  
"What Heals Human Beings? Technology or
Humanity- There's A Choice!"
Continued….
San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center (SJPC) in
Clovis, California is a community based
treatment facility. Services include a
comprehensive day treatment program that
provides an alternative to hospitalization.
Traditional outpatient services are also
available. SJPC does not rely on drugs, shock or
other dehumanizing methods. SJPC is unique as
the only facility of its kind that specializes
in medication-free treatment. Over the past five
years SJPC has successfully treated adults,
children, adolescents and older adults spanning
the entire range of psychological problems.
Many, have had lengthy histories of
self-destructive, self-injurious, or suicidal
behavior. Many have had histories of destructive
or assaultive behavior.
Approximately 60 to 70 percent of individuals
treated at SJPC also have extensive histories of
prolonged, repeated and severe psychiatric
treatment, ranging from a few months to over 20
years. Prior treatment modes have included
physical and chemical restraint as tell as
extensive use of electroshock. Many of our
clients come to us taking from six to ten
different psychotropic medications. Many have
been rejected even from locked inpatient units
as "untreatable." Virtually all have been told
that they have some sort of "chemical imbalance"
and must be on various psychotropic drugs for
the rest of their lives. The implied or
sometimes even stated message (i.e. threat) is
that drugs are their only real hope to be loved;
to have a "normal" life; or to avoid
increasingly more severe, dehumanizing
'treatment" from the mental health system.
In spite of the tremendous pressure to
substitute drugs for human related- ness in
therapy there are many difficulties with the use
of medication. One of the major problems is
simply that drugs are not good for people. The
primary means of action of psychiatric drugs is
to restrain human behavior, cognition, affect
and emotional experience by causing damage and
impairment of the person's brain. A second
problem with the use of psychotropic drugs is
that even at their best they don't work very
well, if at all. Both the procedures and
politics of studies touted as demonstrating the
effectiveness of psychotropic drugs have
repeatedly been questioned.
There is also what is known as the "Darling Drug
Syndrome." Every few years a new drug is lauded
as the miracle medication that is supposed to do
all the things its predecessors were supposed to
do (but didn't) without all the problems its
predecessors were not supposed to have (but
did). Examples have failed "Darling" drugs
abound from Valium to Xanax to Prozac.
Various studies have consistently promoted the
"professionally correct' mantra that a
"combination of therapy and drugs is best. This
is a complete contrivance. With proper
therapeutic conditions the two year outcome of
therapy without drugs is in fact superior to
therapy with medication. The use of medication
actually interferes with the quality and impact
of therapy.
Finally, and perhaps most sinister, the use of
medication in treatment is subject to a state
dependent learning effect. This means that any
newly learned behavior acquired under the
influence of a drug will be effective and stable
only under the continued use of the drug.
Furthermore, the use of drugs to restrain
behavior, thought and emotion may cause prior
natural coping skills to fade, if not to
disintegrate entirely.
The medical model used to justify drugs assumes
that psychological disorders are the result of
some hypothesized disease entity or mechanism.
This speculation is supported by
pseudo-scientific references to vaguely
described or defined "chemical imbalances."
However, there is no real evidence, test or even
definition for any of these "imbalances." Yet
the diagnosis of "chemical imbalance" is imposed
upon patients as if it were a scientific fact.
The disease model assumes that the patient's
symptoms should be purged or controlled.
Patients are like- wise regarded as things to be
purged or controlled- No matter how pleasant it
appears on its surface, any treatment system
built on this foundation is fundamentally doomed
in its capacity to comprehend and treat human
suffering. Unfortunately, even though many
manage to recover in spite of medical model
treatment, many others do not. These poor souls
often become persecuted victims of the very
system that pretended to help them.
In contrast, SJPC adopts as its motto the words
of noted analyst and author Erich Fromm: 'The
criterion of mental health is not one of
individual adjustment to a given social order,
but a universal one, valid for all... of giving
a satisfactory answer to the problem of human
existence. At SJPC there are no demeaning
"level' systems. There are no paramilitary
"staff" to keep order." Yet, in five years of
serving such "untreatable" clients in an
unlocked, day treatment facility, without
medication, shock, restraint or seclusion, has a
hospital readmission rate of zero. There have
been no suicides, no assaults.
SJPC offers a true milieu treatment program-a
multidimensional integrated treatment approach
that includes community groups, expressive arts,
individual and group therapy, educational
groups, and recreational therapy. SJPC affects
people suffering from emotional problems by
using many different dimensions of healing
rather than by suppressing the humanity of the
sufferer.
However, lip service to a "humanistic" model is
not at all uncommon. Be wary of programs or
practitioners who claim that they are "very
conservative" in their use of drugs or that they
use such-measures "only when "'Necessary."
Necessary will inevitably be defined as when the
patient frustrates the therapist or staff, or
threatens the profit margin of a managed care
company. A genuine humanistic model requires
consistent commitment and integrity throughout
both the ideology and practice of the program.
This commitment must extend beyond superficial
marketing practices and is absolutely
incompatible with a disease or medical model.
There is no place for artificial centrism or
pseudo-moderation in choosing between a disease
model and a humanistic model of treatment.
The success of SJPC has not been in finding
"perfect" therapists or techniques. It has been
in the integrity of its commitment to human
dignity and compassion. The things that make us
human are all that we really have to work with.
Everything else is merely a technological
illusion that will ultimately betray itself and
us.
Reprinted from The Rights Tenet: Summer 1995
Founded in 1971, the Center for the Study of
Psychiatry and Psychology (CSPP) is a non-profit
network of more than 100 individuals devoted to
the reform in psychiatry and to offering
independent analyses of current psychiatric
theories and practices. Peter Breggin, M.D. is
the center director and Ginger Ross Breggin is
the director of research and education. The CSPP
network includes leading mental health
professionals, attorneys, psychiatric survivors,
patients rights advocates, and members of the
U.S. Congress. Anyone can stay abreast of CSPP
activities by joining NARPA. NARPA members will
receive CSPP reports in each issue of The Rights
Tenet and can network with many Center
representatives at NARPA's annual meetings. The
views of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry
and Psychology do not necessary reflect the
views of the NARPA. |
Page Last Updated May 17,
2006
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