‘My Story: How I Was Healed From Depression’ by Douglas Bloch

It was great to recently hear from Douglas Bloch who asked if I might include his Story as posted on his website. Great idea, Douglas!

‘In his book, Prayer is Good Medicine, physician and researcher Larry Dossey maintains that praying for oneself or others can make a scientifically measurable difference in recovering from illness or trauma. It is one thing to understand such a healing intellectually; it is another to know it from experience.

Such an experience came to me in the fall of 1996 when a painful divorce, a bad case of writer’s block, and an adverse reaction to an antidepressant medication plummeted me into a major depressive episode.

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‘Setting the Intention to Heal: The Starting Point of Mental Health Recovery’ by Douglas Bloch

dblochSome very helpful reflections from Douglas Bloch, who blogs on Mad in America.

‘“The readiness is all.” William Shakespeare

In my work facilitating depression support groups, I have discovered three essential factors to healing from depression, which I call ”the three pillars of mental health recovery.”  In my earlier blogs for Mad in America I wrote about two of these pillars – connecting with community and using a holistic approach to treat symptoms. Now I would like to present the first and MOST IMPORTANT pillar – Setting the Intention to Heal.

I define setting the intention to heal as “making the decision that you want to get well, even if you don’t know how.”  Setting the intention to heal does not require that a person know the exact path that will heal him from a major depression or other mental health disorder. It just requires that he or she wants be well.

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Recovery Vision: New paradigm, new questions, new answers

I’ve just watched this wonderful talk (from 2001) by Bill Anthony, one of the pioneers in recovery-based care in mental health. [Bill starts his talk at 25’20” into the video]

Bill describes a metaphor for explaining a paradigm shift, such as the paradigm shift to recovery-based care in mental health.

This metaphor is that mankind once thought the world was flat. This understanding led to certain questions such as, “How far do I sail before I fall off the end of the earth?” Once mankind learnt the world was round, these questions were redundant. We asked different questions.

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