Customer Reviews

The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia (Healthy Mind Guides)

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This is a wonderful book in the series of Marohn's healthy mind guides. I write this as a mental health professional who has experience with holistic modalities and also with populations of severely impaired mental patients, schizophrenics included. The author looks at a broad spectrum of natural approaches to healing schizophrenia (not managing/maintaining the condition like conventional psychiatry does). Other than the confirmation of diagnostic criteria and prevalency data about mental illness, this book contradicts much of what professionals and the public are usually taught about the topic. The normal approach to schizophrenia is shown to be to a great extent counterproductive, as natural methods are shown from clinical and empirical reports to often help those diagnosed with schizophrenia recover and live drug-free. Natural biochemical therapies, homeopathic treatments, family systems, shamanic healing, osteopathy, and mind-body approaches such as Dr. Hamer's psychosomatic new medicine are described. The book works its way from the outside in as it explores the levels of healing that may be addressed to heal illness. Interesting clinical accounts are presented and readers are given clear evidence that schizophrenics can recover and that there are a variety of resources available to help this occur, ultimately being less expensive than a lifetime of mind-numbing drugs and additional medical expenses of the side effects of those drugs. The mental health system could be a much more ethical and humane institution of society if people were reading books like this instead of blindly accepting pharmaceutical pseudoscience - and people who actually understand and respect the scientific method will recognize how dubious are the claims of the pharmaceutical establishment and their followers. I commend this book's author for not being afraid to point out that drug therapies are more likely to impede recovery than foster recovery, including stats from World Health Organization research. It's about time that some people in the mental health field are shaken out of denial!

Finding this book was a godsend. Acting on many of the therapies described by Ms Marohn, I can now say that my son has been cured of schizophrenia. My "aha" moment came when I read that if schizophrenia is not healed at the level of vitamins, the problem may lie in the realm of beliefs and the unconscious. It is a travesty that people are routinely told by the medical/pharmaceutical lobby that schizophrenia is something inherently wrong with the brain. Ms Marohn has done an incredible service for anyone who doesn't want their loved one to live a life of wasted potential. This book changed my life.

This book gives great hope to people with schizophrenia and those around them wanting to lessen the need for strong drugs with side effects. Suggested are many different models for healing with helpful addresses and phone numbers of clinicians. The most pragmatic book I have read yet.

This title is an excellent review of supplemental therapies to tackle the mountain that is schizophrenia. Well written, organized, and referenced.

Rossa Forbes is a contributor to Goddess Shift: Women Leading for a Change

I wrote an earlier review of this book which I still stand by. This book should be required reading for anyone who is dubious about the current medications only approach to treating schizophrenia. In my previous review I used the word "cured" in reference to my son. Since then he has had a relapse but is once again back on path. A cure simply means that someone with an illness has become healthy again or it can be the solution to a problem. The difference is that now I am taking a longer term view than I once held. I continue to refer to this book while picking off the therapies that it advises. My son has done Family Constellation Therapy (terrific!), cranial massage (useful), vitamin supplements (they work) and has undergone some interesting shamanic based therapies that I feel are key to resolving the underlying tensions. Stephanie Marohn's book has led me down the path of being a holistic believer. I see medical problems in a way that I didn't see them before. According to Gary Craig, founder of Emotional Freedom Technique, 85% of all illnesses are of a psychological origin. Once you go holistic, you equip yourself better to withstand the ups and downs that are associated with recovery and you dig deeper into yourself to find solutions.