VIDEO REVIEW

Open Dialogue:

An Alternative, Finnish Approach

to Healing Psychosis

A 74 minute video by Daniel Mackler, followed by a discussion led by Will Hall (of Madness Radio) at the Unitarian Church of Vancouver.

Shown last March 19 2012 at Unitarian Church of Vancouver.

See event announcement at:

http://wcmhn.org/events.htm#aa

West Coast Mental Health Network

Review by Denis Laplante of 2012-mar-19 video and talk.

Title: Open Dialogue: An Alternative, Finnish Approach to Healing Psychosis

A 74 minute video by Daniel Mackler, followed by discussion led by Will Hall (of Madness Radio).

Copies available for $33 from

www.iRareSoul.com/dvd3.htm

Technically, this is a well done amateur video by an American mental health activist, of interviews with a dozen members of a mental health team from a small city in the Western Lapland province(?) of Finland.  The talk is in English, easy to follow and with closed-captioning subtitles in English too.

From all I heard this well-established program has been astoundingly successful over a period of 20 years.  The core of the program is, as you may have guessed, open dialogue involving the patient, at least 2 professionals, and at least one member of a "social circle" (usually relatives).  This is government funded, and generally provides a visit to the patient's home or local clinic within 24 hours, with daily follow-up visits for a couple of weeks, less frequent later.  Despite the high staff to patient ratio, they estimate 30% savings because the vast majority of patients do not require hospitalization or long-term chronic support.  In fact most patients go back to work.  Neuroleptics or other drugs are infrequently prescribed, and only in small doses for a short time.  The staff form a team, and are very comfortable with each other and the interviewer.

For privacy reasons no patients are seen in the video.  The only description of sessions addressed the philosophy of the program - free-ranging discussions where for example professionals might try out ideas to each other in presence of all participants.  Will Hall supplemented the lack of examples in response to audience questions based on attending workshops in Massachusetts.  He gave two examples that revolved around a multi-day dialogue breaking the taboo on difficult subjects that were "not to be spoken about".  Possibly the avoidance of specific issues is on purpose, to avoid (as the Open Dialogue method does) placing us outsiders in the position of judging from the outside what "the problem" is and being tempted to short-circuit the core of the program.

For more by filmmaker David Mackler (including a 3 minute trailer) see also:

http://beyondmeds.com/2011/03/21/finnishopendialogue/

An hour-long interview with Mary Olson, involved with importing this program to the USA, has more detailed description of sessions:

http://madnessradio.net/madness-radio-mary-olson-open-dialog

For 3 academic references from the book "Anatomy of an Epidemic" see:

http://robertwhitaker.org/robertwhitaker.org/Solutions.html

To purchase, see: 

www.iRareSoul.com/dvd3.html

  (also link to blog "Beyond Meds").

The DVD is not yet available at either the Vancouver or Burnaby public libraries, but you can ask them to buy a copy.

Go to www.vpn.pl  click on "My VPL", then on "Using The Library", then on "Suggest A Purchase".

In Burnaby, the equivalent seems to be

http://www.bpl.bc.ca/ask-a-librarian/contact-us