Coming Home: A Psychotherapist's Reflections on Madness and the State of Western Psychosis

In Coming Home, psychotherapist and contemplative, Brandon Houston, MA, LPCC paves a new way of relating to recovery from psychotic experiences. He weaves a three-part story of madness:

• Exploring his own journey of recovery from madness in his early 20s.
• The wisdom he gleaned working as a therapist for an alternative treatment center for extreme states, Windhorse.
• His own contemplative understanding of madness, rooted in the wisdom of grounding oneself in familiar activities of health.

At its heart, Coming Home encourages clinicians, patients, and loved ones to move away from pathological narratives of broken brains, chemical imbalances, and heritable illness; to embrace the reality of recovery from psychosis, and most importantly, to restoring the possibility of wholehearted living post-break.

Coming Home explores what it means to honor one's unique sensitivities and experiences as well as the training needed to live in the world with a sensitive disposition. The author posits recovery from psychosis as a natural process akin to any other healing, a process that requires gentleness, groundedness, and understanding to take hold.

For those looking for a perspective on madness outside of traditional mental health, this book offers new ways of thinking about madness, recovery, and what it means to be human, ultimately challenging traditional mental health to imagine new stories to support healing from madness.