A Haven of Hope

The following was written in 1999 by Dr. Loren Mosher, clinical professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego and one-time chief of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health�s Center for Studies of Schizophrenia.

�I opened Soteria House in 1971. � There, young persons diagnosed as having �schizophrenia� lived medication-free with a nonprofessional staff trained to listen, to understand them and provide support, safety and validation of their experience. The idea was that schizophrenia can often be overcome with the help of meaningful relationships, rather than with drugs. ��

The Soteria project compared their treatment method with �usual� psychiatric hospital drug treatment interventions for persons newly diagnosed as having schizophrenia.

�The experiment worked better than expected. At six weeks post-admission,both groups had improved significantly and comparably despite Soteria clients having not usually received antipsychotic drugs! At two years postadmission, Soteria-treated subjects were working at significantly higher occupational levels, were significantly more often living independently or with peers, and had fewer readmissions. Interestingly, clients treated at Soteria who received no neuroleptic medication � or were thought to be destined to have the worst outcomes, actually did the best as compared to hospital and drug-treated control subjects.�

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