answer this question. This is the case for true organic brain damage of a certain severity. Nevertheless, you have to ask the question for them and then test for answers. You have to always be aware that some of their tendencies to social violence might have oppressive root causes in their daily life---where medication is useless. If you can get rid of the pain, you might get rid of the violent reaction to the pain. The pain might arise from a personal attendent, housing staff, a social worker, a family member, a friend or roomate. You have to go inch over inch of the person's environment and rule out all possibilities.

I've done this over and over and over with a very close friend and his disabled son who has organic brain damage. The whole effort is to keep him out of the California prison system. He is six one, three hundred plus pounds and strong as an ox. If he gets pissed off, serious shit happens. This is the real thing Of Mice and Men.

CG



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