| Family therapy began as a way of understanding and helping individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia within the context of their families (Bertrando, 2006; Guerin, 1976). Many of the initial pioneers of family therapy including Gregory Bateson, Murray Bowen, Milton Erickson, Jay Haley, Don Jackson, Paul Watzlawick, and Carl Whitaker studied interactions among family members within this context. While much of this research was underway, the development of the neuroleptic chlorpromazine, marketed in the United States as Thorazine, began being successfully used for the treatment of psychosis in schizophrenia (Deniker, 1990; Whitaker, 2010a). Consequently, when it came to understanding and perhaps curing schizophrenia, the world turned its hope to medical science and the biomedical model. Against this rising tide of public optimism for medical science, psychotherapy, including family therapy, began its "flight from biology" (Doherty, McDaniel, & Hepworth, 1994, p. 32), leaving those diagnosed with schizophrenia at the mercy of adherents to the biomedical model, which held that, epistemologically, the same scientific tools used to treat tissues and organs would work the same for treating schizophrenia. The biomedical model era to the present day has been characterized by minimal clinical innovation and poor mental health outcomes (Deacon, 2013). Continued developments in understanding how schizophrenia impacts family relationships and individual meaning have largely been abandoned.;This qualitative study was an in-depth exploration of what the preference for treating schizophrenia as a biological disease has meant to the lived experiences of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and what relationships and individual meaning might potentially be restored by returning to the "forgotten" biopsychosocial paradigm supported by family therapy. Using phenomenological case studies, this research revealed personal meaning, values, and insight within individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia that have been neglected during the prevailing era of the biomedical model and strikes an enthusiastic declaration that these personal experiences, so long dismissed as extraneous symptoms of a biological disease, must be honored and respected as events in the life of a human being desperately searching for explanation and understanding as to what is happening to them. |
