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Grief Healing Discussion Groups

Complicated Grief Disorder


Andy

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Andy, Did you read (or watch) The Notebook? It's such a great story of an incredible love. I read the book and me and Sean watched the movie together. We loved it, it's an amazing story about how true love lasts forever--- no matter what. Laurie

Yes, I've seen The Notebook. But I guess that, since our love didn't last forever, it must not have been "true". That's one way that she rationalized her actions. I have resisted that idea, but maybe I must acquiesce if I am ever to complete my transition.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Dear Ones,

You may recall an earlier discussion in this thread about the efforts to include “complicated grief” in the next issue of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-V), which is the most widely used psychiatric reference in the world.

I've just come across an interesting article on that very topic that I'd like to share with you. It was written in July 2005 by Dr. Carl A. Hammerschlag, M.D., CPAE, following Tom Cruise's appearance on the Today show. (Dr. Hammerschlag is a psychiatrist, author, and recognized authority in the science of psychoneuroimmunology – mind, body, spirit medicine – and speaks about health and wellness, healing, leadership and authenticity . He has delivered motivational keynote speeches to corporate and business clients around the world. He is the author of the wonderful book, Healing Ceremonies: Creating Personal Rituals for Spiritual, Emotional, Physical and Mental Health.)

In his article, Tom Cruise and the State of Psychiatry, Dr. Hammerschlag observes that in contemporary America, psychiatrists are defining lots of people as mentally ill, for diseases they may not have and over-prescribing drugs with all of their complications. He writes,

Tom Cruise, the preeminent actor and public spokesperson for Scientology has been in the press recently calling psychiatry a pseudoscience and that psychiatrists have never helped anybody. He says “there is no such thing as chemical imbalance in the brain” and what people need to do is explore the underlying reasons and then move beyond their problems. Presumably Scientology is a way to do that. To the actress Brooke Shields, who suffered from serious postpartum depression and took medication which helped her significantly, he said, she was doing terrible things to her body.

Tom Cruise is wrong, there are serious mental disorders that are dramatically helped by pharmacologic intervention. And even if we can’t always explain how they work psychiatrists and neuroscientists are learning more and more about those mechanisms. But it is also true that psychiatry may be moving beyond its arenas of expertise. And I say this as a psychiatrist, not an actor, I believe we are prescribing too many drugs and defining too many behaviors as diseases. Continue reading here.

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THANK you, Marty (and Dr.Hammerschlag), for that timely and informative article! These are the kinds of things I've been reading about for nearly a decade already and it's good to see more and more doctors are finally seeing what I consider the obvious, rather than just sticking their heads in the sand.IPB Image:lol: It's also good to see some of the alarming but true statistics quoted here, although I wish he'd also talked more about adult use of drugs and related problems. It's too bad, though, that we always seem to need those with degrees to confirm what old-fashioned common sense used to tell us. Unfortunately, most people can no longer think rationally for themselves, which is, of course, a huge part of the problem in the first place.

Unlike the good Dr. though, I think Tom Cruise still has a point about chemical imbalances - there can indeed be a physical imbalance, BUT the first cause, or real source, can also stem from our thoughts and emotions. We don't have to falsely separate out the physical manifestations of that cause from the source. This is what mind/body medicine and thinking is all about in the first place.

Edited by Maylissa
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