Networking with Schizophrenics Online is Hard

At some point, I will have to find an actual career. Until then, I am going to blog for a little while, just to let others know that it is possible to have a part-time job, go to graduate school full-time, while being a former mental patient diagnosed as schizo-affective.

The main idea people have of schizophrenics is that we go on rampage killings or that we are homeless or in boarding houses. According to the nimh site (national institute of mental health), 1% of Americans have been diagnosed as schizophrenic. According to the schizophrenia.com website, around 2 million Americans have schizophrenia. Where are these 2 million people? Homeless? With family? Independent? Incarcerated?

I go on youtube and forum boards, trying to network with other schizophrenics. The thing is that a number of us are paranoid subtypes. This can mean we are naturally distrustful, suspicious, cautious, and reluctant to reveal too much of ourselves. Or it can mean we think you, the reader, are a member of a shadowy secret organization intent on patrolling cyberspace, if I am to be totally honest. But usually our paranoid tendencies don’t manifest in totally outrageous conspiracy plots like that one, but in more mundane settings like being afraid of getting “outed” on the internet as a person with a mental health diagnosis. This can make us generally leery of chatting with other schizophrenics or about sharing our experiences as being schizophrenic.

I think I am different because I feel slightly more comfortable than other schizophrenics talking about my mental illness on the internet, where I have a fragment of anonymity. Also, I have taken my cocktail of pharmaceuticals regularly since 2009. That was the last time I was in the hospital, if I remember correctly. Being on medication regularly makes me feel almost normal. I will always have a paranoid streak, but at least now it is not a handicap.

My quest for kinship with other schizophrenics is at a standstill. I can’t find too many others who have benefited greatly from medication and can be reintegrated into society. I know they are out there. They just don’t post publicly online, which makes them difficult to network with.

If you are a schizophrenic, please network with others! We can share experiences, learn valuable lessons, and help the mental health system to evolve into a compassionate model of decent treatment services!

Lions, and Tigers, and Finals Week.

When the only thing that separates me from the other former mental patients is that I can perform well in school, finals week is a stressful, coffee-indulging, binge-eating festival of intellectual carnage.

I am schizo-affective. Most of my kindred schizophrenics are busy talking to pigeons in the downtown park, or rocking themselves in their drug-induced stupor. Some of us lead “normal lives,” though. I am apparently one of them. I work part-time and attend college as a Master’s program student full-time. Nobody knows what I am: a former mental patient who spent the ages of 19 – 25 in and out of mental hospitals before I finally stabilized on meds and took them consistently.

Now, I must study and prove that I am more than a delinquent set of brain chemicals called dopamine and serotonin. I am more than a mental patient. Or at least that is the way I must train myself to think or else I will plummet into a fit of self-destructiveness. My entire essence is wrapped up in how I can differentiate myself from society’s image of a schizophrenic: the bizarre, violent, freak of nature that needs to be detained indefinitely. I try to think of myself as a student, as a laborer, as a creative thinker, as a writer. Deep down, I will always be that girl locked in solitary confinement in the triage center of the hospital with three security guards monitoring every movement, but it’s worth a try to act like I have a chance at a happy life. I deserve that. On that nice thought, I will take my leave. Have a great day!