TRANSCRIPT
I remember when I was working in this ward, a psychiatric ward. There came a young woman, and she had recently given birth to a child. They talked about her at the ward, the doctor and some of the nurses. They talked about her that she was [Music] psychotic. I remember that I just, after a few hours, I thought to myself, how the hell will she be able to act in a normal way being here in a ward, and she has her baby at home? And this is 30 years ago, but I still remember it very, very [Music] clear.
She was just left in her room, and in the corridor, there were lots of other so-called patients walking around. The next day, her husband came to visit her for a short while, and he brought the baby. She met her little baby for, let’s say, 10 minutes, and then the nurses came and said, “End of this visit, and you have to go now.” And then she got mad [Music] crazy. I think she was overwhelmed by grief, and I think she was furious. She screamed, and she banged on the windows. I thought to myself, this is absolutely normal to behave the way she did, but the people talked about her that now she’s even more psychotic. We need to give her even more [Music] medicine.
Family Care Foundation
In 1987, Karina Hawkinson created the Family Care Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden, as an alternative mental health program for people who had been failed by the conventional system. Many had been labeled with psychosis by traditional psychiatry. They placed people on an entirely voluntary basis in farm families in the Swedish countryside.
What is special about Maria, my therapist? She’s very, very good, very good actually. You can talk to her about everything, and she is so understanding and grateful. I’m very happy to have her as a therapist.
Their organization then provided supportive supervision to the farmers who had been chosen not on the basis of any psychiatric expertise, but instead for their stability, their compassion, and their desire to give back. The families were also paid a small fee, but all services to the clients, who were also offered intensive psychotherapy, were free.
You’ve had other therapists before her?
Uh, yes. Um, on the other institution.
What were they like?
Not like her. Not like her at all. Not all. They didn’t care in the same way. She is so very [Music] special.
When I was 20, I think one of my friends got the diagnosis of schizophrenia, I think. Um, and I was with him when he got his first, uh, first break, first episode.
Yes, yes, first episode. So later on, a few months later, he was locked in at that hospital. So when I worked at one part of the hospital, at lunchtime, I went to him at his part, and it was strange. My classmate, uh, who helped me with maths, and suddenly he—
Yes, and he was strongly medicated.
Oh, where is he now?
So strange. She is so—
That was, um, yes. I think, I think, I think it has made, um, a lot of impression. So yes, it has influenced me a lot.
I’m not so good.
I think your English is good.
No, it was better when I was, um, I don’t know. It’s, um, this is sick me, but it was easier to talk English for me when I was on, um, hospital. When I was psych, it was easier to talk.
Yes, it was.
Why? I don’t know. I was, uh, like, uh, in the fantasy world, you know? I was, um, and I was, uh, in love with, uh, Johnny Depp, and I don’t know where. It was very, I don’t know. I had dreams about him and everything. I was very—I learned more English or something. It’s more English and American English in my dreams and everything.
This is a nice place for your son to live.
Yes, he’s happy here.
Yes, he’s very happy.
Why would you say? Is he has love here, I guess?
Yes. He wants to stay here with me.
I don’t know what’s going to happen now.
Oh, because the social services says they don’t want to pay anymore?
No, they don’t want me to stay here with him, and, um, because it’s—I don’t know. They don’t think I’m getting better.
Do you agree?
No, I don’t agree. I agree with the Family Care Foundation. Yes, I think you’re getting better.
Yes, it seems to me, okay. I have my problems, but I’m getting better anyway.
Oops, let me make sure I get this right. It’s hard to do camera and talk at the same time. It’s [Music] um, it goes like this all the time, up and down, and you think—you never know when it’s coming.
You think you will be able to get off your medication?
Yes, I hope so.
And they support you here to come off your medication?
Yes, absolutely. The family, yes, and also the organization, Family Care Foundation, yes, and the psychiatrist. So they believe in you.
Um, you want some?
Okay, this should not be on camera. I’m supposed to be the perfect here. You can film me if you want.
I think many of my clients that I worked with in New York, as when I was their therapist, I think they would do better in the program here in Sweden, okay, than just coming to therapy in the United States. I think this is a better system.
Okay, ’cause I think y—sometimes, or often, it’s just not enough when people have serious problems. They need more than what I could offer, and I gave my heart, but it’s—people need more. It’s not about, uh, medication. It’s about people and people, um, giving love to people.
The first time I came to Sweden was last year. I came for 2 hours. Okay, then I came the second time, 3 months ago. I came for one, 6 days. M, and this time I’ve been here for 2 weeks, filming everything about Family Care Foundation and going all over, driving in the car all over Sweden and trying to find out if this program, Family Care Foundation, is really good.
Okay, and you found out what?
I think it’s wonderful. Yes, you have to have love to help people. If you don’t have love, you cannot help.
It’s funny because I look around, and it just seems like an—from the outside, it looks like just an average home, but it seems like from the inside, there’s something special in there.
This is—it’s very warm inside. Very much love.
What made you both, uh, decide to do this, to take people into your homes like this? ‘Cause this is—it’s not common.
No, uh, nobody does this in the United States. Very rarely. Um, when I was 13 years old, I, uh, I lived in, like, is year do now, uh, in a family in 7 years and worked on a farm, uh, and, uh, say that helps me a lot to be what I am today.
Sometimes I feel that I had every diagnosis in the world. I get a man who taught me how to live life. Um, he taught me to think before I did something and take it easy. I was wild. I was—I fought. I did much foolish stuff, and he—he taught me almost everything I learned in life in that time.
I lost myself as a person, can see, so I had to build everything up in myself again. And if I hadn’t lived there, my life probably had looked in another way today. So that was my—he’s, he—he’s in a way saved me.
And, um, um, my thoughts then, uh, I—I didn’t—I didn’t realize—I didn’t realize the importance of it then. But when I got my own kids and they became teenagers, and, um, then I remember my time as a teenager. It was not easy to build me up again as a person and as a parent. It was then I began to think, what can we do to help? Because my—I mean, my vision, my vision is that, uh, all people have responsibility for each and another.
A, yeah, and we must help. Um, today we’re helping these. Next year, maybe these help us. Who knows?
Do you still—do you ever talk to this man who helped you?
He’s dead.
[Music]
Now the Family Care staff let me participate in several of their staff meetings. Through this, I came to realize that they operated differently from how I was taught to behave as a therapist back in the United States. Rather than being blank slates, they instead struggled toward authenticity. I found this both intense and refreshing.
I have had the privilege in my, uh, life, but also in my professional life, not to be one of those who had to give up myself and to be a kind of dead person, as I think so many people are working out there. And that is also such a, yeah, that’s the mo. I really think right now it’s one of the most important things, uh, for me. Me, uh, by that I didn’t have to do that. And of course, I also worked for not being one of those. But it has so much to do with the system and where you are and how you do it, and that I can still be alive. That’s what I TR to say, because I think many people out there are not alive anymore. They are dead, and it’s not good to be a dead one working with other people who struggle with life and death all the time. Dead or tortured. Tortured? No, I think dead. What I mean by dead is, uh, something has not feeling enough, not getting attached enough. That’s what I mean by dead.
I think hibernating. What is hibernating? Bjorn, in the winter, the bears in the winter, they go in, you know, underground. But I prefer the word dead because I want to use the strong word, because I think it has to do that. That is what I try to say. I think I’ve found out we, because we work in a context when people are struggling with life and death. Therefore, I use the word dead, because if you meet a person who is in a way dead, it’s dangerous.
I had worked a couple of years before we started a Family Care Foundation in an organization where they also included, uh, family homes, which is a kind of foster home. And I felt as if there was something the way they did it that seemed to be very important, but I had no words for it. It was just a feeling I had. Not that very good experiences from my own life. Good experiences mean your childhood. My childhood, good experiences, but also not good experiences. So I cannot say that I am someone who Hallelujah for the family. So it was not that it was families. It was something more, the way the families behaved.
Now we visit the home of Anie and Yonas Senson, two farmers who, along with their sons, have been working with the Family Care Foundation for nearly 20 years. They’ve had many people live in their home, and they have a healing gift that caught me by surprise. I must say, when I came here out today and also now when sitting here, I got so many memories. We got many memories. Yeah, we do have together, but it was just all so… I feel a bit touched about that. All the people who have passed your house.
I told Danielle about, I started to tell a little bit about, but then I thought it would be better if you could… He was a father. He had two small kids. The youngest was six months. The older boy was a year and a half. He needed some help to cope with the children, and he was left alone. His wife has been psychotic, yes. So he was left alone with two young children. He was age of, uh, 42, I guess, when he came here. And, um, he needed a lot of help. He didn’t speak Swedish. He didn’t speak English. He spoke a little bit Italian, so we few words in Italian made him happy. And, uh, he lived with you.
He lived with us, with his children. With his children, one and a half years, yes. And, um, he got to learn Swedish while he was here. While he was here, slowly, his place in the world. He didn’t know what should it become of me, or it was a kind of breakdown, wasn’t it? Yes, yeah, it was a really breakdown. Really break… It was a bit nuts at times, I think. Yeah, it was. He lay on the floor and screamed. And for a 42-year-old who doesn’t speak Swedish, lay on the floor, scream. Yeah, what to do now? What to do? Yes, experience. What did you do? Just being human. You don’t know if you are told, as I told you now, what would you do when it happens to you? You don’t know that now, you don’t. But when you’re in the situation, you feel it. You be human. Stop it. Don’t be sentiment for God’s s… do your job. I’m just being, I’m being human too.
It’s very hard to hold the camera steady and cry. Cry? You want to break? Just to… I’m joking now. Catch me. See, and this is… We have our moments too. I tell you, in my favorite interviews, I always cry. Oh, I can’t stop. I always cry, ’cause it touches me, you know? But we have lots of memories together. Oh yeah, 20 years of memories. Yes, and, uh, I don’t know how many, but it’s not relevant. But lots, lots of people have been here. And it’s not just only them who lives here. If it’s a mother with children, or father with children, or it’s a single person, it’s so many people around them and so many people around us. So we are… It’s a whole community who is involved. And we have the office down in Gothenburg, and it’s a lot of people. Yes, it is.
Do you mean that, uh, if you choose to be dead, you can live a comfortable life? Yeah, I think people, uh, because how… how I mean, I, as many other people, I think I try to understand how come that people do like this. How come that people, as this psychiatrist, for instance, working with one of my youngsters, gives him a huge amount of medication every month since he was a little child? How comes that so many parents do like this instead of taking a fight for their kids? I mean, how come? Good question.
I, and for me, the explanation has been, by some reason, they have been or decided to put away the feelings, to put away the things that makes us human beings. And that is, for me, to be dead. I am very glad for the connection with, uh, the girls who has lived here. I think, uh, she was 17 years old when she got here. She hurt his very bad. She’s self-destructive. Now it’s coming a very loud… I think the electricity went away. Yes, yes, it’s far away. Yes, yeah. Um, was 17 years old when she come here to us. Now she lives in… and have a normal life. Yes, she handled his life. And, uh, is she 25 now? Year 26? 26. 26 in this year, yes. Yeah, it was many, any difficult days. Yeah, with she cut herself while she was living here. Yes, in the beginning, yes, she did. Yes, really much. Really much and really bad. Like, what kind of stuff? Like blood everywhere and… yeah, yeah.
I get angry to her because she was, uh, verbal. She too… yeah, she was very stupid. And, uh, I tried saying verbally abusive. Help me? Yes, she did to us, you mean? Yeah, you okay? Yes, yes, yes. But this time she took his table and on me with teacups and everything. I totally… what was… what is it? And she was very, very angry, and she threw things to me in his room. In her room. In her room there, up. And I… I got… wow, I see a five, six years old little girl. And I think I must do something. But she’s older than that, right? She’s like… she was 17, 18 years older. Yes, and I… I… I took her. I took her and grabbed his arms, and I sat on her bed, and I said, “Now it stops. Stop.” And I was very angry. I was fous curious. You are. And I held her there, and she tried to… but no, you’re still there. And I, after a half…
Minute she be to cry and I, yeah, yes. And I sit down and hold her and say, “Stay here, try to stay here. We work it out.” But it can take a year or two, but try to stay.
So you didn’t throw her out?
No, I talked to Margaret Manan. I call her and talk to her and, uh, to you. And we meet again and she stay here. And I have her in my heart.
When I first heard about the Family Care Foundation, I came to the conclusion that the family homes alone were responsible for the healing work. Yet it was the family homes themselves, mostly speaking off camera, who dissuaded me from this idea. Not a one felt they could have done their job so effectively without getting respectful supervision from the staff and without having respectful therapy offered to the people living with them. This collaborative effort, they felt, made everything possible.
I had an idea that I wanted to try together with others to create a place, uh, that should be good for people to stay in. And that was the goal with the organization; that was the vision. But I think that I knew that the place should not just be good for those called clients, but also for us working in the organization. Um, I knew that we know each other and we trust each other, uh, that do the works. Because if I, if I have an individual therapy with a boy and, and, uh, Magan or some other of my colleagues work with his parents and maybe Maria supervises the family homes, we trust each other in the work.
And I think the whole team feels that we could yell at each other. We could say, “We don’t agree with you.” That’s not so, uh, tough to do that. And I think the people that we meet, they feel that it makes a, what should I call, uh, culture of what’s okay to talk about.
I not always, but mostly I feel that, oh, I talk too much.
Um, what, with your clients?
Yeah, when I, the clients. Oh, I ought to be more quiet, listening, laid back. But, uh, yet it’s not me. But I, I, I don’t try to be, um, to say things that, “Oh, listen to me, I have the true.” I say the true most important things. I try not to be that important by myself, not with authority in some ways. I said, “Oh, this is, I find very important. This I really believe this is important.” But I, I try to, uh, let the person find the thinking and what is important.
I talk a lot, but I think, oh, you don’t have to listen. You can relax. And I hope part of it, if part of it is interesting, I hope she react on that. And we, I would try to talk about that to meet people exactly where they are, uh, and not think taking anything for granted. You know, they come in here with the problems, uh, with their labels and diagnosis. I don’t think we give a dam about what people, other people is telling about that. We have a way of meeting people. We not labeling them or diagnosing them, just meet them and see what they come with and what they want. And I think that’s respectful.
None of us, none of us, none of us, none of us like to be penetrated or analyzed in a way that makes us feel as if we have lost ourselves. No one. And especially not those called psychotic. Especially not them.
What do you think causes psychosis?
What do we think causes, causes?
Yeah, yeah, trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma. Have you ever seen anyone who had psychosis who didn’t have trauma?
No, never.
So you think behind psychosis is always trauma?
But sometimes it’s hard to catch with the trise. Very often very obvious too, but sometimes, um, you, uh, you can’t find is, uh, obvious things. But that’s life. You, you can, there’s so much that isn’t seen from the outside.
I think I would like if I got this experience of, uh, psychosis that somebody took the time to sit down and try to understand what I was saying. I, I would like that. Not leave me somewhere in a room with the only drugs to take everything away, but trying to understand what I was saying. I guess we all need that.
Yeah, yeah, that’s the way I think. Also, it’s not different departments. It’s a scale. And, uh, you are somewhere on the scale of psychosis or not or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, I think so. And what is, um, for all of us is that we want this. You want to be asked. You want to be looked at. You want to be confirmed or what the word is. Everybody wants that. It’s a basic human, uh, stone that we have to build on. And, and not to do this with people with this experiences, it’s so stupid. I think it’s stupid. Of course they need it even more. I can take it if I don’t get it in a week or whatever. I can take care of it myself and maybe don’t feel so good and maybe I miss it and so on. But these people are depending on that another person looks at you and ask you how, how is it and try to listen what you say and try to interact.
I think people I work with hopefully feel that they are welcomed when they come. All of us have a need to be included. To be included means that I also show something from myself. Otherwise, it is impossible to have that feeling.
Although Anky and Jonas presented themselves as ordinary people, it struck me that their home was anything but ordinary. To the degree that I realized I was witnessing a radical therapy model, and it made me curious and inspired this film. Who were these people? How did they work? What was their secret? And why did I feel so quickly safe with them, safe enough to reveal myself so deeply?
We have connection with the several amount of people who have lived here. The first girl who lived here, 91, 92, 93.
So you were just a little boy?
She called Y another day and he was pregnant when, uh, with Y when lived here.
Yes, can we try to not say the names?
Yes, we should try to say CU. What I think I will do is if you do say the names when time, time, if I use the, if I use the video and you say the name, I go beep during the name. I have to.
Yeah, that’s, it’s really, it’s hard to not. They are, I don’t know. I know. And this is good because I tried to explain to Danielle the other day because as I think Daniel was a little bit annoyed with me since I didn’t want to say client.
Why do you not like to use the word client or patient?
It doesn’t fit in the context where I work because I mean in my daily work I call people their names. And in a family home, they are not a client. It’s a P or Anna or Maria or Stefan. I mean the family home never talk about Anna as the client. They never do.
No, no. What did they say then?
What do they say to their friends?
Anna is living.
Yes, but, but they, I don’t believe that to be honest. Yeah, I think that they’re telling people we’ve got someone from Social Services who’s living with us in our home and they’ve got serious problems of this variety, right?
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. It’s different. There are people who stay in a family home who really don’t want to be known in their surrounding as someone with troubles. So sometimes people make an agreement with a family home to say that it is a cousin. But they tell their friends the truth or they tell their, no, I, I, yeah, it, I, I think that most of the family homes tell their friends that Anna, but they say Anna is staying with us since she has had lots of troubles for many years. They don’t say, I don’t think they say we have a client living in our home.
Right, but yeah, I guess. Is it okay that I’m do?
Oh, of course.
Okay, because I, to be honest, I’ll get, I get frustrated when people won’t define the role sometimes.
Okay, because it becomes this long explanation that to be honest nobody can understand what you’re.
Talking about, okay, I said, but we don’t use the word “there.” And can you understand that now? Then good, mhm. But when I have read into my diary, I put the people I have said my, when the name come, the name “friend” instead of the real name. Say what? Uh, when I have read, uh, you write a diary? Yes, I write. And I have, uh, talked about it. Yes, uh, I have used my friend when I have not the name. I had my friend. And you mean that your—?
Yes, I really mean that. It’s my—it is my friend. They—
They? So it’s not your client?
No, when they enter—
No, in here? No, we are all people. We are all people with, um, different problems. Small problem or bigger?
Yes, you have it. You have grown up in it, so you’ve seen this your whole life, mostly?
Yes, yeah. It was four, four years when we started. Yeah, and now I can tell the story when we started to work together and you were four or five and your younger brother was two years younger. And I used to come to see your parents, and in the beginning, you didn’t know what to think about me coming and taking your time from your parents. So you used to make a trap.
Yes, so that I should not be able to go into the house.
Oh really? Do you remember that?
So you didn’t—you didn’t like her at first?
I think she stole—she stole time from, from, uh, their parents. But did you feel that way about the people who came in to live with your house? The people that she sent to live here? Did you feel that they were stealing time too?
No, that’s another thing. To leave here or just to come here and visit us, it’s, uh, it’s been a family member if you are living here.
Yeah, really. So were you sad when they would leave?
Sometimes, sometimes. Don’t—it depends. Yeah, when the small children left, we all—
Oh yeah, we cried. All of us. All of us.
So you’ve all seen each other cry?
Oh yeah.
So when I come and cry, it’s okay?
No, it’s not.
Why not?
No, I don’t know. I just don’t want you to.
No, why not?
I don’t know.
No, do it bother you?
No, no, no, ’cause you’ve seen a lot of tears in—
I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it.
Yes, you see the tears too?
Yeah, many, many times. But why did you think he cried?
You—I know what you said.
Yes, yeah, I know why you cry. You will be touched about the story, uh, about the commitments, about there is people who is caring about other people’s. I get word touch. If I heard a story like that came from nowhere, I—I will be touched too.
Yeah, yeah. I can—I can sit in the living room, watch the TV. Yeah, I felt it.
Yeah, well also ’cause I—I was a psychotherapist in New York City, and I work out of my home. People come to my home with many of the same problems. People who cut themselves, people who diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar, people who want to kill themselves. And we live with them all the days.
Now you will see our—m—very—hello, sorry, there’s a camera going. He has become a grown-up man. We haven’t met for some years.
Okay, years. Some years. Got—he got good tattoos.
Five, six years?
No, for maybe—yeah, he has moved out from home three years.
Okay, then I haven’t seen you maybe for five years. But when you were there, it felt as if it was yesterday.
It’s okay, you cried, uh, because it’s the part of our lives. We cried, we laughed, we are happy, we are sad. I think it’s good. It’s good for us to show what we feel. And I think he thinks we have lived so many people here, and we have been angry, and we have been crying. It could be usual that sons never have seen the father cry like that, you know? But our sons have seen me cry tremendously.
Yeah, sometimes it is. It is. And, uh, so they—they don’t have that burden, you know what I mean? Yeah, that they haven’t seen their father cry. I think it is an asset to have seen the father cry. I’ve never—never seen my father cry. And I think if we show who we are, we cry, we laugh, we get angry, I think the people who come here to us and see us, they differ from everyone else.
Yeah, no, I think they think, “Oh, it’s really normal people.” Yeah, and they can show themselves.
Yeah, after that.
Yeah, by this point in our meeting, I felt I had established enough rapport with the Senson to ask an important question on my mind. Why they thought people living with them got better? In my experience, most clinicians in mental health programs in the United States have never seen someone labeled with psychosis get well. So much so that they are skeptical that full recovery is even possible.
So you see people with very serious problems, and you’ve seen them get well, change, and grow?
Yes, yes. What do you think is the magic? Why do they get well?
That was a very difficult question, but, um, is it a magic? No, is it a magic? I think it is the whole family. And I also think that our dogs will help us. Animals in the—B—the animals, routines. Yes, routines. That’s very important. Routines, routines. We have the stock. You have to go out and, um, them. And that—that’s a very important thing to have the routines, to lay it back on whatever else happens. You have to go out and to take care of the cows no matter what happens.
Me? No matter what problems you have? Yes, you can be crazy for a half minute or a minute, but the cows, they call at you, and they will have their food, and they will be milked.
I said to the girl, “I can’t stand here anymore. We must out, get out and get the cows’ food.”
Oh yes, yes, we should. And she did. She followed me. Yes, and she got there, and she talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. And the cows, they think, “Okay, there is she again. Okay, but get me my food.” The cows trust her.
Yes, and then she came to me for therapy twice a week. And at that time, she didn’t talk to me either. She just talked by herself and shouted by herself. But she used to tell about the cows. And I remember the first time I thought that it seems as if some kind of connection has started was when she described how she cleaned the cows and gave them food.
Yes, so I remember that very well. She talked a lot about the cows. Do you remember that?
A lot, both about the existing cows but also about cows, fantasy cows and fantasy bulls. And it’s a little difficult to talk about, but, uh, do you remember where she cleaned them?
In the bottom?
Yes, where she always—always. We used to inseminate our cattle, yeah, and cows by ourselves. Anky had that education to do that. And when you’re doing that, you enter in the bottom of the cow, you know, and put in a pistol, yeah, with the sperm. And, uh, you clean out, uh, what you call it? The poo?
Yeah, the poo. Yeah, and it will be messy, and you have the gloves on.
Yeah, yeah. And, um, they get messes in the bottom. They met with poo and everything. And she was really—what you call? Nan? Um, she—she was very aware, aware. And they—they shouldn’t seem like that. She shouldn’t stand—she—she got paper. She washed them so they look nice. They don’t want to be ashamed to look like that in the—
Yeah, and that was what she told me when she came. You see, we—I—we need to clean them up because they shall not stand there in the barn with a naked ass and feel ashamed. That’s what she said.
You wonder her history?
Yeah, know I—I—that’s what I say. And that was her first way to connect with me, to start to tell this is a bit about me.
My experience in the United States, both personal and professional, has taught me that authority figures almost never spontaneously reveal their deeper…
Motives, especially when it risks casting them in a bad light. Thus, what was to come in the midst of Johnny signing the film’s consent form caught me off guard and taught me as much about the value of the Family Care Foundation’s culture of transparency as anything else I was learning.
I say to him, “No, you mustn’t tell. Are you leaving too? It has to do with the cows. Will you come back? Yeah, you will be back. Hour, he will be out here. We can call him in. I film you signing it. Why not? This is drama! This is drama! This is drama!”
I’m serious. Yeah, yes, of course it’s drama. I’m serious too. And Dan, I didn’t mean it was wrong to cry. I hope you know that. Okay, good. I… you just were… I don’t know if you got uncomfortable or something.
No, no, I… I think I reacted by different reasons. First of all, I have a father who cried a lot, and I don’t think that has just been good for me as a child to have a father who cries. And I didn’t… he was constantly unhappy, right? Anxious. So sometimes when grown-up people who I trust start to cry, I become that little child again, and I just feel, “Oh, you mustn’t cry.” Yeah, I think that was what happened, right? So that’s one thing that has to do with my own personal private life.
[Music]
Right, and then I also maybe think I just wanted to maybe… I also just wanted to find out if it was okay for Johnny, what he thought about it. But first of all, it had to do with my own, because that’s not easy for me yet. It will never be. I work with it, but I mean, it’s so… and when I spoke about it, as I see it, it’s important for a child to see the father, of course, in a healthy way.
As afternoon was turning into early evening, I decided to open up the sticky, an all too often unspoken topic of psychiatric medications in the United States. Virtually all mental health programs rely on pharmaceuticals as the primary line of defense in the treatment of serious problems, to the point that people labeled with psychosis are expected to stay on antipsychotics for life, with consequences that are frequently devastating.
Here, I sensed a different attitude. When a person comes here, they come from some place, maybe an institution or something like that, and they have maybe a large amount of medication. You can’t just cut it off. When they come here, we have to try to lower the level slowly. But to get there, that you’re not taking any medication anymore, it’s a goal. And it’s not everyone we succeed with, but it is a goal. They will try. They will try. They will try. With our help, they will try. And yes, and they feel healthier without it.
Yeah, but it’s a long way. Yes, it’s a long way. It is. How do you help them get off the medication?
No, English. We made a routine with one girl who lived here. She had a pretty strong medication. Ani helped her to lower the doses by portioning out the medication and to cut them down to smaller and smaller pieces. This medication was giving severe headaches and such flash, flash lightnings in the eyes and could mean real headaches, like migraines or something like that. So it would have to take real slowly. Yes, and Ani helped her to lower the consumption of medication, and it succeeded. And it was a pure practical way to do it.
Then you have to… you have to speak about it. We do other things with… we walk with our dogs, and we sit down and take a cup of tea, and we talked and we cried sometimes. And we get out in the barn and milk our cows, and we do very much things together all the day we were together. You have so much in here and here. It’s not all here, and you can’t give them medicine for the feelings in their stomachs or feelings in your heart. You can shut down your brain, so it works slower.
And where did you get the idea at the beginning that it’s good to lower the medication?
Common sense and lots of help from Karina now and the others and the others. Everyone at the office. So their philosophy is it’s best to be off the medication.
Yes, and that was common sense to you?
To me, it is. Yes, with Tius, we have a doctor that cares. Yeah, listens to these, listens to Maria, and tries to take his part of the responsibility from his work and match it with what happens in their life. That’s… and he’s lowering her medication now. Yeah, because things work better in the ordinary life, in the conversation with us and with Teres.
But you have also very much invited him in your context, so you have worked it through too. Yeah, he has long experience here now. Yes, he trusts your organization.
Yes, I think. But in the beginning, he didn’t. I remember the first big meetings we were like this. You forced him to count.
I don’t know. No, forced him, but we… you… yeah, we forced him to become a member in the team. He couldn’t sit there and just not participate in my work.
As a therapist in New York City, I regularly referred clients to colleagues in private practice, only to discover again and again that many clinicians, because of sensationalized news stories, because of their training, or perhaps just because of their lack of experience, were afraid to work with people labeled with psychosis, especially those not on antipsychotics. Because of this, I wondered how Anky and Yonas and the Family Care Foundation itself dealt with the issue of fear.
Were you ever frightened having people with so many difficulties living in your home?
Never frightened. I… I don’t think any one of us have been frightened. We have had persons who have committed some crimes and things that you could be frightened about, but we have never, never been frightened here. We don’t ask me why, but there is no common sense in that. Maybe there is, maybe I don’t know.
I met people at the psychiatric hospital in a psychiatric ward, and I told about our organization. I told about that every summer we have a summer party when we invite all the people in the organization, including clients and former clients and their families and all of it. And some people, some of the participants, quite many of the participants, professionals, professional participants at the psychiatric ward, they were just stunned, and they looked at me as if I talked about something very strange. And for me, this is not strange. For me, this is absolutely normal.
Once on a date, we had with all the families in the Stiers, and one lady said, “People think that we are crazy. Nor people locked their doors at night so they, you know, quote, can’t come in. We take them in and lock the door.” That’s brilliant! It’s really good. It’s true to adjust who is sane in that matter of speaking. I don’t know, but… but you grew from this experience.
Yeah, we do a lot, a lot. And I remember there was a psychiatrist, and he said, “So you mean that maybe it would be a good idea if we, sometimes, some of the nurses, for instance, had lunch together with the patients?” And your children are better for it. Sometimes they are better for it now when they’re grown up. They are. And he said it as if I was suggesting, you know, going to the moon. And I said, “Yes, I think that would be a very good idea. I’m sure you would find out new things about yourself and about the patients and about the way you do the work.”
In this school time, they have maybe too much experience to cope with the rest of the students. I see they have been a little too old for the age, maybe too soon. They see things that… as what is in common, they have been it too soon. But who said that common is best?
But he was just like this, and he said, and people said, “So you mean that you bring your own children to this summer party, meeting your client and their children?” And I said, “Yes, I do. I’ve done that for 22 years.” Our voice was very good to manipulation.
Teachers very good, very. They were good at manipulating the teachers. Yes, they have learned. They do with the teachers that, uh, no parents want them to do. We have many meetings and, uh, sittings and talking in telephones with teacher of one and the other. Strange thing that happens, and people were just as if I was telling a revolutionary. That is what I mean. The teacher got answered in a way that they never expected a 10-year-old boy to do. It was really tough sometimes, but it’s now, but as adult grown up, yes, I think they have a lot of good. Yes, of this. They read people very good. They see it them, and they are, they see needs. Yes, that people have in a way that not a lot of people do.
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In the United States, the mental health system puts a significant pressure, both legally and ethically, on therapists to prevent suicide in their clients. All too often, however, this results in clients being stripped of their autonomy and traumatized by the very systems aiming to help them. This led me to wonder how Anky and Jonas handled this delicate issue.
So, no one ever killed themselves when they were here? No, no. Did you ever have people here? But they have tried before, while here or before they came here? Yes, that was a question that we put in our heads when we started with this. There was some kind of scare, scar. Yes, that someone might tell. Yeah, yeah. What would we do? What will happen with us? How we will feel? But we find a model to live after, and we have lived after that since then. And probably we will do it our lifetime out. But we said that, are we doing our best? Are we doing our best? That is possible. And they chose to do this terrible thing anyway. Jump in the lake or hang themselves in a tree. Have we a clear conscience that we have done our best? Then that is their responsibility. They take that step.
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I found myself feeling a deep sense of respect for Anky and Jonas, and the therapist part of me found myself wondering how it would have been for me as a therapist to have had them as therapeutic allies. And it made me wonder how this alliance was for the staff at the Family Care Foundation.
When I listened to you, I thought about, uh, it was here in this kitchen. I think it might have been, but it also might have been someone else who at the time were very crazy, or how to say it. And he was crawling around on the floor and making noises, impossible to understand. And I remember I asked you, Jonas, are you not afraid? And you said, there are much worse things to be afraid about in the world than a man who is crawling around on the floor being sad and confused. I have saved that memory, and I think a lot about it when I need strength. When you are in a situation, you feel afraid, or what shall we do? Or can we just leave this? What is right? What is right to think about? Shall we phone the police? And, uh, I mean that they live with these hard questions sometimes, right? You must admire them. I do really, I do.
I think it’s very much the basic things: eat, sleep, a little physical exercise, some people who like you. And if you get that as a base, you can start working with the difficult things. And when we start to connect and the trust builds to one person in the family, and the other ones are not, uh, trust that almost doesn’t exist for this, for these persons. But I’ve seen it to one, and how it builds, slowly, slowly builds. And next people, next person in the family gets into this space. And, uh, it just puts me in to think again about, yeah, people need other people. Psychosis is so much of isolation. So the best surroundings ought to be a family you live, or people you live together with, not professional who all will, um, new persons every morning, like a hospital or institution, but a place where you share life, not just working together with clients. It’s a way of living with them, share their lives and their experiences. And, uh, it’s not just that we are therapists and supervisors. We are just human beings sharing a life story.
As our meeting was heading toward the end, I wanted to know if Anky and Jonas had a specific person who had lived with them who summed up all the points we had explored. Although they had several people to choose from, they finally spoke about one woman who had been given up for lost by the traditional system.
This is a woman that when she came here, she couldn’t walk in a city or go into a store, supermarket, bank, which was very important to her that she get a Visa credit card. Visa card? Yes, that was there, and she couldn’t do any of, no, no, no, no. She couldn’t. She hadn’t the opportunity to get that, and she couldn’t go anywhere without being arrested. People get afraid, people get scared, people felt threatened everywhere: on the bus, on the train, in the cab. When she came here, because she was so afraid, she was so afraid. Well, we can say that today, but then we couldn’t say that she was complete insane, mad, crazy.
We had the breakfast meeting here who lasted for two and a half hours. First time we saw this woman, she entertained us for two and a half hours. I don’t think anyone of us did get the opportunity to say at least one word. She spoke, she spoke about women with frozen chickens under their hat. What’s that? We didn’t know. One can really wonder how come you let her come into your house? Who is the one who is crazy?
But something who is very important here, uh, this woman was here from the beginning. One day, two days, then she leaves to Gburg and several days, yes, and be there for four days. Then she got here again. Uh, we slowly, slowly, slowly, yes, so she got a break. We got a break. Yes, we could live our lives. Yes, yes, we slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly during three and a half years extended the amounts of days that she was here for this woman and for us. It was so much and so, so heavy and so frustrating, yes, for us. And, and, but it’s calmed down, it’s calmed down.
So when she left here, what was she? How was she different? Oh, we can sit, so she have been here and visit us several times since she left. And what happened to her life? It’s much better. She, she has a credit card. Yes, she, she went to United States. We got a postcard. We got a postcard from her. Her sister lives in Los Angeles. We get a postcard from her when she was in Los Angeles, and she told us, have, um, went by fly from Sweden to Holland, from Holland over to the states and down to Los Angeles. Thank you for the help. Yeah, thank you for the help.
And when she left here, was she on medication? No, no, no. She will never have. She had no medic. She had no, when she came here, she refused. She was one of them who didn’t have medication. She refused.
Have been both. So let me ask you this. I asked Karina this. This woman, if she was in mainstream psychiatry, what would her diagnosis have been when she came here? The diagnosis was schizophrenia. She was diagnosed schizophrenia. Really? Yeah. And when she left, this diagnosis still? She, she could still have this diagnosis? No, oh no, no, no, no, no.
Let me ask you this. Um, do you think of people with diagnosis? Do you think schizophrenia, bipolar, this ADHD, depression? I didn’t think so at all. No. Do you know about these diagnosis? Little, very, very little. Do you care? No. When? Why? Why? It didn’t help me. You got the people in your home, and, uh, we should live together and share everything. I have no use of the schizophrenia or Border Lines or psycho this time. No, I don’t know why. It’s not to neglect. How neglect? We don’t neglect diagnosis. It’s not that, but for us, they don’t do anything. We haven’t the education to know.
What it is, we haven’t wanted to educate us to know what it is. We have no use for it. What should it bring us for good? I don’t know.
Although it was very personal, I wanted before we closed our meeting to bring up one final taboo topic: money. I knew they weren’t getting rich from their healing work, but I didn’t know a single other place in the world where such gifted healers weren’t even supporting themselves from their work. And I wondered how they felt about it.
Do you feel you deserve to be paid more for what you do?
Sometimes, in the short minutes, yes. Sometimes, but not in the general. Not in the general. And I think it’s enough. It’s good. You don’t get a lot, right?
No, no, no. We don’t get paid a lot. We don’t. And am I saying here with the boss sitting right next to me? But it’s, uh, but it is. That’s why, yeah. It’s not that kind of relation that I feel that I have with Karina and anyone there down there. It’s not employee and employer. It’s something different. I can’t put a word on it, what it is. But surely sometimes, yes, we felt underpaid. But if you look at it on the whole, who could pay you for you live your life? What would you put for numbers on that?
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired.
Yes, I’m very tired talking for three and a half hours. I’m sorry, but you want to have the last word ’cause you just came back?
I don’t know what I should say.
Yeah, bye. It went well in the barn. It’s just been great to listen to you and to sit. All the cats are happy, good. I hope and the ball too. Yeah, and the ball.
[Music] too.
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