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The Dilemma of the Undiagnosed Daughter
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17960 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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5 / 1990 |
4,546 Words |
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Douglas F. Levinson, M.D.
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If you remember nothing else from these comments, please remember this: This book is not about schizophrenia.
Most relatives of persons with schizophrenia will do almost anything to find help. Be aware that there is no evidence in this book that nutritional therapy helps schizophrenia, because Rickie Flach never had schizophrenia. (I discuss below what I think she did have.)
My message, in brief, to families' of people with schizophrenia: Your children will need support when you can no longer take care of them. Don't bankrupt yourselves on orthomolecular clinics (as have the families of some patients I have seen) or on long-term hospitals promising psychotherapeutic cures. Get a few competent diagnostic consultations. Find a caring psychiatrist who knows a lot about medication and who communicates well; he/she should be a pragmatically oriented therapist who connects with the patient and won't give up. Seek out rehabilitation programs that emphasize incremental and practical steps toward a more normal life, realistic living situations, meaningful ways to reward the ill person for staying in treatment and making gains, without applying excessive pressure. Pray. Learn how to use legal procedures to protect yourself and your loved one, when necessary, if the illness results in violence or self harm. Work at not blaming yourself (this is hard). Educate yourself. Be demanding of good care. Be active in advocacy groups if you have any time and energy left. Support research.
"Sure," you say, "whenever anyone cures a person with schizophrenia, the 'experts' say the person never had it." This would imply that people such as myself, people who are constantly with patients and their families, would not want to find a cure - any cure. But we have to deal with facts.
Rickie Flach never had the symptoms of schizophrenia. Tragically, she met only one good diagnostician in her odyssey. Writes Dr. Frederic Flach, the author and Rickie's father, of a call from Dr. Heinz Holzer, a state hospital psychiatrist trained by the famous Eugen Bleuler in Switzerland:
He was convinced that she had been incorrectly diagnosed as schizophrenic, at least according to his quite precise criteria for such a diagnosis. She'd never had any delusions or hallucination, her thought processes were always rational…. Most impressive to him was her tremendous amount of feeling and uncommonly wide mood swings.
Every piece of evidence in this book supports Dr. Holzer.
To be fair, Rickie admittedly lied to most of her doctors about her symptoms to get attention, but more about this later.
Why, then, is the word schizophrenia mentioned on the book jacket? I suspect that the main reason is that "schizophrenia" plus "recovery" is a good formula for book sales. (The families of mentally ill people are often financially exploited by promises of miracle cures and end up spending on everything from doctors and therapists to herbs and books. Personally, I think it is mean.) Another reason is that Dr. Flach keeps the issue of diagnosis so confused that a nonprofessional reader (or editor) might well conclude that many people diagnosed as schizophrenic are like Rickie and would
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