Social Network's Healing Power is Borne Out in Poorer Nations

[MountainLaurel]

Considering some of the threads here this weekend about mental health, I thought this might be of interest. It's the second segment of a three-part series: Be sure to check out yesterday's part about the role of diversity awareness in treatment.



Psychiatrist Naren Wig crossed an open sewer, skirted a pond and, in the dusty haze of afternoon, saw something miraculous.

Krishna Devi, a woman he had treated years ago for schizophrenia, sat in a courtyard surrounded by religious pictures, exposed brick walls and drying laundry. Devi had stopped taking medication long ago, but her articulate speech and easy smile were eloquent testimony that she had recovered from the debilitating disease.

Few schizophrenia patients in the United States are so lucky, even after years of treatment. But Devi had hidden assets: a doting family and an embracing village that never excluded her from social events, family obligations and work.

Devi is a living reminder of a remarkable three-decade-long study by the World Health Organization -- one that many Western doctors initially refused to believe: People with schizophrenia, a deadly illness characterized by hallucinations, disorganized thinking and social withdrawal, typically do far better in poorer nations such as India, Nigeria and Colombia than in Denmark, England and the United States.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/26/AR2005062601091.html

[undergroundpanther]

1. I myself

Dream of creating a network on people...See
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=276x900


I was talking to my therapist last night...

And He asked me what could have made a difference in my life.
At first I had no answer. Because my life sucks most of the time.It's pointless to grow up struggle get hurt,"succeed" have the intelligence,and all just to die and everything you ever loved dies.

[Kire]

2. I'm schizophrenic, and an anthropologist.

This study is the holy grail to me.

I'm going to write to the authors of the study and offer my help.