Safety or System?

Samizdat has just been graced with Gene Larkin’s Seeking Soteria accompanied by Bill James fabulous artwork (graced is the best word). For reasons that will become clear, the title of this post picks up on the last post Unsafe Safety.

Gene can be heard talking about Soteria with colleagues on a Mad in America Soteria Webinar. In the near future Katinka Newman will be hosting him on her podcast.  Here are some reviews and further leads below.

Through vivid storytelling, Larkin traces his journey from a Catholic working-class upbringing in the Midwest, through disillusionment and self-discovery in Brazil, to the heart of a groundbreaking experiment in healing schizophrenia without medication. What emerges is not just a personal narrative, but a call for trust, presence, and radical empathy in the face of madness. Seeking Soteria is a powerful testimony to what’s possible when we choose trust over fear, being over fixing, and humanity over systems.

Reviews

Eugene Larkin has created a superb and moving memoir of Soteria’s powerful simplicity…actively being with another in pain, not running, not rushing, not fixing. Highly recommended, especially for practitioners who all too frequently feel lost about what to do when their standardized treatment protocols fail.
Chuck Ruby – author Smoke and Mirrors: How You Are Being Fooled about Mental Illness

Inspired by Ronald Laing’s Kingsley Hall, Soteria House was a daring experiment in the treatment of those problems with living usually called “mental illnesses” with kindness, empathy and compassion. This was all part of a long-standing tradition of humanistic psychiatry going all the way back the Eighteenth Century (before the term “psychiatry” was even invented) but one which has been all but forgotten.

In elegant, poetic prose, author Eugene Larkin tells the story of his own involvement with Soteria House, more than fifty years ago — a tale told with grace, compassion, and humility. In an era in which increasingly large amount of the human condition are classified as drug-treatable brain diseases, his is a story which needs to be shared as widely as possible.
Patrick Hahn author of Obedience Pills and Prescription for Sorrow

In Seeking Soteria, Eugene Larkin takes readers back inside the Soteria Home that existed in the 1970s, bringing that ‘therapeutic’ space alive, telling both of its joys and challenges, and of his ‘being with’ those we call mad.
Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic

Simply said Seeking Soteria is a gem. Eugene Larkin’s writing style is pure delight. Through the telling of his story, we learn about the magic of Soteria House—the compassionate treatment of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The Soteria study was a very successful program in the 1970s, and this book puts you right there. Whether you already know about Soteria House and want to learn what it was really like, or are just somebody interested in the human condition, Seeking Soteria is for you.
Jim Gottstein, author of The Zyprexa Papers

In Seeking Soteria, Eugene Larkin, has quietly but powerfully described the challenges of helping people who are coping with ‘extreme mental states’ feel safe and protected in a therapeutic community while finding their way back to themselves and their lives. This is an important book.
Courtenay Harding, PhD, author of Recovery from Schizophrenia: Evidence, History, and Hope

Every so often, a crack in the system opens up, and some light gets in, showing us a better way to live together. This is the light that shines through Seeking Soteria. Eugene Larkin’s memoir is one of those underground publications that could literally overturn the status quo on mental health care. Read this book, think about it, and start living it.
David Healy, MD author of Shipwreck of the Singular: Healthcare’s Castaways

Seeking Soteria is a story of redemption and a convincing critique of our mental health system. Rich and compelling, Larkin recounts his experience working in an experimental treatment program for psychosis and provides deep, perceptive portraits of the people he met there. His story is deceptively profound, and the reader will come away with a guide to becoming more fully human.
Albert Galves, Ph.D. author of Harness Your Dark Side

A wise, sensitive, and inspiring book… A lucid exposition of what is wrong with an overly biomedical psychiatry and how Soteria provides a coherent, humane, therapeutic alternative.  Seeking Soteria, belongs on the shelf of everyone seeking a better way in psychiatry.
Pesach Lichtenberg, M.D., Founder of Soteria Israel

What Logic?

For years I’ve been telling everyone I know that the best book on healthcare is Annemarie Mol’s The Logic of Care.

Annemarie tops the list of – The Best Books on what Medicine Should Be. a post here from 3 years ago. But all the listed books as well as everything Samizdat publishes share a Logic of Care theme, which maps well onto the message of Seeking Soteria.  Seeking Soteria reminds us that in at least 9 cases out of 10, maybe more, the power of companionship is worth more than the power of consumables, the Logic of Care beats the Logic of Choice.

Reminds us that, individual though we might be, our key task is to define the meaning of US.

I mentioned above that Katinka will be interviewing Gene in a few weeks time.  Her The Pill that Steals Lives should be on a list of the Best Books on Healthcare. Katinka’s book brings another angle into the frame that almost all of us have missed except Jim Gottstein when he grappled with The Zyprexa Papers – the legal angle.

In the Name of the Victims

Jean-Christophe Coubris’ In the Name of the Victims was published 4 years ago – an astonishing book that Yoko Motohama introduced me to.  I doubt if many people expect a lawyer to write such an ’emotional’, such an ’emotive’ book.  This is not a legal book. It is about the central dilemma that RxISK.org and everyone who has been harmed by a medicine faces – how do we make our health systems safe. Jean-Christophe tackles this by showing us how from his daughter through to his legal cases later these harms came about and how our safety systems have made or risk making things much worse.

A common theme across all these books is that Safety does not come from Systems. So many of us, though, figure we need systems to consolidate good practice, common sense and care. It looks like what we really need and what we should be telling others we need is courage.  Courage doesn’t mean not feeling fear.