Describes the nature of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), other 12-Step programmes, and the Minnesota Model, how they developed, and the key assumptions that underlie their approach. (1,320 words)
‘Shh… Just Whisper it, But There Might Just Be a Revolution Underway’ by Peter Kinderman
March 4, 2021 by
I have just received two books written by Peter Kinderman from a publisher as part of a thank-you for reviewing a book proposal. The books look real good, so I thought I’d start this new part of the Resources with an excellent article by Prof Peter Kinderman which was posted on Mad in America in August 2014. I first posted Peter’s article on Recovery Stories at the same time.
‘The idea that our more distressing emotions can best be understood as symptoms of physical illnesses is a pervasive, seductive but harmful myth. It means that our present approach to helping vulnerable people in acute emotional distress is severely hampered by old-fashioned, inhumane and fundamentally unscientific ideas about the nature and origins of mental health problems.
We need wholesale and radical change in how we understand mental health problems and in how we design and commission mental health services.
‘Why We Need to Abandon the Disease-Model of Mental Health Care’ by Peter Kinderman
November 19, 2014 by
Excellent blog in Scientific American by Professor Peter Kinderman. I agree with all that Peter says here.
‘The idea that our more distressing emotions such as grief and anger can best be understood as symptoms of physical illnesses is pervasive and seductive. But in my view it is also a myth, and a harmful one.
Our present approach to helping vulnerable people in acute emotional distress is severely hampered by old-fashioned, inhumane and fundamentally unscientific ideas about the nature and origins of mental health problems.
We need wholesale and radical change, not only in how we understand mental health problems, but also in how we design and commission mental health services.
‘Shh… Just Whisper it, But There Might Just Be a Revolution Underway’ by Peter Kinderman
August 19, 2014 by
Here is an excellent article by Prof Peter Kinderman from Mad in America. Yes, recovery-based care is needed!
‘The idea that our more distressing emotions can best be understood as symptoms of physical illnesses is a pervasive, seductive but harmful myth. It means that our present approach to helping vulnerable people in acute emotional distress is severely hampered by old-fashioned, inhumane and fundamentally unscientific ideas about the nature and origins of mental health problems.
We need wholesale and radical change in how we understand mental health problems and in how we design and commission mental health services.
–o–
It’s all too easy to assume mental health problems must be mystery biological illnesses, random and essentially unconnected to a person’s life. But when we start asking questions about this traditional ‘disease-model’ way of thinking, those assumptions start to crumble.
While it obviously serves the purposes of pharmaceutical companies, ready with their chemical pseudo-solutions, the evidence doesn’t support this view.
‘Full Recovery from Schizophrenia’ by Paris Williams
December 18, 2013 by
‘This is the first of a series of blog postings related to my own series of research studies (my doctoral research at Saybrook University) of people who have made full and lasting medication-free recoveries after being diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.
This is very exciting research because it is one of the few areas within psychological research that remains almost completely wide open. One reason it is so wide open is that most Westerners don’t believe that genuine recovery from schizophrenia and other related psychotic disorders is possible, in spite of significant evidence to the contrary.
Since there are some very hopeful findings that have emerged within this research, I want to begin this series of postings by summing up one particularly hopeful aspect of my own research, which is a group of five factors that emerged which are considered to have been the most important factors in my participants’ recovery process. But before looking closer at these factors, we should back up for a minute…
‘The Globalization of Addiction’ by Bruce Alexander
August 20, 2013 by
‘Global society is drowning in addiction to drug use and a thousand other habits.
This is because people around the world, rich and poor alike, are being torn from the close ties to family, culture, and traditional spirituality that constituted the normal fabric of life in pre-modern times. This kind of global society subjects people to unrelenting pressures towards individualism and competition, dislocating them from social life.
People adapt to this dislocation by concocting the best substitutes that they can for a sustaining social, cultural and spiritual wholeness, and addiction provides this substitute for more and more of us.’
I’ve taken these words from Bruce Alexander’s website and can highly recommend his book, The Globalization of Addiction, which highlights the role of disconnection or dislocation in the development of addiction. This theory makes much more sense than the classical disease model focusing on the role of brain neurotransmitters in addiction.
