Adaptation Practice
Origin
When as a hospital doctor I started to train and work in psychiatry, first at the Univeristy in London and then in Oxford I was already studying and training in psychology from the Far East. What little I had read about it made me realise that this was what I had been looking for for a long time. It was clear that the emotional, psychological and mental suffering so common to us all, from slight disappointments and frustrations to profound fear, anxiety and depression, was due to how we respond to emotion when it arises in us. I was determined to train in this and was told that it cannot be learned from books any more than swimming or playing the piano could be. Training had to be done with the body with the guidance of an experienced teacher.
Like all other psychiatrists, I was trained to diagnose people suffering with mental illnesses according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as compiled and published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). There was no scientific basis for the diagnoses: they were the opinions of a few psychiatrists. Each disorder had a recommended psychiatric drug to treat it and like other psychiatrists I was expected to prescribe the drugs and/or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
We were told that the unerlying cause of serious conditions like major depression, manic depression (bipolar), paranoid psychosis, schizophrenia and anxiety in all their various forms was known to be a chemical imbalance in the brain.
But later I realised that it was not known: it was made up, fiction, in order to convince psychiatrists like me to prescribe the drugs. We did not realise that the so-called ‘evidence’ for this was fabricated and so we blindly prescribed what turned out to be harmful and at times lethal drugs.
When a few of us started to realise that we were causing more harm than good, including three patients committing suicide, I decided to teach people what I had personally found so helpful in the Far Eastern training. I wrote notes for people to have as reminders of what to do and for them to check themselves that they were doing it exactly as shown. To my surprise nearly all patients were willing to do it and they were surprised at how simple it was and how helpful. With no drugs and no endless talking therapies.
Patients from different backgrounds and cultures found it equally helpful. It made sense and those from different religions commented how it strengthened their religious practices.
They asked what this way was called and so it had to have a name and was given the name Adaptation Practice.
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