Skizzie Lizzie Applies For Graduation

I was released from the psych ward in 2009. Since then, I have been through "outpatient services" which are a quaint euphemism for total behavioral modification group therapy sessions with an emphasis on potent, Western psychotropic medications (don't get me wrong, I believe in these medicines. I take these medicines. I advocate for others to take their medicines, but man, these drugs have major side effects. Can you, Eli Lilly, stop counting your billions of dollars and please spend a little on some chemists to work on more advanced medicine that does not cause massive weight gain, zombification, diabetes, tremors....and other maladies caused specifically by the drugs?).

I regained a semblance of normalcy back in 2010, when I learned from the sociopaths in group therapy that it was not a requirement to be honest with others in society (again, don't get me wrong. I don't approve of sociopaths, but to be fair, when they were not preying on me and the other deteriorated mental patients, they told good stories). I remember in particular one doctor's visit to an outpatient clinic. The clinic was for felons. Why I went there I have no idea, I assume somebody was funneling money to themselves by adding me to the little circus. No, I am not a felon, nor have I been convicted of a crime, ever. Still, this is how your mental health system is, America, you sent me to a mental health rehabilitation facility for ex-felons with mental health disorders (ranging from bipolar to violent, sociopathic behavior), me, a 160 pound 26 year old woman. AND IT MADE ME STRONGER AND A BETTER LIAR SO THANK YOU!

Let me explain.

Before, if people asked why I missed class, or why I took a pill, I would squirm and feel conflicted about how to tell the truth. Enter the sociopath from the rehabilitation center which I will refer to as T.P. This guy, "Sam," was my age and when we talked about employment experiences in group therapy he said he could never get a job because every time he went in the boss would ask him to explain his felony. His answer? "Which one?" Possibly not the most ideal role model for societal behavior but you'd be surprised what I learned from him. He kindly explained to me while waiting in the doctor's office, that I should just lie my ass off because I can pass.

"How are they gonna treat you, anyways? You like the way they treat you?"

"It's discrimination and I hate it," I told him, honestly.

"Then stop telling 'em. Don't worry, just lie."

Later I learned he went back to jail for punching his girlfriend in the face. That was just my life back then, it didn't seem abnormal or frightening at all. I just felt lucky that I wasn't his girlfriend and I hoped his girlfriend was okay, but the commonality of violence at T.P. was so rampant that I became jaded (and I still am, sadly).

I mulled. Did I really want to take the advice of a woman-punching scumbag? I turned on the television. Some crap about creating a database of mental patients that could be accessed by anyone (this story is from around 2011). I tilted my head and stared at the tv. Is this what I am to them? A violent thing, not a human? So be it. If you treat a human like an animal long enough, they'll start to bark. I swear to god, they bark. And after my neglect, sexual assaults, abuse, and other unethical practices inside the psychiatric facilities all throughout my twenties, I was all "ruff ruff."

So, I quit telling the truth.

In 2011 I transferred to a 4 year university, having secretly applied without telling anybody. I entered and graduated a year later with my Bachelors. Everyone at T.P. was so amazed. I was such a success story! I was an incredible inspiration to all! Truth? The sociopath taught me how to lie and that is apparently what is required to be treated like a human being with full civil rights when one is bipolar or schizophrenic. You want to know how to avoid cognitive bigotry (my new term for someone who hates and persecutes people with a cognitive/neurochemical disorder)? Just don't tell them the truth. And when they blurt out their prejudices, take the time to inform them of scientific fact, from an outsider's perspective. Teach them humanity, but never, never forget that they do not recognize your own humanity if you have a diagnosis.

In 2012 I graduated and entered graduate school.

In 2015 I belatedly applied for graduation. I will have my Master's degree from a University (no, it's not one of those bogus online campuses, either).

Now that I am preparing to graduate in May, I realize that this blog is actually important to me and maybe even to one of you out there. I have tried to avoid this blog because it reminds me of where I came from, who I am, what I live with, and what you think of me. I miss this blog, though. So much so, I came back.

With good news. I am graduating. Skizzie Lizzie is graduating in May with her Master's degree.

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.

Who works at Mental Hospitals?

A criminology professor once told a class I was taking that people who have power complexes and want to dominate and control other human beings tended to flock towards jobs in mental hospitals. There, they could exert their power over an unwilling person with the justification that "they're just not like us." What do I mean by "exerting power"? One of the times (this is only ONE of the many times) that I was sexually abused in the mental hospital, the staff saw ---watched---an older male patient enter my room (I was not used to door locks in psych wards because many do not allow for even a moment's privacy, this will be pertinent later). They were not even five feet away at the desk, with my door practically facing them. The man came in and he was already stripped down to his boxer shorts. He pulled out his genitals and began to masturbate. Nobody stopped him, everybody saw him. I had to get aggressive by yelling at him to "get the f out" while kicking the air around him. Even though I was yelling, nobody came, nobody helped, nobody even feigned concern. I chased him away and went back to sleep (I can sleep through anything because I have been abused in the hospitals enough where it is not anything to lose my sleep over anymore).

The next day my doctor came into my room (everyone, EVERYONE can go into your room. This is supposed to be just for staff to check we're not dead, but in reality this means other mental patients, ex-felons, whoever happens to be detained at the moment).

"Why didn't you go to group?" the doctor asked. Silly question. Once my psychosis stops, I realize that my major psychological issue is being cooped up in a psych ward with a bunch of predators (be they the rare, hostile mental patient or the more common sociopathic employees that do the checks). How exactly will group treat the fact that I hate the mental health care system and see it as an archaic throw-back to lobotomy days? I can just imagine being told to go back to my room because my ideas were "disturbing to the other patients' well being".

I muttered something to my doctor about hating group and then I blurted out that I was boycotting everything outside my bed to protest that old male who trespassed and was probably about to rape me.

"WHO?" Yelled the doctor. See, doctors really are not in charge. They think they are and they should be, but they are not on the ward nearly long enough to understand the dynamics that exists behind locked doors.

"That f^$ right there," I yelled, pointing my finger at the offender, who had been moved to a room directly visible from my own bed. The doctor fumed, but again, doctors don't have nearly as much power over my day-to-day life as the mental health technicians. He chased the offender, who went inside the bathroom. I went back to sleep, knowing KNOWING I would wake up and the offender would be on the same ward as myself, STILL. He did not get moved to another room, they just "had a talk with him." "We'll handle it," they said. One of these days someone is going to lift that rug off the floor and see the dirty horrors that you swept under the rug for decades.

Nobody came. Nobody saved me. That is what it is like inside the mental hospital. Here is a link to a video that is pretty close to what I have personally seen going on. Staff do tend to magnetically gravitate towards one patient in particular (someone who they see is easy to control). They can get verbally abusive. They are clever predators though: they are guilty of neglect and cover-ups but they keep their hands "clean" by not physically leaving marks on the patients. They have other ways to make a person suffer. At this hospital where a reporter went undercover as a mental health technician, it was revealed that there had been physical and psychological abuse of autistic, suicidal, and other marginalized groups.

In some country (name forgotten), the recovered mental health patients are hired to treat their own kind--so that a schizophrenic who is medicated and recovered, can work in the hospital alongside those like him who are still very, very sick. This model is beautiful because Normals have no idea what it is like to hear voices, or to feel hysterical fear for days on end. Other schizophrenics know what that is like, and we can feel a tremendous amount of empathy and compassion for those of our ilk who are still in their psychotic states. I would really much prefer to have a medicated schizophrenic looking after my well-being and protecting me than these Normals. They keep forgetting we are humans who feel pain when they hurt us.

BELOW: LINK to a 15 minute youtube video showing the inside of a locked ward (BBC took down the entire episode, but it might be floating out there in cyber-space). The title is "Undercover care: Abuse Exposed" by BBC panorama.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqg_UjWhmOM

1% of Psychotics Are Violent, I am the 99%

I always hate seeing violence in the news, especially this new massacre in Colorado. Every time there is a random act of violence people start labeling them "psycho," "insane," and lumping all of us law abiding mental cases in with the violent maniacs that take their angst out on innocent people.

It occurred to me that I should quote from a book written by a world renowned criminal profiler. Dr. Hickey has studied serial murderers, mass murderers, sexual deviants, and criminals in general for decades. He has published numerous textbooks on the subjects, including this one, "Serial Murderers and Their Victims," fifth ed., published in 2010. Here is a quote from that textbook:

"...[Souza in 2002] found that although mass murderers will most likely have a history of both childhood trauma and violent behavior, most do not have any significant history of institutionalization (Hickey, p. 59, 2010)."
        ---So, essentially, the bulk of mass murderers have never seen the inside of a psych ward. They appear to be normal, unlike the majority of schizophrenics, who stand out like a sore thumb in society and are constantly admitted into psychiatric facilities for behavioral modification, medication, and confinement.

Later on, the book states, "Henn, Herjanic, and Vanderpearl (1976) examined the psychiatric assessments of nearly 2,000 persons arrested for homicide between 1964 and 1973 and noted that only 1% were considered to be psychotic (Hickey, p. 62, 2010)."

This is not anecdotal stories that I just made up. This is genuine research conducted by PhD's who are at the top of their fields. Maybe this criminal is insane, if so, he is that 1% of mentally ill people who perpetrate crimes. Please do not take your anger out on the law abiding 99%!!

For those of you who do not know this, there is a state mandate that says if you have ever been put on a "5150" hold, meaning that you are judged to be a threat to yourself or to others or you are incapable of caring for yourself, you are prohibited from possessing or purchasing a fire arm for at least five years! The most chronic cases, those of us who are repeat mental patients in psych wards, are fairly likely to NEVER own a hand gun, due to the fact that every couple of years we are hospitalized.

Let us not forget that the bulk of crimes are committed by sociopaths. Sociopathy is a personality disorder, not a neuro-chemical imbalance that is inherited from one's genetics. Sociopaths are cunning, deceitful, sane, and organized (usually organized, there are some that are classified as "disorganized"). Schizophrenics are totally scatterbrained, bewildered, frightened, and busy with their internal worlds of make believe voices and visions.

Just like race, please do not discriminate due to mental disability. We are not gun wielding maniacs. We fear the gun wielding maniacs as much as the next person, even more so, because the after math affects how everyone treats mental patients, which often involves indirect victimization of innocent schizophrenics.

I  urge you to follow the laws set forth by the constitution. I vow to follow the constitution. Please do not violate the constitution.

My sympathies are with the victims of the Colorado massacre. I am glad they apprehended the person responsible. I await his day in court with the rest of the nation.

Thank you for reading. Please have a good day!