The Story – How to deal with a psychotic break
Psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis as schools of thought are less than 150 years old, and we shouldn’t be surprised if such young sciences have gaps of knowledge, questions that are still left open, or even questions that are outright ignored. It’s possible, even likely, that the modern psychiatric model of mental illness is incomplete, and could learn things from other schools of thought.
Many people have the conception that being diagnosed with a mental illness means that you have a chemical imbalance. However, such “illnesses” are normally diagnosed by looking at behaviour, rather than blood tests or other chemical tests to determine amounts of chemicals in one’s brain. So, at least in the majority of cases, the “chemical imbalance” idea is just an assumption.
In contrast, there are shamanistic traditions which stretch back hundreds or even thousands of years. Shamans have been helping people through the strange times in their lives even before recorded history. Is it possible that psychiatry and psychology still have a lot to learn from shamanistic methods?
This is a clip from an interview that Andrarchy (Andrew Levine) did with Kurt, and more clips will be coming over the next couple of weeks.
The Episode
To download this episode in audio, right click here and press ‘Save as’.
The links
“Mental Illness” – how and what to learn from your mind breaking
Andrarchy’s post on Steemit introducing his show
What a shaman sees in a mental hospital
A traditional approach to mental illness – Phil Borges TED talk
Healing with communication, conversation and love by Sterlin Luxan