Beyond Mental Illness: Healing

About These Blogs

Welcome to "Beyond Mental Illness." This site was created to give advice to people who have a psychiatric history and now are working to re-build their lives. It is definitely possible for people with psychiatric histories to have meaningful lives with important contributions, and these pages are designed to give suggestions on how to do so.

There is minimal discussion of medication here. Medications can be an important step for some people, but they are only one step. Medications can help mitigate some symptoms, but they cannot do everything a person needs. The author hopes to give suggestions on filling other needs people with mental illness have.

Right now the blog has two composite characters. One is Tony, a young man who has recently been released from the hospital and is low-functioning. The letters addressed to Tony are here on this page.

The second character is Kayla, who has been stable for a while but needs advice on taking next steps and moving forward. The link to Kayla's letters is: beyondmikayla.blogspot.com.

The author recommends people interested in mental health consider reading the following books: http://beyondmentalillness.blogspot.com/p/recommended-reading-list.html.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Healing

Dear Tony,
I know you are sick. I know that is very scary. I have been there before.

Try to relax and calm down. Try to just rest at first. This is most likely temporary. Your life will grow better in time.

When you are sick, you need to heal. You need to relax and let both your body and your mind heal yourself. No one can do that for you. People may be able to help you with that, but you really need to heal yourself.

Healing is not the same as treatment. Healing is much more than taking medications. Healing is fixing your mind, your body, and your life so that you can live as fully as possible. Medication is only one piece to that. For some people it is essential, but it is still only one piece of improving. The true healing rests with you.

Rest at first. When you are sick you need rest. Then start to figure out ways to heal.