No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being.
While psychiatrists may have betrayed their medical roots, the fact remains that workable healing methods do exist. The first action to undertake with someone manifesting “psychiatric” symptoms is a full and searching medical examination. Dr. Sydney Walker, III, says: “The moral is that very little is undiagnosable, but much is not being diagnosed.”
Psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen says, “most people can overcome the obstacles of leading satisfying lifestyles through the help of more natural alternatives that treat our whole selves,” including “physical, intellectual, and emotional.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Thomas Szasz says that the mentally disturbed “do not need mental hospitals; they need asylums�places of refuge where they would be protected from coercion by persecutors posing as protectors.”
Thankfully, there are many non-psychiatric and workable ideas and practices in the quest for the achievement and recovery of mental health, even for the most severely disturbed individuals. While psychiatry is the last to promote it, a great deal of knowledge is skillfully applied by many non-psychiatric professionals. A great deal of help is being given.
We provide some of the suggested medical and educational solutions in these pages.
Some Suggestions
