My last post was a little bleak. I blame the hot weather in my city, and my ever changing internal moods for that.

I discussed the abuse at the hospitals with my therapist. Well, I didn't so much discuss things as I ranted and raved for a good hour about the injustices in the American mental health care system. Finally, he stitched me back together in about five minutes of behavioral modification (or cognitive behavioral therapy, whichever term you prefer), altered my perspective, and sent me home feeling like a little embarrassed for losing my patience.

I have this love hate relationship with the county mental health system. They were both the people who hurt me and the people who saved me and helped me to recover. Sometimes, the same person is in both categories.

I have been a ward of the county's mental health program since the age of 22-23 (previous to that I was enrolled in private insurance under my mother which warehoused me in the hospital that was actually pretty fancy back in the day, with lavish cakes for dessert and non-stop art therapy). For the bulk of the time I was with the county I felt ignored, belittled, maligned, and neglected. At one county center my doctor was a new person every three months, the previous doctor having quit or gotten fired, and it was a stressful relaying all the painful bits of my life to a new doctor every three months.

Then again, the county provided free medicine so long as I entered a rehabilitation program, but that was years later, in approximately 2008-2009. The county both provided for me and left me to my madness with no concern for my well being. It was a confusing time, my enemies were my carers and my carers weren't caring....but they could care at random and unexpected moments. If this sounds confusing, that is exactly what I felt. Confused. Alone. Tormented by internal voices and treated as a leper by the external world. But there were moments of refuge. I found refuge with other schizophrenics and bipolar people. I made unlikely friends: from different social classes, of different races, and different religions. The only thing that bonded us was our shared experience of forced hospitalization. Despite what we were (or had been) on the outside, once inside we became blank, generic mental patients; interchangeable cogs in a machine we had no control over.

I cannot relay just how startling it can be to have staff not speak to you when they approach you to take your blood pressure. It is a silent act between a nurse and whatever that person saw me as: a sick person, maybe, or maybe they saw me as a sick thing, a thing that was more like an animal than like them. It is when you have been dehumanized to this point that something kicks in: a final coping mechanism. A last ditch effort to find human decency where there is none. Every smile becomes a source of fuel, more powerful than the watered down decaf coffee they serve on the wards. A smile could make the boredom tolerable, could make the interactions with the volatile patients tolerable, make being in captivity while the world moves around without you---tolerable. The bonds I made with the other schizophrenics are deep. I still run into someone from the hospital from time to time (in the county behavioral center, on the bus, etc...) they have always cracked a wide grin, approached me, sometimes hugged me, always asked how I was and if I remembered this group or that hospital from the past. I will not lie, I both cringe and breathe a sigh of relief whenever I run into another former patient. I cringe because I am almost done with my Master's degree now (I am going to be in my final semester this fall), I  have been passably healthy and out of the hospital for 5-6 years now, I have new hobbies, new friends, a new life---I pretend like I was not that sick person banging on the bullet-proof window rambling about suicide and CIA agents; I cringe because it hurts to remember the damage. Yet, I breathe a sigh of relief because I can finally smile my real smile at somebody who knew the "real me." There is a kinship between us former mental patients based on the mutual experience of being dehumanized, marginalized, imprisoned, all for our own good.We are what society mocks, at least when they are not busy building up hysteria around us because of some sociopath who may or may not have also had the label of schizophrenic, bipolar, or autistic at some point in their pasts. I strongly disagree with the idea that schizophrenia, bipolar, or autism disorder is the root (or even tangential) cause of mass murders. I have known many great men and women who were totally insane. One of the kindest woman on the wards was a middle-aged African-American lady who said she heard non-stop golden oldies playing like a radio in her head to the point where she could hear and do nothing else (except sing along, which, to my great amusement, she did frequently). I must remember this woman and the others whenever I get angry about the hospitals. There was cruelty, yes, but there was also random acts of love and compassion that I have never found on the Outside.

I will always love those that I met on the inside: who found a way to keep their souls through everything. They are like me. I am like them. This reminds me of a book by Philip K. Dick called "Clans of the Alphane Moon," a science fiction tale about a future where the mentally ill were rocketed en mass into outer-space, to colonize their own planet without infringing on the realities of the Normals. It is a great book! I  highly recommend it due to its unique insight into the quirks of those with mental illnesses and its laugh out loud style humor. On this random note, I bid you adieu. 

Mental Health Book List

Over the years, I have felt inspired, educated, and intrigued by the following books listed below. Each one is related to mental health. Some books are memoirs, others are novels. I hope there is at least one of these books available at your public or campus library.

~ The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks = A true, often witty, more often harrowing story of the author's experiences as a schizophrenic attending law school at some of the most prestigious universities in the world. She is also on TedTalks discussing her illness. Also, she is on UCTelevision's youtube channel talking about her experiences and her knowledge of mental health and the law.

~ An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison = A lively true story written in flowing prose. Dr. Jamison was diagnosed with bipolar disorder while holding prestigious research positions at top medical universities. Quite the prolific writer, Dr. Jamison has written a number of books that are important reads (see, "Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide", and "Touched by Fire").

~ Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Except More So by Mark Vonnegut = A memoir by a doctor slash writer slash schizophrenic who overcomes his diagnosis, completes medical school, and becomes a brilliant, witty, and charming doctor slash writer slash person with bipolar disorder with psychosis.

~ Madness by Marya Hornbacher = A memoir of bipolarity, eating disorders, and the creation of multiple wonderful memoirs by a woman whose talented writing surpasses the difficulties she suffered due to numerous diagnoses. Her book, "Wasted", is another amazing literary achievement.

~Wasted by Marya Hornbacher = A memoir of a talented writer hounded by the demons of food obsession and restriction. She focuses this autobiography on her personal experiences as an anorexic slash bulimic and the ways in which her illnesses ruined her relationships and nearly destroyed her health.

~ The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath = A novel based on Plath's real life, this book delves into the tunnel vision of a depressive woman who cannot see how talented she is because she feels only sadness and pain. The tragedy of Sylvia Plath's real life throws a darkness across the pages, but the prose is raw, candid, genuine, and sadly, very prophetic.

~ A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar = A deep, well-researched biography of Dr. John Nash, a mathematical genius who developed paranoid schizophrenia around the time when he was revolutionizing the field of math and science. The movie is excellent as well, but this book deserves special praise for Nasar's in-depth look at the personality of a prodigy whose mind gave birth to both groundbreaking theories and unreal conspiracies.

This is an incomplete list. I have not read every book out there so this list is not comprehensive. The more books I read, the more books I will list here. Have a great night! Thanks for reading.

Comments on Mark Vonnegut's memoirs

I grew up on Kurt Vonnegut's literature, having stumbled upon "God Bless You Mr. Rosewater" at the age of 13. To this day, I still possess 10 Kurt Vonnegut books and an additional 2 copies of Welcome to the Monkey House. What does this have to do with his son, the illustrious Mark Vonnegut? Well, just imagine how much I admired Kurt Vonnegut...now transfer that feeling to his son, a man towards whom I feel a particularly kinship to due to his bipolar/quasi-schizophrenia disorder. Now, multiply that mushy Hallmark feeling times 10 and that's how I feel about his newest memoir, "Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So."

My favorite sentence thus far has been where he states that you can tell who has the mental illness in his family by pointing at the people who look ten or more years younger than their actual ages. I had to crack up. All of my classmates originally thought I was mid-twenties or younger until I laughingly confessed I was pushing thirty. "Must be all the laughing and crying...it keeps the facial muscles toned," says Mark Vonnegut on the subject.

I also had to crack up at the part where he states his new, post-psychosis goal of becoming a doctor: he had all of a 1.8 GPA in the math and science field going into college again. "It seemed natural," he said, then cited the optimism of mania. Thankfully for his patients, Mark Vonnegut was stable for the period during his medical schooling (take THAT Stanford professor who thinks no mentally ill person should bother to apply to med school because we shouldn't be allowed to be in the medical field in the first place~!! Ha ha, counter-evidence to your biased discrimination!). He is now an M.D. That's right, M.D. Capital letters and everything!

If Mark Vonnegut MD had typed up a bland, melodramatic memoir, I still would have been inspired. But his memoir is littered with wit, charm, self-deprecating moments, and a tendency to organize paragraphs slightly more loosely than one of those Normal writers (if there exists such a thing as a Normal writer, aren't writers generally moody? See "Touched by Fire" by Kay Redfield Jamison for a psychology study on the prevalence of depression and mania in successful writers). This turns his book into a mental playground where the swings are sentences, the monkey bars, paragraphs, and the sandbox, whole chapters! I love this book.

It is not enough that he has accomplished so much---this is something he says---but what came in between all those accomplishments that is really the soul of Mark Vonnegut. I agree. Was it really my "intelligence" or "aptitude" that got me into graduate school despite my mental illness, or was it those years I spent lugging trash bags to the dumpster outside the pizza joint I worked at, delusional and convinced that my boss was plotting to kill me after everyone else clocked out? Horrifying, yes, but it helped put things in perspective. No injustice in academia is as bad as lugging restaurant trash into the night rain, checking behind me for the angry boss who probably really did hate me, wondering if there was anything in life outside of a pizza joint. There is, not that there is anything wrong with working in a pizza joint...I just prefer to write essays, I guess.