QUOTES AND REFLECTIONS FROM DR. DAN L. EDMUNDS

If we truly worked towards social justice, if we addressed the issues of racism, class inequality, poverty, and oppression in all its forms, then most assuredly, true mental health would arise."

"I have never purported that there is a means that can resolve the distress of every person, but I do know that every person deserves to be treated with respect, compassion, and dignity. I also know that where this is lacking, we are not helping, but oppressing."

"I am aware that it is often difficult to change the difficult dynamics that impact many individuals, but I know that if I can create with them a place, even if but for a moment, where they feel safe, tranquil, and at peace with themselves, that in spite of the chaos and conflict circling them, much has been accomplished."

"Our goal as mental health professionals should be selfless and once again to define our work as restoring relationships and resolving conflicts. We must return dignity and respect for individual's experience and depart from biological determinism which defines all thoughts and feelings as chemical accidents. Children in distress need a voice. I seek to do my best to insure this voice. Psychiatric drugs never teach new skills. People do. It is time we invest once again, our time, our energy, and our hearts into the lives of our children. We must stop medicalizing experience and treating people in mechanical ways. For people to overcome distress, we must be genuine and journey with them."

"Because something can be scientifically validated does not mean it is ethical or good. One could validate many coercive practices. We must enter the realm where we realize that mental health is highly dependent upon our response to issues of social justice. Science must be linked with a strong sense of ethics and respect for the dignity and liberty of persons. Ethics must always proceed technology."

"We have the choice to look at the problems within the world and to bemoan our plight and to become complacent. We have the choice to become filled with rage and remain in our personal hells, to close ourselves off and allow our difficult experiences to become breakdown for us. Or we can decide to have a breakthrough. We can be courageous, we can actively transform ourselves, our worldview, and by this we can tranform that which is around us and our difficult experiences can be to our benefit and to the benefit of others."

"Psychiatrists have often completely misunderstood what the term recovery really means. It does not mean being a lifelong consumer of toxic psychiatric drugs. The psychiatric establishment's idea of recovery is based on suppression which lesds to oppression."

"Young people need a voice. Relationship is a powerful force for healing. Many of our young people are outraged by the injustices perpetrated upon them. Their despair becomes rage, and sadly, they move from victims to victimizing others. We must approach our young people with acceptance, and begin to realize what we can each change within ourselves, within our society, so that we can truly value and respect our young people again."

"What is termed ‘madness’ or ‘mental illness’ is for some the only means for expression of their being lost and confused in a world which has caused them deep hurt and pain. Such is not disease but behavior with metaphorical meaning. There has been received through life mixed messages and placement into situations where regardless of the option they choose they felt damned. They seek to break out from the reality which has only caused them distress."

"Life is our creation. We create it by our choices. In this ability to have choose, this is where we are gifted with freedom. But this freedom can be liberating or it can bring us to hell. Life is like a play or performance. At times, people's frame freezes and they become trapped in that singular moment. All that they define about life, about who they are returns to that singular point. We imprison ourselves by our thoughts, by our own choice."

"We live in a society where there must always be winners and losers, it impacts every aspect of how we conduct ourselves, in courts, in politics, in business. If only we can regain a sense of our common humanity, and be able to develop concern for others, even the most troubled."

"To find what is 'acceptable' is to find our humanity, to find our inner being, to find those links of experience which remain in spite of the social forces that cause us to sway this way and that, and for some tear at their core being and identity. When we are free, we can experience the other, when we are free, we can be ourselves. If we are free, we can reshape these social forces, and they will not be storms, but unifying forces helping us to recapture our sense of what it means to be human and to truly love again. How do we be free? Must be become 'mad' to be free? But are the 'mad' really free or have they been driven to this barren place? We can only be free once we have come to a state of unlearning, of unknowing, a rebirth where we are not bound by blame and shame and the darkness of past traumas or of ideas we have learned and carried forward because it is all we knew."

POETIC REFLECTION BY DR. D.L. EDMUNDS,ED.D.- "IF I OPENED THE DOOR TO PARADISE..."

If I opened the door to Paradise, would you choose to remain in Hell? If I gave you my heart, would you notice? Can you respond to that you never knew or had? Surrounded by the demons, yet truly alone. You recognize not your friends. Engulfed in delusions, seeking pleasure in that which but leads to more suffering. How I sought to change the wretched mind. A deafening silence, but then an echo, a constant echo. Are you too far away to hear it? Your hurt is now the hurt of others. You inflict your pain on many. Covered in stinking filfth, they say you are foul. Yet I saw what was within. I saw what was possible. You glorify the one who hurt you. You have indeed become him. A sick cycle. The wheel must be broken. Who are you? What do you see? A mirage. A false image, not you, but that which the demons say you must be to join their legion. You think they laugh and revel with you, they laugh at you, they scorn you. And now in the darkness, they flee, leaving you truly alone. If I open the door to Paradise to you now, will you choose to remain in Hell

LISTEN

All I ask is to be heard.
Yet when I look at you, you turn away.
You do not have time for me. Your world created my pain, and when I seek to share a glimmer of my experience, you look at me with revulsion.
Staring at the watch, pretending to listen, but really distant. And some of you seek to mock me further. Is it not the wish of us all simply to be heard? And because there is no one to listen, no one to understand, I retreat into myself, and I find my own to listen.


-Dr. Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D.,B.C.S.A.
International Center for Humane Psychiatry
www.DrDanEdmunds.com