Hi @Dimity
I personally DO think this forum is the place to discuss things like this and dare I say a lot more.
My personal wellness plan involves a a gym workout a couple of times a week. I sometimes have to push myself to get there but once there it is good. I have little doubt that it plays a very important part in my physical and mental wellness. I don't think you can go wrong with walking. Here in Melbourne it was a lovely evening for a walk and for me an uplifting experience. IMO it all helps.
I have been reading a lot about the history of mental health treatment lately. It is interesting to discover that there has been numerous support programs that have utilized these sorts of ideas outside of the traditional medical/ pharmacological model. The evidence suggest that they work very well.
One of the early ones was The Retreat in York mental health hospital. It was set up in the UK by the Quaker movement around 1796. The treatment was predominately kindness, support and respect together with useful work, a healthy diet and daily exercise etc. The healing was left to "nature" which apparently did a pretty good job and produced very high recovery rates. This organization appears to have operated until quite recently. I am not quite sure what has happened to it. I think it may have recently morphed into some sort of day center.
Another similar operation known as the Soteria Research Project was founded by psychiatrist Loren Mosher in San Jose, California, in 1971. Soteria-based houses are currently run in Sweden, Finland, Germany,Switzerland,Hungary, the United States and some other countries.
These approaches appear to produce results that are far better than the traditional medical/pharmacological ones. This in turn makes them highly cost effective. Being sustained for a life time on neuroleptic medication is not a cheap option for governments or insurers, particularly when doctors are able to persuade patients to switch to the latest and most expensive offerings.
These low/no use pharmaceutical approaches therefore inevitably come under vitriolic attack from the main stream interests who have managed to dominate mental health care for at least the last 300 years.
The Hurdalsjøen Recovery Center in Norway is a current, rather bitter sweet story, based on the kindness principle. Its success is quite amazing but it too is currently under attack from vested interests.
The situation is no better and possibly even worse in Australia. Just trying to talk about these issues can evoke extreme hostility from all sorts of unexpected quarters.
I have attached an interesting article about The Hurdalsjøen Recovery Center that I found on the Mad In America website. IMO it is well worth reading both for inspiration as to what is possible in eco-friendly MH treatment as well as the threats, problems and potential impact from vested interests who see their power and profits being challenged.
I am optimistic that we will see something like the Hurdalsjøen Recovery Center in Australia in the not too distant future as well as outpatient centers that operate on the same principle. Achieving this however will not be easy.
In the meantime, I would like to see the SANE organization putting some effort into expanding its capacity to provide better facilities for discussing specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound goals for people like us with lived experience.
Furthermore, as discussed in the attached article, those goals which we should be able to freely and openly discuss, should be our own individual ones. Not those dictated by self serving interests who don't give a damn about our well being as long as they can make money out of our suffering.
Whether our goal is to take a walk in the park or to reduce our dependence on toxic medication, it must be our choice.
Here is a link to the Mad In America article
A Revolution Wobbles:Will Norway’s “Medication-Free” Hospital Survive?
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