We have many stories. Each is owned by a single person who experienced these difficulties and who courageously fought to overcome them. Each story is very personal and will be told or kept private by the person at its center. I honor that ownership and decision to maintain privacy.

 

But I also have a story. I entered the world of mental health out of necessity. It wasn’t a career choice, but a survival instinct when a loved one experienced a mental health crisis. For our entire family, the experience was painful, confusing, frightening, and disempowering.

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In an effort to make sense of what we were going through, I connected with the local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). I enrolled in their education class taught by volunteers who faced similar difficulties. Our class learned the basics of mental health and were given a good dose of pragmatic advice and warm, supportive companionship.  What especially caught my attention was the wide-ranging presentation on non-drug approaches. They seemed to hold great promise. A seed of interest had been planted. It drove me to systematically research this new world of alternative treatments.

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I decided to start at a trusted place: medical journals. Although at first a bit daunted, I picked up their vocabulary and research methods quickly enough, reading everything I could find about non-drug options. All the while, I jotted notes and ideas. I realized that a vast range of non-drug options was available and the extent of research supporting them was fairly staggering. Soon my notes coalesced into a paper that I shared with interested NAMI volunteers, and later in public conferences.

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But something was gnawing at me. If all of these medical journals were accurate, why wasn’t I hearing about non-drug options from psychiatrists?

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In the space of thirty minutes, I posed that question to two psychiatrists who worked at one of America’s leading hospitals. I was interested in calibrating my new-found knowledge about mental health issues with people extensively trained and actively practicing in the field.

 

First I spoke with a smart and engaging psychiatrist who had recently finished his medical internship. I was interested in how the positive research on nutrient therapy was being used to improve clinical care. The newly minted psychiatrist made his position clear: taking supplements posed possible drug-interaction issues. He said it was important to stop the vitamins and other supplements unless there was a clear medical reason for taking them.  He obviously viewed vitamins and nutrients as having little benefit. In fact, he viewed them as potentially detrimental to the true solution: drugs.

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I walked away feeling embarrassed. Maybe I hadn’t understood those medical journals all that well. But then I recalled the many studies documenting the benefits of nutrients both alone and with drugs. Regaining a bit of confidence, I set off for my next conversation.

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The head of the psychiatric department was waiting for me, a man with decades of clinical experience and front-line mental health management. He smiled and invited me into a meeting room. After introductions, I asked him about recent studies that had received notoriety in the medical press, including a prominent blog by the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health.

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The studies’ findings were startling: antipsychotics (drugs taken for schizophrenia and other disorders) appeared to do more harm than good in the long run. People who used them had more hallucinations than those who didn’t. Plus, their brains physically shrank in proportion to the amount of antipsychotics consumed. These findings seemed to shake the very core of recommended care for psychosis. I wanted to know what to make of these conclusions. Trying not to be intimidated by his degrees and expertise, I posed my question.

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The answer I received stunned me.