Here is an excerpt to whet your appetite:
“The really important to ask are the people who are going through it. What do they want and from their perspective, what do they need?
And what I have heard repeatedly is that people need to be listened. People need to interact, people need to be respected. People need to be cared about, people need safe places to go. They need to feel valued…
So if we’re going to talk about psychiatric diagnosis, I’ve never really figured out how psychiatric diagnosis fits into that.
I mean, when people are going through emotional crises, the kind that get labeled with all these extreme labels, I haven’t heard people going around saying, “You know what I need, I need a diagnosis.”…
When people are going through emotional crises, I think intuitively what they need and want, what they say they need and want, they want human connection, they went peace for the torture that is going on in their lives.
They want better relationships with their family, they want to talk about their history. They want to talk about what they are afraid of, they want to talk about what they are obsessing about what…”
And here’s some great advice:
“If you get people who can actually really sit and listen to what people want, and really want and really need, then… I don’t think you really need to be telling them what to do. Instead of telling people what to do, we should be listening to them more.
And I think that a whole system that is devoted to listening to people, and putting a huge amount of energy into listening to them and to facilitating dialogue with them. And not just with them, but between them and the people who are close to them in their lives.
And we get all this and put it all together, we could create a mental health system that doesn’t look anything like the mental health system we’ve got now.”
Of course, this is all relevant to the lives of Indigenous peoples - we need to be listening to them much more.
Please enjoy the film clip. And thanks Daniel for this and all your other great work.
‘Therapist and folk artist Daniel Mackler discusses the major barriers to creating a more effective and compassionate psychiatric system, as well as the practice of Open Dialogue in Finland, and recognizing pain as a motivator for growth.
Daniel is a musician and documentary filmmaker responsible for such titles as: Take These Broken Wings, Open Dialogue, Healing Homes, and Coming Off Psych Drugs. For more information please visit Daniel’s website wildtruth.net.
This is latest in a series of testimonials featured on MadInAmerica.com produced by the Open Paradigm Project – @Open_Paradigm on Twitter.’