Soteria Alaska Opens
In an email today, Jim Gottstein, president of the Alaska-based PsychRights group, announced the opening of the new Soteria-Alaska project. The project is modeled on the now-defunct Soteria House in California. Explains Gottstein:
“The original Soteria House proved that outcomes for people diagnosed with schizophrenia could be dramatically improved if a psychosocial approach was used instead with neuroleptics used as a last resort and stopped as soon as possible when they were used.”
While there was some controversy about client outcomes at Soteria House, which closed in 1983 due a lack of funding, I’ve long felt the model looked promising enough for it to be tried again. The US spends many billions of dollars a year in taxpayer funds through Medicaid and Social Security disability and other programs for the care and treatment of people diagnosed with schizophrenia but we are seeing terrible clinical outcomes for some people including greatly reduced life spans due to the effects of medications. That kind of situation argues that some other system of care and rehabilitation should be tired, at least on a pilot basis, to see if other approaches might not work as well or better.
The Alaska project opened with two clients, but plans to accept others as soon as its state license is approved. I congratulate everyone involved in the effort to make the new Soteria a reality. I hope it works.
There are several other Soteria-style projects in Europe. A lengthy report on the original Soteria House authored by its founder Loren Mosher can be found here.
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