I’ve often wondered what would happen if an undiagnosed manic-depressive participates in The Landmark Forum, receiving counsel from a Forum leader with no education on mood disorders. The result could be devastating, I would think.
In real life, …
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It should be illegal to advise someone to either take or discontinue prescription medication. The only permissible advice should be “Talk to your doctor”. This reminds me of a situation when my daughter was in third grade. She daydreamed and refused to do the simplest assignments. The school district psychiatrist wanted her to transfer to a special school. The counselor asked if we ever considered ADD. I took her to a neurologist who asked a lot of questions and said that my little girl was a classic case. Unfortunately, upon the advice of her school counselor, she refused to take the medication. She received counseling from him for two years and it did nothing to help her. The last week of high school, she focused enough to complete some assignments and her teachers passed her. She took the entrance test for community college and almost passed it. It broke her heart that she would have to take remedial classes before starting the normal course work. That’s when she decided that she wanted to succeed in school. She asked me to get her an appointment with a psychiatrist, who diagnosed her with ADD and OCD. He prescribed medications which initially caused side effects, but the dosage was continually adjusted until it was something she could live with. She is a college senior, now, majoring in accounting. She has to work harder than other students but she is successful. A combination of therapy and medication is working for her.
A home run, Therese! This is a real concern and no, you aren’t over-reacting. It was just last fall when the self-help leader James Arthur Ray led a group of people into a sweat lodge as part of his “spiritual retreat” that promised to “absolutely change your life.” Over 20 people got sick, 2 died.
A few years ago my sister (also a psychologist) and I went to a weekend workshop for mental health practitioners that for the most part was very good. Most of the group leaders were well known mental health professionals. Only one leader (not a trained behavioral health pro) crossed the line when he encouraged participants to reveal deep secrets to each other and conclude with a lot of hugging. It made us, and several others, so uncomfortable we left. My sister specializes in helping women with histories of childhood sexual abuse. Later we discussed how the combination of instant pseudo-intimacy with the physical contact could be dangerous for people with these issues.
Thanks for your direct take on this issue. You speak for the professionals and consumers alike.
Thank you, Therese! As a primary support person for a sister with bipolar, I am painfully aware of public opinions about her illness.
With the current self-help craze suggesting we control reality with our thoughts (gee, aren’t we powerful!), then anyone who suffers from depression is bringing it on him or herself.
According to ‘thought reform’ agendas, all a person has to do is wake up in the morning and pretend they’re happy by ignoring reality and voila! No more depression!
People’s assumptions about depression are so ridiculous. I shrug my shoulders so often these days that I’m starting to look like the hunchback of Notre Dame.
Back a few years ago when my marriage ended, a friend suggested I attend the Landmark forum with her. It would have been her second time through the program and she didn’t seem very grounded in reality to me. In fact, she became even more uncertain of her identity—justifying her husband’s abuse as a way for her to be enlightened.
Yea, enlightened as in two-hundred pounds lighter when they divorced.
So I checked around and asked my non-professional friends what they thought about Landmark. The majority said it had been a waste of time and money. Those were my normal friends who weren’t in a recovery program of some kind.
A few told me it was life-altering. Those few were in similar situations to my own: divorce.
I decided I had already married a life-altering man and better not risk another life-altering experience like that one. Especially before my sense of self had been restored well enough for me transcend it at Landmark. ha!
At that point, I became very concerned about self-help industry and the potential for harming other people despite laypeople’s (or professional’s) good intentions.
When someone writes a bestseller on “how to treat depression”, I always check their credentials and all the studies listed in the back of the book.
The average self-help consumer like myself, MUST use critical thinking skills in order to protect herself from financial wizards, out and out charlatans, naive but well-intentioned people, and pompous gurus purporting to have ancient answers that will cure all that ails modern society.
We all wish that could be true!
We malignantly hope that a three-day seminar will resolve our suffering and bring us inner peace.
But Magical Thinking and three bucks will buy us a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Thank you for this post!
Hugs,
CZBZ
I spoke with a woman recently who had come out of a job interview shaking her head: one of the requirements of the job was to participate in an intensive personal-growth program that is secretive about its methods and content, but that claims to have miraculous results. She was wise enough to stop the hiring process there.
my sister is mentally ill and became a fundamentalist christian.
the evangelists told her to throw away her pills and pray. she has been recused from the family for about nine years. we don’t know where she is. she looks down on us as non christians.
here in the usa, i do not know how we can legally stop religious organizations from <> the mentally ill. it is especially tempting to a schizophrenic who thinks he knows god because of the effects of his illness. combine that with the high costs of medicines here and the fact that these have unsatisfactory side effects and this is a very common recipe for disaster.
Recently a teacher in a nearby private school asked me if I would be interested in attending a group therapy workshop. I asked him about the credentials and educational background of the presenter. He admitted that the presenter was a life coach without any “official sort of training,” but added that “if you really want to learn how to do group therapy you won’t let this opportunity pass you by.” I asked him what makes this training better than the over two years of social work training and supervised internship that I went through. He had no answer to this question. It frightens me to see people in need of mental health care submitting their emotional well-being to those with no training, credentials, and even worse, no accountability.
My question is: What can we as therapists and mental health professionals do to educate our clients (as well as society at large) concerning the dangers and pitfalls of none credentialed and poorly (if at all) trained life-coaches?
What I’d like to see, Ben, is a cooperative relationship between professionals and non-professional people.
A support group led by those who have dealt with whatever the topic of the group might be, has much to offer professionals who are working directly with patients. There’s book-learning and there’s life-learning. Both are important means for understanding the complexity of people’s lives.
In my experience with both therapy and self-help support, the unfortunate either-or dichotomy exists on both sides:
Self-help folks are disenchanted with therapy, distrusting of authority (for whatever their reasons may be) and in an extreme overreaction “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
I think there are those professionals who react similarly and dismiss self-help as ‘inferior’ or ‘incompetent’ for whatever their reasons may be.
Working together may offer people the best of both worlds. After all, many people are unable to afford private therapy even though they are desperately in need of professional counseling.
I think it is unfair to focus on deaths like this without also taking into consideration how many people currently under the care of a physician and taking medications end up committing suicide. Statistics tell us it happens and it happens more often when people take SSRIs than when they don’t take anything. It’s not right to focus on one instance outside the mainstream and use it to condemn everything that is not conventional. Conventional psychiatric treatment has a mediocre track record. How many times do you see anyone questioning a psychiatrist when a patient dies? It just doesn’t happen. It’s as if they are above questioning. If alternative practitioners lost as many people as psychiatrists do, we’d be reading about them being sentenced to prison.
Seanna,
I have to say that I agree with you completely. I for one did not start to flourish life until after I stopped formal therapy and pills. I do currently use marijuana but my bills get paid, my job gets done and my daughter is taken care of. I did not have that control before using marijuana, in fact before I started using I was on my way to being a raging alcoholic and fighting constantly. It was after I left therapy and learned to synthesize the theories taught in treatment with the reality of life. For me it was found in further research in the human condition in general that I found my place. For others, it may informal group sessions. The arrogance and condensation that often comes from the medical field in general is what endangers lives. IMHO
I think the key here is to look an any program carefully. I actually took part in Landmark’s three programs, and I remember quite clearly that the instructors said that the course wasn’t a replacement for medical treatment and that if you were on perscribed medication you should absolutely stay on that. I don’t think the inference based on a comment by a friend is accurate here, or the idea that Landmark must be like Turning Point because they’re both self-help courses. I think the lesson here is to check out a specific course or company, since from my experience the self-help industry is a complete ocean of different types of seminars and programs.
I did the Landmark Forum a number of years ago, in my mid 30′s, and found it quite “enlightening” in some ways. I got a lot out of the Forum in terms of letting go of certain fears and restrictions I put on myself. However, when it came to dealing with my depression, which I have had since age 14 or possibly earlier, Landmark was absolutely not an appropriate source of information or healing.
People at Landmark balked when I mentioned being on antidepressants, telling me that I was generating that depression myself, and that I could control and change it if I wanted to – generate something different. I know from experience that going off my antidepressants leads to difficulty, increased depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts.
In the past I’ve gone off medication because “I felt better”, not being clear that feeling better was a result of taking the right medication. Within 6 months to a year of going off medication I was right back in the black hole caused by my illness. This is not a cureable disease in my life so far. I have had to start over repeatedly and have not had the level of “success” and/or progress that my peers without mental illness have achieved.
The Forum will not cure mental illness, and is an inappropriate resource in that area. They also cannot cure cancer, diabetes, loss of limbs, wrinkles or other physical illnesses.
Technically, a chemical imbalance in the brain is an actual tangible, physical condition. Perhaps “mental” is not an accurate term for something that so deeply affects every aspect of one’s life. I do consider depression to be a physical illness or condition which I must treat daily in order to survive.
This issue cuts both ways. Check out the history of psychopharmacology and you’ll see overhyped products, ignorant doctors and dishonest studies being pedaled. It took a major push in Great Britain for these issues to even begin to be addressed in the U.S.
As has been written, anytime peer groups speak, as a group, about the efficacy of medications, they are clearly stepping beyond the bounds of propriety.
The most productive comment I read comes from CZBZ, who advocates a cooperative relationship between professionals and peer groups. I have little to no expectation this would ever happen though. There’s no money in it.
I don’t believe that the Rah-Rah programs are a good thing in the long run. As the euphoria ends so does the “benefit” of the program.
I do go to a support group which is headed by a professional in the field who only intervenes if the people in the group give bad advice or misinformation. The quality of the meetings varies according to who is present. I try to go at least once a month. (it meets twice a month)
Hi,
I’ve completed a few Landmark Education courses and NEVER heard any leader disparage the use of prescribed medications or invalidate any legal therapy anyone might be engaged with. Landmark Education is committed to helping lead more satisfying, powerful, loving lives. I’ve seen people reconnect with family members they hadn’t spoken to in years. I’ve seen people gain a deeper appreciation for their spouse and children. I’ve seen people gain a deeper appreciation of themselves. Landmark Education offers a very positive, empowering, enlightening and useful course of study that helps many, many people. I don’t work for them – I’m just a happy customer!
Thanks.
I took some courses at Landmark, including the Forum and others, and my experience was that it intensified my self-esteem and anxiety issues.
I have observed the value and potential that Landmark’s philosophy can bring. Some of the ideas shared are similar to those found in eastern religions, such as the idea of “no self” or non-attachment or, in other words, not being limited by an over identification with a self concept.
After ten years of therapy, I believe part of the problem I had at Landmark was that I didn’t have a strong enough sense of self to endure the typical way Landmark tends to deconstruct a person’s belief system.
The idea, for example, that everything I thought was just “my story” left me confused and unsure of what was real. I also felt there was a lack of authenticity at times as people tried to force breakthroughs in their personal lives. As a result, I often felt alienated by participating in Landmark’s classes.
I’m grateful that I was able to seek counseling and put the Landmark experience into perspective, and I’m so sorry Ms. Lawrence was not as fortunate.
I think most of you put too much faith in so called professionals. The word has little to no meaning anymore anyway. During my time in my undergraduate degree I was told that a profession was “a group of self-regulated people posessing special skill and knowledge warranting public trust in some aspect of public welfare.” The regular use of the word, however, is much more expansive; consultants are professionals; marketers are professionals; people with any sort of graduate degree are professionals. If my formal definition is correct, than any of these classes of people aren’t necessarily professionals.
I will assume from the context of the discussion that we are talking about people with psychology and/or medical degrees. What does this mean exactly? I have a friend with a BSc in psychology and I think he is an idiot; he comes to conclusions about people after a 20 min conversation and starts slapping psychological adjectives on them and their behaviour. More advanced degrees might suggest better mastery of the subject and some degree of justificaiton that the public should trust them but it is not an absolute measure. Is someone with a PhD in psychology a professional? Maybe. But I have a PhD in engineering and I can tell you that I feel I have a mastery over only a very small part of engineering knowledge. Without commenting on the validity of the position myself, I would point out that at one time the APA called homosexuality deviant and that they have since flip flopped on this position a number of times. This may be part of the scientific process but just look at the harm they have done to people as a result of their pronouncements.
The word professional (even when limited to psychologists with PhD’s) is often used to acquire status. Frankly, your faith in them is grossly misplaced in my view. Every argument needs to be evaluated on its own merits. That is how Landmark’s education should be evaluated.
I took the Landmark Forum myself and found it to be very useful. It does not cast aspersions on people who are depressed or those using antidepressants. It does however encourage people to realize that their suffering (and even happiness) is attributable to how they interpret events around them. Yes – this does include victims of rape and survivors of mass shootings. The point, quite frankly, is rooted in accepted psychological principles. “How we feel affects how we think which affects what we do which affects how we think which affects…” I was told this from someone with a PhD in psychology in a formal setting. it is consistent, in my view, with what Landmark teaches.
The Landmark Forum EXPLICITLY suggests that people who are suffering from physical and mental ailments do not take the course. Using your girlfriend’s questioning of your use of anti-depressants as a basis for suggesting otherwise is irrational. You explicitly identified that she was not an instructor – merely a “graduate”.
I do not believe any of your arguments have any merit.