Interactions between people create thoughts in the other person that may be helpful and/or harmful

The harmful effects of medical model interventions are significant and far outweigh any benefits such interventions may have. This is not simple opinion, but has been consistently documented by the failures of the last fifty years. Further, any study designed to specifically test this observation will verify these facts.

Do no harm

The pseudo medical profession that operates psychological services does not follow this axiom. They do harm regularly and without regret. This harm includes, but is not limited to:

1) Creation of a belief that drugs improve feelings leading to the obvious and natural desire to seek the most effective drugs leading to the outcome of a drug culture

2) Toxic damage done to the body including the brain by the drugs used [along with Tardive Dykenesia, obesity from ravenous appetite leading to obesity, sexual dysfunction, urinary dysfunction, etc.

3) Masking the fundamental causes of psychological distress and thereby avoiding resolution

4) Attributing the distress to a falsehood [there is absolutely no scientific evidence that any pathology exists] over which the client has no control thereby creating:
a) a coercive relationship to people with such distress [e.g., since they cannot control themselves, they must be controlled – violation of the Constitution with involuntary commitment – the only predictive incarceration acceptable in the United States]
b) a diplomatic immunity to punishment for unacceptable and illegal acts [e.g., innocent by reason of insanity]

• This interrelatedness extends to all of the people who regularly populate an individual’s ecosystem

Children learn their behaviors from those people around them. Therefore, if a child has learned inappropriate behaviors, the entire community of interest has participated in the learning and should participate in the relearning. The present system allows the child to become the scapegoat for the adults who directly or inadvertently provided the basis upon which the child makes the decisions to behave in a certain manner.

• The regular participants in the ‘community of interest’ need to take responsibility for the whole, not simply draw attention to a part

It is not sufficient for the parent or the teacher to ‘blame’ the child for the behavior. It is required that s/he participate in the solution. If the community really wants change, it will be required to support the child and the community in a balanced and rational exploration of the evidence to see how messages are sent and received and to change those messages that seem somehow to result in behaviors that are unacceptable.

This is a direct extension of the balanced and rational justice movement that includes community conferencing and family decision-making.

• it is a presumption of human life that all behavior has or at one time had a positive purpose.

The positive intention behind ‘aggressive’ behavior, for example, is often ‘protection’. If you are the one aggressed, the behavior does not seem so positive. But be assured, the person aggressing has an ‘inner logic’ that requires the action, perhaps only to protect himself.

The positive intention or purpose behind ‘fear’ is usually ‘safety’. The positive purpose behind anger can be to ‘maintain boundaries’. ‘Hatred’ may have the positive purpose of ‘motivating’ a person to take action. The positive intentions behind something like ‘resistance to change’ could encompass a range of issues; including the desire to acknowledge, honor or respect the past; the need to protect oneself by staying with the familiar, and the attempt to hold onto the positive things one has had in the past, and so on. Confusion comes from the perspective.

Another basic principle that is related to that of positive intention, is that it is useful to separate one’s ‘behavior’ from one’s ‘self’ – that is, to separate the positive intent, function, belief, etc., that generates a behavior from the behavior itself. Both of these principles provide a beneficial and supportive relationship to the person with psychological difficulties and do not place them in a defensive position.

• Schools are required to use evidence base interventions

This is a specific attack on the fifty years of medical model practice without directly addressing the psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies who are draining our children of their competence. It is sorry to say that almost nothing of the traditional mental health system has been empirically validated although apologists for the system have been attempting to do so. It is the advent of the cognitive behavior management movement has lead to all of the evidence based interventions. Even the new brief ‘therapies’ are embedded with cognitive aspects and philosophy. The cognitive behavior science has incorporated the humanistic philosophies and supplied them with evidence-based interventions. It is a ‘kinder, gentler’ approach along with being scientifically supported.

SUMMARY

There is no validity in replicating the traditional mental health system in schools. There is validity in using this opportunity to change the system into a ‘learning system’ that uses outcome data to support it continued functioning. Schools do not need psychiatrists and medications, they need to use the psychological traditions they have and expand their capacity to use what helps. Bringing psychological services into the school on all levels also offers the potential of ‘saving’ the public system from the disasters of the past. If provider agencies are to provide services in the schools, they will need to abandon their failed premises and upgrade to the new model.

Schools are the place where children are in a valued setting with professional staff on a regular basis. Schools are the de facto providers of psychological services. They fail only because they carry the belief that ‘mental illness’ exists and requires a medical intervention. They can be quite successful using social learning interventions if they will only choose to do so.

Schools are the place and the time is now to abandon failed superstitions and instigate a new era.