reorient; thus it is, a psychological crisis rooted in the life of the spirit. The healing process may include righting our values and addressing meaning and purpose. However, we do not yet have many resources in the US that can address mental disturbance as a spiritual issue with spiritual treatments. This book, and coming new editions, will attempt to stay abreast of what we can do as “consumers” looking for that kind of assistance.
The first section, “Who Needs It?” gives context, starting with the prevalence of people diagnosed with mental illness in the USA. We begin by telling stories about people who are living through extreme states and stories of people who are looking after family members in extreme states. These stories help us reflect on the varieties of treatments, the outcomes people experience, and the paths to recovery. We further define integrative medicine to assist us in making steps towards working with the best treatments there are for the physical, psychosocial and spiritual problems we face. Selene Almeida, a Brazilian medical doctor and clairvoyant, shares spiritual guidance she received about the nature of mental illness and mental health. She represents a growing number of doctors in Brazil who are also spiritual healers.
The second section, “Spiritism in Brazil,” reveals how Spiritists work in Brazil. The components of spiritual treatment at a Spiritist Psychiatric Hospital are defined so that the reader can envision an integrative model that draws from conventional biochemically-based medicine and spiritual diagnostics and treatment, including prayer, meditation, peer support, classes, blessed water, and consultations with sensitives (clairvoyant mediums). The Spiritual Hospital of the Casa de Dom Inacio provides a different model that centers on the work of mediums, psychic surgery and longer meditation sessions. Selene Almeida, MD writes about her use of flower and mineral essences. Many private practitioners in Brazil, like Dr. Almeida, are grounded in Spiritist philosophy, and they also use spiritual therapies stemming from Europe and the Far East, as well as their own research. Practitioners at a Spiritist day treatment program for those struggling with addiction, in a Spiritist Psychiatric Hospital in Curitiba, Brazil, details how patient motivation to change can be assessed and encouraged. This hospital also invites paraprofessionals into the hospital to assist patients in their healing.
The third section, “Resources in the USA,” addresses what we have in the USA that is in harmony with the Spiritist approach but is not Spiritist in name. These resources allow the person coming to treatment to continue their allegiance to their religious preferences; like Spiritists, the practitioners are ecumenical and welcoming. As in the best of medicine, the practitioners are knowledgeable about the needs of the physical body and may prefer to use natural supplements. We survey options: residential care, private practitioners, clinics, collaborative arrangements between private practitioners, and the use of mediums and medical intuitives. Linda Haltinner’s reflections on Brazil and her USA clinic, Sojourns, illustrates integrative care that gives weight to the spiritual nature of healing.
We pay particular attention to the efforts that are being made in the USA to establish sanctuaries, or safe “healing” homes, for those in crisis. These function more like homes than hospitals in that people live together in extended family, taking on responsibilities for household management and engaging in caring relationships. These have a more egalitarian structure, unlike the more authoritarian structures of most hospitals. This enables participants, when they are ready, to responsibly take on the full power of who they are. Peer support is included as a vital aspect of healing, as well as supporting those choosing to withdraw from some or all of their psychiatric medications.
“Last Words,” the final chapter, gives a summary of the book’s message.
Appendix A gives guidelines for those who are looking for and those who may want to set up a safe home for those in crisis. It covers what to look for, and encourage, in the paraprofessionals who assist those in crisis. These guidelines were taken from a 1992 booklet prepared by Loren R. Mosher, MD, and associates to explore alternative approaches for helping those diagnosed as schizophrenic. Soteria, the original facility and the focus of this report, lasted twelve years (1971-1983).
Appendices B-E offer readers resources for supportive organizations, covering the themes that are described in a more narrative form in the first thirteen chapters of the book. Appendix B provides contact information including websites of supportive organizations. Appendix C profiles Models for Peer Support in Massachusetts with contact information. Appendix D provides ways to find safe homes/therapeutic communities in the USA and Europe. Appendix E lists resources for safely getting off psychiatric drugs and treating children without psychiatric drugs. Appendix F offers more perspective on what orthomolecular psychiatry has to offer.
Final Note
When the tsunami is over, the ocean waves are back to normal height, and people are assessing their situation and what needs to be done, we would diminish them by calling them “sick” for having survived the experience. Nature unleashed herself, and these people were there—managing the changes as best they could. Period.
In a similar vein, we need not stigmatize a person for having an emotional or spiritual tsunami in his or her own life, either. Instead, we can offer each one a safe house, food, water, warmth, some tools to build a new life, and sustaining friendship for stability over time, just as we would for someone who had literally been overpowered by a tidal wave and was lost at sea for some time. To do this, we must often step out of our own culturally-biased comfort zone--become bigger than our ego identity and become a large, benevolent force that empowers and shares with compassion, as equals.
Since the late 1960s, we have come to understand whales as basically benevolent beings—not the fear-inspiring Moby Dicks that symbolized the menacing forces we projected on Mother Nature. Whales maintain communications with each other by sending subtle vibrations (sound waves) over long distances. They do not attack unless provoked or threatened. Like us, they are mammals, and social creatures who are loyal to their young, taking care of them consistently until they are ready to go solo. Unlike us, they are adapted to life in the water. They know how to be safe in the midst of ocean storms and approaching tsunamis by staying under the most turbulent waves. Thus they are a good model for those of us learning how to weather the turbulence that our emotional lives can bring to us. Like whales, it behooves us to learn to recognize the vibrations of change in the sea’s waters so we can keep ourselves out of harm’s way, and stay in close contact with our loved ones in that ocean of consciousness referred to as “the Field.”
At our most elemental, we are not a chemical reaction, but an energetic charge. Human beings and all living beings are a coalescence of energy in a field of energy connected to every other thing in the world. This pulsating energy field is the central engine of our being and our consciousness, the alpha and the omega of our existence. There is no “me” and “not-me” duality to our bodies in relation to the universe, but one underlying energy field. This field is responsible for our mind’s highest functions, the information source guiding the growth of our bodies.
---Lynne McTaggart, The Field, p. xiv
Art by Daniel B. Holeman www.AwakenVisions.com
Section 1: Who Needs It?
Chapter One: What’s the Problem?
Bi-Polar kills tens of thousand of people, mostly young people, every year. Statistically, one out of every five people diagnosed with the disease eventually commits suicide. But, I wasn’t convinced, to say the least, that gulping down a handful of pills every day would make me sane.
--Sascha A. Dubrui, in “The Bipolar World”
