TAKING THE POWER BACK:"Most power & authority given2 psychiatrists,science,government ‘think-tanks’ n ‘developed’ soc"

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Taking The Power Back

All of this inevitably raises the notion of power, which is of paramount importance with this issue. When looking at the notion of power within this context, at least two main factors come into play:

1) Who societies view as being worthy to wield power and deserve an ‘authority’ status on a particular subject;

2) The degree to which we, as individuals, believe that we have the power to control events and situations (and therefore, one could argue, our mental health state) which affect us.

It should be fairly obvious that when looking at the current state of affairs within ‘developed’ societies that most of the power and authority is given to professional individuals (such as psychiatrists and other mental health professionals) and groups or organisations that are affiliated with science, such as government ‘think-tanks’, peer-reviewed research studies published in journals, and, of course, the pharmaceutical companies, to name just a few.

This is largely the state of affairs because the current reigning paradigm within mental health is still very much based in science and the scientific method which includes research. While the issues of nature versus nurture and cause and effect are still very much up for debate it is still assumed that science will produce most of the answers (and will, no doubt, inevitably involve something to do with neurotransmitters in the brain or some other biological mechanisms, such as genes.)

However, like times gone before, paradigms do and will shift and change. Thousands of years ago it was religion that was the dominating paradigm and, as such, it was often the clerics and scholars who wielded most of the power then. Whomever controls the power plays a pivotal role in shaping how the society as a whole views difference between individuals – no more so than when looking at the issue of mental health.

Back then, for example, ‘voice hearers’ or people who reported to have had communication with something of a spiritual or religious nature would have been treated very differently to how they are treated today. I need not mention that if Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, and all of the prophets and apostles of all the various denominations and religions were to speak and behave like they did back then in today’s ‘developed’ societies, most, if not all, of them would be diagnosed with some kind of mental health condition and be subjected to ‘treatment’.

Obviously this is a very sensitive topic for debate and I appreciate societies’ issues and problems with people going so far as to claim that they are the ‘second coming’ and other similar claims. That being said, however, these types of spiritual experiences that even the apostles and followers of these religious leaders and figures reported to have had still get reported to this day. Many people who I have worked with over my nine years working in this field report what would not be out of place from something in Revelations in The Bible or from something in other similar holy books and manuscripts.

The point is while the paradigm has changed over the years the types of experiences many people go through, I dare say, have not. In order for all of us who have experienced some kind of spiritual experience to start to re-gain some of our power back, it is first necessary to understand how the power system is currently balanced out. I hope I have provided some of the basics here and, as you can see, it is far from an even balance.

So, what can we do practically to help re-address this imbalance and reclaim some of our power back then? Well, I would say that the second main factor, when looking at the issue of power within a mental health context, can help us enormously here. While great work is being done by consumer groups and the whole consumers movement in general, I would add that we, as individuals, can do a lot as well.

I’m talking about the extent to which we believe we have the power to effect events and situations that affect us. Rotter (1954) postulated the concept of the Locus of Control in his social learning theory of personalities which explains what I mean here quite well. Put simply, people with a greater internal locus of control believe that their own behavior and actions have a large effect on events and situations which affect them. Conversely, people with a lesser internal locus of control believe that powerful others, fate, or chance, largely control events and situations which affect them.

Click on the following link to get more information about Rotter’s Locus of Control:

http://wilderdom.com/psychology/loc/LocusOfControlWhatIs.html

While looking at this notion from a mental health point of view many of you might say that we have very little control over what our psychiatrists and mental health professionals diagnose us with or prescribe to us. It’s merely cause and effect, one might say. They are only consulting the DSM-IV (or the Diagnostic Statistical Manual version IV used in theUSA) or ICD-10 (the International Classification of Diseases version 10 used inEurope) and applying the relevant medication to that category or diagnosis.

I would like to add, however, that psychiatrists are still people and therefore are still subject to the same bias and a whole host of other subjective influences like past experiences and assumptions and prejudices etc, as we all are, and, as such, will not be judging your behavior and speech purely from an objective stand point when consulting these diagnostic manuals.

However, if we were able to work on increasing our internal locus of control to the point where we could see and understand the connections with and the effects of our own behavior and actions on the events and situations we find ourselves in, then we could choose to change how we perceive them, and perhaps, more importantly therefore, how we feel and think about them. In short, we could manage our own mental state from situation to situation rather than feeling that they control and dictate to us how we should or ought to feel and think. Not only that, but by seeing the relationship clearly we could, in effect, create our own healthier realities.

While this idea might sound fanciful and quite far out there for some, it also sounds logically achievable and worth while pursuing I feel. Some Buddhist traditions and ways of viewing the World, for example, stem from a similar kind of belief. So, many people do and actively attempt to achieve this.

I could write another paper I’m sure on the possible avenues to explore and develop this in more detail (and perhaps I might), but I do want to leave this idea with a final thought.

It’s about language and it’s relation to and impact upon identity, and ultimately therefore our sense of Self. Sadly too often I meet consumers who have bought into the label of their diagnosis to such an extent that they find it very difficult to describe themselves in any other way: ‘I have psychosis or I am a psychotic. I am a service-user survivor or other similar terminology’ and go on to describe their personality or character in terms that often refer in some way to the symptoms of their label or diagnosis.

While diagnoses can be helpful for some (for understanding their condition better and choosing possible helpful ‘treatments’ and for helping their family and friends to understand them better etc) it can be very damaging also. For some people their label (which has been given to them by those in society with the current ‘power’) consumes them to such an extent that it forms the very basis and core component of how they view themselves at the virtual exclusion of all the other facets that make up who they really are. Sadly, I am not making this up.

Through years of possible conditioning by the mental health system and by societies’ attitude malfunction and through possible reliance on and institutionalization within the system resulting in a degree of learned helplessness, some people have lost their power to such an extent that they have unwittingly allowed those currently in authority, through the use of labels and diagnoses among other things, to undermine their own power of Self-definition and therefore their sense of identity. This is a ghastly thing to witness, something which no one should ever have the right or that much power to do.

Like Al Pacino’s character in the film Scent of a Woman said: ‘There is nothing quite like the sight of a broken spirit.’ That is exactly how I feel when I try my best to help those people I work with re-gain their lost power and their sense of empowerment again. It can be utterly soul-destroying at times; the power balance has to change. This is one main reason why I wrote my book The Canary: A Journey through Psychosis.