Tag Archives: severe mental illness

Halloween and Schizophrenia From Stereotypes and Stigma to Candy

15 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by in bipolar, caregivers, hope, mental illness, schizophrenia, stigma, Uncategorized

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I love October it is the first month after summer where days start to get cooler, nights longer and there are all of those great flavors like pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, and maple. As a kid, October held one of my favorite days at the end of the month, Halloween. But that was long before I had the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Now Halloween marks the most stigmatizing and stereotyping day of the year for people with a severe mental illness. There are straightjacket costumes, the horror films, the haunted asylums, and many other cultural favorites that make it look like those of us with a mental illness are terrifying, monstrous, and the places we go for treatment are houses of horror.

People have become more and more aware of how costumes, mascots, names, etc. are offensive to certain groups over the years. Look at the campaigns to get the Red Skins to change their name, and the pushback on Hollywood to hire transgender actors to play transgender roles as well as Asian actors and other POC to play roles intended for them. All good, every bit of it.

Many groups have experienced a tide of change about their identities, but that wave has not included severe mental illness. There has been a great deal of public acceptance of anxiety and depression, those two disorders have made it into the mainstream in ways schizophrenia has not. I have seen little shift in public awareness or acceptance of schizophrenia, especially in October.

There is hope, though with movies like Netflix’s Maniac, where the main character has schizophrenia and displays many symptoms, but isn’t a monster, a criminal, or even unlikeable. That is a huge change from the stereotypes on many crime shows that write in the killer as someone with schizophrenia.

The history of psychiatric facilities as places that tortured patients with treatments like lobotomies, ice baths, insulin shock therapy, and other stuff of nightmares, almost cements psychiatric facilities with a role on Halloween. The boarded up closed up, and long unused asylums that dot our countryside don’t help as many people and television shows report tales of ghosts and other haunting stories.

I don’t hate Halloween, though. On the bright side, at least it is a night that involves candy, and who doesn’t want to celebrate pillowcases, and plastic pumpkins packed full of sugary treats, especially candy bars that are full-size.

 

 

In This Horrible Mess, I Will Continue To Find Two Good Things

25 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by in bipolar, mental illness, schizophrenia, stigma, Uncategorized

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At dinner, my husband and I tell each other two good things that happened during our day. Yesterday, I told him, the love note he left for me in the little mailbox I keep on my writing desk, and having lunch with a friend, were the best things that happened to me. Then I told him, other than that, it was a depressing, infuriating, sad day.

It seemed like everywhere I looked yesterday the topic of schizophrenia or mental illness came up. There was an article about the woman who was pushing her dead child in a swing for two days. It turns out she has schizophrenia and was noncompliant with her medication.

There was an article written by a man with schizophrenia who claimed in the first sentence of his essay that schizophrenia was the worst illness you could have. The writer went on to write about his need for forced medication. It was a story that I found stigmatizing.

Then there was the article written by a fairly well-known writer that made sweeping generalizations about all people with schizophrenia, and she referred to us repeatedly as “schizophrenics” which is a term that most people with schizophrenia dislike because it puts the illness before the person. In other words, it identifies a person by their illness rather than by the millions of other things they are, like, do, talents they have, their career, or whatever.

On a Facebook status a woman wrote that calling someone mentally ill was the “most malicious and vile slur imaginable.”  (I probably don’t need to point out that one in four Americans are mentally ill and we don’t consider our disease a slur).

But there are two things that topped off the day. I read an article about “dumping” where psychiatric facilities put chronically medically ill people on a bus and ship them to California. They do not send them to California to be with relatives or to go to a treatment center; they send them to California, so they are out of their cities and towns and not “cluttering up their streets.”

I almost can’t continue typing at this point. We, those of us with a severe mental illness, are the unwanted, the eye-sores, the throwaways, the not-to-be-seen, less-than-human, people that are being put on buses so people can get rid of us.

All of this was enough for me for one day. I decided to read a book about Jesus. I was reading the book, The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey and on page 32 the author writes about Mary being pregnant and how she was an unwed teenager and how today, that pregnancy would probably lead to abortion. Then I read this, “…and her talk of having conceived as a result of the intervention of the Holy Ghost would have pointed to the need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for terminating her pregnancy even stronger.”

There is so much I can say about that quote. I will let you think about it though, and simply ask this question, “Do most people believe that women with a mental illness should terminate their pregnancies?”

With so much stigma, so much misinformation, so much fear, so much inhumanity, so much misunderstanding, so much disdain, I don’t always know how to put one foot in front of the other. I don’t always know how to shake all this stuff off. I don’t always know how to keep my head up and keep going.

People talk about the horror of kicking a puppy, the cruelty of hurting something so vulnerable and innocent. For one hour, for one day, let’s talk about the cruelty inflicted on the mentally ill. It’s real, do you find that as disturbing as kicking a puppy?

At dinner tonight, I will search for the two best things that happened today, so I can keep up my husband’s and my nightly ritual, but so that you know, those two things don’t outweigh the truth about how many severely mentally ill are treated. Finding two things right with my day doesn’t overshadow all that is wrong.

 

Another Attempt to live a Normal life

02 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in hope, mental illness, schizophrenia

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My symptoms have been very light lately and every time that happens, I try to go back to school or go back to work. Unfortunately, the reason my symptoms are light is the fact that my husband works very hard to make sure there is as little stress and as few requirements on me as possible. Not only does my husband go to work every day and pay our bills, he takes care of much of the daily tasks around our house. He is a true caretaker.

So, with my confidence up I have been applying for jobs. I have over a decade of experience as a social worker and I have experience in a university library as a technical coordinator, and I have quite a bit of marketing, and networking experience, and some nonprofit development and fundraising experience.

I have had some terrific jobs since college, and I have frequently updated my education by returning to school.  I am a true lifelong learner and love the experience of school (at least the learning and instruction, and test taking, and paper writing side of it).

Since I went on disability from my last job, I attended a culinary school and made it about six months into the program before I couldn’t do it anymore (I also discovered that I am not a very good cook. I am an excellent baker, but not a good cook. I really don’t have the natural ability. I got A’s on all the written information, but was not good in the kitchen). I also applied and got accepted to two graduate programs in writing (MFA) but for various reasons, I didn’t make it too far with those either. I am an excellent student and I work very hard to get A’s, but the stress of interacting with teachers, and students, makes me so symptomatic. (Social anxiety is one of my symptoms that continues to progress with age). Also, being around groups of people brings out my paranoia – at times a little bit and at times too much for me to handle. There are other symptoms and issues, but I’m not going to list them all here.

So, because my symptoms have been light lately, I have hope and confidence, and have been trying to stay realistic about what kind of work I can actually do and not hurt my self-esteem by trying and failing. I think I can easily say that I could manage a job as a social media professional – keeping up a company’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and blog.  I could do that if I was allowed to work from home. I have applied for a couple of jobs like that, but I haven’t gotten very far. I was given a chance to write one blog entry for a company I really wanted to work for, but they said my style was too abrupt, not friendly or chatty enough. Well, as someone who submits writing to publications frequently, I can accept rejection, because I receive rejections weekly (and thankfully, acceptances!) I’m not going to give up hope of finding a job where I can work from home and write. There are many jobs like that, but the competition is tough. I will just have to keep trying and hope I hit the right tone and style with the right company.

I have also been looking into school. I have always dreamed of getting my MFA, but my experiences along that road, have not been a good ones. I have to think, why do I want my MFA? I want to be a writer that is good enough to be writing for publications that pay writers for their articles. In other words, I want to make a living from my writing. I’m not at that stage yet. I am building up my portfolio, but I have only been paid for my writing three times, and it was far from enough to even cover our Internet bill.

So, I need to get better at the craft of writing. I need to network more. I need to find something different than an MFA that requires me to travel for several weeks a year away from home (I simply can’t do it). And the good news is I found a program just like that. It isn’t an MFA but it is a certificate program from a very prestigious school and I can complete all of it online, from home.

I am going to call tomorrow to get the details.

I am trying to get back up on my feet. I feel like the best way to be an advocate is to have a successful life. I want to be an example for those living with a severe mental illness. We can do it! We can live like other people live! We can overcome and we can achieve – we might have to fight harder, and think smarter, but we can do it!

The only thing in my bag of tricks is the desire to keep getting back up after I fall. I guess I’m more like that 8 year old who I wrote about yesterday than I thought.  I hope I can inspire someone someday like he did me.

Right now, I have a can-do attitude. I’ve had it many times before.  I’m up on my feet. I’m knocking on doors.

My prayer for you – may your illness never keep you down for long. The timer is ticking, get up, put up your fists, and fight.  Fight on!

Learning to Accept the Different Experiences with Mental Illness

05 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in bipolar, caregivers, mental illness, schizophrenia

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About six months ago I was one of ten winners in a memoir writing contest.  Our memoirs were selected to be performed by actors on stage.  Last week was the performance.

Mine was the second piece to be read. It was about living with schizophrenia and how I have a good life despite my illness.

The second to last piece was written by a woman whose mother had schizophrenia. I don’t know why, but every time I try to get out there with my story about how schizophrenia is not what people think it is, and bring my strengths and my success to the forefront, someone else has a story about how hard their life has been due to having a parent with schizophrenia.  This has happened in all of my writing groups, and now it has happened on stage.

I have no doubt that people my age who had parents with schizophrenia had it tough, because when they were children, the treatments for schizophrenia were not what they are today. No doubt it was difficult to live with a parent with delusions, and hallucinations.

I feel like I am working in the opposite direction of most of the people who grew up with a parent who had schizophrenia though. I am trying to get people to understand the illness, to have empathy for the people who suffer from it, to see our humanity and our strengths, and to talk openly about our daily struggles. The people writing about their parents are trying to get support, understanding and empathy for their own experience, and their experience is often a painful one due to the illness of their parent.

I once said in a writer’s workshop, “I don’t know what kind of parent I would have been.” A woman with a mother who had schizophrenia said, “Well, you are about to find out.” She said it with such anger and force that I was taken back. Are any two mothers really alike? How did she know I would be like her mother?  She was obviously projecting her anger at her mother on to me.

I have anger of my own. I get tired of being alongside people who want to say how tough it is to have a relative with schizophrenia.  I want to shout, “What about the person who has/had the illness? Do you think they chose to have it? Do you think they would have traded a healthy mind for a mind with a disease? Do you think they had hallucinations and delusions on purpose?

I know this isn’t the right attitude for an artist or for an advocate of the mentally ill and their families.

As someone who loves to write, I want all people to be able to tell their stories, and I think everyone’s story is unique and important. I also know that mental illness is difficult on everyone it touches.

I need to remember that my story intersects with other stories. It intersects with the story my parents could tell. It intersects with the story my siblings could tell. It intersects with the story my husband could tell.  Other people’s stories do the same – the parents of those adult children could write their story, and it would be very different than the one told by their adult child.

It is important for all of us tell our truth. I want the freedom to tell mine, and I need to accept that not everyone’s truth will fit neatly with mine.  I need to accept that the reality of schizophrenia lies in all of the stories from every perspective. Each of our stories is like a piece of a quilt that doesn’t make a bed cover until they are all sewn together.

Stories can be hard to hear, but continue to write them, and I will continue to read them, because your colorful square of fabric is as necessary as mine.