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.

Off the Grid for a Semester

I started this blog with the intention to share my personal experiences with what I thought was paranoid schizophrenia (now it is either schizo-affective or bipolar with psychosis, depending on which doctor you ask). Since then, I  have graduated from a CSU as a returning adult student, had a couple of menial jobs, entered graduate school for a Master's degree, volunteered at fundraisers, taken my medication almost every day, kept my doctor's appointment, and started working on my Master's thesis. At the age of 23 I was given a life sentence of chronic insanity: paranoid schizophrenia. I was told to go on disability and avoid stress and driving at all costs. I guess you can count me as one of those mental patients who did not listen to their doctor's advice. My doctor was actually pretty adamant that I stop driving because he thought I would think that other cars were following me. How outdated is that?! I am a modern, contemporary paranoid and we new paranoids know (yes, we know) that if any agency or shadowy figure really, truly wanted to follow us, they would do it via satellites. One cannot outrun the satellite. Why my former psychiatrist could not wrap his head around that logic is beyond me. But the point is now moot---I am neither on disability or taking the bus to get around.

My friend from high school recently came back into my life. At the moment, she is the only person alive who knows my secret (I'm a former mental patient) and who is not a member of my family. She finds it a little unusual that I "went off the grid" for about a decade, to return at the age of 27, newly rehabilitated from an outpatient center, to enter college, finish, continue with post-post secondary schooling, and ultimately, exhibit totally normal behaviors all the while proclaiming that I was a charlatan who was a mental hospital escapee and nothing else.

Mental wards are not day spas. They are co-ed deprivation tanks (when you are lucky, when you are unlucky they are torture chambers). The damage inflicted by other mental patients, mental health technicians, and fishy nurses has been done and, sadly, it looks permanent.

I would give my left pinky finger to ensure that the sexual assaults that happened to me in the psychiatric hospitals never happen to anybody else. But what can I do? I am on the outside, which technically makes me a success story. Some success story! I hide in my little room inside my family's house and type these private secrets to anybody with an internet connection. I still have all consuming anger at the way my sexual assaults were handled by administration (namely: ignore it, let it happen, pretend it didn't happen, minimize it, shuffle it under the rug, refuse to press charges, etc...etc...etc...).

The mental health care system in this country sucks. No other word explains it as succinctly. Imagine this: you get yanked out of bed, strapped to a gurney, restrained with leather cuffs on your wrists and ankles, silent people poke you (they don't talk because they don't see you as quite human) with various medical instruments, needles, blood pressure cuffs. Everything is supposed to be for your own good. Enter the triage center and all the police officers who think it is their job to interrogate people whose brains are already haywire. They just want to make sure you are not the next Sandy Hook killer, or the next James Holmes, or whichever sociopath you choose that may or may not have a dual diagnosis with a mental health issue. They leave you a little more screwed up then when you came in. Spend anywhere from 2 days to months in a "hospital" which is more like a detention center with designated arts and crafts time. Navigate around sociopaths who were dropped off by police who decided they were just nuts when they threatened to shoot up everybody (note: every other mental patient on the ward will not have this death-threat issue because we are NOT VIOLENT, except for the sociopaths who masquerade as one of us). Spend entire time avoiding certain mental patients with anger management issues. Spend entire time avoiding mental health technicians with anger management issues and power complexes. Take pills that have massive side-effects. Hand over civil rights, or rather, have them violently taken away for a period of time under the banner of "mental health treatment."

What should be done? What must be done? I cannot just go back into my day-to-day life and ignore the plight of my kin; those bipolar, schizophrenic, anxiety-riddled, depressive nutcases who are tormented not only by internal stress, but are also victimized in a detention camp with no human rights (aka the mental ward). I will continue to blog about all my experiences and when I have none left I will just ask other mental patients about their experiences and blog about that as well. It is time that the world knew how much contempt and neglect mental patients face in America.

This is the next civil rights movement. The right to equality for those of us who have had our rights taken away without committing a crime. Say no to unfair detention of mental patients! Say yes to transparency in how the mental health system runs in terms of administration! Say no to police murders of mental patients when it is avoidable!

 Our kind is neglected everywhere. However, with new medicines, those of us who are well want to treat our own kind with the respect and empathy they deserve and we don't want predators abusing our vulnerable population; be they sociopaths or mental health workers. Soon, we will rise, globally, in unison, in hospitals and in our places of employment or schooling---we will not be silent anymore. There may come a time when I have to be outed to the world in order to stand for what I believe in (equality and justice) and that scares me but I deal with it. I don't want to be treated like an animal, like a monster by people who don't understand mental health issues. I have two choices: fake normalcy and hide my condition, or drag my condition out into the open and demand reparations for the grave atrocities that occur daily to mental patients.  This blog is my attempt at the latter, in my own, modest way. Thank you for reading! If you are (or know anyone who is) a person with a mental health issue, spread this message: There is hope. People tried to steal our hope. Sometimes all our hope got stolen. But hope is like a plant that grows wherever you plant it. My hope is that our kind will be treated equally and with empathy. In fact, I demand that my hope get realized. I think you should demand that as well!

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!

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.

Spring Break, Mental Health, & how I gained Weight

I am being transferred from an intensive out-care program to the county's relaxed mental health care system. I am not sure how I feel about this, as memories of this county facility still haunts me --- being sent away repeatedly and then finally getting to see one befuddled doctor who wrote the incorrect prescription and left me without medicine for a good 2 months (while I was floridly psychotic).

Hopefully, I can make all my doctor's appointments without fail, otherwise there might be a three month wait period.

Wish me luck, I'll need it if this new care program is like the last time I remember.

******************************************
Good news = I am president of a club and I actually did get our event approved.
Bad news = I had no spring break because I have been working on arrangements for the event.
More bad news=I did like 2 pages of a 15 page paper only. I still need to do my programming homework.
Good news = I had a cup of chai and I'm feeling good,
**********************************************

Lately, I've been reading a lot of race relations articles and I am feeling a little queasy from thinking about how many anti-immigrant/anti-minority people are running around out there. I'll keep it to myself for now, since I don't feel like going off on some political rant.

Ah heck, I'll do it anyways. marriage =. Immigration reform. Break the glass ceiling. Down with neo-nazis. Up with Bill Maher. Okay, I'm done.

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On my weight
OMG. I gained weight while taking two hours of martial arts twice a week! Four hours per week for nothing! Nothing! I now am at the heaviest I have been since I first modified my diet intake 2 years ago; 171 pounds. Yes, it's technically in the obese range. Yes, I hate my body (except for my boobs which have returned to a plump, seductive G cup). Yes, I gained a whopping 20 pounds in under 5 months. I don't know what to do. The more I think about my weight the more despondent I get and the more I want to comfort eat. I ate a doughnut today. I hate myself for eating that doughnut. The long walk to the doughnut store and back home only burned off a quarter of the calories I consumed in doughnut. I ate half my dinner today, but I didn't use my stationary bike or my punching bag as exercise, so I feel bloated and disgusting. My dinner was a couple of tablespoons of white rice and some nopales my mom made. My lunch was that doughnut. For breakfast I had a bowl of oatmeal with a bunch of fresh blueberries. Then, right after breakfast, my mom came home from taking the elderly neighbor lady to the grocery store. The elderly lady, in her naive kindness, bought my mom a tray of mini cupcakes. I literally doubled over when I saw them. My kryptonite. This is the reason why I don't buy any chips, baked goods, ice cream, or frozen pizzas. I have issues with moderation. I cannot eat a little handful of chips, or just 1 mini cupcake. I will literally flee the kitchen and hide in my room, without the treat. Then, for hours, I will think about the treat. Eventually, I break down, sneak into the kitchen, grab the entire bag/carton/tray of treats and secretly eat in my bedroom. This is the reason why I always buy roma tomatoes, cheese, and tea instead. When there are no sugary, sodium-laced, greasy alternatives, I eat quite healthy. But when a naively kind neighbor lady buys us mini cupcakes, I crumble after an hour of pouting on my bed and trying to distract myself by watching BBC documentaries on the internet. Yes, I ate 3 mini-cupcakes, and then I couldn't stop myself. I walked to the doughnut store and bought a coffee and a doughnut. I came home. 2 more mini-cupcakes. I despise mini-cupcakes. They must be walked into the jungle and left for the pumas. Down with mini-sprinkle cupcakes!!

I like my boobs. They are plump. They are the only part of my body I am fond of. I will now end this little blog entry by writing a positive, self-affirming statement about my fattened up body. My boobs are awesome. Guys always stare at my boobs. Sometimes, women stare at my boobs, too. Sometimes I think I must have spilled something on my blouse and people are just wondering what the stain is, which is why they are staring so intensely for so long, but then I look down and nope, just my boobs. Then, there is this awkward moment when both of us are standing there staring down at my boobs. I think I am kind of flattered. Still, it's like, what, am I wearing a dirty shirt? Are my nipples popping out? Is there like a stain that looks like a milk leak or something??

Recovered Mental Patient: I was not sane but I am now--can i have a cookie?

I am a former mental patient (a female schizo-affective) who recovered thanks to a regimen of medicine treatment mixed with cognitive behavioral therapy. I got healthy enough to return to college, finish my Bachelor's degree, and currently I have been in a Master's program for nearly a year. I also volunteer on the side and I am a leader of an organization on campus as well. Originally, I had wanted to follow up with my PhD after completing the Masters, but now I feel (as my therapist so bluntly put it) that achieving a doctorate was nothing but a pipe-dream.

I  have kind of given up on my dream of achieving a PhD. I am doing above average in my field, but my mother and the Department of Rehabilitation counselor both told me to go get a job instead.

"We're not funding PhD's," said my DOR counselor. "Our goal is to get you guys to pay taxes." Tact might not be his forte, but I guess he has a point. I am supposed to earn money, not just grants.

Humorously, the DOR counselor asked me what made me think I was schizo-affective. He seemed skeptical of this diagnosis. I almost started to giggle.

"Nothing, nothing at all. In fact, I think I am totally sane, with no mental illness. It is total fact that I am being psychically driven by hostile countries through long-range, low-wave frequencies. The voices I heard are totally a part of the psychic warfare techniques used against me to discredit me and get me to commit suicide. I can, in fact, read minds, and the minds I read are always plotting against me. It is an injustice that I have been involuntary committed into psychiatric facilities on a dozen separate occasions and 5250'd each time. I demand lawsuits! Lawsuits and a UN stipulation barring psychic driving!!!" I really wanted to say all that. I really did. Instead, I just sighed.

"I have been hospitalized a dozen times and the psychiatrists all diagnosed me with the same illness--schizo-affective disorder. I used to get audio and visual hallucinations, grandiose delusions, and extreme anxiety. I am on medicine and the symptoms have all gone away. To me, this tells me I was really sick because the medicine made such a huge difference." ----That's what I actually said to the guy. It really bemuses and frustrates me that I have to assert myself to others and state "yes, actually I am a schizophrenic, no kidding," and the whole time they're like, "why is she faking?" I guess it is difficult for society to accept that a person who can be non-functional one year can be a high-functioning student/volunteer/organizer with no hint of positive or negative schizophrenic symptoms. But it's true!

It is tough being a recovered mental patient. Often, it is very tempting to agree with people who never met you before but who judge you based on how you are at that very moment (perfectly socially acceptable), and who decide maybe you were never sick, you were just mishandled by the system.

I was mishandled by the system; I experienced sexual abuse in the wards, death threats, cruelty by staff, use of restraints without having made any threats or suggestions that I was going to be violent or a flight risk----but I can honestly say they didn't misdiagnose me. They just horribly traumatized me.

Now I am getting so irritable. Every time I talk about the stuff I went through in the psych wards, I get a migraine headache.

I change subject now.

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Currently, I am the president of a campus organization. I did not start the club but I was recently nominated to be president and so I am president now. I  have a meeting with the administration today to discuss our upcoming event, which I am now in charge of, as the last president just left with the paperwork for the event incomplete and not approved by the administration. I like the last president. I am just a little nervous because the choice to switch officer positions was not her choice. I think she might be a tad bit bitter. I must use my diplomatic skills to win her over. I will then use the diplomatic skills to win over the administration and to hold this event, which is coming up next month.

I must go make promotional materials for the event, that is not approved to take place yet. Better to be over-prepared than to come empty-handed.

Usually, I don't wake up at 2 am, but today I did, so I might as well make some promotional materials. Thanks for reading!!

Stress=light mania

I keep waking up at three in the morning. I wake up alert, refreshed, and unable to go back to sleep. It might be the end of the semester or my natural bipolar cycles. Whatever it is, I have been more productive because I am awake for longer periods of time and I use this time to work on my graduate term papers or to exercise. This productivity is both a good thing and a sign of bad things to come. Increased productivity and less sleep is an early warning sign of impending mania. I must make sure to get at least 6.5 hours of sleep, as opposed to the 4 hours I got tonight. The normal sleep period is 8 hours, but that is unusual for any full-time graduate student, let alone a bipolar graduate student.

While I was up I watched a documentary about Bellevue psychiatric hospital. I found it to be totally triggering. It reminded me too much of my own experiences and the sight of a woman being strapped to a gurney was especially hard for me. Oh, the injustice of my misunderstood existence....but enough whining.

I often worry about how I come across to others. Do I seem bizarre and freakish? Do I stand out? Do people hate the sight of me? Do I come across as weird, troubled, bossy, eerie? I will never know for sure. The only thing I can do is to monitor my behavior, obey social etiquette, and smile.

Anyways, back to working on my term papers.

I am watching a documentary called "Jonas." The brother of a schizophrenic made a documentary about his brother's struggles with the illness. It is available on amazon dot com's instant video collection.

I recommend it not just because it is about a schizophrenic, but because it is an honest portrait of a human being struggling to overcome a major obstacle. I also liked the rhyming children's book idea that the title character, Jonas, wrote. He recites it at the beginning of the documentary.

Being a female paranoid schizo-affective myself, it is healing to see someone who is like me in some ways. His struggles were mine as well.

I am doing alright in graduate school. Nobody knows I have schizo-affective disorder. They think I am just a wild one; tattooed and a little eccentric. No, I don't resemble Lisbeth Salander. As much as I love her black Cyber-goth outfits I try not to stand out in a crowd. I do have tattoos, but I usually wear boring khakis and GAP shirts so I blend in with the campus crowds. People do not suspect I am a mental patient.

 I have been out of the hospital for 3 years now. For the last 3 years I have not heard voices, seen hallucinations, had major delusions, insomnia, or feelings of persecution. I have mostly stayed on my medication. I say mostly because here and there I would go a week without them for one reason or another (e.g. I couldn't get refills, or I forgot to take them). For the most part, I stick to my treatment plan. I check in with the psychiatrist, the social worker, and the therapist. I feel kind of like an adult ward of the state. My life is filled with people who tell me what to do---down to not spending money excessively (as I tend to do), not smoke marijuana, and they have even suggested to stop dating a guy on the basis that he didn't want to be in a committed relationship. I obey. I mean, look how far I got making crappy decisions on my own: not far. Look how far I got accepting advice and treatment from professionals: far.

I encourage people with mental health disorders to be open to others. Unless they want to cuff you to a bed---then I say call a lawyer. But if they seem to truly want you to function in society, listen to them. :)

Thanks for reading! More to come for this little public diary of mine.

Sugar Cookie As Symbol of my Recovery

It was two years ago, maybe even longer. The staff on the psychiatric unit were doling out my favorite snack: two soft, sugar cookies with white frosting and little colored sprinkles on top. These cookies were treats on the psych ward. We got some only at intervals, sometimes at lunch time, sometimes at snack time, never on a regular basis.

I liked to wrap my cookies in a napkin and smuggle them out of the cafeteria for later consumption. Often, I would lie awake listening to the never-ending noise in my head and reach over for one of the little cookies which I stock-piled in the dresser beside my assigned bed. They were a comfort food on the ward--sugary, fattening, sweet.

Later on, I would abhor the sight of those cookies. Once I was outside and no longer an in-patient, I was vehemently opposed to eating that specific type of cookie. One time, my mother brought home those soft, sugar cookies from her workplace. I took one look at the two cookies she generously offered me and my stomach churned. It was THAT cookie---that exact brand of cookie. I shook my head and refused it. It was not because I was trying to lose weight and avoid sugar (which I was, but one cookie would have been okay). It was because that cookie represented confinement. It represented a locked ward and horrible memories. It represented my illness.

 For two years now, I have avoided those cookies. They seem to be everywhere, at Save Mart, Target, Food Co., they are stocked in every major grocery store! I would shop for food and sigh as I passed the bakery. There, amongst the brownies and tiramisu cakes, that specific type of sugar cookie with the white frosting and the sprinkles. Those cookies haunted me for two years. Like decaf coffee, they are two fixtures in the psychiatric hospital that I can depend on to be there each time I am involuntary hospitalized.

This last week I turned it all around. I was approved for graduation from my University on July 3rd. My degree will be posted on August 10th. My admission into the graduate program was cemented. It was a great feeling. After 1 year at the University I had achieved my goal of obtaining my Bachelor's degree from an accredited University. I had gone from being a chronic hospital basket-case, in and out of psychiatric facilities and community college classes, to a full-time University student with no major psychiatric relapses. I decided to celebrate....I bought the sugar cookies with the white frosting and the little sprinkles on top. I took them home. I sat them on the tabletop and opened up the little plastic container. My mother came in and I told her the story of the sugar cookies.
"So why did you buy them?"
"Because I want to taste them. They taste like victory now. I want to taste them as a graduate student not as a mental patient. From this point, the cookies are symbols of my recovery." She smiled, I chewed. The cookie tasted delicious. :)

200 mg of Zoloft later....

Re-reading that last post makes me glad I no longer have to live a life of psychological turmoil. In case you haven't guessed, I saw my psychiatrist and she refilled my anti-depressant for me. I had no idea, but apparently I was going through a psychotropic withdrawal phase caused by going off meds cold turkey. My doctor said it is not good to go off abruptly because it can cause emotional symptoms in the patient that are similar to withdrawal symptoms.

Now, I feel very happy and I want to share that happiness with you. Puppies, kittens, tomatoes with goat cheese, these things make me feel happy and I hope they make you happy as well. Good movies, an inspiring essay or speech, dancing with nobody watching, getting to a checkpoint on call of duty, exchanging a nice greeting with a stranger, listening to a new song that totally rocks your body, finding a video on youtube that makes you laugh...these things are pleasant for me and I encourage people to try to find something pleasant every day, even if that means putting down your work or homework just for a minute to achieve this.

I have one assignment left for summer session. ONE assignment! Then, so long as I get a minimum of a C in both classes, I get my Bachelor's degree from an accredited State University! Then two months of being broke and bored....then back to class in the fall, this time as a Graduate Student (notice the capitalization there).

My shrink recommended keeping my mind active this summer because I have a fear that I will get very lazy and not be able to survive my first semester. So I have decided to re-read my mental health memoirs, read some Kurt Vonnegut books, and then blog about my favorite parts here on this blog. So stay tuned! More to come! I'm feeling good! Have a great day! Thanks for reading!
~Electra

Celebrating May as Mental Health Month on Campus

From 10:00 am to 1:40 pm I sat at a little white table in the free speech area of my University to celebrate "May is Mental Health Awareness Month."

I used the following to raise awareness:

~Fliers from www.mentalhealthamerica.net

~A brochure I made myself using campus computers with Microsoft Publisher installed. The brochure highlighted a part of the Americans With Disabilities Act and its impact on those with a mental illness who are attending a federally funded post-secondary school. It also listed good memoirs to read which were written by people with a mental health disorder. I threw in a trivia question about Pulitzer Prize Winner/paranoid schizophrenic/A Beautiful Mind inspiration John Nash for fun, as he is my hero.

~4 books from my personal library:

    "Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide," by Kay Redfield Jamison.
    "Wasted," by Marya Hornbacher.
    "An Unquiet Mind," by Kay Redfield Jamison
    "The Collected Artwork of Martin Ramirez," with drawings by Martin Ramirez.
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Number of people who came up to ask me what I was doing:    2

Number of people who passed by the booth without asking:      100+

Number of friends who stopped by to find out why I ditched class today:   6

All in all I would say that those 2 people who came up to me without knowing me made the day worth it. :)

If you would like to hold a booth at your campus, I would suggest the following:

1)  get in touch with services for students with disabilities office and work the plan out with them (I did and they sponsored me and paid for the booth).
2)  bring peppermints or something to hand out to people. I wish I had had the money to buy peppermints.
3) do not get a table next to a for-profit company that plays dubstep for 4 hours straight and dances around enticing people to look at them and not at the lonely, non-profit, mental health information booth. I like dubstep, but four hours was too long.
4) get in touch with your local NAMI at least two months in advance. My local NAMI chapter did not respond to my emails (I sent two emails), but that is probably because they are preparing for NAMI walks, so I am not hurt.
5) bring a lot of visual aids and always, always, smile!

Thanks for reading and happy may is mental health awareness month!

Not just anecdotal evidence: Schizophrenics as Mostly Non-Violent

With recent news about the killer who committed the atrocities in Norway now diagnosed as an alleged paranoid schizophrenic by 2 psychiatrists, I am afraid you will think all the stories I have about being a functioning, non-violent skitz to be purely anecdotal. By this I mean, I am afraid you are thinking that maybe, if I am non-violent, then it is just a fluke, and that most schizophrenics have violent tendencies. If you are to believe the media, every shooter is a schizophrenic and schizophrenia is synonymous with violence.

While I am all for the punishment and imprisonment of so-called schizophrenics who attack and murder, I want to be clear that they are not the norm in the skitzy community. The only thing I can tell you is what I know first hand and provide you with more links to books on the schizophrenic community. While some say this is pure anecdotal evidence (by that they mean that one instance does not prove anything), I urge you to stop yourself from jumping to conclusions about the personality traits of schizophrenics.

Imagine listening to the radio 12 hours a day, with no ability to turn off the radio. Sometimes the radio plays soothing music, other times it plays horrible messages about people coming to hurt you, or saying that you are a bad, evil person. Imagine that unstoppable radio playing for 12 hours a day for months on end. According to http://www.schizophrenia.com/szfacts.htm, 2.2 million Americans suffer from schizophrenia. Yet, despite this imaginary radio playing hostile messages 12 hours a day for months on end, 2.2 million Americans do not hurt or kill another human being. This is not anecdotal evidence, this is statistics.

So what do 2.2 million Americans do? Different things. All people react to stress differently, so one coping mechanism might not work for the next person. I know a man who would keep journals of everything the voices said. He had boxes and boxes of journals with all the statements made by his illness' voices. He had no history of assault (drug use, yes, but not assault). I know another man who would make bracelets out of beads to calm himself when the voices were being particularly mean. Also, no history of violence. I know another woman who would sit and giggle to herself in response to what she heard. No history of violence. I know that I would write down rebuttals to the voices when I was having auditory hallucinations. I would also paint pictures. I would also read as many books on schizophrenia as I could, so that I would understand what was happening with my brain chemistry.

Some people need to hide from the world, while others feel that they need to be highly scrutinized by family or colleagues so that their paranoia doesn't seem so ill-based. Personally, I believe the latter statement is the underlying reason why I keep an online diary/blog. I believe that somewhere in my subconscious there is this little piece of logic that says if people are really listening into my thoughts (albeit, via a blog entry that I myself post) then I won't be so paranoid after all, and this helps me cope with my illness. Also, in some backwards logic, I feel that if I am under surveillance, as my illness would have me believe, then it is best to get the entire story out there. So, if you are reading this, welcome, reader. Thank you for taking the time out to read my little diatribe.

Preparing to Celebrate May is Mental Health Awareness Month 2012

Dear reader,

I am so happy right now! Thanks to support from a mental health organization, as well as support from my campus Office of Services for Students with Disabilities, I am preparing to hold an event at my University in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month this May! I am thrilled! Ordinarily, I would be apprehensive about talking about my mental illness to my peers on campus, but it is for a larger purpose; equality for the mentally ill! Though I may own up only to my mood disorder and not my accompanying schizophrenia (I am schizo-affective which is bipolar disorder mingled with (paranoid) schizophrenia), I think this is a great opportunity to finally be honest about having a mental illness. I have struggled a lot with this living in compartments, with my mental illness hidden in a corner of my soul and my student persona the only thing visible.

My plan for "May is Mental Health Month" is to have a few tables out in the quad area on campus. The tables will hold brochures with information about major mental illnesses, resources for those who live with them, brochures on the legal rights of people with a mental illness, information on the Americans With Disabilities Act (the ADA), and hopefully, a video that shows famous people with mental illnesses, such as my personal hero, John Nash (inventor of Game Theory and Nobel Prize Winner who lives with paranoid schizophrenia). I already made a 6 minute video using my macbook's iMovie and iDVD programs. Still, I need to show it to my University sponsor, who will need to approve the contents. I would like to just loop the movie and play it over and over on my laptop for anybody interested in stopping by and watching it.

The plan is at its minimal operation. My grandiose plan (yes, I can get grandiose, I still battle with over the top, implausible goals and aspirations) is to reserve a room where we can have a big event. The big event would start with a presenter explaining the history of the treatment of the mentally ill, accompanied by a slideshow. Then, maybe we can play the video I put together of famous people with a mental illness. Next, maybe a few people can talk about living with a mental illness in a society that stigmatizes mental patients. Finally, we can have a series of tables set up and free time for the audience to walk around and see all the tables. One table will be an information and resource table. Another table will have artwork done by local artists with a mental illness. Another table will be a "hall of fame" table where we provide information on successful people who live with a mental illness.

What do you think? I know I can go over the top---but that's the way my mind is built. If we only get approval for a small table with a few pamphlets I will be happy. If we get my grandiose plan approved I will faint from euphoria!

The important thing is that I get this event approved and completed. This means I have to spend the month of April getting things approved, running around getting fliers printed, requesting informational materials, and spending finals week promoting this event. I think I can do it, so long as I spend all day in the library with my textbooks and laptop. 2 hours of studying, 2 hours of promoting, 2 hours of more studying, 2 hours of organizing....good thing I am hypomanic, lol (hypomanic=mild state of mania including feelings of increased energy, ambition, lofty goals, and near hyperactivity)!

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!