I've
seen a large number of schizophrenic patients who were
cured—cured—when they stopped drinking milk.
—Abram Hoffer, M.D., in Masks of Madness
Masks
of Madness: Science of Healing
hosted
by Margot Kidder
featuring Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
Canadian
Schizophrenia Foundation
Sisyphus Communications, 1998
50 minutes, $34.50 |
|
Reviewed
by SYD BAUMEL
The
holiday season is a time when most people celebrate what
they have while others grieve for what they have not.
It's enough to drive some people to drugs, drink, depression—or
worse.
Masks
of Madness is a unique video about a little known
school of biological psychiatry that offers much to people
who break down any time of year.
The
faces in this infomercially upbeat production (minus the
sales pitch) are not those we associate with schizophrenia,
severe depression, or bipolar disorder (manic-depression).
They are happy, smiley, confident, healthy.
The
first face we see is one many of us were shocked to see
in news reports a few years ago, looking like a crazed,
pathetic shadow of her former Superman's-girlfriend self.
Now appearing as sunny and relaxed as the garden grounds
behind her, Canadian actress Margot Kidder brings us up
to speed on her up-and-down life. The infamous psychotic
episode, she explains, was the latest in a twenty-year
series of manic-depressive breakdowns, despite her long-term
use of every medication in the book. Though the doctors
assured her she'd be back, Kidder had no such intentions.
"I'd really had enough, and did a great deal of homework
in trying to find alternate ways to balance out my system
naturally. . . .And it's working. It's been over two years:
the long slow process of learning new things just about
every two weeks or month. Touch wood somewhere—no symptoms,
no ups or downs, which in my life is nothing short of
a miracle."
What's
working so well for Kidder is what Nobel Laureate Linus
Pauling dubbed
"orthomolecular psychiatry"
in 1968: the treatment of mental disease by providing
optimal doses of nutrients and other natural biochemicals
to the brain—and sheltering it from substances it can't
tolerate. Joining Kidder in this 50-minute primer on orthomolecular
psychiatry is its foremost pioneer, the Victoria psychiatrist
Abram Hoffer, prominent younger practitioners like Hyla
Cass (an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at
the UCLA School of Medicine) and Michael Janson, M.D.,
and a high-spirited chat group of patients whose happy,
shining faces belie the horrors of their pasts.
"Drugs
are very helpful," a well-preserved, eightysomething Hoffer
says at one point. "I certainly would have difficulty
practicing without them. But in my experience, going back
now 'til 1955, schizophrenic patients on drugs alone don't
get well—it's very rare." Cut to two schizophrenics who
clearly have. "I started taking the
niacinamide [vitamin B3] and the vitamin C in megadoses,"
recalls one of the young men after regaling the group
with tragicomic accounts of his psychotic episodes, "and
within a month I was starting to be like my old self."
If
this video, produced by the Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation
(the world's major orthomolecular organization), has one
significant flaw it's that it fails to blow the CSF's
own horn. To learn more (or to order the video), contact
the
Canadian
Schizophrenia Foundation
16
Florence Ave., Toronto, ON, M2N 1E9, 416-733-2117.
