Schizophrenia Documentary, Recovery without Medication, Joanne Greenberg, Take These Broken Wings

Trailer #1 for "Take These Broken Wings," a 75-minute documentary on recovery from schizophrenia without medication. DVD available at: http://wildtruth.net/dvd/brokenwings/

Featuring Joanne Greenberg (bestselling author of "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden"), recovered for over fifty years. Interviews with Peter Breggin, Robert Whitaker, Bertram Karon, and Catherine Penney. Directed by Daniel Mackler.

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  Film & Animation

[bygten88]

Part II. Antipsychotic medication is scary and I wouldn't wish for anyone to take it unless there were no alternative.I would like to see you try to do therapy with a hallucinating young man or woman and cure their schizophrenia. Please cite your sources, other than anecdotal ones, that talk therapy alone is a viable and successful treatment for the vast number of folks with intractable schizophrenia. In contrast, there are journals full of research that meds plus treatment work.

[Daniel Mackler]

awful story -- just terrible. that said, your story is one of someone who was medicated, hated the meds, and stopped them (probably abruptly), and then became worse. that is all too common. some sources that show significant benefit of no drug psychosocial treatment over that which you suggest: robert whitaker's books (mad in america & anatomy of an epidemic, mosher's writings on soteria, harding's vermont longitudinal studies, seikkula's finnish open dialogue. all quantitative stuff.

[tubefamed]

I'm sorry but I doubt that you ever really had Schizophrenia. You might have been misdiagnosed. It is truly a serious and life long disease.

[Daniel Mackler]

Sadly, your comment represents the illogical, unscientific mindset that is so hurtful to people and helps gives psychiatry a terrible name. It starts out with the assumption that no one ever recovers from this thing called schizophrenia, and then it builds from there -- that if someone DOES recover that they either never had schizophrenia in the first place, or that the "illness" is just in remission.

[Jens Roved]

Thank you Daniel. We need more of this sort here in youtube.

[Daniel Mackler]

thanks snetigeren!

[DarkHorseI]

0:48 Face+Voice= ERROR

[hawley1987]

@tubefamed

That's why "schizophrenics never get better/recover" because if/when they do then people want to deny they ever had schizophrenia. So of course it seems to always be life long. Because once a person gets better people claim it had been a misdiagnosis in the first place.

[Larry Letich]

Command hallucinations are usually scary and unpleasant to the person suffering from them. Most often, the "voices" do quiet with the right meds. Schizophrenics' minds are impaired. They suffer deeply from their inability to think clearly and relate like regular people. Today's meds are very inadequate. One day I pray we will find better treatments and even cures. Talk therapy is important and valuable, but definitely not enough.

[Larry Letich]

I would love to see the movie "Broken Wings." I loved "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" when I first read it at 16 -- it touched me deeply.

I'm a psychotherapist. I've worked with quite a few schizophrenics. Schizophrenia, or what we now define as schizophrenia, seems very different from the mental illness described in Joanne Greenberg's book. Clearly, if her character's experiences were close to her own, Ms. Greenberg suffered from some kind of psychosis. It's not one I've been exposed to.

[LivingDead53]

death therapy seems to work best for me. It's either, you figure this out, as there are real people after you, or you die.

[Swiyyah Muhammad]

We have to rid the stigma. I have a similar video on my page.