TRANSCRIPT
I came to ISPS basically because I was working in the wilderness. A friend from an international listserv for psychiatric nurses recommended it while I was in graduate school. I didn’t really hear too much about working with patients with psychosis. I didn’t have any colleagues who understood what I was doing. They mostly thought what I was doing didn’t make any sense or wasn’t possible.
The medical model that most people have been trained in suggests that, you know, this illness is entirely biologically driven. So really, most people think that you can’t do therapy a lot of times. Speaking with colleagues and supervisors who I really liked and respected, when I talked about my patients with psychosis, often the response would be, “Maybe you shouldn’t see that patient,” which was not helpful because I was committed to working with these patients.
The thing I love about ISPS is that it believes otherwise. It believes that these people who society seems very happy just to sort of drug up and forget about can really be helped. No one’s doing this for the money or for the, you know, great glory in the world. But this, you know, so the stars of our worlds are very accessible, and they’re usually wonderful people because why else would you do this work?
We exchange ideas, give each other support, provide educational opportunities in an ongoing way, and it’s become a support community for me as I do this work. It’s been very helpful, and it’s tremendously validating and good for me to feel that there are people now who have my back and that there is opinion and even literature out there that says, “Ron, you’re right to be around people that had a similar belief that you could really work on a deep level with people with psychotic issues.” And maybe more basically, that you could treat them like human beings.
It is just fascinating to be, to unravel and understand what is going on, and it’s nice not to have to do it all alone. So if several years ago I was working in the wilderness and didn’t have any colleagues and didn’t really know anyone else who was doing this work, I’ve got hundreds of colleagues all around the United States, all in the world too. And it’s exciting! Like, it’s given me a chance to travel and meet new people and meet a lot of fascinating, amazing people: clinicians, patients, recovered patients, theoreticians, and friends.