On Schizophrenia and the Recovery Model of Treatment

My mother is a member of NAMI. NAMI stands for national alliance for the mentally ill. They promote mental health, recovery, reintegration into society, and they also battle stigma and discrimination against the mentally diagnosed. 

I found an article on yahoo's news page about NAMI's current battle to fight stigma. There was an accompanying tale of a man's struggle to find work as a person with schizo-affective disorder. He was told repeatedly that he couldn't work due to his illness. What a shame. Imagine if we had told John Nash he couldn't go to college because of his condition. The world would never have known game theory!

http://news.yahoo.com/virginia-man-wont-let-mental-illness-define-him-170410339.html

The outlook for mentally ill people used to be bleak. It kind of still is, but there is a movement towards a recovery model that can change the common fate of the current model (current model = disability paychecks and lots of bed rest). The recovery model promotes maintenance of mental health. By educating the mentally ill and their families about their illnesses, there is a greater chance that a relapse can be prevented from happening.

For example, if I start thinking paranoid thoughts (like my friend is really an agent sent to gather intel on me), I can stop this process from becoming a full blown delusion by asking myself what evidence I have of this thought, how can I counter this thought, and whether or not it is logical or cost-effective for the agency to do this against an ordinary citizen like myself. The answer is no, it is not logical or cost-effective and there is no evidence to support this. Now, instead of having a minor relapse, I have isolated a defective cognitive thought and quarantined it. Then I can relay this information to my out-patient care provider and they can assist me in further ways, such as providing verbal reinforcement about this thought being defective, or by upping my dose of psychotropic medication. 

Prior to very recently, this would not have been feasible. A therapist would give up, throw the towel in and possibly even send me to a hospital for in-patient treatment. The common thought was that therapy can't help psychotics, only medication and restraints help psychotics. However, those days are gradually dissolving. We now know there are positive symptoms of schizophrenia (delusions, auditory hallucinations, etc.) and NEGATIVE symptoms (apathy, loss of happy feelings, introverted personality tendencies, inability to socialize, scattered speech, etc.). Medications generally only provide relief from POSITIVE symptoms, though the new drugs on trial may be paving the way to change this. Therapy, coping skills, family interventions, friends, and self-maintenance are the ways to reboot the schizophrenic's cognitive state by treating the NEGATIVE symptoms as well.

What I hate the most about being schizophrenic is that the only media portrayal we have is of first-time psychotics going sociopathic and shooting people. Just because a couple of psychiatrists found 2 mass murderers to be paranoid schizophrenics does not justify labeling all of us as potential killers. First of all, there is no mass murderer gene. Schizophrenia is a complicated disorder that affects the genetic structure of a person's DNA. Some research even suggests it may be a misfire of how our DNA is activated.

science daily article on new findings about schizophrenia

Nowhere in the scientific literature does it state that schizophrenia is a killing disease. Even sociopathy isn't defined as a killing disease! Just in case you don't know, sociopathy is the personality disorder (as opposed to genetic disorder that is schizophrenia) that causes people to be narcissistic and apathetic about the feelings of others---extreme sociopaths include Ted Bundy, and lesser sociopaths include that control freak ex-manager of mine who followed me around with a nasty temper. I am not making this up, I took a class from a respected criminal profiler last January and he stated that sociopaths pose much more of a risk than schizophrenics ever will. He then held out his arms at his sides and said "my right hand is a sociopath, my left hand is a schizophrenic, two different hands, get it? They're far apart. There's probably a schizophrenic here in the room and you don't even know it! Raise your hand, where are you?" I pretended to look around for the schizophrenic while refusing to raise my hand (I'm the paranoid sub-type and I was too paranoid to expose myself in a room with 150 strangers. ; /  )But it was good to hear somebody finally dispel the myth that schizophrenics are violent, agitated people who need to be chained to trees and left for the elements. 

We need love! With that thought, I'd like to add that I found an opportunity to establish a NAMI affiliated club within my University. I just need 5 people and the okay from NAMI. I'd like to be part of the solution towards a recovery model for mental health. Cross your fingers and hope for the best for my idea of a NAMI campus club! I sent them an email yesterday, hopefully they'll reply before the new semester starts!

PS I am still reading "The Center Cannot Hold", I'm on page 100-something, and it gets better and better! I strongly recommend Elyn R. Saks as the book to read this month! :)

An Excellent Book On Schizophrenia by Elyn Saks

I just ordered this book, The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks, through amazon dot com and it arrived yesterday. I have read all of 24 pages and I'm hooked. It's the kind of book that gets me so excited I can't sit still. 24 pages into this memoir of psychosis and I had to set it down and take a long walk while listening to industrial techno music. I felt the euphoria of someone who had just found somebody who was like myself.

Yes, 24 pages is all it took to make me endorse a book I barely read. From the opening scene at the Yale Law school library's rooftop to the admission of early drug use to her parents--- that's as far as I got before I realized I was reading a book up there with An Unquiet Mind and Prozac Nation.

I am so excited about this book I felt like promoting it before I even finished it. True, only a few people visit this blog, but to you, the random one person who accidentally stumbled here, I encourage you to purchase this book and give it a read.

Due to the nature of schizophrenia it is difficult to find a writer who can detail her/his illness with clarity and insight, as the illness can rob us sufferers of clarity of thought. Many of the memoirs on schizophrenia are written by the close relatives of people who suffer from the disease. There are some notable exceptions, such as the son of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. who wrote Eden's Express (Mark Vonnegut).

Elyn R. Saks really comes out as a major prose writer, as well as a memoir writer, which makes her writing all the more powerful. At one point, she writes that she felt like an "insect on a pin" while being admitted to a psychiatric facility. This is too true. Sad, but honest and well-written.

Please purchase this book! It is a good way to see that a schizophrenic is just a person with a cognitive disability, someone who can nonetheless achieve goals in life.

Here's a link to the book on amazon dot com.
http://www.amazon.com/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Through

Mental Health Budget Cuts

I'm not a politician. I'm not an accountant. I am, however, a paranoid schizophrenic with a long history of hospitalizations.

To a politician, mental health budget cuts means less taxes on the 99%. To an accountant, mental health budget cuts means more money in the piggy bank. To a person with depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, ADHD, autism, or any other mental health diagnosis, the mental health budget cuts means a bleak future, no medicine, no treatment, possibly no work, and general misery.

In a way I am lucky to have been forcibly hospitalized so often because the county realized it is much cheaper just to put me in a treatment program and put me on pharmaceutical assistance programs than it  costs to warehouse me like a piece of veal in a psych ward for a month every year. So I am one of the lucky ones that gets medication from a long-term care provider, and only because I've been deemed "institutionalized." Institutionalized means that I have been in the hospital so often that I've become almost dependent on the process of being 5150'd and locked up in order to recover.

The topic of recovery is a touchy issue for some. While there is no cure for paranoid schizo-affective disorder (schizo-affective=a combination of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia), there are medications that take away the positive symptoms such as delusions, paranoia, auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, and anxiety that results from experiencing these cognitive malfunctions. There is also behavioral modification therapy that focuses on re-integrating mental patients into society. These therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, are sessions where a therapist asks about the persons life and tries to make the patient's outlook on his/her life to be more positive and productive.

For example, one of my goals in therapy was to become more social. My time in the hospitals made me feel like a freak, somebody nobody would want to associate with. My therapist reframed this idea for me by saying that I had a disability no different from a learning disability, and that a person's adverse reaction to my diagnosis did not reflect on myself. She also said that if I didn't feel comfortable telling people I am mentally disabled, I was not obliged to do so. Over time, I learned to manage my negative symptoms (negative symptoms=asocial tendencies, flat affect, indifference, lack of motivation). I smiled more, asked people about their days, made an effort to reach out with compliments, and pretty soon I had friends! Of course, none of them know I am schizophrenic, but that's because I am leery of telling the uninitiated about a disease barely anybody even understands. My point is that therapy provided a base to relay my fears about talking to people and through therapy, I was able to befriend graduate students and undergrads at my University without making a total ass out of myself. :)

Without the funding for outpatient services none of this would have been possible. I would be miserable, jobless, penniless, friendless, a drain on the welfare system, and hiding in my room all day, afraid of invisible assassins. The cost on taxpayers would be greater than it is now, and I'm not on government cash assistance! And if your answer is to say, just let them roam the streets and remove the burden off taxpayers---you're not thinking of what that entails. First, you probably know somebody who is mentally ill and you would probably prefer to pay 25 cents per paycheck rather than watch a loved one suffer. Second, think about the possibility of unmedicated psychotics wandering the streets wondering why you hate them so much---are YOU the assassin they're afraid of? Most of us aren't dangerous, but I'd be lying if I said NONE of us are dangerous unmedicated. There's bound to be some psychotics, depressives, manics, or whatever, out there who are unpredictable without the mind controlling effects of psychotropic medications. My point is, 25 cents isn't that much and it is worth it if it gets thousands of mentally ill people out of hospital beds and into jobs where they can be productive to society.

Thanks for reading!

Finals Week on Campus

Some people go to a confessional booth to see a priest. I am not that religious. Instead, I come to cyberspace to spit out my secrets, hoping somebody somewhere will absolve me.

My mother would be so ashamed of me, keeping my life open like some kind of tart.

I should really be studying for finals right now. I will, I'm not that lazy. I've just written about 30 pages of research for my undergrad classes and I feel like I should take a breather, just until 9 tonight.

I have nothing dramatic to say, I quit with the melodrama last summer when I broke up with an insensitive male lover. Instead, I am going to talk about my life goals. Why? I dunno. If you're looking for something more daring, please read "Confessions of a Closet Schizophrenic" or "Confessions of a Closet Bisexual" that I wrote a few months back.

I completed all but one of my lower and upper division general education classes already. Next semester I have 2 linguistics classes, 2 foreign language classes, and 1 theory of dance class that fulfills the last of my general education requirements. Then I graduate. What I do after I graduate is unknown, as the job prospects are limited for somebody who only has a B.A. This economy isn't ideal, to say the least.

Saturday I am going to the campus library to study for hours. My friend will hopefully join me so we can rent one of those rooms with a whiteboard. Sunday I am going to the library to study. Monday I am going early so I can go to the library and study. Then I take my phonology final. Then I go back to studying a foreign language, a class which was going well until my grandfather died right before Thanksgiving. I have to memorize 20 sentences worth of dialogue, including spelling, in a non-romance language. After this, I should only have my Chinese final to prepare for.


There's this yahoo gossip column about some female student who went berserk in the library at another CSU (or was it UC?). She snapped over the loudness of somebody's breathing and started hollering all over the place. Man, I am glad I tend to isolate when I get stressed out or there might be some kind of viral video of me curling up in fetal position under a desk  in the library, muttering poorly enunciated Chinese words to no one.

Finals week sucks.

One student in my French 2B class last semester told me she had a breakdown every semester. She showed up for our project red-eyed and still puffy from sobbing. "I've been on a crying jag for a few hours," she admitted. She was in the graduate program for music. I gently asked her if she might consider an anti-depressant but she laughed me off. She's out there somewhere, having another nervous breakdown. I guess this is me having my break down.

When I have breakdowns I stuff them down by eating too much. That's probably why I gained the weight back I lost taking that martial arts class. I was 159 about 3 weeks ago, and now I'm 161. I tend to be an anxiety-eater. You know the type, the type that tries to be really pleasant and helpful to everyone but eats in binges until the stressful event passes. That was me last week. I didn't have enough Zoloft, my grandpa had just died, my grades were falling from A's to low B's, and it was about to be finals week. So I ate. I ate a hamburger from McDonalds---and I'm a vegetarian! I ate 230 calories worth of salty french fries with that stupid hamburger. In the middle of the night I went foraging for rice cakes. Yes, those are only like 50 calories for 2, but I ate like 6 or 8!

Today I tried to control my caloric intake by avoiding eating with my family and instead munching on 3 pieces of sushi for lunch. Then I saw my therapist, who gently goaded me to accept my life as it is now. She said it's okay to overeat on occasion, so long as it's only during finals week. But last finals week I ballooned up to 190 pounds and it took me from April to September to climb down to 160 pounds.

I feel that food is like the only thing keeping me from curling into a ball in bed and refusing to take my finals. Well, that and coffee....lots and lots of coffee. Like 8 cups of coffee a day. Therapist also said to cut back on the coffee. If only I could! It tastes so good with splenda and some half and half. Yes, I know, half and half won't help me lose weight, but I need my caffeine fix so I just delete a snack for the day and pour in some creamer without remorse.

Tonight I am going to write a list of all the Chinese characters we have learned over the semester and begin to copy them over and over and over again. Plus, I will read through the chapters in my phonology book. Then I will take an anti-anxiety drug and go to sleep. Ah, the pleasure of psychotropic medications. It's funny, people who are medicated get this rap for being unstable, but if anything we are so medicated we're the most stable in the room! Where one person starts yelling about people breathing too loud, I just take my medication early and nap away the stress. Is that healthy? Oh who cares, this is a Prozac Nation anyways (read the book, too!).

I Wish I Was Successful

I wish I was successful. I wish I had money from real jobs, not just the grant money my University gives me at the start of the semester.

I've always been working class. I've always done menial labor work like being a pizza delivery girl or working as a cashier. I wonder what it would be like to have a profession, to be respected, to have real responsibilities.

I turned in two term papers this week and I'm nervous! What if I totally fail miserably? I feel like a fool; like somebody who is lecturing to a packed auditorium on a topic I know nothing about---and I'm lecturing in my underwear. I have to pass all these classes. I have to advance into the next round--my final semester as an undergraduate.

I know I did horrible on several quizzes due to my grandfather's death, but I hope I succeed. I tried so hard, it is really difficult knowing you tried your best and it wasn't enough!

Ah well, if things go horribly awry I can just go back to delivering pizzas for dollar tips. It wasn't so bad. Okay, yes it was.

I had a break from academia recently. I spent the night at a couple's house with whom I am friends with. We watched movies, drank white wine, ate Indian vegetarian cuisine, and chatted about how draining college can be. Still, there's nothing like checking your grade and getting an A on something you busted your ass doing! It feels much better than delivering a pizza, I can tell you that much!

My love/hate affair with Academia

I spent 4 months cultivating my grades to an A- average. I am carrying 16 units, over full-time, of upper-division courses. I tended to my homework and to my academics like a gardener tends to her roses and sunflowers. Everyday, homework, studies.

In one to two weeks my months of hard work has been undone. My grandfather was the closest thing I had to a father my whole life. He died right before Thanksgiving and since that time I have had a hard time concentrating and doing well in my classes. I bombed a quiz. I bombed the first draft of a paper. One would assume that since my grades were in the 90th percentile, I'd be alright. But no, weighted grades means that my top grades plummeted to a low B in one class, a C in 2 others. That academia is built this way; allowing a student who maintained an A for four months, only to take it away in a heartbeat, is a damn shame.

Then there's all the other issues. Students disregard my work because they think I'm getting it "easy" because I'm a minority. Just the other day, a student complained about his 78% score on his homework by saying that a fellow who happens to be Indonesian got an 86% on his homework that was "identical" and that the professor must be a reverse racist.
 That's funny, considering the professor is a White guy who made a racist remark himself about how Mexicans are "dishwashers." Being a Mexican myself (or Chicana, since I was born here in California), this stung. You're hated either way; either you're a lowly dishwasher or you're getting it easy because of your race.

Recently a professor falsely accused me of cheating, allegedly because she though a scribble on my answer sheet was a cheat sheet (it was just the exam question written on my paper so I wouldn't have to keep glancing up at the whiteboard). My thought, however, is that her action was far more nefarious. It was as if she were searching for a reason to destroy my academic potential---the only brown skinned girl in the class, of course, I had to have been cheating, right? Or maybe it was my tattoos that made her peg me as a deviant type. Whatever her motivation, I gritted my teeth and explained myself. I was polite even though I had been totally humiliated in front of my peers! She later sent out a mass email to our class apologizing for her behavior, but it was far, far too late.

These examples are just the tip of the ice burg when it comes to the ugly side of academia. Professors yell about how all their students are cheating, all of their students are being allowed in due to affirmative action, blah blah blah. Well, this is my side of the coin: my grades are better than the others, that's why I'm in college, not because of a long-since banned affirmative action program. My grades are better than quite a few students even now that they've dropped due to my grieving state, even though I feel like crying every day because I miss the only man in my life who was reliably good to me. I deserve to be in academia. I'm not leaving. Ridiculously weighted grades, insulting students, false accusations, plummeting grades and all----I'm willing to take this all because I told my grandfather on his deathbed that I would complete college and get a job, that he wouldn't have to worry about me because I would be doing alright.

Obesity As Genetic Mutation

Hello,
I am watching an excellent episode of NOVA concerning the problem of obesity.
Yes, if you eat only fast food and sit down all day, you'll get fat. That's like obese person, type 1.
But there's another version of obesity: set-point obesity, or obese person, type 2.
This NOVA episode investigates the brain receptors and the genetic make-up of obese patients. MC-4 is a receptor that triggers the "I'm full" response in humans. For some people, this receptor is absent, which makes over-eating inevitable.
Finally, a scientific approach to studying obesity! I was getting really tired of people saying "just don't eat! It's your fault you eat so much!" Truly, these people are ignorant, but unfortunately, they're the majority of people in American society (and the most vocal ones as well).

Here's the link to NOVA
http://video.pbs.org/video/1506746269
Enjoy!