I was diagnosed in 1980 at age 19. I spent my first year of psychosis without medication in Soteria House whose main tenet was that schizophrenics could be better treated without medication or hospitalization. So they bought houses around the world in residential neighborhoods and put 6 or 7 schizophrenics in it to live there and staffed it with counselors who had no formal training in the psychiatric field but were chosen for being likable, open minded, tolerant, understanding and patient.
The idea was to normalize schizophrenia so clients that lived there were encouraged to share and talk about their delusions and the staff listened and nobody was called crazy, schizophrenia was looked upon there as a different consciousness and we hung out with the staffers and played basketball with them or went jogging with them. The kitchen is where everybody hung out and you could always find a couple of counselors in there talking to clients.
We also all watched TV together and ate together. Now, I was in the San Jose house which closed in 1984, not because it didnāt work but they ran out of money. The founders of Soteria and other high up people who worked with them would always claim they had higher success rate than hospitals and they claimed they had a higher recovery rate without using medication.
Soteria didnāt help me, in fact I went steadily downhill the entire year I was there. After I moved out I personally wished that instead of living there without medication that instead, Iād have been put on medication and hospitalized. But thatās just me. During the year I was there I saw some people recover but I also saw other people like me who suffered in misery.
In fact I saw a lot of weird stuff there; you put 7 schizophrenics together who arenāt medicated and youāre going to see lot of weird behavior. And thatās what I saw. People talking to themselves, others were delusional and saying weird things, people howling and screaming. I think most Soterias are closed now though I believe thereās still one in like Switzerland or a Scandinavian country. It was an interesting chapter in the history of the mental health system.
I was really out there without meds. Violent and talking to myself. Shouting things in the middle of the night pacing back and forth in my apartment. Being put on meds initially was a relief. I could sleep, eat, and relax. Iām still ācrazyā so I need them. Itās just the weight gain and fatigue ruining my life.
Iām glad meds exist. I would be dead without them.
Itās weird how some have ideas about mental health without having any knowledge in the medical field. Putting a few schizophrenics together seems like a dangerous alternative.
oh I am a true blue believer in anti psychotic medsā¦love my med fluphenazine, generic prolixinā¦itās amazing you were in Soteriaā¦impressiveā¦sad, but impressive.
There are certain cases that would benefit from Sorteria house, but not all. Medicine is not a one size fits all solution but its treated that way and ends up making some people worse and dependent on meds that are harmful in long run. Unfortunately there is an austerity in treatment and everyone gets the meds
When I first got sick I remember seeing videos about something called the open dialogue approach they were using in Finland. Iām pretty sure the treatment was exactly what it sounds like. You would sit in a room with your family and a couple psychologists and just talk about what was going on with you. I remember the people administering it were pretty adamant that they did not want to use meds. Pretty sure they claimed it worked but you had a very short window from when the psychosis started to when the treatment wouldnāt be effective. Seems like these kinds of things just come and go because I havenāt heard much about it since.
R.D. Laing was practicig when my Grandad in the same hospital as my Grandad, My cpn said she saw him at conferences before he died but he was always āunder the influence of alcoholā
a couple of years ago i was at an exhibition about him & some of his early patients āone of his earliest patientsā Mary Jane was really messed up and would use her faeces to draw art on the walls, anyway they managed to replace this habit and she would end up using proper paints, the art was actually very good.
there is an old documentary about the RD Laing experiment when he first tested it out, but i couldnt find it, i did find a good documentary about how the Asylums changed over time, some of it is shocking how they treated patientsā¦ here is the documentary for that.
