Successful Schizophrenia Articles

General Articles:

**A Special Message for Families and Friends of Someone Diagnosed as Having Schizophrenia: Helpful facts and information you probably haven't been told about so-called schizophrenia. This article provides guidelines on how to be helpful to a person who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and how to avoid adding to their difficulties.
A Beautiful Mind: Review of the book and movie starring Russell Crowe, about Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash, Jr.
"Beautiful Minds" Can Be Recovered: An editorial authored by Courtenay M. Harding, Ph.D.
"Critics of the Concept of Mental Illness" (3MB PDF): Chapter 9 reprint from 1993's Madness, Heresy, and the Rumor of Angels by Seth Farber. Goes deeper into Thomas Szasz's doubt and dislike of the definition of "mental illness."
How Non-Diagnostic Listening Led to a Rapid "Recovery" from Paranoid Schizophrenia: In 1965, Al Siebert conducted an experimental interview with an 18-year-old woman diagnosed as "acute paranoid schizophrenic." He prepared for the interview by asking questions and wondering what would happen if he listened to the woman as a friend, avoided letting his mind diagnose her, and questioned her to see if there was a link between events in her life and her feelings of self-esteem. My interview with her was followed by her quick remission.
What's Wrong with Psychiatry: An experimental interview with a young woman diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia led to her rapid recovery. This incident and questions raised about psychiatric practices suggest that something is seriously wrong with psychiatry. It lacks insight into its own behavior, invalidates constructive criticism, avoids the kind of self-examination it urges on patients, shows little interest in accounts of successes with schizophrenic individuals, erroneously lumps all the schizophrenias (plural) together in research studies, etc.
Critical Issues the Media Never Cover During "Mental Health Awareness Month": Let's contact the media several months before May of each year, to request that their coverage is less one-sided. Let's ask magazines, newspapers, radio and television broadcasters to include a critical look at American psychiatry and to stop mouthing psychiatry's views in such a parrot like way. Here are several issues to focus on.
Internalized Stigma Erodes Morale by Jennifer Ritsher and Jennifer Bernstein: The report of a research project by Jennifer Ritsher and Jennifer Bernstein reveals that when persons suffering from severe mental illness (SMI) believe that most people devalue persons with SMI, the person may suffer a number of negative consequences. The article shows how important it is to resist believing that someone is "mentally ill"

Research Reports / Free Term Papers:

If Schizophenia is a Disease Why Doesn't it Act Like One?: There is no proof in psychiatric literature that schizophrenia is a disease or illness. A review of research facts suggests that rather than being an undesirable mental disease, the phenomenon called schizophrenia is better understood as both a developmental chrisis and a legitimate reaction to the disruptive interference of families and psychiatric treatments.
What if Psychiatric Treatments Had to Meet FDA Standards for Effectiveness, Safety and Appropriateness?: Efforts are being made by the U.S. Senate to establish Food and Drug Administration (FDA) criteria for psychotherapy by requiring that it be effective, safe, and appropriate. This along with Congressional mandates that Health Maintenance Organizations and health insurance companies provide more funding for psychotherapy, brings attention to evidence that psychiatric and psychotherapy practices at best get approximately the same results as placebos and at worst are ineffective, harmful, and inappropriate.
Successful Schizophrenia: Similarities Between Nietzsche's UeberMensch and The Survivor Personality.: Two mental and emotional states, the survivor personality and schizophrenia, have followed a parallel course of development during the 20th century. Now, almost 100 years later, the incidence of schizophrenia and the survivor personality is each estimated at being present in 1% to 2% of the population. The author's assertion is that they are manifestations of the same basic phenomenon. The classic "dementia praecox" form of schizophrenia is a misunderstood, mishandled, disrupted, interfered with, version of the survivor personality and, conversely, a person with a survivor personality demonstrates a successful form of schizophrenia.
Psychiatry's Lack of Insight: Four Double-Binds that Place Patients in a Living Nightmare.: A double-bind is when a person hears words said to them in such a way that the accompanying actions or non-verbal communications directly contradict the spoken words. Observations of what is said to patients in psychiatric facilities reveal that traditional psychiatric practices subject patients to four major double-binds.

Disclaimer: Material found on the Successful Schizophrenia website is for your information only. We are not able dispense specific advice for your situation. If you are under a doctor's care, you should talk with him or her about your mental health goals and if they are not on the same page as you, ask for a referral to a doctor or counselor who is. It may mean interviewing several. If you are on your own, you may wish to contact your local county mental health department to ask for local resources. Our site exists to show people that there are all varieties of mental states and assessments of those states; that sometimes 'mental health' is in the eye of the beholder; and that the mental health profession needs to continue to open itself up to the new paradigm ... progress is being made!