Renowed psychiatrist pens new publication

Renowed psychiatrist pens new publication

16 October 2019

DOWNPATRICK anthropologist and psychotherapist, Dr Stan Papenfus, has written a new book entitled ‘Renewing Our Lives’.

The new publication also has a seemingly strange subtitle — ‘A radical alternative to psychiatric colonialism” with colonialism referring to the idea that psychiatrists worldwide are creating colonies of “drugged and dehumanised people”.

The origin of this idea lies in Stan having a mystical experience when he was studying medicine in 1964 apartheid South Africa. He recalls that his mystical experience revealed to him that all people are mutually interdependent and all people are essentially good.

Significantly, the revelation led to him leaving his study of medicine and immersing himself in the study of psychology, social anthropology, sociology and African languages. And, during university vacations, Stan engaged in so-called participant observation research as a nursing assistant in psychiatric hospitals. 

He also played music with an African group known as ‘The Kirela Kids’, two of whose members, Robert and Joshua Sithole were proclaimed to be a foremost penny-whistler and second best guitarist in South Africa respectively at a jazz awards ceremony.

It was through these musicians 

that Stan met his future wife, Selin Mahlvane, who was herself a singer of traditional African music and a jazz singer.

In 1967, the author was awarded both BA and a BSc Science degrees, also receiving a bursary for being the top sociology student which resulted in his engaging in further studies, leading to him receiving an honours degree.

After this, Stan engaged in further participant observation studies, this time as a ‘pretending patient’ in a mental hospital in Swaziland, subsequently writing this research up as a thesis, entitled, “Situations: a model for the analysis of mental hospital practices’’. He received PhD degree for this research. 

While he was in Swaziland, Stan married Selin, a black South African. Such a marriage was illegal in South Africa and was banned under the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. The couple’s son, Kenneth, was born in Swaziland and was smuggled across the border into South Africa and it’s this backstory which forms the genesis of his new book.

Already an acclaimed author, Stan argues that the reason psychiatric hospitals and psychiatry were so significant was because the way hospitals treated patients was equivalent to the way black people were classified and dominated in apartheid South Africa.

All this is described in his new book, along with a way to evaluate the therapeutic value or lack of value in staff-patient interactions.

When Stan came to Northern Ireland, he became a clinical psychologist, working in psychiatric hospitals. He was also the co-founder of a self-help group for mastering anxiety, panic and stress.

Some of the background to this group is contained in his new book, as well as in another publication entitled ‘Soul On Fire’’ — a guide to mastering  anxiety, which is also available on Amazon. 

Together with the process of mastering anxiety, Stan also engaged in research into overcoming depression, put together in a book entitled ‘Rising from the Dead’ and the process of recovering from alcohol and drug addiction, contained in ‘Victory of the Spirit’.

All this, he says, forms part of an understanding of the radical alternative to psychiatric colonialism. 

“The worst part of psychiatry lies in its process of diagnosing so-called mental illness, along with its prescribing of drugs, supposedly for correcting and ‘chemical imbalance in the brain’” says the author.

Dr Papenfus illustrates that such a chemical imbalance does not exist. In fact, he argues that the “fraud” involved in creating and medical basis for psychiatry is no more than a myth and there is shown in great detail in the book.

Also demonstrated in great depth is what the author describes as the “unscientific basis” of pharmaceutical companies supposed ‘testing’ of prescribed psychiatric drugs. 

“This fraudulence results in millions of people’s lives being ruined, year after year and in one country after another,” said Dr Papenfus.

“Even children are now becoming a huge market for prescribed psychiatric drugs and some of their extremely dangerous effects are described. The research involved in this exposure calls for a dramatic and urgent response. This is what ‘Renewing our Lives’’ provides.

Between 1956 and 1967, Dr William Barrington was the leading psychiatrist at the Downshire Hospital in Downpatrick. According to Dr Papenfus, it was during these years that traditional bio-psychiatry was replaced with social psychiatry. 

“Under his guidance therapy always included a social dimension,” said the author. “Goals were formulated and realised. The personal empowerment of patients included regular reviews of what was going on and how everyone was making sense of everyone else.

“The result was that the Downshire Hospital was widely regarded as the best psychiatric facility in Europe. Because Dr Barrington’s way of working was still strikingly held by many nurses, social workers and others, this is what persuaded me to come to work in the Downshire in 1975.”

But, when he arrived, the author claimed that the ideology of the medical model of mental illness was in force once again and “the dehumanising processes of bio-psychiatry was prominent once more.” 

Despite this, the author says a transformation was still possible ands this is the hope behind his new book.

Two copies of the new book have been placed in Downpatrick Library and it is also available on order, from Amazon.