Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Music Links the Cell and Soul

Brenda Dintiman forwarded this amazing link about "Music and Medicine."  Some of you will have seen it -- but for those who haven't, it will touch your soul.

For better viewing Click Here.

When Robert Gupta was caught between a career as a doctor and as a violinist, he realized his place was in the middle, with a bow in his hand and a sense of social justice in his heart. He tells a moving story of society’s marginalized and the power of music therapy, which can succeed where conventional medicine fails.

“For those living in the most dehumanizing conditions … music offers a chance for them to transcend the world around them, to remember that they still have the capacity to experience something beautiful.” Robert Gupta

We featured another piece by Gupta a couple of years ago:  Music is Medicine:  Music is Sanity.

Sherwin Nuland on Depression and Shock Therapy

 TED Introduction:  "Sherwin Nuland was a practicing surgeon for 30 years and treated more than 10,000 patients. Now he is an author and speaker on topics no smaller than life and death, our minds, our morality, aging and the human spirit.

In this TED talk, Nuland discusses the development of electroshock therapy as a cure for severe, life-threatening depression -- including his own. It’s a moving and heartfelt talk about relief, redemption and second chances."  Well worth listening to.

 

Elyn Saks' Tale of Mental Illness

As a mental health law scholar and writer,  Elyn Saks speaks for the rights of mentally ill people. It's a gray area: Too often, society's first impulse is to make decisions on their behalf. But it's a slippery slope from in loco parentis to a denial of basic human rights. Saks has brilliantly argued for more autonomy -- and in many cases for a restoral of basic human dignity.

In 2007, deep into her career, she dropped a bombshell--her autobiography, The Center Cannot Hold.     In it, she reveals the depth of her own schizophrenia, now controlled by drugs and therapy. Clear-eyed and honest about her own condition, the book lent her new ammunition in the quest to protect the rights and dignity of the mentally ill.

This TED Talk by Elyn Saks is enlightening.

 

Patient Directed Mental Health Care

Comments from Brian Maurer and David Elpern:

Ivan Illich, in the introduction to Medical Nemesis, tells us:  "The medical establishment has become a major threat to health.  The disabling impact of professional control over medicine has reached the proportions of an epidemic. Thoughtful public discussion of the iatrogenic pandemic, beginning with an insistence upon demystification of all medical matters, will not be dangerous to the commonweal.  Indeed, what is dangerous is a passive public that has come to rely on superficial medical housecleaning.  My argument is that the layman and not the physician has the potential perspective and effective power to stop the current iatrogenic pandemic."

To us, Illich's observations ring true in our modern approach to the treatment of mental illness. Patients suffering from psychiatric maladies often receive fractured care from a variety of clinical professionals who rarely take time to view them from a holistic perspective -- or to communicate with one another in an attempt to improve quality of care.
 
Psychiatrists -- more properly known these days as "psychopharmacologists" -- seem to have sold their birthright in the medical marketplace.  In our opinion, these clinicians have compromised many marginalized people in our society through the widespread practice of prescribing of largely ineffective drug cocktails that rarely contribute to the betterment of the patient. With less medication and a bit more caring and compassion, any number of these patients might enjoy more productive lives.

Elyn Saks shines a light in the darkness with her memoir, "The Center Cannot Hold." This remarkable woman documented her life with schizophrenia and the message is that psychotherapy (sometimes six days a week) plus a few drugs work in concert to keep her productive and sometimes happy.  Also, a recent article in the NY Times "A High Profile Executive Job as Defense Against Mental Ills" is a valuable addition to the literature on patient-centered care for persons with mental illness.

Synchronistically, a recent submission to Cell 2 Soul, "A Patient Request," covers similar terrain.

All of these pieces are a beacons of help for patients with mental illness and their families.

Goodbye/24 by Susan Gottlieb

In 1964, Susan Gottlieb, a 20 year old, is charged with caring for her 54 year old mother who has recently undergone brain surgery. Susan learns that communication with her mother will be more difficult than she ever imagined. The other aspect of this relationship is that even though the embolism has been removed, alcoholism and false pride are still a part of the mother’s life. To read this moving essay:  Download Goodbye-3  You may contact Ms. Gottlieb at: Email.

 

 Author (20) and Mother              Author Currently

 

 

Music is Medicine, Music is Sanity

This amazing TED performancy by R Gupta of the L.A. Symphony Orchestra compliments the post about Tim Lee and Jorge Camara's work.

Knaves and Pawns

In their seminal essay, Societal Perceptions of Physicians: Knights, Knaves, or Pawns?, Christine Cassell and Sachin Jain, refer to three kinds of physicians: knights, knaves and pawns.  The knights are motivated by virtue and service.  The knaves by rigid self-interest, and the pawns are passive victims of their circumstances (employers and corporate masters).

It is clear, that most U.S. psychiatrists these days are Knaves and/or Pawns.  They don't have time to listen to their patients, but rather, adjust their medicatons in short visits and depend on psychologists and social workers to listen and counsel. We have a a new specialty, "psychopharmacologists" whose knaves and pawns generate the income they want at the expense of their patients.

See a recent article in the NY Times: "Talk Therapy Doesn't Pay."   "A 2005 government survey found that just 11 percent of psychiatrists provided talk therapy to all patients, a share that had been falling for years and has most likely fallen more since. Psychiatric hospitals that once offered patients months of talk therapy now discharge them within days with only pills."

If you agree or if you are outraged, please let us know.

 

Triumph Over Madness

"I lost everything when I became psychotic:  my house, kids, job, marriage, health.  I found myself on the street, homeless.  Trying to keep my highs and lows in check was like walking a tightrope.  I felt like I might fall at any moment.  I worked hard to break free from a reality beyond time.  This is the story of how I wiggled through a hole in the universe. Complete essay: Download Madness Prevailed-edited

Author Note: Susan Rose is a retired respiratory therapist, mother of four and an artist.  She worked in the Boston area most of her adult life and now resides in the beautiful blue hills of Berkshire County, Massachusetts.  Her essay is a brave, painfully honest narrative.  You may email her at: S_Rose.

"Spinning Wheel" by Susan Rose (medium ink and water color) from the North Adams Regional Hospital Community Art Project, May 12 - October 22, 2010

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Marginal Notes: Addiction—biochemical bondage or voluntary behavior?

 

“Addiction is a chronic and relapsing brain disease.”  Few would dispute this statement purported by the National Institute on Drug Addiction (NIDA).  Those of us who work in the disciplines of clinical medicine and research pharmacology have been inculcated with its corollary:  “once an addict, always an addict.” Such claims conjure up the notion that those addicted to substances remain powerless over their pharmaceutical spells. Now comes a work—Addiction: A Disorder of Choice—in which research psychologist Gene Heyman challenges the view that substance abuse is an irresistible act wholly beyond the control of the user. >>more

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

On The Brink

by Alexandra Godfrey.

"I sense her fear the moment I walk into the room. Perched on the edge of the exam table, my patient teeters on the brink, wavering between stability and instability, presence and absence. Her smile betrays her too. Fleeting and forced, this grin is not an authentic expression of happiness, but rather one of those overzealous attempts to appear content. I smile back at her, effortlessly returning her greeting as I consider the possibilities:...

You will enjoy this fine vignette, and it will inspire some of us, too.  Full piece: Download On the Brink 

Author Bio: Alexandra Godfrey is a second-year physician assistant student at Wayne State University She may be contacted at: ax3316@wayne.edu
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