Hi All,

One thing about people diagnosed with incurable schizophrenia who are a danger to themselves or others is that you seldom if ever get to hear about their experience from their point of view. That's usually because they are usually institutionalised and sentenced to, er I mean, prescribed long-term heavy medication to render them insensible and easily controllable within the facility.

And then you get a rare situation like this one. In this interview, Rufus May, now a psychologist, describes his escape from both a life sentence in institutions under heavy meds but also his escape from his old behaviours and the identity Doctors had given him as a result. Rufus (working as a therapist) was featured in the docudrama The Doctor Who Hears Voices which was the subject of another recent thread here on the forum.

The astute NLPer will likely see some of the patterns in what he did by accident that allowed him to navigate his own way out of those very treacherous waters on his own, a feat that is, in my experience, seldom accomplished. Lots to learn there and experiment with, methinks.

And while I think that some of the conclusions he reached about how and why he was doing what he was doing, or how to help others who are doing some similar things (May holds to a more traditional albeit rapid psychoanalytical approach with a bit of CBT thrown in, it seems to me), I think he's still a powerful exemplar of what happens in mental health facilities every day as well as what can happen when even the 'incurable' learn to look at and to do things differently.

Enjoy!

Be Well,

Michael Perez