Notes on Hypothesis Making in Medicine: Opiates and Opioids as a Unifying Framework for Mental Illness

This piece of work represents a continuation of a multivalent piece of interdisciplinary work which extends back over the last twenty years.  In this social document two main purposes are being addressed, the first one being continuing a study of science and it’s information tools exploring the basis of how hypotheses can be constructed and tested so that the reader may get some sense of where an idea sits on a scale of increasingly or decreasingly reliable knowledge. Read more…

Photo Collection: Mad World Exhibition 2017

This is a collection of photos showing the work which was brought together that made the Mad World Exhibition in 2017.  You can read about the ideas by following THIS LINK.  The exhibition held at its heart a space where questioning of attitudes to mental health, mental illness, madness and identity was encouraged particularly in light of the Psychiatric Survivors Movement which legitimately challenges and drives forward understandings today.
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The Holding Space by Julia Macintosh

Like most people, you are not able to face more than one fear during your lifetime. You also spend your life fleeing from your first fear towards your first hope. Be careful that you do not, through your own wiliness, end up always in the same position in which you began. (Jane Bowles)

I was invited by Alex to share my personal account of mental illness, and was reminded of this by Joel White’s moving reflections about his experience of breakdown and its transformative impact on his life. Well here’s the thing: I’ve already recounted the ins and outs of my own experience of breakdown, on my personal blog. My posts there record the evolution of my reflections over the past few years, as I headed into crisis and emerged from it into recovery and renewal, into the present. So I’m not going to dig too deeply into that – though please bear with me here, because I’m going to try to use it as a springboard to something else. Read more…

Mental Illness: First Hand Experience by Joel White

What is the meaning of life? From a lot of reflection and avoidance to some degree in writing this article I have finally reached appoint where I feel more able to be at one with my inner feelings of vulnerability whilst also reaching the full realisation that I beat mental illness.
Despite the pain, suffering, chaos, turmoil that I experienced before, during and after my ‘episode of mental illness’, I say with my hand on heart if I could turn back the clock, I would be more than happy to go through this experience again. REALLY I hear you think? Yes, really. Read more…