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Articles by Amy Begel
When the Family Is the Patient
I recently got a chance to read Laura Delano’s memoir “Unshrunk” which tells the moving story of one young women’s mental suffering, her eventual recovery, and her relationship to the psychiatric establishment. She was labeled as sick, with multiple diagnoses and medications attached to her. She talks about reading Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic, and how the book transformed her thinking about what was happening to her.
It's the Cracked Ones Who Let the Light in
As family therapist I often have families referred to me with an âidentified patientâ, a person who has troubled behavior, or is troubling to the family in some way. This person may be the object of attention and concern. Sometimes this person, a child or adult, fills the role of the scapegoat. The scapegoat is the person who attracts and absorbs the scorn, anger, or disapproval of the rest of the family.
A Relationship Imbalance, Not A Chemical Imbalance
As a family therapist, well-trained in the 1980s, I came of age professionally with an understanding of how symptoms of mental distress occur, and ways to address it. What most people donât know is that we already found out a great deal about the causes of mental disturbanceâbut now we seem to have forgotten it. Psychiatry, along with the pharmaceutical industry, have been ostensibly busy looking for causes of mental distress but, unfortunately, they are looking in the wrong place.
Never Waste a Good Depression: Family Therapy Challenges the Seductive Shortcut of Psychiatric Drugs
Once upon a time, a long, long, time agoâin the 1970s and ’80sâthere was a great deal of curiosity and an upbeat mood among many in the psychotherapy professions. The field of family therapy had become a global movement, with clinical work and research being conducted all over the world. Much of this work looked at how relationship patterns, especially family dynamics, contributed to what showed up as âsymptomsâ in one person.
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