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Crazy Wisdom
by Edward L. Knight, Ph.D.

ed_knight

Ed Daigu Knight, Ph.D, CPRP is Vice President of Recovery, Rehabilitation and Mutual Support for ValueOptions, a national behavioral health managed care organization. He is a person living with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. He has also been diagnosed with anxiety disorders, mania and depression. He is “dually diagnosed” with alcoholism. He manages his extreme mental and emotional states with Zen and small amounts of one psychiatric medication. With a regular zazen practice, 12 step work and Christian contemplative prayer he has been able to get off all other psychiatric medications and reduce the one he is currently on. The wisdom he has gathered over the years about transforming extreme states is the source of his teaching. He has been a Zen practitioner for 7 years and before that an Insight Meditation practitioner for another 7 years. He has been a Sufi initiate for 34 years. It was as a Sufi that he studied The Cloud of Unknowing, a medieval Christian treatise on silent prayer. Daigu considers the personal study of schizophrenia and other extreme states as an expression of the enlightened way. His sensei is Ken Tetsuji Byalin of the Zen Community or Staten Island, a Multi-faith Zen Center and part of the Zen Peacemakers Sangha.

Dr. Knight is the Steward of two Zen Peacemaker Circles. One meets at Haven House, a drop-in center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which is an independent completely mental health client run 501c3 that he has supported since its inception about 15 years ago. Haven House does peer to peer outreach with street people with mental labels and also with folks with labels coming out of jails. Daigu started a ZPC meditation group there called The Healing Circle about 8 years ago. Enough people have mastered meditation to run the group when he is out of town. The group uses and discusses the use of meditation in managing extreme states or “symptoms”. He also runs a 12 step group there called Double Trouble in Recovery.

Buddhism and Extreme States is the second ZPC Daigu runs. It is a list serve and hosts discussions about the use of zazen, other Buddhist practices and silent practices from other traditions. The online discussion also is a venue for sharing life style issues such as diet, exercise, psychotherapy, relationships and many non-drug modes of healing “mental illnesses” or extreme states which is the terminology he prefers. There are mental health professionals on the list serve, but the majority are clients.

Daigu has presented at Sweetwater Zen Center in San Diego on recovery from serious mental illnesses and the use of Zen in doing so. He also presented on Zen and Recovery in Portland, OR recently, an event sponsored by Portland Hearing Voices Network and the Great Vow Zen Monastery. There is a large body of research evidence on recovery from schizophrenia (average recovery rate 63% in 10 years or more in 12 studies) and bipolar illnesses (average recovery rate for 12 studies in 10 years or more, 76%). The recovery rate from major depression and anxiety disorders is about 60% in three years from the available study. In his career Dr. Knight has done research on the use of peer to peer support groups in recovery from major mental illnesses and has shown that peer run mutual support greatly enhances recovery.

In his practice of right work, Dr. Knight uses his skills as a Zen practitioner to teach meditation as part of his ongoing training of peer specialists who are clients of the mental health system hired within the system to support others in their recovery. He has started hundreds of mutual support groups and dozens of completely peer run 501c3’s delivering peer to peer mental health services from drop in centers to supported housing, homeless outreach case management, peer run crisis respite and in one case a full blown mental health clinic (Hands Across Long Island) with peer psychiatrist, psychologists, social workers and case workers. These projects are started and run by clients of the public mental health system.

He is currently engaged in training and supporting an exciting project in the plains of Colorado in a small town called Greeley. It is a drug court peer agency, Dreams Inc., doing rehab work for people who are addicted or dually diagnosed and are deferred from prison terms if they successfully complete a 15 month treatment program. He has been asked by his employer to explore the possibility of starting a peer run substance abuse crisis respite in Dallas. Dr. Knight carries an active research agenda. He is assisting the John LaValle Prep School in research on how an integrated college prep school impacts the resilience of the pupils, 30% of whom were in special education last year. He is working with Nathan Kline Institute in New York State at the NIMH funded Center for the Study of Recovery in Social Contexts. There he is studying the issue of learned helplessness or powerlessness created in mental health systems and the creation of individual and group “agency” or empowerment as a healing response to this.

In addition to the prisoner/ex-prisoner work Daigu does in Greeley and Colorado Springs, he is a mentor with Prison Dharma Network. Daigu is planning another event in Portland OR in the next few months with Portland Hearing Voices Network. This event will be an awareness raising event about Zen and mental health recovery. It will be a kickoff for Hospital Dharma Project. He is with other psychiatric survivors from Portland planning on initiating a project to teach meditation in mental hospitals.

Some of his research can be found at www.professored.com and he can be reached at his work phone 719-538- 1445. His email address is ed.knight@ValueOptions.com


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