Feedback: We'd like to hear your comments and views. Please forward them to the e-mail address above. Contact information is below.

Also included on the site is an array of articles on topics ranging from the medical causes of schizophrenia to the effects of toxic metals on mental health.

Special AlternativeMentalHealth.com T-shirts and bumper stickers are available at our online store.

A bookstore page lists top books that cover many areas of alternative treatments with titles like Natural Healing for Schizophrenia and Other Common Mental Disorders and No More Ritalin.

AlternativeMentalHealth.com has been created to educate the public, practitioners, and government officials on the medical conditions that create "mental illness" and the many safe resources available for addressing and often curing severe mental symptoms.

As promised in our last issue, more comments from the public on Safe Harbor's work:

Found on a bulletin board on the internet: 

"I went to [Safe Harbor's] conference on 'Non-Pharmaceutical Approaches to Mental Disorders' and it was absolutely fascinating. A lot of information on herbs and nutritional remedies- presented by some well-respected psychiatrists. B complex vitamins, folic acid, magnesium deficiency causing anxiety, depression, allergies; zinc healing bulimia (UCLA professor of Psychiatry), EFA's (Omega-3's for bipolar) and on and on. Lots to process- but 2 things stuck in my brain- the U.S. uses 90% of the world's ritalin supply and 48% of psychiatrists take psychotropic meds...this was a very intense 2 days."

From a site visitor: 

"My name is [deleted] and I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I kept your last e-mail. I wanted to let you know that I got the book The Diet Cure by Julia Ross. I have been using the amino acids and I must say that eating healthier (no goodies with sugar, etc.) has helped me. I do get out daily and walk my son to school (which is helpful). It may be too early to tell, but it seems that the mental fogginess I had is clearing. I will look into the site for OCD that you gave me also. Just thought I would try this book first and it does seem to help. I have noticed that my symptoms worsen if I forget to eat. Low blood sugar is the culprit. This book covers that. Pretty amazing. Glad I found your site. God bless you for your website and common-sense information."

From a site visitor, a man who found he had been diagnosed with mental illness for years, only to find he had pyroluria, a metabolic disorder: 

"Thank you immensely for your organization, for the brave ray of light and seed of hope you provide amidst the abomination that the current mental health system is.  History will be very, very parising and commending of Safe Harbor."

YOUR SUPPORT OF SAFE HARBOR IS NEEDED 

 

And do us a favor by passing the following information along to those you think might be interested.

Alternative Mental Health News has learned that a major U.S. university plans to create the nation's first integrative psychiatry program for educating doctors in non-drug mental health treatments like those posted on AlternativeMentalHealth.com.  The current target date is 2004 with some possible CME (continuing medical education) courses being taught before then.

The university has asked to remain unidentified until the program is officially established.  Alternative Mental Health News will make the information available at the soonest possible date.  

"I am thirty-six years old this December 9th. I had a complete hysterectomy at the age of twenty-six. My doctor put me on hormone replacement. I had problems sleeping. I would go through nights without any sleep, fighting insomnia. Through lack of sleep I was exhausted.

"A friend of mine suggested for me to go to her physician. She felt he could help me. She made the appointment and drove me to the doctors office. After seeing the doctor, he prescribed a sleeping aid, which was the root of the problem - and Prozac. I found out my friend was on it too. She expressed to me it made her feel like a brand new person. No one took the time to explain the danger of this drug or monitored me on the drug.

"At the time, I really was not sure of how I felt, there was a lot of changes. The only difference was that I was sleeping a little better than before. My emotions were numbed, nothing bothered me, even daily chores. I let them go. I did not care. Soon my insomnia came back even worse than before. In March 2000, being on Prozac three months, I started my way to hell. I did not know mentally what is going on or happening within. My whole mental recall is blurred. I started crying hysterically. It crossed my mind this was ridiculous - crying all the time, and spending the amount of money monthly for Prozac.

"I threw the bottle of pills in the trash. Each day that went by I steadily was heading for bottom. Everything that crossed my mind had to do with religion. The people that I saw at this time all knew that something was wrong with me. This went on for about nine to ten days. Each day I was getting worse. Toward the eighth day my emotion/ thoughts flipped speedily from one thought to another.

"Aubrey, my eleven year old daughter, and I went to MacDonalds for lunch. I became extremely paranoid of everyone in the building. I thought someone was going to come in and start shooting. I was so frightened - all I could think of was protecting Aubrey. I thought my yard was the Garden of Eden. Everything was meant to be free.

So I let our big dog loose and freed our two ducks that were in a cage. Our big dog caught one of the ducks in his mouth. Immediately it crossed my mind that he was a monster and he was going to kill the ducks. I became scared of him. In the process of trying to catch him to get the duck out of his mouth, he finally let the duck go. He then jumped on Aubrey and knocked her down. She was screaming. He was on top of her and she could not get up. That's when I hysterically went to pieces. I had to save her. I went to get the gun that was in the closet on the top shelf. I shot the dog to save Aubrey.

"The next thing I remember was that I was in my bathroom to put the gun up and all of a sudden my thinking pattern shifts again. Crying, I put the gun to my head to pull the trigger when Aubrey walked into the bathroom to witnesses what is fixing to happen. She screams 'No, Momma!" and jumped on me and grabbed my hand with the gun.

The gun went off. The bullet that was meant for me - hit her.

"The next thing I remember is waking up in ICU being told I had been shot. I lost one lung and part of my liver. I lost Aubrey. I went through hell for days. No one had enough time to reach a caring hand out to save me. My daughter was the bravest of all. She reached out her hand and saved my life."

Safe Harbor has been invited by the Foundation for Integrative Healthcare - (505)983-0546 - to take part in the creation of insurance codes to cover the costs of alternative mental health treatments.  Part of the Foundation's mission is to "oversee the maintenance and continued development of a listing of integrative healthcare interventions that support reimbursement, electronic commerce, outcomes data and research for over 3 million licensed healthcare practitioners."

Currently 60% of the American healthcare dollar is spent on alternative treatment and much of that is not reimbursed by insurance companies.

At some time in the first half of 2003, the Foundation will hold a free 8-10 hour training session in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to prepare member organizations for "stewardship of ongoing code maintenance and development."

Any physicians interested in assisting Safe Harbor by attending the training session may contact us at SafeHarborProj@aol.com.

Dear Chris,

Thank you for contacting us on this. That's great that you are taking on this topic as a debater. Debating skills will serve you well in life.

The issue of increasing mental health funds is a tricky one from our perspective. Our view is that government-funded psychiatric treatment as is currently exists is actually HARMFUL in most cases. There is much evidence for this. An excellent book that covers this fact is Mad in America by Robert Whitaker.

The standard treatment in government-funded facilities is drugs. A person comes in with various severe mental symptoms. If it is a hospital where he can stay, they may do a brief physical exam on him to see if he has any illnesses but they almost NEVER look to see if he is suffering from a physical illness that might be causing his mental symptoms. Then they put him on drugs for his symptoms. Often these people are told they will have to be on drugs the rest of their lives.

If the person goes to a CLINIC, where he is treated and sent home that day, he will not be given any physical exam in most cases. They will look at his symptoms, find a drug that matches those symptoms, and give him drugs to suppress them.

And what do these drugs do? In an article in the Feb 1996 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry by Stephen Hyman, the head of the Natl. Institute of Mental Health, he clearly states: "...psychotropic drugs produce long-lived alterations in brain function." And when people have been on these drugs for many years, these alterations can be permanent.

I know about this personally because I watched my father become worse and worse on psychiatric drugs over a 40-year period until it looked like he had Alzheimer's Disease.

The drug companies tell people the drugs fix a "chemical imbalance" in the brain, but if you use common sense you can see this is totally untrue. The brain is made of natural substances. These substances try continually to stay in balance with each other - a condition called homeostasis. If you introduce a foreign chemical into the brain, the brain has to deal with it. There is no place in the brain for a non-natural substance so the brain chemistry is actually thrown OUT of balance by the drug.

So is there a better way than drugs to deal with the mentally ill? Yes!!

Most mentally ill people have physical illnesses that are causing their symptoms. We have many articles on our site that show how this occurs. So the first thing I would budget for would be to ensure that all patients are given a very thorough examination when they come to the hospital or clinic. One landmark study on this subject was done by Richard Hall, MD, in 1978, who found 46% of patients in one study had illnesses causing or contributing to their mental problems. It is written up in Hall RCW, Popkin MK, Devaul RA, Faillace LA, Stickney SK: Physical Illness Presenting As Psychiatric Disease, Archives of General Psychiatry, 1978, 35: 1315-1320.

The second thing I would do would be to ADD extra tests to the physical exam these people get. There are many things that can cause mental illness that are never tested for. A good example of this is food allergies. They can cause any kind of mental illness yet are never tested for. I know of two people who were told when they were young they had mental illness and would be on drugs the rest of their lives. They later found they were allergic to wheat. They stopped eating wheat and now live normal lives.

So I would test for allergies, toxic conditions, hormone problems, nutritional imbalances, infections like Lyme Disease and typhus (where indicated)and a few other things. This would actually save the state money because many of these people would be cured and would not be spending government money on psychiatric drugs for the rest of their lives or taking up space in psychiatric hospitals.

For those people who did not recover after the exams, I would put them on nutritional supplements that have been proven to help people recover from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other conditons. You can find out about some of these at www.truehope.com and on our site at http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/schizdiet.htm

I might also add fish oil or flax seed oil supplements that have been shown in scientific studies (one at Harvard) to be effective in treating schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and attention deficit disorder.

For their hospitalization, I would make sure they were given a healthy diet with no sugar, no white flour and no caffeine because all of these have been shown to worsen mental symptoms. I'd make sure they got plenty of fresh fruits, nuts, and vegetables and protein and virtually no processed food. I'd also educate the patients on the importance of a good diet in maintaining mental health.

I'd make sure there was a place to exercise or take walks or run and I'd encourage that because Duke University and other places have shown that exercise is more effective than drugs against depression and it improves health in all ways.

I'd make mild labor available, like gardening or making products for charity, so people could feel productive and do something with there time instead of sitting around watching TV.  I'd eliminate TV as it tends to disconnect people from their immediate environment and these people need all the connection they can get.

I'd let patients be and not harass or introvert them with a lot of psychotherapy, but simply let them heal on their own with good nutrition, rest, and exercise. I wouldn't force them to take showers or do things but would only try to encourage healthy behavior and let them be. If they wanted to talk, of course, I'd ensure all staff knew to listen attentively and patiently when their attention was needed.

The Soteria Project and other studies have found that non-professional staff (just regular people) do as well or better at discussing such patients' troubles with them than therapists (Ref: http://moshersoteria.com and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43350-2002Sep5.html)  A German study found that patients allowed to use computer chat rooms to discuss their problems with each other after discharge had a nearly 0% readmission rate, compared to the usual 30% readmission rate (Ref:  Alternative Mental Health News, Issue 25:  http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/Ezine/ezine25.htm)

Most of all, I wouldn't tell them they are mentally ill, that they are genetically defective, and that they will be this way the rest of their lives - which is what they are currently told. I would tell them the truth: They are suffering from some sort of medical problem, a nutritional imbalance, a metabolic abnormality, etc., that is affecting their mental processes. I'd tell them these are reversible in most instances but the person may, like a diabetic, have to take special precautions with his health to maintain stability. For those few who are not medically ill, but are simply overwhelmed by life situations, I'd tell them they just need a rest and to relax for a while. In short, I would give them HOPE based on realistic expectations, which is far more than they get now.

I'd use drugs minimally for urgent symptom relief when symptoms were out of control, causing serious suffering or agitation. And I would look HARD to find the cause of the symptoms so the drugs could be discontinued as quickly as possible.

For those already on medication, I'd maintain them on it the least amount of time necessary until I could wean them off.

For those people who do not recover with thorough exams, lab tests and nutritional treatment, there is always the possibility they will heal on their own. See http://moshersoteria.com and our article on natural recovery from schizophrenia at http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/beautifulmind.htm

I'd give them a safe place to stay until they did recover on their own and I would treat them with the expectation that they would return to a fully normal life, instead of the current concept of disablity for the rest of their lives.

The results? Most of the people would recover and get on with their lives. They would have their dignity and not live with the stigma of being labeled a mental patient forever. The government would, in the long run, save a ton of money because these people would not be coming back to the hospital over and over again and wouldn't be on welfare and wouldn't be on psychiatric medication.

A percentage of the people would refuse to take care of themselves or eat properly or take their vitamins or would abuse street drugs or want psychiatric drugs (since they can make you high like street drugs) and these poor souls would be dependent on psychiatric hospitals for years or the rest of their lives. Another percentage of people would be actually brain damaged from drugs or shock treatments or car accidents, etc., and may be beyond help and these people, too, might suffer the rest of their lives and be dependant on psychiatric care. But most of the people would get better.

So there you go. It's different. It's radical. But it is also what mental health treatment will look like in the future. The sooner the government starts doing it to help these people, the better off we all will be.

All the best,
Dan Stradford
Safe Harbor

On the back wards, where the sun doesn't shine, time is measured in the burning of cigarettes. Drugged zombies pace listlessly past the peering eyes of hospital staff who observe the pathetic scene from the other side of the nurses station window, like people peering into an aquarium, taking meaningless notes out of sheer ignorance.

Locked naked behind a two inch thick steel door, I felt sealed in a tomb of hopelessness. I lay on the rubber mat in the corner, with muscles turned to jello by an injection of a highly toxic neuroleptic drug called thorazine. On the walls were obscenities scrawled in blood and excrement from past prisoners in the seclusion room, and the fetid stench of stale urine filled the air.

It was Christmas day, but I had no visitors, and the outside world seemed hopelessly out of reach. In this setting, after being forced out of college by my illness, I struggled for 4 long years to hang on to a shred of hope. I  badly wanted to resume a life put on hold, and hoped of some day having access to orthomolecular medicine, a suppressed nutritional treatment mode that had helped my aunt and several cousins to heal on a cellular level- via the natural substances that comprise the proteins that make of each and every one of our cells: vitamins, minerals, amino acids, trace elements, and hormones.

My aunt Jane sent three books about orthomolecular medicine to the next to the last hospital I was in. When they first arrived, I could not concentrate well enough to read them, but felt an intrinsic pull to them and became determined to do anything possible to bring about a sufficient physiological change necessary to be able to concentrate at least enough to skim the books so as to glean their essence.

The hospital had taken the one thing away from me that had been helping: long distance running around the perimeter of the grounds. Release of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine from the running had a natural antidepressant effect, helped me detox from the toxic drugs they gave me, and helped me cope with the stress of my situation so I could sleep at night. They told me they were going to stop me from "running away from my problems" and stuffed me on a locked ward- where I was the only non smoker. After my eventual orthomolecular recovery, I was to learn that exposure to cigarette smoke, (also to several foods) to which I am allergic, caused an escalation in my histamine levels- which contributed enormously to my debilitating symptoms.

On the locked ward, I compensated for running being taken away by doing yoga, push ups, sit ups, tai chi, meditation, and prayer. To get away from the cigarette smoke, I spent as much time as possible in my room with the window open. I got so I could read with great difficulty- if I read with my finger, and re-read a page at least 10 times, I could retain enough to go onto the next page.

Via that means I struggled through Mental and Elemental Nutrients by Carl C. Pfeiffer, MD, PhD after first reading an account by a fellow patient, Mark Vonnegut, son of the famous writer Kurt Vonnegut, about how this man's methods had helped him recover.

Since Pfeiffer had also helped my aunt and some cousins, I was more than a little interested in trying this nutritional approach, but my doctor arrogantly and vehemently insisted that it was "unproven quackery."  I got myself kicked out of that hospital by breaking all their rules in order to get back to New Jersey, where I was put in another hospital which ALSO wouldn't let me try orthomolecular medicine- but at least I was in the same state as Pfeiffer, so figured I had a chance- if only I could go see him and get lab tested.

My dad was dead set against this idea because physician friends of his advised him that Pfeiffer was a "quack", but my mom was more open minded- and she saved my life by taking me to Pfeiffer who did a battery of lab tests that no one else had known how to do.

Armed with the proper nutrients, I smuggled them back in to the last hospital I was in, and took them on the sly while mouthing my medication, and spitting it down a toilet. I had to hide my vitamins in a cavity gouged out from the underside of a foam mattress because they did room searches searching for contraband- and if they'd found my vitamins, they would have confiscated them as if they were cocaine or marijuana, having been brainwashed into believing that any amount over the RDA merely gives us "expensive urine."

After just three weeks of taking my supplements, I was doing so much better that I was given a full medical discharge, with the doctors scratching their heads, wondering which of their drugs had been helping me, but none of them had been -- I was spitting them all down the toilet where the toxic substances belonged. That was 23 years ago.

WHAT PFEIFFER FOUND

Pfeiffer discovered that food and inhalant allergies caused me to have an overproduction of histamine which is peripherally stored in basophils of the blood and the tissue mast cells. Basophil counts greater than 50 cells/cu mm and histamine levels greater than 70 ng/ml (10 mcg%) are considered diagnostic for histadelia. The average histamine for males was 111 mg/ml and females 107 mg/ml in a study reported in 1975. My histamine levels were up to 126. This is significantly different from normals: 42 and 46 mg/ml for males and females respectively. Histadelia causes suicidal depression, paranoia, and obsessive thinking.

The amino acid methionine detoxifies histamine by methylating the ring structure forming N-methylhistamine. Calcium, taken in the form of calcium salts reduces the release of the bodies store of histamine. Zinc and manganese aid the calcium- methionine program and provide sufficient relief.

Pfeiffer also discovered that I had very high aluminum levels, and copper levels, as well as overproduction of an enzyme called kryptopyrolle.  This enzyme  robbed me of zinc, a copper antagonist that I needed to eliminate excess copper which was having an excitory effect on the brain as an electrolyte, contributing to my difficulty concentrating, to thought disorder as well as to my severe depression. In essence: high copper levels were shorting out my brain, interfering with neural firing. Zinc, Manganese, and vitamin C all help to lower a copper burden. The amino acids l-tyrosine, and l-tryptophan boost norepeniphrine and dopamine levels respectively, also helping to alleviate depression.

I have barely scratched the surface of telling my story here, but I hope it is sufficient to lead other suffering people to the help they need. Meanwhile, please help STOP a global pharmaceutically instigated threat to ban our access to these safe healing nutrients:

URGENT GLOBAL HEALTH FREEDOM ALERT

The EU Vitamin and Herb Directives, as well as the Medicines Directive threaten to ban people's access to the nutrients that helped me heal, and which enable me to maintain my health in the face of genetic biochemical imbalances. They threaten the lives and health of people not only in the EU, but due to the EU regs threatened impact on globalized regulations via the UN's Codex Alimentarius Commission- people all over the world, including all Americans. American vitamin companies have been lied to on this issue by their pharmaceutically dominated trade associations. We must wake them up fast!

It is therefore essential that freedom loving people world wide actively oppose these draconian, pharmaceutically biased regulations. People in the UK (and world wide) should join http://www.healthfreedommovement.com and take this to the streets. Also in the UK see http://www.alliance-natural-health.org  Vitamin consumers world wide should contribute to these organizations which are on the front lines of the global battle to defend access to dietary supplements. Also please see http://www.laleva.cc and sign the petition.

Additional Web Based Information: Orthomolecular Medicine

http://www.orthomed.org  International Society of Orthomolecular Medicine, Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation,
Links to more info  http://www.orthomed.org/links/web.htm

http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/default_1.htm  Safe Harbor- Alternative Mental Health Online

http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/directory/  Resources Directory- includes lists of practitioners and orthomolecular clinics

http://www.dr-rath-research.org/home/index.php A wealth of information from Matthias Rath, MD who along with Linus Pauling developed the Solution to Human Cardiovascular Disease- the world's number one killer. Also see health freedom information.

http://www.truehope.com/  Synergy Group of Canada- Foundation started by Tony Stephan in aftermath of his wife's suicide, stemming from successful efforts to help his children find nutritional answers to their biochemical imbalances- Very inspirational

Books:

Mental and Elemental Nutrients

Pfeiffer, Carl C, MD, PhD; Keats c.'75 ISBN 0-87983-114-6

Nutritional Influences on Mental Illness -- A Sourcebook of Clinical Research

c. '91 Werbach, Melvyn R, MD Third Line Press, Inc., 4751 Viviana Dr., Tarzana CA 91356 USA ISBN 0-961-8550-1-0

The Schizophrenias- Ours to Conquer

Pfeiffer, Carl C, MD, PhD; Mailloux, Richard, B.S., Forsythe, Linda, B.A.  c.'70 BioCommunications Press  3100 N.Hillside Ave. Wichita KS 67219 USA  ISBN 0-942333-02-0

A Physician's Handbook on Orthomolecular Medicine

edited by Williams, Roger K with Kalita, Dwight K, introduction by Hoffer, Abram, MD  Keats, c. '77 ISBN 0-87983-199-5

Diet Related to Killer Diseases, V, Nutrition and Mental Health- Hearing Before the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs of the United States Senate- 95th Congress, first session, June 22, 1977- Mental Health and Mental Development- 1980 Update

c. 1980 Parker House- 2340 Parker St., Berkeley CA 94704.  Library of Congress Catalog # 79-57366

The Way Up From Down

Slagle, Priscilla, MD c.'87 Random House, NY ISBN 0-394-55194-X

Common Questions on Schizophrenia -- And Their Answers

Hoffer, Abram, MD, PhD, c.87 Keats ISBN 0-87983-378-5

Biochemical Individuality the Basis for the Genotrophic Concept

Williams, Roger J.PhD  c.'56 , 7th printing '79 Originally published by John Wiley and Sons, Reprinted- University of Texas Press- ISBN 0-292-70022-9

How to Live With Schizophrenia

Hoffer, Abram, MD, PhD; Osmond, Humphrey, MRCS, D.P.M  c.74 Citadel Press  ISBN 0-8065-0665-2

The Roots of Molecular Medicine A Tribute to Linus Pauling

Based on a Symposium presented on May 7-8 1983 in San Francisco by the Orthomolecular Medical Society edited by Huemer, Richard P., MD  c.'86 W.H. Freeman & Co.  ISBN 0-7167-1761-1

An Alternative Approach to Allergies The New Field of Clinical Ecology Unravels the Environmental Causes of Mental and Physical Ills

Randolph, Theron G, MD; Moss, Ralph W, PhD  c.90  Harper & Row ISBN 0-06-091693-1

Molecules of Emotion- The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine

Pert, Candace B., PhD c.'97 Simon and Schuster Inc, ISBN 0-684-846-34-9