TRANSCRIPT
Anyone who’s had a mental illness or knows somebody who has knows how devastating and also difficult, or perhaps tricky, it can be. Unfortunately, the drugs that are used to treat these illnesses can at times be nearly as devastating as the illnesses themselves.
Now, Daniel McKa spent 10 years as a social worker and a psychotherapist in New York. But then he decided to tackle this issue of mental health in a different way. He now travels the world, visiting places where groups of people are working to treat mental illness as far as possible without drugs. He makes documentaries about their successes.
He’s in Alice Springs this week, screening some of those films at the Center for Remote Health and delivering seminars. And he’s with us here in the studio. Daniel, nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in.
Daniel: Nice to be here.
Yeah, tell us how you got the call up to come to Alice Springs, I guess, firstly.
Daniel: Well, a therapist who works at the Center for Remote Health, Tim Carry, bought one of my films, I don’t remember, six months ago, a year ago. And he’s part of the Radical Network that’s spreading all over the world that I’m a part of. He emailed me, and we had a little bit of email contact. And then it turned out I was coming to Australia. He said, “Anyway, we can get you to come out here to Alice?” And here you are.
I decided, “You bet, I’m coming! I want to come here.”
Yeah, yeah. So tell us a bit about the work that you do and the films that you create. As I said, parts of them have been screening in Alice Springs this week.
Daniel: So it’s looking at treating mental illness without drugs, without medication, pretty much. That’s my focus. I mean, some of the programs, great programs, do use some psychiatric drugs, but the point is to use as little as possible to avoid some of the side effects. And also, the point is to help people recover as fully as possible. A lot of the studies are showing that if you can really give people good treatment, then they’re going to be much more likely to get better, also if they’re not getting the drugs.
Okay, and so when you talk about treatment, what does that look like if it’s not medication?
Daniel: It can really be a variety of things. But the program right now that’s getting the best results in the world for psychosis, for first episode psychosis, is taking place in Northern Finland. It’s called Open Dialogue. What they do is really, really intensive family therapy. Right when someone’s having a problem, they’re also trying to keep people out of the hospital, so people are avoiding being stigmatized and avoiding being pulled out of their environment. They’re including people’s social network in the therapy, so it’s network therapy. They’re including their families. Everything is voluntary. They’re trying to help people avoid getting on psychiatric drugs. That helps, so then they don’t have to deal with having to get off them at some point. And then they meet really, really intensively. So teams of therapists, it’s really a very strong upfront program. So it’s not like spread over a long period of time, but it can be really intense. It can be every day, sometimes a couple of hours a day. It can meet for weeks or months, and it’s all free because it’s part of a country that provides socialized healthcare. And so there’s been some good success in that program. Best in the whole world, actually.
Yeah, really?
Daniel: Yeah, 85% full recoveries without medication. A very small percentage of the people, or of those recoveries, are on medication. But more than 90% of the people who are getting the full recoveries are off meds. And these are people that would otherwise, in other systems, end up diagnosed with schizophrenia and be pretty much, in most cases, disabled for life.
Have you been able to learn much about what’s happening here in Central Australia when it comes to dealing with mental illness?
Daniel: Well, that’s a bit of a political question, I would say. I have been learning. I hear a mix of things. Basically, what I’ve been hearing is some people finding really nice clinicians here. But I think there’s a much stronger tendency to use psychiatric drugs up front and some pretty strong ones and multi-drug combinations. And generally, as is what happens in most of the world, because it’s basically what I hear here is compassionate care, but it’s in some ways fairly traditional mental health treatment, with psychiatry and psychiatrists being the front line of treatment. And it’s like, I don’t know how good the results are. I don’t imagine they’re really fantastic. I haven’t heard a lot of fantastic success stories, let’s put it that way.
All right, and in terms of the seminars that you’ve been delivering and the parts of the films that you’ve been showing, what do you hope practitioners here in Central Australia take from what you’ve been delivering?
Daniel: Well, it’s actually been practitioners and also consumers. Today I did a seminar for consumers and carers. Well, it’s actually interesting because in one sense it could seem like I’m promoting an idea, but in another sense, what I’m really just doing is sharing an alternative perspective to give food for thought. Because I think it can be, just on a personal level, it can feel a little rude for me to be a foreigner coming from New York City saying, “Hey, listen, I know what you should be doing.” Sure. But on the other hand, I think what I’ve seen is pretty much people are hungry for hearing alternative stuff. And the kind of people that are going to want to come to see what I’m doing are going to just be curious and say, “Maybe we don’t agree with it, but let me learn about it.” And I find that especially with mental patients, a lot of them say, “I actually, some can actively say, actually, I don’t agree with what you’re saying, but I really respect that you’re saying it, and I want to learn because I want to know what’s best for me.” And a lot of therapists and psychiatrists be the same. I actually haven’t met any psychiatrists here, which is often not uncommon when I travel because the psychiatrist can be a little bit like, it’s a little stressful, and they’re also really busy. And I’m doing my stuff during the week at work times. But I have met a fair number of therapists, and I find people actually quite interested in open.
Okay, so you, as we said in the introduction, you spend a lot of time traveling the world, making films, talking about mental illness and treatment without medication. Could we see you making a film one day here in Alice Springs, do you think, in Central Australia?
Daniel: I would be curious to do it. This is an inspiring place. I was here 20 years ago. I told you I hitchhiked here from Melbourne, and I remember when I came up here, it was like there was a reason that I wanted to come back. This is an unusual and very special place. I felt it as soon as I got off the airplane, and it was nice to come back in style, yeah, rather than backpacking.
Yeah, yeah. All right, well, look, really nice to meet you. The work that you do sounds like it’s particularly interesting, and I’m sure you’ve had some really good conversations with people.
Daniel: Oh my God, fantastic. Interesting interaction here in Central Australia. And all the best with the rest of your time here. We never know, might see you back here making another film one day soon.
Real pleasure.
Okay, see you later. Bye!
That’s Daniel McKa, who spent 10 years as a social worker and a psychotherapist in New York. Since then, he has been traveling the world, making films and working on projects dealing with mental illness, and was giving a seminar at the Center for Remote Health today in Alice Springs.