Articles About The Centre

A GROUP of London psychiatrists and psychotherapists are treating nervous breakdowns as family rather than individual problems; and they claim that they are achieving in only a few days what mental hospitals fail to achieve in months through the use of drugs and electro-convulsive therapy (ECT).

Dr Morton Schatzman, the founder of the group, named Arbours' Association, says : " Emotional crises and emotional breakdowns invariably arise in family or group situations-they are, essentially, family problems. And yet mental hospitals treat only individuals.
"Since patients, like everybody else, never report precisely what is happening to them the information the hospitals get is always incomplete and it can be misleading."

The focal point of the association's family therapy work is the "crisis centre"; a daunting name for a modest, semi-detached house in a quiet, tree-lined road in North West London. Members of distressed families - sometimes entire families-are being invited to stay there for a few days.
" We do not practice medicine in the traditional sense. All we try to do is to make their motives intelligible to themselves." Says Dr Joseph Berke, a co-founder of the association.

'A husband fails to confide in his Wife about his business worries ... a mother thinks her husband is demanding too much of the children'

The Arbours argue that the family leads a tightrope existence and can get by for years without really knowing itself. Flimsy assumptions are made about relationships. Annoying habits remain unchecked. Things that should be said are left unsaid ... a husband fails to confide in his wife about his business worries, leaving her feeling that he is ignoring her . . . a mother thinks that, her husband is demanding too much from the children...
And then the crisis comes: a marital breakdown, a runaway child, bankruptcy, a marriage which is opposed. When, one person falters, it becomes increasingly difficult for everybody else to keep balance. In the inevitable fall, everybody is bruised; but one person is visibly worse than everybody else.

He becomes the patient though the Arbours say he might be the least disturbed member of the family. He is classified as "mentally ill." The family begin to treat him differently, interpreting everything he does as a sign of his condition. Sooner or later, the Arbours say, he begins to enact his own ideas of mental illness-and even makes a career out of being a chronic mental patient.

'The mental patient is, often a scapegoat selected by his or her family'

"Much so-called mental illness is mythical," says Dr Berke. " We believe that the mental patient is often a scapegoat selected by the family to rationalise its own actions."
How does the centre work?
"When we respond to a call, we alert a team of about two dozen people. They talk with the disturbed individual, his family, friends and anybody else who can help.

"When the team agrees that we call help an individual-who might be the mother who called us, rather than the son she called about- he or she, or both, are invited to spend a

few days at the centre with the two residents, a psychotherapist and a former teacher of maladjusted children."

The Arbours takes its name from the New English Bible Leviticus 23:24: "You shall live in arbours for seven" days." Arbours, then, is a temporary refuge. In this case, the semi.
However the guests ('not patients,') are not given any refuge from their problems, either through drugs or in any other way. They are encouraged to talk about their distress at quite literally anytime, night or day.
"We provide the guests with a sympathetic support system, but at the same time we think that people should face their problems head on. Suffering can be beneficial - it can act as an incentive. Drugs, however enable people to forget what is bothering them," says Dr Berke.

Many, complex problems have been unraveled at the centre in what amount to journeys of self discovery. For instance one case, involved a married couple and a friend. The husband was tense and had developed a bad stammer.
At times he was unable to speak at all.
The friend suggested that they should go to the centre-and that he should accompany them. Within a few days the husband was speaking fluently and freely again. His tension disappeared and he and his wife, left the centre, leaving their friend behind. It transpired that he had " befriended " many married couples, preferring to sample the emotions of marriage second hand rather than marry himself.
Discussion revealed that, during childhood, lie had riot been, allowed to learn anything about his parents relationship. It was as if they were in a castle and he was outside-beyond the in moat.

Dr Schatzman said: " In other circumstances it might have been assumed that the husband was mentally ill. I think the point to stress is that you don't need to be round the bend to need help, but that you will very quickly go
that way unless you get the right sort of help.

'We are far too ready to classify other people as mentally ill'

" In a recent study, eight people, four of them students of psychology, set out to prove how easy it was to be diagnosed as mentally ill. None of them had psychiatric histories, so they invented symptoms, They each went to a different hospital, complaining about a voice which kept saying: "Empty, hollow and thud."

" Seven of them were diagnosed as schizophrenic and one as a manic depressive. They were kept in hospital for an average of 19 days each, and yet, during that time they behaved quite normally."
The doctors could obviously not be criticised for taking the counterfeit symptoms seriously. But why did none of them, inquire into the family and social background of their patients?
" The trouble is," ' says Dr Schatzman, " that people-and this includes psychiatrists-are. far too ready to classify other people as mentally ill.

- John Illman