The following statement was made by a prominent Australian psychiatrist during a televised discussion about Australia’s (spiritually blinkered) mental health system:
Patients who claim to channel spirits are immediately prescribed medication.
Given my interest in healing, mediumship and the afterlife, and the contentious topic of ‘spiritual crises,’ the psychiatrist’s opinion naturally captured my attention. I don’t channel spirits or hear voices but do have about 35 years worth of afterlife and mediumship knowledge, and personal spiritual experiences that I shall always treasure.
Perhaps the prominent Australian psychiatrist was a religious man who believes the bible narrative which condemns mediumship as an ‘abominable occult practice’:
In Deuteronomy 18:10-12 New International Version (NIV), God is explicitly clear about forbidding specific occultic practices.“Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you.” (Crosswalk)
I agree that murdering children and casting evil spells to harm and kill others would upset the Lord but don’t see anything wrong with responsible mediumship to assist the mentally disturbed/imbalanced and grieving. The Bible refers to ‘spiritual gifts’, does it not?
Most Bible translators are uneducated in the Gifts of the Spirit. They ignored Saint Paul’s directive to understand psychic science. It is this lack of understanding that caused errors in translation to appear in Bibles. Rev Sydney Schwartz, I Walk in Two Worlds, PDN
Can ‘schizophrenic’ people can make a full recovery?
The psychiatrist’s statement was made in 2017/18, around the same time I began to write and edit articles for Jock Brocas’s Afterlife Magazine. Brocas also happened to be a grief specialist and mentor, evidential medium, spirit interventionist, Paranormal Daily News Editor-in-Chief, Parawize founder, marketing and tech wiz, photographer, journalist, author, veteran, entrepreneur and president of the American Society for Standards in Mediumship and Psychical Investigation (ASSMPI), now ISSMPI (International).
But the pièce de résistance was the revelation that as a spirit interventionist, and in collaboration with mental health professionals, Brocas helped ‘schizophrenics’ make a full recovery. In simple terms, a skilled spirit interventionist is able to identify and resolve spiritually-based parapsychological disturbances such as ‘mediumship psychosis’ or ‘potential obsession from a misaligned spirit entity’. (Catholic exorcists are known to do similar work.) Compared to the mental health treatments on offer in the odd little land downunder, particularly in relation to Schizophrenia and spiritual crisis emergence, this was huge news to me.
The widely accepted belief is that there is ‘no cure’ for Schizophrenia and that schizophrenics need to be medicated for the rest of their life. Unsurprisingly, when I shared Jock’s relevations with various people who knew of long suffering families dealing with a schizophrenic loved one, my news fell upon glazed eyes and deaf ears. Blinkered indoctrination runs deep in Australia.
Is old school psychiatry and psychology failing your mental health?
After a disastrous experience with an Adelaide psychiatrist in early 1990 that nearly killed me and caused even more trauma, I was fortunate to have a session with a gifted spiritual practitioner in Sydney that a friend introduced me to. The practitioner helped her heavily medicated boyfriend recover from long-term and increasingly debilitating depression by identifying and removing negative entity attachments. Although he reluctantly agreed to see her, he was amazed at how much lighter he felt after just one session. Over time, he was able to wean himself off the medication and return to a balanced, productive life. During my session, the practitioner identified the root cause of specific issues that began in my mother’s womb and provided me with other helpful insights that all made sense and brought immense relief and clarity.
If your psychiatrist or psychologist is failing to help you resolve your issues, research the services of a skilled and qualified holistic practitioners, particularly in the fields of energy medicine, kinesiology, sound medicine and parapsychology. Skilled spirit interventionists are out there but often prefer to ‘fly under the radar’, but an experienced medium or shamanic practitioner should be able to assist. Reputable holistic practitioners are much easier to find these days than they were in the 80s and 90s. If you are prepared to do the work and commit to the journey, with the right support, you will successfully help you transform your inner world and your entire life. Drug free. And be sure to arrange an in-person consultation wherever possible.
Spiritually Blinkered Mental Health Systems
Inspired to write an article about spiritual crises, psychiatry, mediumship and mental health, I asked Jock to share some thoughts about medicating people who claim to channel spirits or hear voices. He kindly provided this response concerning one of many Schizophrenia cases he had dealt with:
‘I had an email from a distraught mother who requested help because her son was hearing voices. The medical community’s instinct was to medicate and I must say in my own perception – discriminate. They were convinced it was Schizophrenia.
The individual was referred to me because of a previous case involving another family member who was in a similar situation and being medicated to the detriment of her being. Investigations revealed that the individual was suffering what I consider as “mediumship psychosis” or “potential obsession from a misaligned spirit entity.”
After only one intervention, the issue was dealt with and to date, there have been no more interferences and nor is the individual under any medication or medical treatment. I truly believe that mental disturbances that have no foundation in physical or traumatic ailments should be investigated for a spiritual solution and that spiritual intervention should be a considered approach.
The problem, of course, is that you can’t have just anyone doing this type of work, as the responsibility is huge. This is why within our ASSMPI/ISSMPI organization, we are moving forward in research and development of protocols to investigate and deal with mental health issues requiring spiritual intervention.
While I have no foundation as a healer or indeed a psychiatrist, I do understand the spiritual efficacy of intervention by divine law and authority, and believe it goes some way to providing relief from spiritually-based parapsychological disturbances or psychosis.’
Mental health and psychotropic medication
To top things off, I also came across an extended TV news report featuring an Australian mental health nurse who expressed her concerns about the overuse of inadequately trialled psychotropic medications for schizophrenic patients. She claimed that the drugs were causing damage to patients’ physical health and that they were being cruelly used as guinea pigs. Horrifying stuff.
Who in their right mind would aspire to cause even more suffering to vulnerable people who need care and support? Nobody. Apart from profit-worshiping CEOs of pill manufacturing corporations, it seems. The ones that put profit before health; profit at any cost. An Australian politician who experienced traumatic events before entering politics revealed in a candid interview that the majority of politicians were medicated for depression and anxiety. Hasn’t anyone told them about safer and far more effective holistic health pathways, and the dangers of long term psychotropic medication?
You be the judge if the projected global billions from psychotropic drugs are being driven by profits at any cost or achieving optimal health and peace of mind.
Emergen Research - Psychotropic Drug Market Size:
Schizophrenia statistics
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) defines Schizophrenia as a psychotic disorder characterized by disturbances in thinking (cognition), emotional responsiveness and behavior. It falls under the Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders Class. 5 to 6% of people with schizophrenia die by suicide, about 20% make suicide attempts on more than one occasion, and many more have significant suicidal thoughts. The incidence rate ratio for suicide among those with schizophrenia is about 20 times higher than the general population (Med Central)
Approximately one in one hundred Australians live with schizophrenia, and according to the Results of the Global Burden of Disease study for schizophrenia: trends from 1990 to 2021 and projections to 2050 study, Schizophrenia ranks as the third leading cause of disability worldwide. People with Schizophrenia also have a 10 to 25 year shorter life expectancy compared to the general population. Much of this mortality stems from unhealthy lifestyles combined with low income, limited medical care, physical and psychological changes and increased co-morbidities.
Mental health, trauma mediumship and self-care
A previous long-term relationship with a highly attuned medium taught me many things about mediumship, including the highs and lows of the ‘gift’, and the detrimental effects of undealt trauma - my own included. While the definition of trauma has changed over time, it is broadly defined as a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress, or a physical injury. The American Psychological Association defines it as any disturbing experience resulting in significant fear, helplessness, or dissociation, while the DSM-5 specifically identifies trauma as exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence. (Psychology Today)
Trauma can also serve to heighten sensitivity and if dealt with, may activate a deeper sense of compassion for others, both of which are essential qualities for responsible and attuned mediumship. Undealt trauma that remains ‘buried’ and ‘energetically trapped’, inevitably causes intermittent havoc on all levels. Whether or not you are a medium or psychic practitioner, don’t be frightened of seeking professional holistic support, even if it’s just for a spiritual ‘tune-up and balance.’ Medication will block your mediumship and psychic abilities and adversely impact your livelihood. Ongoing talk therapy will just have you go around in circles or feeling stuck in a rut. For example, an acquaintance of mine has been counselled by a Catholic priest for about 30 years and still suffers from depression.
But rest assured, if and when you are ready, and with the right professional support and guidance, post traumatic stress can transform into post traumatic strength if you are willing to do the work. I speak from experience and consider myself to be a happy and productive work-in-progress.
Additionally, if a self-care protocol is absent from anyone’s life, especially mediums and other health/care-related practitioners whose role involves significant amounts of giving, it is bound to be detrimental to their health in the long term. By self-care protocol I mean simple things like preventative health awareness including nutrition, exercise, time out in nature, impromptu adventures, a creative hobby, laughter, fun times with friends and family, incorporating personal development with spiritual development, and refraining from working and/or drinking/drugging yourself to death. To name a few.
It really isn’t hard to care for ourselves as well as others, and the rewards are great. Health is by far our greatest wealth, after all.
Spiritually ignorant psychiatry is potentially harmful to mental health
Have you ever loved someone with all your heart and soul in your childhood or teenage years and they suddenly died, catapulting you into a state of shock and denial for several years? Does impossible grief ring a bell? Did you wonder why the world still turned when yours just crashed and burned, leaving you feeling like a heartbroken spirit adrift who refused to accept the finality of it all?
Perhaps you stumbled onto your spiritual path in search of answers when you were twenty-something, your only guide an obscure spiritual book or two. You eventually found yourself on a spontaneous inner joy ride that you couldn’t explain to anyone. A soothing, exciting sense of something far greater and more beautiful than you could ever imagine. Then your loved one in spirit reconnected with you in your dreams and/or waking life, providing reassurance and support when you needed it most. But just as you felt that you were finally emerging from your darkest days and that the proverbial stars were aligning in your favour, your immaculate ride was crudely interrupted. External events turned your newfound spiritual joy into something something akin to a confusing spiritual crisis, or attack, of sorts.
You innately knew that you needed spiritual counselling but back in 80s Adelaide, that was virtually unheard of; written off as gobbeldygook. In Australia, at least. You wound up in a room with a spiritually ignorant psychiatrist that bypassed your spiritual experiences and flatly ignored the criminal elements that smashed you off your happy perch. Her answer to your anger and grief was drugs. She started with a mild sedative and ended with debilitating psychotropics that nearly caused you to commit suicide. Even though you were never suicidal to begin with.
The ‘final’ drug nearly killed you within a matter of weeks but it wasn’t your time to die. You recovered enough to book one last appointment and told the psychiatrist what happened. Once again, she refused to listen and take responsibility.Instead, she consulted her notes and told you that you were a ‘highly creative type’ and threatened you with yet another toxic drug. You told her to stick her drugs and refrained from slapping her on your way out.
Soon after dismissing the psychiatrist’s abusive, incompetent services, you were informed that your abuser suffered a nervous breakdown. You limped out of town to start a new life. Many angry years later, you began to calm down and reconnect to your compassion. You hoped that the psychiatrist made it through the darkness without committing suicide because of her beloved psychotropic drugs. However, your traumatic experience left you with the biased opinion that psychotropics are a dangerous and debilitating bandaid. They just shut down the spirit and bypass the root cause of trauma or any other imbalance.
Thankfully, a spiritually minded friend and psychologist would eventually break the news that the broken psychiatrist completely missed your Post Traumatic Stress diagnosis. But this leaves you wondering how the psychiatry profession could be so incompetent.
All’s well that ended badly
I can say yes to all of the above. My dear father died without warning when I was 17. The external events that drove me into what I regard as a preventable spiritual crisis, primarily involved an unreported malicious scandal comprised of extreme character assassination, lying informants, attempted false imprisonment based on fabricated allegations and silver bullets blasted through my workplace window overnight. The bullets followed dreams of being shot in the back with a radio colleague and sent me into a tailspin. Intriguing material for a book and movie one day, perhaps.
And how’s this for a twist? Despite leaving that traumatic experience behind a long time ago and the shadowy perpetrators getting away with it, I had a lucid dream which involved three seriously looking men in suits. One of them told me the name of the political figure that ‘sent’ the bullets my way. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in time to come.
To this day, I am still thankful for an obscure paperback about a spiritual healer and seer called Edgar Cayce. It found me in the mid 80s when I was struggling to stay afloat in my ridiculously consuming TV job. It thankfully ended in 1988 and opened the door to a breezier writing job at a popular radio station. The book’s soothing words and afterlife concepts helped me breathe again and anchor myself, somewhat. Back then, topics like death and the afterlife were taboo. In Adelaide, South Australia, at least. A veritable chambers of horrors. But I was fortunate to have one solid friend with an open mind to the mysterious world of spirituality.
Mental Health Tip: Stop Watching the News
Whilst on the topic of the media and mental health, I highly recommend a book called Stop Reading the News by Rolf Dobelli. The core message is to limit your exposure to the constant barrage of generally negative, traumatizing and largely manufactured ‘news’. Be discerning in relation to where you source your news from and aim for information that is worthy of your time and attention. Here are some pertinent notes from Dobelli’s book:
~ ‘The way news is presented and the way that we access news has changed significantly over the last 15 to 20 years. These changes have been detrimental to general mental health.’’ Graham Davey, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Sussex University and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology.
~ According to a study by the American Psychological Association, half of all adults suffer from the symptoms of stress caused by news consumption. One in 10 Americans check the news once an hour.
~ To the media, what’s relevant is anything that grabs attention. This is the racket at the heart of the industry’s business model. The news they supply us is irrelevant but is sold as relevant.
Holistic healing pathways Vs medication
In retrospect, the Adelaide psychiatrist did me a favour because she gave me an excellent reason to steer clear of Australia’s drug-driven system for the rest of my life. Over the years I have read hundreds of testimonials about psychiatric drug abuse for a myriad reasons and hope that everyone found their way out of their system-induced debilitating and suicidal darkness. For people who find it easier to take psychotropic medication, and it works for them, I wish them well. It’s important to make our own life choices, particularly in relation to health.
In early 2013, I took a twelve-month sabbatical from my job because I felt my old traumas stirring and decided to do something about it. My supportive GP respected my choice to explore holistic health pathways and I diligently found highly skilled holistic practitioners who collectively helped me find my way back to health on all levels. My GP was amazed by my rapid progress and recovery from acute stress and also commended me for having the resilience to confront my old traumas rather than bandaid them with medication. She also stated that:
~ Most people in the 50+ age bracket choose the medication option and that my chosen holistic path would terrify them.
~ Trauma and old wounds have a tendency to resurface in ten year cycles, because they need to be addressed and released - medication or no medication.
~ Long-term psychotropic medication often impacts the quality of life and can shorten the life span
~ Associated side effects can cause more health issues including chronic depression, that require more medication.
For anyone who isn’t aware, antidepressants are one of the five main classes of psychotropic drugs, alongside anti-anxiety agents, antipsychotics, hypnotics and mood stabilizers. Some of my former work colleagues have been in and out of Adelaide psyche wards to withdraw from one antidepressant and start on another. This was shocking to me, but like I said, we are all responsbile for making our own health choices.
Nutritional psychiatry
One of my most exciting health discoveries was ‘nutritional psychiatry’ and the vital role that balanced nutrition plays in maintaining robust health on all levels. A nutritional psychiatrist would be the perfect match for an attuned medium, should the client require spiritual intervention. My first nutrition teacher was Lyn Craven, an advanced naturopath and herbalist based in Bondi Beach, Sydney. Her guidance mirrors the following quote:
A lack of essential nutrients known to contribute to the onset of poor mental health in people suffering from anxiety and depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and ADHD. Nutritional psychiatry is a growing discipline that focuses on the use of food and supplements to provide these essential nutrients as part of an integrated or alternative treatment for mental health disorders. – Joyce Cavaye, Author & Senior Lecturer, The Conversation
Has deep nonsense really taken control?
Given my experience with a spiritually ignorant and negligent psychiatrist, I can’t help but wonder how many suppressed sensitive souls such as healers, artists, writers, musicians, mediums, visionaries and empaths are out there. This excerpt from unpopular Australian psychiatrist Niall McLaren’s Mad in America article Is Australia’s Psychiatric System Redeemable? bears repeating:
There is indeed something rotten in the state of modern psychiatry, and it is the artfully concealed absence of a formal, articulated model of mental disorder. When medical students vote with their feet in not choosing psychiatry as a career, they are showing that they are at least intuitively aware of this. All the money in the world, all the committees and research projects aren’t going to do more than rearrange the deck chairs just because deep nonsense has now taken control.
No doubt for daring to expose this, I will be subject to the usual barrage of secret complaints by anonymous authors, which will be investigated in camera by an unnamed committee considering evidence I am not allowed to see, who will reach a decision that favours the status quo, and for which there will be no effective appeal. Because that’s how psychiatrists operate. The one thing they will never do is have a fair, open, transparent and, above all, honest debate about the realities of being mentally disturbed in Australia.
Billions of Australian taxpayer dollars are spent on mental health each year and one would expect a happier, healthier and far mor productive population. Sadly, this is not the case. According to a Productivity Commission report released in November 2020, mental illness and suicide costs Australia a conservative $220 billion a year, or $600 million every day. The report was commissioned prior to the additional challenges and trauma caused by the COVID-19 episode, so this figure is now seen as wildly conservative when trying to estimate the economic impact of mental health. The Banyans & ABC News
Tidal wave of psychiatric drugging, including children
To shed even more light on the concerning state of mental health treatments in Australia, increasing numbers of children are now being recklessly and unlawfully treated with psychotropic medications. Little wonder this continent is viewed as ‘experiment island’ from afar. Talk about how to numb and dumb down a generation:
‘Australia is experiencing a tidal wave of psychiatric drugging. In a population of 27 million, there were 47.3 million prescriptions written for psychiatric drugs in 2023/2024. Over $13.2 billion is spent annually on mental health. Of great concern is the growing numbers of children and teenagers on antidepressants when no antidepressant is approved for use in children under the age of 18 for depression. There were 161,729 Australian children aged 0-17 on an antidepressant in 2023/24.’ ~ Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR)
Healthier Healing Pathways
Pearls of wisdom
In closing, during my travels to the Hopi Lands, Arizona in 2018, I noticed an announcement on a community noticeboard about their annual health conference. It included keynote speakers covering the four levels of health: Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual. The spiritually ignorant and wisdomless western world health fraternity has some catching up to do, me thinks.
May you find the following excerpts from West African Shaman Malidoma Patrice Somé’s article What a Shaman Sees in a Mental Hospital as helpful and uplifting as I did:
‘In the shamanic view, mental illness signals the birth of a healer. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born. What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.” The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm.
Mental disorder, behavioural disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field. These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.
In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds – the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community. That person is then able to serve as a bridge between the worlds and help the living with information and healing they need.
Thus, the spiritual crisis ends with the birth of another healer. Western culture has consistently ignored the birth of the healer.’
Here’s to a healthier, happier and far more enlightened future.
Note: This updated article was originally published in the Afterlife Magazine by The Otherside Press which has since joined the PDN group.
Links
If you live in Australia and feel that you, a family member or friend may need support from a spiritually aware psychologist, counsellor or community support professional, contact either of the following organizations:
Australian Insititute of Parapsychological Research (AIPR), founded in 1977. According to their Aims and Policies: AIPR provides support in matters to do with alleged or actual experiences of a paranormal nature that may require relief of suffering, distress, or helplessness (this support work is undertaken by AIPR members who are qualified psychologists, counsellors, and social-workers, and trained in (house) ‘clearing’ techniques.)
The Australian Parapsychological Research Association (APRA) is currently moving into a new phase of development and offers support for individuals wishing to discuss personal psychic or paranormal experiences and related trauma.
