{"id":2983,"date":"2009-05-30T02:31:23","date_gmt":"2009-05-30T07:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/?p=2983"},"modified":"2009-05-30T02:31:23","modified_gmt":"2009-05-30T07:31:23","slug":"mental","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/mental\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday May 30, 2009.\u00a0 I watched the tv show Mental last night<\/em>. Chris Vance is Dr. Jack Gallagher, an unorthodox psychiatrist who becomes Director of Mental Health at an L.A. hospital. He takes on patients battling unknown, misunderstood, and misdiagnosed psychiatric conditions.\u00a0 Gallagher has developed an ability to get into the minds of his patients and see the way they see reality, allowing him to uncover what might be the keys to their long-term recoveries. This perspective leads him to offer alternative treatments for his patient.\u00a0 I wondered why I was led to turn the show on, but then I saw the doctor and staff around a table discussing treatment plans.\u00a0 Since one patient had already gone off his medication, Gallagher suggested they keep him unmedicated, let all the chemicals get out of his system, and use counseling, acupuncture, visualization and other forms of alternative therapy.\u00a0 Then after the patient had a period of no medication, re-evaluate him in light of new technologies. You can imagine that not everyone at the table was in agreement.\u00a0 One responded “You don’t treat schizophrenia with aromatherapy.” This might be a very good show.<\/p>\n

Later in the show, Gallagher is approached by an authority at the hospital who asks for his cooperation in keeping the funding in place from the major pharmaceutical companies who use the hospital to run their drug trials.\u00a0 This should play out nicely as a story line.\u00a0 And also educate some people; especially the elderly who are over-medicated and sit in front of the tv all day.\u00a0 I hope they watch this show.<\/p>\n

I spent about 10 years with the tv off, and it’s just recently come back on.\u00a0 That’s a good thing to do to gain perspective.\u00a0 Now I see programming is slowly making some changes for the better.\u00a0 It’s encouraging.<\/p>\n

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