My Diagnosis: AKA Just to clarify I am not a sociopath

To recap my diagnosis: I am schizo-affective. I even have my own printed out copy of the main file of my on record with the county mental health office. I am not a sociopath. I have to say this with half a smile because I keep seeing "female sociopath" and "sociopathic women" in the stats area for this blog. I smile because of all the decades that mental health workers have cared for me, they have never ever said I have sociopathic tendencies. It is the one thing I am not (thankfully).
These are the things that I have been diagnosed with (soociopathy not being one of them):
bipolar
schizophrenic, paranoid sub-type
schizo-affective
dual diagnosis (diagnosis + cannabis abuse)
ptsd (don't ask me why)

Humorously, someone out in the web must have decided I was a sociopath and linked it to my blog, which is fair, I guess, except they got the diagnosis wrong. Arm chair psychiatrists, what can I say?

Anyways, thanks to those who read with an open mind. The world out there for people like me is very unkind and society is quick to label those of us with a mental health diagnosis as violent, or potentially violent.

I can assure you that I am indeed a graduate student who has no criminal record whatsoever (and I don't even cheat on taxes or speed while driving!). I am indeed disabled cognitively when having an episode. I am not a sociopath. It would offend me except that I recognize the deep-seated hostility and fear of those who would decide I qualify as a sociopath -- it is not sociopathy, it is a furious wrath that has built up over years of both abuse and negligence in the mental hospitals. If you were me, you would be pissed, too.

"Whoever told you you're schizophrenic was an idiot," --disability evaluator

I saw a disability evaluator last week. She was a stocky African American lady with a polished, clipped voice and a skeptical look to her.

“Whoever told you you were schizophrenic was an IDIOT,” she said, “There is NO chance you are schizophrenic. I know schizophrenia, I evaluate it all the time, and you are NOT a schizophrenic.”

I started to cry. She just glared at me. Having shattered my identity she went on to tell me how I was not entitled to disability, that I was not schizophrenic, blah blah blah. I sat there for 30 minutes listening to her wail on me. I hated her. I hated her from the deepest part of my soul. It is not nice to try to dismantle somebody’s identity. Schizophrenia is part of my identity. It is part of what defines me, and I don’t like people trying to wrestle out my soul with brittle disgust, like she did.

Two days later was my doctor’s appointment. I told her my Master’s program was going well. Then I asked her what my official diagnosis was.

“Schizoaffective,” she said, double checking with the computer’s information. My mind was restored, in a sad way. I knew I was different, sick, ill, not normal. Now, it was re-confirmed. I had spent two days wondering what I was, why had I hallucinated and heard voices if I was not schizophrenic? But everything was okay, or rather, it was back to being not okay--I was schizophrenic. It made me feel happy, in a weird way.

Note to self: Don't trust anyone. DTA.

I hope you have a nice day! Thanks for reading!

Skizzy Lizzie

I always wanted to write a book, but agents are expensive and the market is primarily for mystery or romance, so I guess my manuscript "Skizzy Lizzie: Autobiography of a Paranoid Schizophrenic" will never be.....how sad (sad face).

I guess I'll make due with this blog and the few folks who stop by to play the voyeur. Thanks for stopping in to read this, by the way! I like to see that people are interested in learning what it is like to be a person with a mental illness. I only hope I am worthy of your attention!

I told my psychologist about the Stanford lecturer and his tales of goat killing, maniacal schizophrenics. She told me this would be something I would likely encounter again in the future, and this made me very sad. Sometimes I feel like a pioneer, being in college after receiving a grim prognosis, but other times I feel very small and pathetic, like maybe I can complete my degree, but only after years of struggling, and even then the big question looms: what will I do for money?

I'm 28 years old and I still don't have my degree. I am slated to graduate after taking 2 summer courses in early June. I'm 28 and I don't have any relevant work experience, unless you count delivering pizzas as relevant, and most companies would just scoff. I'm 28 and I'm not married, I don't have offspring, I live with my family, and I go to school with kids who think 23 years is really, really old.

It could be worse, though. Memories of being in a hospital are much worse. You'd think the security would be good, but it's not. The nurses all hide in their rooms and I've had several instances of perverted older men sneak into my room and try things....mental institutions are not day spas. They are not safe. They are remnants of some barbaric practice of subjugation and horror from the Middle Ages. I get restrained onto gurneys every time they ship me from one hospital to another by EMT's with no thought as to the fear that comes with being tied up. They don't even look into my eyes, they just grab me as though my body were state property, push me back into a flat, lying position, and handcuff me to a stretcher. No reason, no justification, not even a little, "this is for your own good" speech, just instant and unnecessary force. I can honestly say I have never hit or attacked anybody in my years of being actively psychotic----so what legal justification is there for tying me to a bed during the ambulance ride?

If you're schizophrenic like I am, maybe you've been through this: the brutality of the mental health system, the death threats of deranged, possibly drug using patients, the presence of felons who are likely faking mental illness to get a few weeks out of their cell, nurses that do not protect your mental well being, social workers who think all mental patients need disability money and a good, soft pillow for sleeping (because that's all they should do---sleep!), and an outpatient service system that is bordering on bankruptcy. Here are some links I found helpful. If (or when) I am hospitalized again, I am writing the number of my local ACLU branch on my arm in ink so that I can have 24/7 access to my legal rights.

San Diego Branch of the ACLU: Phone: (619) 232-2121 (American Civil Liberties Union)
website: http://www.aclusandiego.org

I input San Diego since I'm in Central California. For more information, please see the main ACLU page at : http://www.aclu.org/

Find your local NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill): NAMI locations
Your Rights as a Patient in a Psychiatric Facility: Patient Bill of Rights at healthyminds.org

Remember, every moment you step up for the rights of the mentally ill is potentially one less time somebody else in the future will have to do the same. :)

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! :)

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!

Comment on "An Unquiet Mind" by Kay Redfield Jamison

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the amazing Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, I'll catch you up to speed. She went through medical school and became a successful psychiatrist and researcher.

Despite her long list of outstanding achievements, she was hiding an ailment not too far out of her field of research. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder by a colleague, she, like many of us disordered patients, went through the stages of denial, fear, and secrecy. For the first time, a doctor came out to the medical field as being a patient as well as a healer. Rather than sink into an oblivion of despair, she penned an autobiographical account of her trials, titled "An Unquiet Mind."

Written in lucid, bubbling prose, with plenty of references to various manic poets, Dr. Jamison captivates the reader with her tale. One part that stands out in my mind is the page where she describes experiencing mania after work. She begins to run loops around the parking lot, a rather perplexed colleague watching as she sprints to and fro.

I can relate to this energy, to this temporary high-spirited state. Though outsiders might consider me first and foremost a paranoid schizophrenic, I mostly experience mania, then after several months of mania, I spiral into psychosis, the paranoid schizophrenic type. I rarely experience cognitive misperceptions such as thought insertion, paranoid delusions, and visual hallucinations without the accompanying mania that precedes it and I am convinced I am a psychotic variety of bipolarity, and not a pure schizophrenic. But now I'm having flight of thought...heh heh. Back to the book....

I can relate to the author's experience of being resistant to treatment. For years, I went on and off medications. I believed if I could make the dean's list, how could I possibly be disabled? Disability and hospitals were for people with one leg, or a heart condition. Psych wards were for people who talked to themselves on the street corner and didn't shower. It was hard for me to fit myself into this category of disability, but like Dr. Jamison, I eventually came around to long-term treatment.

Though I haven't earned my B.A. yet (I'm graduating in May, 2012 with a B.A. in interdisciplinary linguistics), I feel that I have done fairly well with myself, considering my past as a pothead, party girl with no money and little ambition.

Reading "An Unquiet Mind" allows me to feel hope for the future. It taught me that even a doctor can have bipolar disorder and still maintain her position within the field...and more than that, she can change the way society perceives mental illness and the potential of people with a diagnosis to go on with productive lives. She taught me hope. Thank you.

Online Exhibitionism

My psychoanalyst wants to know if I'll ever merge all the various pieces of my life into one persona.

The Artist, the Writer, the Student, the Bisexual Lover, the Bipolar Schizophrenic....

Nope, I said. I can't imagine anybody in my city that would be comfortable around all the parts of me. Maybe I am naive, or ignorant, or both, but is there a special soul out there who would be okay with me the way I am?

I have always felt the need to compartmentalize my life into socially acceptable little boxes since I first realized I was different, around the age of 13. Sure, there were moments when I stopped caring, like when I started smoking pot, but even then I wouldn't mention a certain part of myself to close friends.

The best friend I had in my teens and early twenties knew I was bipolar and bisexual, but she had no idea I was a good student, an artist, and a writer.

The boyfriend I had for a year didn't know I was bisexual.

The art teacher I had for nearly two years had no clue that I was missing class because I was in a psychiatric hospital....rather than save my grade by admitting I had a cognitive disability, I just took a mediocre grade.

Now I am even more split....

The best friend I have, who is an excellent student with the same major as myself, has no idea I'm part of United Student Pride, the Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered, Transsexual, Bisexual alliance group on campus. Furthermore, she has no idea I'm schizo-affective and a disabled student who gets accommodations if I request them.

The only person who really knows me, the real me, is my psychoanalyst. Isn't that lame? I think I need to get out more.

This blog is my way of anonymously piecing myself back together. It's my little exhibitionist practice that allows me to vent in front of people without suffering major repercussions in my personal life.

So thank you, anonymous reader from whatever country you're from: I need you. I need you more than you need to read my soap opera life. I am willing to take any harsh comments you may have just for the satisfaction of knowing that, even though you don't like me, you still read about my insignificant life. You know me better than most people! So thanks, from the sincere part of my heart: thanks!

Confessions of a Closet Schizophrenic

I'm a returning University student, a senior with just 1 and a half semesters left to achieve a B.A. I made the dean's list last semester and I also got straight A's taking 13 units during the summer. I'm well-dressed, well-groomed, well-read, and well, crazy.

I'm a decent person with a clean legal record. Unless you count my 5150's where the police came to the house to capture the girl who was cowering in a corner, afraid of assassins barging in at 3 in the morning. Even then, in the midst of my mental illness, I wasn't a threat to other people. Myself, perhaps, but not you, not my family, not anybody else. Like a parasite, the schizophrenia preys on its host until its host is but a shell of her former self.

But that was 2 years ago. I've been in recovery through medication and cognitive behavioral therapy for about that long and I haven't had an episode since. I have a long-term care provider, a counselor at a state disability program, and good grades despite recent deaths in the family. I'm what a professional would call "stable."

But in the long run, what chances do I have of living a successful life? Can I expect real employment after I graduate, or will my future be an endless series of single job interviews with unsympathetic employers wearily eying their health insurance packets? This problem isn't mine, it's yours. If I can't find work I'll go seek state disability. That's tax payer money. I'd RATHER work. I CAN work. I CAN critically think. I CAN be productive. I CAN maintain high levels of stress with appropriate coping skills. Does this really matter as soon as I drop the S-word (schizo-affective disorder) with somebody?

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, I am guaranteed equality under the federal government and in all aspects of employment, education, and social treatment. But this area is an area where a lot of people break the law and get away with it. Many people discriminate against persons with a mental diagnosis. They fear them. They hate them. They mock them. They ostracize them. I'm not talking about the thug at the end of the block. I'm talking about people in high positions. Employers, CEO's, supervisors, professors, publishers, agents, and many, many corporations.

To a corporation the mental diagnosed are just unnecessary burdens. We "drain" their health care resources. We "slow down" their productivity. We "can't get along" with other coworkers.

They apparently never got the news that Pulitzer Prize winner Sylvia Plath was mad, or that Nobel Prize winner John Nash was a schizophrenic. Indeed, many talented people can have a diagnosis while being productive.

But back to the title of this post: I'm a closet schizophrenic. I tried one semester of partially disclosing my medical needs to my professors. I am under the Students with Disabilities Services program and as part of it, we may choose to hand out letters requesting specific accommodations. Mine was infrequent absences due to doctor's appointments. I got 2 letters out to 2 different professors. They were both kind. However, when it came to handing the letters out to my major's professors, I chickened out. I couldn't face them knowing they knew there was something behind my shy demeanor.

I had turned in a scholarship application and applied as a disabled student. I submitted physician's proof of this. I wrote honestly about having an average GPA because a lot of my college time coincided with periods where I couldn't get treatment, be it because the county refused to treat me or because I was in denial of my illness. I was clear, honest, sincere. I was then soundly rejected. I didn't even receive a hundred dollar scholarship. Nothing. I had a sufficient GPA to transfer to a major University despite being chronically disabled, but I wasn't deemed worthy of a hundred dollar scholarship. Maybe I'm being bitter, but why would they ask if you're disabled if they are not going to take that fact into consideration?

This time around, when I apply for grad school, I might not disclose that I'm mentally disabled. I might pretend to just be a lazy pothead who didn't take school seriously the first couple of years. Maybe they'd be more sympathetic if I just sugar-coated my entire existence.

When friends ask why I'm going to the doctor, even close friends I trust dearly, I still say, "check-up." Maybe I should start saying I have a chronic heart condition. Maybe then I'd be accepted as "an acceptable disabled person" and not a "risk" or an unwanted type of person.

I'm perfectly willing to work my ass off at a job with high stress. I'm willing to continue my treatment program. I'm willing to be open to criticism and new ideas. The question is: are the rest of you willing to accept me as a disabled worker?