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PHILOSOPHY of the NETWORK

by Ron Carten

The Vancouver Richmond Mental Health Network Society (VRMHNS) is a self-help and consumer run organization that provides the opportunity for mental health consumers to come together, to "kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight". In my time within the mental health community, I have seen far too many of us, the "psychiatrized," fall away from the hope of ever recapturing the vigor and hope of our lives prior to illness. It seems that somewhere in the process of our recovery, in the process of healing, we have been stopped, stymied by isolation, apathy and defeat, perhaps by medication itself. What causes this, and how can mental health consumers move beyond this to recapture our lives? We need an energetic debate within our community about how people can go beyond this barrier.

Over the course of ten years of my psychiatrization, one fact about mental health has asserted itself to me time and time again, and it is this. As a form of medicine, psychiatry is gravely flawed. Naturally, some will respond to this fact by declaring, "Away with psychiatry". Would that it were so simple. Despite its flaws, the psychiatric system has scored some victories. For every patient that damns psychiatry one will admit its usefulness. Drugs can work, and drugs can cause irreparable harm. So, the question arises: What will be the future for psychiatric survivors? And the only decent answer from a nurse or doctor or social worker or activist should be that we will work to make progress in the care and treatment of people suffering from mental illness.

A recent issue of the Greater Vancouver Mental Health Services Society (GVMHSS) newsletter, called "Connections", contained in it an article by Ralph Buckley of the Strathcona Mental Health Team. In it he wrote that "...(i)n the early seventies there was a short period of perhaps five to eight years where 'talk therapy' was king". A bit further on in the same article Buckley refers to "the then hated Medical Model".

Today, most people involved in psychiatry and anti-psychiatry will tell you that the Medical Model is king now. Uniformly, mental patients are prescribed medications and even the primitive electro-convulsive therapy. Despite, and/or in tandem with, this development in the practice of psychiatry, serious problems abound, from tardive dyskinesia to akithesia and from broken lives to suicide. The Network hopes to provide alternatives to this, the status quo of 2000.

Here is where the philosophy comes in. First, people in the mental health community, both professionals and clients, must believe that progress is possible and be committed to progress. Second, we must find the best way to achieve progress. To this end, the truth is indispensable. Through dialogue and experimentation, open discussion in good faith and trial and error the truth about peoples lives must be heard and honored.

All of us must examine our opinions about how we as a community can improve the process of healing and recovery from mental illness. We must foster the free expression of opinion and we must devote sufficient resources to nurture a diverse and thriving community of mental health groups and services. In this way we will be able to carry on with vitality the dialogue and trial and error so necessary to make progress in mental health.

As already mentioned, psychiatrists today generally restrict themselves to the prescription of medications. Has this proven to be the best way to address the needs of people experiencing mental illness? Can it be improved upon? Doctor, what is your opinion? The good doctor may not be aware of any alternative. This is where the Network steps in.

When consumers come together in groups in Network empowerment takes place. Information, anecdotes and empathy, all lead to enhanced knowledge of who we are, where we are and where we can go. The Network is a place of learning and of sharing, of growing beyond the passivity of a mental patient into the self-respect of a rights-conscious citizen.

Ron Carten is an active member, Board member and the current Treasurer of the VRMHNS