I am troubled by the state of mental health care in America. Most of this blog comments on my personal experiences in mental health facilities, but I often include links to news articles about mental health issues that I found on yahoo or msn.
Today I found an article that made me feel hopeful for the next generation of schizophrenics. According to the Washington Post, there are new early-intervention programs geared at teenagers and young adults whose pre-psychotic symptoms have already begun to spring up. Pre-psychotic symptoms can include a lot of the negative symptoms such as lack of motivation, loss of affect, and social withdrawal. The social withdrawal part is a huge issue that needs dealing with. For people whose lines between reality and unreality blur, often times a neutral third party can provide a much needed balance in perspective. Personally, I know that my cousins and close family members were the only thing that kept me from talking out loud to myself or shutting out the external world entirely. They provided a non-psychotic mentality to combat my psychotic mentality. Of course, Abilify, the anti-psychotic drug, is what finally eliminated the positive symptoms (i.e. hallucinations, voices, feelings of persecution, paranoia), but I would not have been able to complete college without the support of a social network.
Unlike most schizophrenics, I finished college after I had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The majority of my 20's were spent being sent repeatedly to mental institutions. I call that time the "Lost Decade" because I could only focus on keeping my head above water. Sure, I worked part-time at multiple jobs and attended a community college part-time, but I was never able to maintain my normalcy until about 2010. Enter a rehabilitation program designed to retrain severely mentally ill people to reintegrate into society. After the intensive 6 month, out-patient program, I was released into the care of another mental health care provider where I consistently met with my doctor and a counselor. The toll of being mentally ill had drained me psychologically and I needed someone to talk to about the repercussions of my psychotic episodes (I often experienced "flash backs" of my psychotic episodes and the time in the hospitals. The scent and taste of orange juice is repellent to me because it reminds me of being ordered to drink my orange juice and milk inside a mental health hospital every day by one of the mental health techs. Also, anything that has to do with lack of privacy (aka the Snowden Affair) triggers moments of abject fear of persecution and mind control). The therapy allowed me to bridge the gap between my internal world and the external world through the guidance of a counselor. I do not, of course, believe therapy is the "solution" to schizophrenia, but it is an important addition to the treatment plan.
Since 2011, I have been a return University student living a double life. One life involves attending classes, making social connections, getting good grades, and entering the Master's program right after I received my Bachelor's degree from a California State University. The other life involved constant monitoring by a team of health care professionals who often called me unexpectedly to have me tell them about my day to day life and what my major sources of stress were. This might sound extreme, but it worked. The program managed to re-install the social functions that I lost during my psychotic episodes. I cannot detail the many ways that treating the negative (aka social) symptoms associated with schizophrenia can help the person reintegrate into society without freaking everybody out (not that your freaking out is our problem, that is society's stigmatization problem, but it is true that our spontaneous fits of unprovoked laughter can unnerve you Normals).
This new consideration of treating the negative symptoms is truly a benefit to schizophrenics and to society in general. This Washington Post link details a new, social reintegration approach to dealing with negative symptoms before they morph into full blown positive symptoms (i.e. voices, visual hallucinations). The best part is that it is aimed at young adults who are at a perceived risk of developing the disease (who defines what constitutes "risk" in an alleged pre-schizophrenic is a topic for another blog post, but I should note that there is the potential of misdiagnosing people). The article goes on to say that the state of Maine has seen hospitalizations for newly psychotic patients has dropped by over 30% (as cited in the Washington Post, edit: July 16th, 2014 by the journalist S. Shomashekhar).
As a thirty-one year old with schizophrenia, this is wonderful news, if not for me, then for the next generation of schizophrenics who are growing up in the wake of the recent mass murders committed by alleged---I repeat---alleged---shooters with mental illness. Being raised in a society where one is perceived as a threat to the community despite one's obedience of the law is unjust. I cannot stand by quietly and allow this mass hysteria to ruin the lives of my fellow skitzes. This article shows that there is no need for society to alienate us (we do this fairly well on our own, anyway) and that intervention by society can spawn a generation of schizophrenics who can fully re-enter society.
Thank you, Washington Post and the state of Maine, for not seeing us as disposable creatures meant to be warehoused in a cold and often neglectful mental institution! You have made my day by sharing this story of hope for the next generation. It might be too late for me to recover from the emotional scars of the mental hospital, but it is not too late for the next generation of skitzes.
To you, generation of new skitzes, I advise you to take advantage of these opportunities and to take comfort in knowing that your generation will not experience the mental asylums the way I did. There is hope in little things. Hope in a smile of a stranger, hope in that moment of silence when the voices stop, hope in a healing society!
Here is the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/promising-new-approach-helps-curb-early-schizophrenia-in-teens-young-adults/2014/08/06/82609e74-fd77-11e3-b1f4-8e77c632c07b_story.html
Today I found an article that made me feel hopeful for the next generation of schizophrenics. According to the Washington Post, there are new early-intervention programs geared at teenagers and young adults whose pre-psychotic symptoms have already begun to spring up. Pre-psychotic symptoms can include a lot of the negative symptoms such as lack of motivation, loss of affect, and social withdrawal. The social withdrawal part is a huge issue that needs dealing with. For people whose lines between reality and unreality blur, often times a neutral third party can provide a much needed balance in perspective. Personally, I know that my cousins and close family members were the only thing that kept me from talking out loud to myself or shutting out the external world entirely. They provided a non-psychotic mentality to combat my psychotic mentality. Of course, Abilify, the anti-psychotic drug, is what finally eliminated the positive symptoms (i.e. hallucinations, voices, feelings of persecution, paranoia), but I would not have been able to complete college without the support of a social network.
Unlike most schizophrenics, I finished college after I had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The majority of my 20's were spent being sent repeatedly to mental institutions. I call that time the "Lost Decade" because I could only focus on keeping my head above water. Sure, I worked part-time at multiple jobs and attended a community college part-time, but I was never able to maintain my normalcy until about 2010. Enter a rehabilitation program designed to retrain severely mentally ill people to reintegrate into society. After the intensive 6 month, out-patient program, I was released into the care of another mental health care provider where I consistently met with my doctor and a counselor. The toll of being mentally ill had drained me psychologically and I needed someone to talk to about the repercussions of my psychotic episodes (I often experienced "flash backs" of my psychotic episodes and the time in the hospitals. The scent and taste of orange juice is repellent to me because it reminds me of being ordered to drink my orange juice and milk inside a mental health hospital every day by one of the mental health techs. Also, anything that has to do with lack of privacy (aka the Snowden Affair) triggers moments of abject fear of persecution and mind control). The therapy allowed me to bridge the gap between my internal world and the external world through the guidance of a counselor. I do not, of course, believe therapy is the "solution" to schizophrenia, but it is an important addition to the treatment plan.
Since 2011, I have been a return University student living a double life. One life involves attending classes, making social connections, getting good grades, and entering the Master's program right after I received my Bachelor's degree from a California State University. The other life involved constant monitoring by a team of health care professionals who often called me unexpectedly to have me tell them about my day to day life and what my major sources of stress were. This might sound extreme, but it worked. The program managed to re-install the social functions that I lost during my psychotic episodes. I cannot detail the many ways that treating the negative (aka social) symptoms associated with schizophrenia can help the person reintegrate into society without freaking everybody out (not that your freaking out is our problem, that is society's stigmatization problem, but it is true that our spontaneous fits of unprovoked laughter can unnerve you Normals).
This new consideration of treating the negative symptoms is truly a benefit to schizophrenics and to society in general. This Washington Post link details a new, social reintegration approach to dealing with negative symptoms before they morph into full blown positive symptoms (i.e. voices, visual hallucinations). The best part is that it is aimed at young adults who are at a perceived risk of developing the disease (who defines what constitutes "risk" in an alleged pre-schizophrenic is a topic for another blog post, but I should note that there is the potential of misdiagnosing people). The article goes on to say that the state of Maine has seen hospitalizations for newly psychotic patients has dropped by over 30% (as cited in the Washington Post, edit: July 16th, 2014 by the journalist S. Shomashekhar).
As a thirty-one year old with schizophrenia, this is wonderful news, if not for me, then for the next generation of schizophrenics who are growing up in the wake of the recent mass murders committed by alleged---I repeat---alleged---shooters with mental illness. Being raised in a society where one is perceived as a threat to the community despite one's obedience of the law is unjust. I cannot stand by quietly and allow this mass hysteria to ruin the lives of my fellow skitzes. This article shows that there is no need for society to alienate us (we do this fairly well on our own, anyway) and that intervention by society can spawn a generation of schizophrenics who can fully re-enter society.
Thank you, Washington Post and the state of Maine, for not seeing us as disposable creatures meant to be warehoused in a cold and often neglectful mental institution! You have made my day by sharing this story of hope for the next generation. It might be too late for me to recover from the emotional scars of the mental hospital, but it is not too late for the next generation of skitzes.
To you, generation of new skitzes, I advise you to take advantage of these opportunities and to take comfort in knowing that your generation will not experience the mental asylums the way I did. There is hope in little things. Hope in a smile of a stranger, hope in that moment of silence when the voices stop, hope in a healing society!
Here is the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/promising-new-approach-helps-curb-early-schizophrenia-in-teens-young-adults/2014/08/06/82609e74-fd77-11e3-b1f4-8e77c632c07b_story.html
