Asheville psychiatrist Daniel Johnson didn’t set out to transform his profession. But he’s now part of a growing movement, both locally and nationally, that’s challenging the most fundamental assumptions about mental illness.
Dr. Johnson launched a private practice here in 2010 and, like most psychiatrists, he prescribed medications for his patients. But a controversial article he read nearly a year and a half ago got him thinking and eventually led to a profound shift in the nature of his work.
“Unfortunately, and sadly, more often than not, medications do more harm than good,” Johnson now maintains. “And of course I had contributed to all that in my own practice. I had a lot of soul searching and reckoning to do on a personal level.”
Nonetheless, Johnson — a graduate of the UNC School of Medicine who spent several years working in Mission Hospital’s inpatient psychiatric unit — says he did “a lot of apologizing” to clients, including those who later experienced a difficult withdrawal from a particular antidepressant he’d prescribed: “They put a lot of trust in me, and I feel like I led them astray.”
Many in the field would disagree with that position. And while Johnson says he’s gotten some support from colleagues, psychiatrists who help patients safely withdraw from psychiatric drugs are few and far between.
Asheville resident Faith Rhyne, a former patient of Johnson’s, says, “There’s something very reductionist about the conventional approach to mental health, which ... really is that you have a chemical imbalance, and it’s a disease, and you have to take medication in order to fix that.”
With Johnson’s help, she’s been off psychiatric meds for more than a year. “I feel so much better,” she reports.
Rhyne belongs to the Asheville Radical Mental Health Collective, one of several local alternative support networks. “You are more than your diagnosis,” she declares. “You are more than whatever quick answer might have been handed to you.”
http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/02/...orth-carolina/
http://www.mountainx.com/article/482...ream-treatment
