Hello,

 

I highly recommend two powerful books published this past Spring by friends of mine, Gene Larkin's Seeking Soteria: Being in Process, and Laura Delano's Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance.  

 

 

 

You may have learned about the original Soteria-House of the 1970s in San Jose, California from Robert Whitaker's 2002 masterpiece, Mad in America.  It inspired me to try and get one started in Alaska, which we were able to do and was open very successfully for a number of years.   Whitaker described the National Institute of Mental Health Soteria study by Dr. Loren Mosher, who is revered by psychiatric survivors.  Loren was very critical of the way neuroleptics had taken over as the treatment of people diagnosed with schizophrenia, and the study involved people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia being randomy assigned to treatment as normal in a psychiatric ward with the drugs or to Soteria-House.  Soteria House's mantra was to be with people rather than do to them in a natural family-like environment.  Soteria residents were respected and their ideas were not ridiculed.  

 

Mad in America includes a vignette about a staff member who instead of trying to talk a Soteria resident out of believing space aliens were going to come and pick him up at a nearby park for a special mission (it wasn't actually a park), went with the resident to the appointed place at the appointed time and when the space aliens did not show up the resident "simply shrugged and said 'I guess they aren't going to come today after all' and then returned to Soteria House where he fell sound asleep."  Gene Larkin is that staff member.  If Gene had stopped that resident from going, the resident very well might have always believed he had been prevented from performing his special mission.  This was the magic of Soteria House.  And the magic of Eugene Larkin.

 

Seeking Soteria is about more than Soteria House; it is a very personal, very honest, telling of Gene's coming of age journey.  He is very humble and his writing style is pure delight.  This is the blurb I wrote about it on Amazon:

 

“Simply said Seeking Soteria, is a gem. Eugene Larkin's writing style is pure delight. Through the telling of his story, we learn about the magic of Soteria House—the compassionate treatment of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The Soteria study was a very successful program in the 1970s, and this book puts you right there. Whether you already know about Soteria House and want to learn what it was really like, or are just somebody interested in the human condition, Seeking Soteria is for you.”

 

 

I have had the honor of meeting and working with a number of people associated with the original Soteria House:  Loren Mosher, the founder, Alma Menn, the Administrator; Voyce Hendrix, the House Manager, and Yana Jacobs, a staff member.  And Gene Larkin.   It turns out Gene is going to be on a panel titled Soteria Houses: Safe, Humane, Life-Enhancing Treatment for Psychosis this coming Tuesday, September 30 at 2:00-3:30 Pacific Time, put on by the National Empowerment Center.  If you are interested in knowing about the Soteria approach I highly recommend reading Seeking Soteria and/or attending the webinar

While sales of Seeking Soteria are fair, Unshrunk is quite popular.  While Gene Larkin is laid back, self-effacing, and wrote his book mainly for himself and his children, Laura Delano is a "high achiever," on a mission to inform the public about the harmful nature of psychiatric drugs, the difficulties of withdrawing from them, and to promote other choices.  She does this through being brutally honest about what she went through from when she first saw a psychiatrist at age 13, her epiphany fourteen years later when she read Mad in America, and her ordeal in coming off psych drugs.  It is a riveting read.  Interspersed, Laura educates about psych drugs and withdrawal, including citing research. 

 

Seeking Soteria is published by the Samizdat Health Writers Cooperative, founded by Dr. David Healy (which also published the hardcover version of my book, The Zyprexa Papers), a small publisher devoted to publishing books about health that are not going to be published by mainstream publishers.   "Samizdat" refers to the clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the government, especially formerly in the communist countries of eastern Europe.  Unshrunk, on the other hand is published by Viking, a big publisher.  With Viking behind Unshrunk, and Laura's drive, it has made a big splash.  Laura is on the podcast circuit including interviews by Tucker Carlson and Michael Smerconish.  Smerconish not only had her on his podcast, but also his weekly show on CNN.  Laura also has many in-person events. 

 

My sense is Unshrunk is the most influential critical book about psychiatry since Robert Whitaker's 2010 book, Anatomy of an Epidemic.

 

 

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