A Day in the Life

OK, so last time I ate my words was not long ago, in a blog entitled "The Soloist: A Palinode ", in which I had to retract some things I had said about the film, "The Soloist". This time, I feel I should go over some of the things I said about the self-help phenomenon of the "law of attraction", as espoused by Esther and Jerry Hicks in their various books. God, I hope this doesn't become some sort of habit! Anyway, as I said in my previous blog, I have a friend who is somewhat taken with the "law of attraction" and the work of the Hicks', who wanted to come to The Pathways Group, a group run for the long-term mentally ill who are in recovery, to discuss her experience of this form of self-help and to see if it could, perhaps, help others as it had helped her. I was somewhat concerned about this, as having read a little about the "law of attraction" I felt it to be flawed in several ways and, indeed, went on to suggest that it m...

Having just watched Louis Theroux's BBC2 documentary, "America's Medicated Kids", and this, after all, is a blog largely about mental health, I just thought I'd give you some of my own thoughts on the programme. The documentary focused on the issue that, currently in America, more and more children are being diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and moreover, being medicated for them, often with drugs that have never been tested on children and are only recommended for adults over the age of 18. As if this weren't enough cause for concern in itself, the children in the programme seemed to be being diagnosed with two or more disorders at a time. Hence there seemed to be many cases of comorbidity (where there is more than one diagnosis given to a person). As far as I know, comorbidity is quite rare in adults, let alone children, but in their seemingly overwhelming desire to " pathologise " the behaviour of these innocents, the psychiatrists shown he...

This is just a very short and somewhat belated blog to thank both klahanie and dcrelief for passing on to me the two blog awards, "A Beautiful Blogger" and "A Lovely Blog" respectively. I thank both of them for the recognition, particularly Gary, aka klahanie , who has done his utmost to promote my blog and direct others to it. I would, therefore, mention some other blogs which deserve recognition as part of my responsibility in receiving the above awards. There is, of course, Gary and Dixie themselves, who both write engaging, sometimes funny, sometimes touching blogs. Their blogs are entitled " klahanie " and " dcrelief ". Other than that, there is "Mattie's Just for Fun Poetry", which contains some amazing poetry from the wise and wonderful published poet Hazelmarie Elliott. The subjects she covers range from friendship to mortality, all done with erudition and beauty. Then there is "Not Singing the Bipolar Blues", a...

In my voluntary work for the Media Action Group for Mental Health, we often have to deal with, what we feel, are misrepresentations of mental ill health in the media. One of the overwhelming misrepresentations that we deal with is the spurious link made between schizophrenia and violence. While we cannot deny that some experiencing the symptoms of schizophrenic illness sometimes become violent, we have to continually point out that such incidences are very rare and usually only happen when someone is not receiving appropriate treatment. In a recent survey it was revealed that something like 75% of newspaper editorials linked mental ill health, when it was reported, to violence. In sharp contrast to this, the actual statistics show that random, unmotivated, violent attacks by those with a diagnosis of schizophrenia are about as likely to happen as being struck by a bolt of lightening. So, it would seem, the public have this continual battle between information and misinformation about m...