I'm a person, not a disease

you can talk freely, with Humor and without vanity about her life, gives clear answers to complex questions, and exudes the rare combination of peace and strength. Patricia Deegan, PhD, clinical psychologist, directs, Massachusetts, a company that has specialized in psychological recovery. You came to Bern to talk to a specialist Congress on the Recovery approach, as this Form of self-help in psychiatry is called – a method that was developed in the USA and inspired by the radical reforms of the Italian psychiatry in the seventies.

The psychiatrist Franco Basaglia requested that as a way of dealing with people, their environment and their self-determining support. Nothing of the appearance of Dr. Deegan to their self-determination, doubt – except for what she says.

Angry voices

the 63-Year-old has a severe psychosis. This took her when she was 17 years old. Inner voices began to tell her how worthless she was, how ugly and evil. Other people were foreign to her. As she was taken to a hospital and the psychiatrist told her she suffered from schizophrenia, she reacted almost with relief. "I wanted to understand what was happening to me," she says, "and I would have done everything to stop it."

to endure The harder the what is said of the psychiatrist to her later was that she would have to take life-long medications and never would be healed. That she was too sick for life. That there would be no school, no love, no work and no Sport. Never. "You are a schizophrenic" was not a diagnosis, but a judgment.

"I wanted to understand what was happening to me."Patricia Deegan, psychologist

So you took the medication. "I was overdosed up to a half-sleep," she says. "My days are neither a target nor a joy. I lived, I only existed." Also, not a single doctor I have spoken in the clinic of recovery. "It is not believed at all." Now, the criticism of psychiatry is a rotten has long been commonplace, many falls on the subject of little else than Jack Nicholson (the Patient) and Louise Fletcher (sadistic head nurse) in Milos Forman's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". But to work with people suffering from schizophrenia or severe Depression, requires a lot of patience and resilience.

The Walkman as a therapist

Patricia Deegan no longer believe in the healing of your disease and not even more relief. Then, she discovered the first therapist that she was better: the Sony Walkman. "When I heard the music, the voices in my head get quieter," she says. "So I could do something about my disorder." The have given her strength. Deegan calls this force the "personal medicine" your personal medicine , and enqueues it in the Recovery approach. The aim is to find the balance between the right medication and the, what she calls "the inner healer". Listen to music, but also gardeners, and many others may a psychosis to relieve.

question to Gianfranco Zuaboni that is in the Sanatorium Kilchberg for the Recovery approach to be responsible and on the topic of doctoral degree: How did this desire for self-help at all? "Among other things, through wars," he says. "The United States have been faced with soldiers who had not conformed to the image of the brave hero, but totally insecure, and enormous problems in the society arrive." Often the returnees were perceived as weaklings or malingerers. The have meant that veterans would have done to self-help groups and their concerns to the Public were entered.

she was not nine times in the clinic

Also in other countries, the need for a participatory, less hierarchical, organized psychiatry but grew up in Switzerland. "Our country remains very strong due to the inpatient care provided at the clinics marked," says Zuaboni, although the motto "outpatient before inpatient" in the case of professionals is undisputed. As the main reason for the hesitant behavior he calls the money. "Innovative outpatient offers may not be funded to cover costs."

"make it like the Homosexuals,' Stand up to you. Honest, open, proud."Patrick Corrigan, psychologist

And now back to Patricia Deegan, a clinical psychologist who knows how schizophrenia feels. Why you be so sure, you ask them, that it was the music that helped her – or gardening? "If I have to be of me feeling worthless, angry, and if I believe that everything is destroyed, the I touch, then I go in the garden. And with my terrible, evil hands I bring something to Bloom. What I refer to as "personal medicine" is more than a way of dealing with the disease.

helps a Little, if no understanding is there

It is a method." Medications are important, but not everything. And what do you say to those people, not of salvation, but in the psychosis, fall back? "As always, I'll start with my own story: I'll tell you that I myself was nine times in a clinic." And how you can get rid of it again? "By the realization that I'm never fallen to the same level. With each Episode I learned." Your last Episode you had in 1994. Drugs don't need them anyway, she was ashamed, "It's just who I am. But I'm a person, not an illness." It is not a disease.

article: If the psychiatrist himself is sick Many psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses suffer from mental diseases. The least can. You should go for it. (Subscription)

But this insight remains useless, if people with mental health difficulties get no understanding from family, colleagues, bosses. How something feels to the touch, Patrick Corrigan experienced. The psychologist who taught at the University of Chicago, suffered from a bipolar disorder, he was a manic-depressive. And, guided by his experience, on the reasons for specialized, leading to a Stigma. "Stigmata are a manifestation of injustice," says Corrigan, "how is the racism."

was Unhappy to have been the wrong is not corrected. 1956 and then again in 1996, Americans were asked whether people with mental illnesses are dangerous. In the first survey, a fifth had answered in the affirmative the question, in the second there were already 40 per cent. And what Corrigan advises those who have similar mental problems as he? "Do it like the Homosexuals,' Stand up to you. Honest, open, proud."

Or do it like actor Jim Carrey. Also, he is bipolar and. And all play: the Manic may. The Desperate. And the in-between.

* This article first appeared on 2. July 2018 in the Tages-Anzeiger.

(Tages-Anzeiger)

Created: 29.12.2018, 16:23 PM