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Archive of Analects 2005
Links to Archive 2002 * Archive 2003 * Analects 2004 * Analects 2005 * Archive 2006 * Archive 2008 * Archive 200
1. "To put people who are psychologically damaged, who are psychotic, in such a thing is cruelty of an order people just can't believe" - a volunteer at the South Australian Baxter Detention Centre Feb 8, 2005. SANE Australia's helpline 1800 688 382, if member of family is affected by mental illness. SANE's general help on line. Immigration detention in Amnesty's view.
"Many suffered from psychological ailments. Society became with every new decree ..... more and more hostile. There were even whispers coming from England that the Nazi’s were planning and executing the total extinction of the Jewish race. It is no small wonder that in this climate of fear, hate, distrust and paranoia many Jews suffered from panic disorders and depressions. Etty also did not feel too well in 1941." More about Etty Hillesum and her breath taking diary from a Durchgangslager detention centre where she voluntarily placed herself knowing her fate.
"The relevant act (Migration Act 1958). . . refers to having a belief that someone is an unlawful non-citizen." Senator Vanstone. Just a small step to a non-person - 'unless a person is assaulted, no crime has been committed'
Detention centres are an expression of a society stuck at learning basic trust and mistrust - Stage 1 in Erickson's model of human development. In our incredible response to disasters from WWI to the Tsunami we express the very best in us as a nation that of Stage 7 - "generativity is an extension of love into the future. It is a concern for the next generation and all future generations. As such, it is considerably less "selfish" than the intimacy of the previous stage: Intimacy, the love between lovers or friends, is a love between equals, and it is necessarily reciprocal." Like each of us and every nation - we are full of impossible contradictions.
2. 'Oh, we have a home. We just need a house to put it in.' - a ten-year-old homeless Tsunami girl.
'The tsunami offered little comfort for traditional theists who believed in God as a kind of cosmic puppeteer. But those who believed that God was both in the wave and on the beach, among the dead and the survivors, could draw hope and comfort of God's omnipresence.' Revd Dr Andrew McGowan. And an Islamic view, 'I am owned by God. I come from God I will return to God.'
A counselling hotline has been established by Centrelink to offer professional help, personal support services, financial assistance and medical advice to survivors and victims families. Call 1800 057 111
International Organization for Migration for displaced persons (IOM) donate online. IOM's counter trafficking page. UNICEF child exploitation and trafficking links.
3. Discovering the affair of your partner after it has been going on for 12 months 'right under your nose', and each new week revelations of the extent of betrayal are excavated, is like being stripped, shaven, thrown out of your house and home and onto the street where no rules apply, nothing to cling to and nothing makes sense. Of course you want to hurt them back as much as they have hurt you, take away all their security, dignity, sense of belonging, of purpose and of self-worth. You want to strip them bare until they have as little left to believe in as you. Wishing to inflict a tsunami on the offender is best spoken but not acted upon. Read my full article on the subject of affairs.
4. 'Ask anyone in the middle of battling a catastrophic illness. Or survey all my friends from the acute trauma ward, and they will tell you they live to give a halting hug or to speak a word of grace to another. The irony can no longer be lost on me. When crisis explodes in our midst, what we yearn for is a clue to our spiritual life.' Yehuda Fine Read more from Fine and others on my spirituality page.
5. The London Depression Intervention Trial (British Journal of Psychiatry 177:95-100) found 'couple therapy', whereby a depressed person is counselled together with their non-depressed spouse, works much better than any other form of treatment for depression.
6. I'm enjoying contributing to the goodtherapy site. One of my post reads as follows: Is it okay to be deeply sad for 20 years and not call it depression? Answer: Some losses are irreparable and some grieving is without end. Some lives too swiftly taken for a complete goodbye and some loves too brief to fully mend a broken heart. I think of parents who miscarry, of children lost to illness. I think of whole communities, dispossessed. Of those who act out childhood wounds whom we abandon, unforgiven. I think of this world we cling to and us, not able or not willingly to be vulnerable to those with whom we share our lives. It is appropriate and healthy to feel deep sadness about these very human conditions and for a long time because that is the tender core, which compassion chases. It calls us to our fearless, tender heart; draws us closer to this huge life; toward embracing all that is dealt us, not just toward the next hit of retail therapy. Compassion moves us to welcome it all.
To label that chest opening pain depression pathologises a right minded movement to connection or a lengthy mourning of the loss of it. True, mainstream culture hides or treats any emotional pain or grief lasting longer than a week, but clinical depression is on another trajectory. It can be described as fragility, brittleness, lack of resilience, a failure to heal, with a loss of any emotion but guilt, of any desire but to stop. Not in that definition is melancholy or deep sadness. Clinical depression carries the hopelessness of learned helplessness into a room without windows and doors, where inner light is engulfed and our support networks inacessable. Prolonged clinical depression digs pot holes into brain tissue and over a long time these are like the scaring seen in dementia brain scans. Clinical depression, however, can and ought to be treated. For example, The London Depression Intervention Trial found that couple therapy, whereby a clinically depressed person is counseled together with their non-depressed spouse, works much better than any other form of treatment including anti-depressants! Meaningful relationships and appropriate exercise are effective and singles can do both.
Sadness and depression are different again from chronic, undifferentiated unhappiness. That is the normal reaction to growing up in a dysfunctional family, especially where one or both parents suffered chronic chemical dependence (such as alcoholism) or a disabling mental disorder (such as Bi-polar) or both. However, that normal childs reaction can grow into a way of life for the adult child of those families. It doesnt eat brain tissue, it just rarely opens to joy. Sadness, depression and unhappiness are set in different attitudes and outlooks. Each require different ways of living alongside them, of joining and of awakening the resource asleep in their signal pain.
Our last freedom, said Viktor Frankl, is to choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances. Of his time in the Nazi concentration camps, he said, It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life -- daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not of talk and meditation, but of right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks that it constantly sets before each individual. in Mans Search for Meaning. After 20 years of deep sadness I think you probably know, in the tender core of you, the attitude you greet your life. Is it time for a change of mind?
7. Again anti-depressants shown to be no more effective than placebo (sugar pills). British Medical Journal 2005;331:155-157(16th July) Joanna Moncrieff, senior lecturer in social and community psychiatry, Irving Kirsch, Professor of Psychology. Here is their summary:
- Recent meta-analyses show selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors have no clinically meaningful advantage over placebo.
- Claims that antidepressants are more effective in more severe conditions have little evidence to support them.
- Methodological artefacts may account for the small degree of superiority shown over placebo.
- Antidepressants have not been convincingly shown to affect the long term outcome of depression or suicide rates.
- Given doubt about their benefits and concern about their risks, current recommendations for prescribing antidepressants should be reconsidered.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently recommended that antidepressants, in particular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, should be first line treatment for moderate or severe depression. This conclusion has broadly been accepted as valid. The message is essentially the same as that of the Defeat Depression Campaign in the early 1990s, which probably contributed to the 253% rise in antidepressant prescribing in 10 years. From our involvement in commenting on the evidence base for the guideline, we believe these recommendations ignore NICE data. The continuing concern that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors may increase the risk of suicidal behaviour means there needs to be further consideration of evidence for the efficacy of antidepressants in adults as there has been in children.
8. Anger management links:
9. Proving the connection between the symptoms of apothegmatic stress disorder and schizophrenia, Read shows that many schizophrenic symptoms are directly caused by trauma. Before proceeding any further with Read's evidence, two important caveats must be entered. Firstly, many parents of offspring with the illness may find what follows deeply upsetting or infuriating. But this is not about blame, and it is not being suggested that all cases are caused by parental care. It is also important to realise that the new evidence is far more optimistic in its implications than the psychiatric establishment's view, for patients, parents and carers alike ... The cornerstone of Read's tectonic plate-shifting evidence is the 40 studies that reveal childhood or adulthood sexual or physical abuse in the history of the majority of psychiatric patients (see, also, Read's book, Models of Madness).
10. Slow Wave is a collective dream diary authored by different people from around the world, and drawn as a comic strip by Jesse Reklaw. A new strip is uploaded every week on the first minute of Saturday in San Francisco; 3 AM in Ottawa, ON; 5 AM in London, UK; and 3 PM in Sydney, Australia. Wonderful wacky dreams.
11. Predicting relationship violence: 'Vigilance the checking up on you, may be initially seen as someone who's keen on you or cares about you (indeed a potentially abusive partner may convince you and them that this is true). It may not always be easy to spot such behaviours when they start, particularly if you've got low self-esteem or a lack of confidence. A partner who always needs to know where you are, restricts your movements and who you can see, and demands proof of your whereabouts is not acting out of love for you, but out of a need to control. You cannot fix this nor should you pander to them because you want to reassure them. Over time their behaviour will worsen no matter what steps you take to try and show youre trustworthy.' quoted from Petra Boynton's blog.
'It is timely that we give thanks for the lives of all prophets, teachers, healers and revolutionaries,
living and dead, acclaimed or obscure,
who have rebelled, worked and suffered for the cause of love and joy.
We also celebrate that part of us, that part within ourselves, which has rebelled, worked and
suffered for the cause of love and joy.
We give thanks and celebrate.' Michael Leunig (Common Prayer)
Happy Hanukka, Yuletide and queer holiday season
12. Our brain's capacity for risk assesment is not fully formed until 23 years of age. The brain spinal cord links are not fully concluded until about age 25. Try getting life insurance under 25 and you will discover that insurers have know about this for decades without having the neuroscience to back it up. Two conclusions: don't commit to a long term relationship unti both of you are over 25 and exercise the brain.
13. Sex and romance addiction links on line: Recovering couples vision. Key insights about sex compulsion. Plain Brown Wrapper mag of SAA. Dry Drunk Syndrome from Minnesota Recovery and their sex addiction link.
