Block Management Software
Service charge and ground rent collection Software

books

Many of the tiles here are available to borrow from the Bray Group.

  • Distress as process not illness. The New Paradigm.
  • Doctoring the Mind: Why Psychatric Treatments Fail. Richard Bentall. 2009.
  • Depression: A Emotion, Not a Disease. Michael Corry and Aine Tubridy. 2005
  • Going Mad? Michael Corry and Aine Tubridy. 2003
  • Beyond Prozac. Terry Lynch. 2001
  • Toxic Psychiatry. Peter Breggin. 1991
  • Trials of the Visionary Mind. John Weir Perry. 1999.
  • Soteria. From Madness to Deliverance. Loren Mosher and Voyce Hendricks.
  • Anatomy of an Epidemic. Robert Whitaker.
  • The Stormy Search for the Self. Christina and Stan Grof. 1990
  • Broken Brains or Wounded Hearts; What Causes Mental Illness. Ty Colbert Ph.D. 1996
  • Depression and Mania; Friends or Foes? Ty Colbert Ph.D. 1995
  • Psychosis and Spirituality; Exploring the New Frontier. Isabel Clarke (editor). 2001
  • The Necessity of Madness and Unproductivity: Psychiatric Oppression or Human Transformation. John Breeding. 2004
  • Spiritual Emergency; When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Stan and Christina Grof (editors). 1989.
  • Beyond Fear. Dorothy Rowe. 1987.

Medication issues:

  • Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications. Peter Breggin and David Cohen. Revised ed. 2007.
  • Coming off Psychiatric Drugs: Successful Withdrawal from Neuroleptics, Antidepressants, Lithium, Carbamazepine and Tranquilizers Peter Lehmann (Ed.) 2004

Books from Crazy Diamond: www.crazydiamond.org.uk

  • The Art of Thriving; Beyond recovery. Marion Aslan. 2008
  • Thrive; The Thrive approach to mental wellness. Marion Aslan & Mike Smith. 2007
  • Overcoming Sadness and Depression. Manual. Also accompanying Workbook.
  • Stories of Hope. From recovery to emancipation. Edited by Marion Aslan. 2008
  • Understanding and Making Sense of Voices. Smith and Aslan.

film and video

  • Take These Broken Wings A film by Daniel Mackler. This astonishing film charts the full recovery of two women from diagnoses of schizophrenia. Renew is selling authorized copies of this film and organising showings with discussion to interested groups. €8.00 per copy.

Video material that we are using at our meetings to stimulate debate can be found on YouTube from the following contributors:

  • Straight talking John Breeding normalises “symptoms” and offers great hope and direction.
  • Sean Blackwell looks at his own overwhelming process and finds great meaning in it.
  • Pema Chodrun is a feisty Buddhist nun offering strong suggestions as to how we can transform our outlook on challenges and pain.
  • Stan Grof looks at the transpersonal and healing power of non-ordinary states of mind.

websites

Web sites relating to non-medical treatment of distress; spiritual emergency; “overwhelm” and “renewal”. Click on the links in blue.

Articles

There are two types of material in this section. There are articles from Renew that reflect our evolving collective outlook. There are also articles from others that we feel broadly share our outlook and that we have found helpful in framing our experiences in the context of renewal and transformational crisis. We are trying to become ever more aware of how the language that we use to describe distress is important in framing our life experiences in their proper context. We are still struggling around this, as new ideas may require several words to replace one old one, and our early attempts seem cumbersome at times. We are pressing ahead to try to develop a new language that reflects a new vision. In our own articles we are doing our best to change our language in line with our new outlook. In the articles by others that we carry here, we understand that they too are struggling to get new ideas across and they may have made decisions that the old language is the most direct route to understanding, particularly in the context of a short article. we do not use the term “mental illness” because we do not see distress in that context. We are trying to adopt the term “overwhelm” for very challenging states of being, whether this is prolonged and/or severe low mood (currently called depression) or a state of mind involving unremitting and chaotic visionary experiences or voices. As with much in Renew, our change of language is a work-in-progress. We would like to promote dialogue on this issue. We also take the view that while our own and others’ articles are imperfect in their language, we are all exploring valuable new ways of looking at our experiences and finding ways towards health, peace and wholeness. Click on the links in blue.

  • Transformational Crisis This is the Renew presentation to the November 2009 conference “Making Thriving a Reality” in University College, Cork. In it we look at the value of staying with difficult and distressing processes so that we can resolve the underlying issues/pressures/histories.
  • The Value of Depression This article by Al Galves, which we found on the Beyond Meds website. Thomas Moore discusses this topic with great warmth and insight and in greater length in The Care of the Soul. Reprinted here with the permission of the author.
  • The Health of Psychosis Another article by Al Galves that looks at the natural tendency of the psyche towards healing itself. We need to listen to what is going on in our psyches and not be fixated by the unusual ways in which this presents itself, whether this is in voices, visionary experiences or unconventional ideas. John Weir Perry examines this approach in many of his writings. See “When the Dream Becomes Real” interview with Michael O’Callahan (web resources section). Reprinted with the permission of the author.