Mental Illness In America

originally posted by: tanstaafl

originally posted by: wantsome
With so much stuff going on in the world today fear of people with mental illness has grown. Most people fear what they don't understand and to some people they can't comprehend the concept of being mentally ill.

-snip-

Wow, thanks for your willingness to share, sounds really tough, and no one who hasn't experienced can ever understand what you've been and are going through.

One thing I would like to point out though, is that there is no one single form of 'mental illness'. Yours was obviously an extreme case, but thankfully not the most extreme (cases like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy come to mind).

But there are also a lot of less severe cases, some very minimalistic, to the point that no one would even notice.

Also, my own personal belief is, some (many? most?) cases of mental illness are caused by one or more external factors, from malnutrition (some people live off of 'dead' food from the day they were born) to exposure to toxins, both environmental (lead is a huge cause - research the term 'mad hatter', and there are many others) and specific (some people find out there homes were built on top of or near a toxic dump site), hormones and hormone mimickers in the food supply, GMOs, etc etc ad nauseum.

One question I have though:

Every time my union rep told to sign the write up and say I agree with the companies statement. In his words I’m coming out cherry with no suspension. They were writing me up for stuff I didn’t do.

Why on earth would you sign something saying you did something you didn't do?

Anyway, sorry you ended up getting screwed like that...

I signed it because he told me to. He said I wasn't getting in much trouble and I trusted him. After all he was my representative. He said I wasn't getting any time off so it wasn't a big deal. After 12 write ups it became a big deal when they fired me.

People were telling me to go to the head of the UAW and explain what happened. My union rep caught a lot of backlash over the incident and was voted out. He was latter fired. I made friends there and people stood up for me. I have a buddy that I’ve been friends with for 20 years since leaving. He tore into my union rep in front of everybody. He said if they can railroad me like that whats to say they can’t do it to everybody else. I didn’t go to the top of the UAW. I took the unemployment and let it be. I didn’t want to go back it was a hostile work environment. It was basically war between the UAW workers and management. I had Ford Mo Co on my resume and I found a job pretty quick. It’s was less money but I was a lot happier. My new employer was extremely impressed.

As for mental illness a lot of it is genetic. They've found that schizophrenia and autism share the same genes. It tends to run in families. Although none of my immediate family members have schizophrenia. I do have a distant cousin with it. They found two genes specifically responsible for the illness. 25% of the population caries one gene and 12% of the population have both. If you end up with both you're at high risk for the getting the illness. They don't know what triggers it. They've done studies with identical twins where one twin gets it and the other don't.

originally posted by: BoscoMoney
I always found it weird how some people were judged to be mentally unemployable and eligible for disability. I've found that most times unless youre slathering yourself with poop, either on purpose or just because your crazy, theres no way youre ever going to qualify. I've met a few who acted up during the interviews in order to get it because they knew they wouldnt otherwise. Meanwhile, someone like me who's been unemployable for over half of his life is eligible to get any help whatsoever. Sure, if your a child with parents who have means they will use you as a guinea pig and smother you with attention. But as a adult, LMFAO good luck. It IS possible to be coherent and even intelligent and still have major crippling mental illness. But hey, maybe next time I need to crap myself and smear it around while clapping and dancing like steve martin.

I was waiting to reply to you because I wanted to go in depth about the disability system. It's very difficult to get disability. Unless you go in there with a screw driver sticking out of your head chances are you're going to get denied. Mental health cases are very difficult to win. They want proof and serious proof. Mental examiners at social security are trained professionals. In order to get disability the claims examiner and doctor both have to agree to your claim. If they don't you have to take it to court which can take years just to get in front of a judge. Then when you get denied you have to appeal. If the appeal fails you have to file all over again. I had school records as far back as 3 rd grade. I went to the school and got them.

In 5th grade the school the school system thought I was stupid because I was failing all of my subjects. My teacher was complaining to my mom that all I did was stare out the window. The school system tested me and my memory skills were off the charts. I was good at math but my verbal skills lacked. My IQ was 130 it would have been higher had my verbal skills been better. In middle school I started acting out. Again psychologists were called in. The school had me labeled as mentally disturbed. In high school I mellowed out and became and honor role student. I had all of this in writing for disability.

I had two hospitalizations that were documented. I had a well respected doctor in the psychiatric community with 15 years of medical documentation backing me. Social securities doctor that examined me agreed to the disability. The claims examiner over ruled her. She said I was smart and trying to pull one over on the system. So it went to court.

In court the judge slammed the hell out of me. My lawyer did absolutely nothing. The judge flat out called my doctor a liar. As of now I've been a patient of his for 20 years and I see him once a month. His office is in a hospital. He has a pharmacy in his office and had given me free medication at certain points.

I appealed the judges decision and lost. I reapplied for disability and I found a lawyer that was an expert in mental illness cases. I'm just lucky I stumbled across him on accident.

If you have the medical documentation I suggest you find a lawyer that knows about mental illness. Don't just take any lawyer out of the phone book. Ask them what they know about mental illness and cases involving it. If you don't get the right answers find another lawyer.

Thank you for sharing your story and I commend you on your bravery. I have been living with my neighbor who is my age (30s) for over a year and a half as his caretaker. I have known him for five years and he is shizo reactive bipolar, I’m assuming this is the same diagnosis you have. His onset was at 21. The night of his onset he walked to a Del taco , accused someone of being evil, and that person and another stabbed him six times. He then spent time institutionalized. From the time I met him until 1.5 years ago he was very stable, drove, and a good freind and neighbor. The first GF he had in a decade convinced him to stop taking his meds. When he lapsed he was so bad that he would have had to be committed again bc his family wasn’t able to really take care of him. So I moved in as his caretaker to make sure that didn’t happen.

I suffered with anxiety until I was 25 and got help. I now don’t feel anything anxious like I did before but I remember it well and the similarities between his feelings and fears and what mine were are very similar and it helps him I can relate sometimes.

I’m giving you this back story to get to the meat and potatoes.

Over the last 1.5 years I have tried my hardest to convince him to try new meds. He won’t. He’s scared. But he has been SLOWLY getting better. He has plenty of resources to get any treatment available. He at least goes and talks to a therapist and takes the basic meds he has taken for a very long time.

In an effort to try and convince him to take new meds and maybe turn his logic and fear, I began asking him to explain every detail of what he hears and feels. I am his only friend bc he is a big guy and well he talks to himself so everyone is afraid of him. He’s very nice of course and I know what it’s like to be an outlier, even though for me it’s usually self induced, he would be friends with everyone if they weren’t afraid of him.

He opened up fast once I started asking questions 6 months ago. He is a very intelligent person. Him and I share an interest in all ideologies, the paranormal, and meta physical topics like quant and alternate universes. Before either of us met we studied these topics since an early age and even though we talked about these topics before he went south, he never told me how much these topics are a part of his condition. He only said before that the voices were annoying and they would just talk down to him. And he truly wasn’t affected by them like his is now. Well at least he didn’t let me notice he was. Because what he says is really going on, and why he hears voices is profound to me.

Now I understand the entire issue of the condition is what it is. He has the typical symptoms. Hears voices that aren’t his. Sees things that aren’t there. Paranoia. He’s messy and I have to handle all the cleaning or he’ll wreck this place. Etc etc

He is very aware of reality but like you mentioned he has trouble focusing bc of the constant interruptions he hears. We have a good life here. We live a block from the ocean. Plenty of nightlife and healthy activities everywhere. Beautiful people to meet and invite over. He doesn’t have to work. He can literally do anything he wants and I try so hard to get him to just pick anything and I’ll make it his life work. But he won’t.

Here is where is gets strange I feel.

His story has never changed. He claims he is what he calls “spiritually disconnected”. He says that means he is not connected to this dimension securely and he floats between parallel universes. He claims he is an old soul. He is convinced he is fighting evil and he is in a spiritual battle that he has been in for many past lives. He spends most of his day reading religious and magic based texts from around the world and then mentally focusing on warding off evil spirits he says he can see and hear. He says they mess with him bc they know he can see him. And he does it very naturally, I watch him do it. I am Catholic and I am well versed in many religions as well. And what’s shocking to me is that what he says I feel fits on basic levels of good and evil.

I never see him depressed, sometimes annoyed, and he claims that he is never depressed, and that he’s just doing his job. He says causing depression or making reasons to be violent is how evil spirits do their basic function. Which is to get souls into hell. Evil spirits get into peoples minds and mess with them until the victim does something evil or kill themself, which is a mortal sin. And then they get that soul in hell and move to the next one. So in a nutshell he doesn't think he is crazy.

Now of course I want my friend to live a normal life, have a family, or whatever he wants to do and not spend everyday feeling like he has to be a loner fighting evil until he dies. Any advice to convince him to break away from this purpose he feels he is serving would be greatly appreciated.

Now for my opinion on the matter. Especially bc this is ATS and we do discuss the paranormal here. I think he is telling the truth. And of course I won’t tell him that and encourage him, but my experience with anxiety actually ties into what he is saying actually happens on the spiritually level around us and I never thought of this until he started telling me what’s going on with him. And this actually is what fully cured my anxiety, or at least my mentality to be strong against it. Which is why I wanna state this part for anyone reading bc it may help them the way it helped me.

My friend made me realize that we all have a voice in our head. The difference is he hears other voices that aren’t his and most people hear their own. So let’s talk about when we hear our own voice in our head.

Now I’m not talking about when you are reading or thinking in your own head or taking to yourself and creating your own voice mentally to say things to think something through.

I’m talking about when your own voice says things that you weren’t thinking about. Like the voice that says things that make you scared. Or give you anxiety like mine did. What is the origin of THAT voice? Sure it sounds like you but where is it pulling those ideas from? Why is it “thinking” on its own? As far as I’m concerned it’s simple. God or good or any faith based belief doesn’t speak to you directly. Or what would the point of faith be then? Faith is based on belief without confirmation or direction. And worrying or anxiety or a need to control everything your voice in your mind is telling you to do is literally the opposite of faith.

Faith is the opposite of worrying. That is why I do not have anxiety anymore. Bc I am convinced that voice is coming from an evil source. Bc if it isn't good, than it's evil, and if you're practicing worrying or anxiety, than you don't have faith. Remarkably after a few weeks of telling myself to not listen to my own voice in my head when it came up with its own theories and anxious ridden ideas,
it's stopped.

I rarely have any anxious thoughts anymore. As if evil got bored with me and leaves me alone now bc I figured out its game.

I don't think you have to beleive in any God or religion to know evil energy and good energy exists. And how those energies interact with your soul. Which is energy as well.

Thank you for reading my story and telling yours. I know most mentally ill people do not have the luxury my friend has and the world is not good to them. I am forever grateful to my friend for helping me to fix myself. And he tells me everyday how grateful he is for me being in his life too.

Any advice to help my friend break away from wasting his life trying to fight a never ending battle would be greatly appreciated.

a reply to: rickymouse

I get seizures....both epileptic, (I had one too many concussions) and seizures called PNES....basically I have severe PTSD (as well as bipolar) and I will have a seizure if I get REALLY upset or afraid, or "triggered". In fact, I am a felon for the next few months because I was arrested while having a seizure...(LONG story) and while the assaulting a police officer charge was dropped when I showed my medical records AND the video showing I was having a seizure, NOT fighting a cop.....I could not get the prosecutor to drop the resisting arrest charge (the cop wouldn't allow her to. he INSISTED I was lying about my seizure because of my mental illness and because there was THC in my system....he was mad because he couldn't charge me with DUI-no probable cause for the stop....I was about 100 yards from my house....a neighbor called 911) I took a plea deal because I had fought for 2 years at this point and I am middle aged...the case was affecting my mental AND physical health....so my lawyer, husband and family told me to take the deal...ay any rate...my mental health could NOT be used as a mitigating factor......only the epilepsy. I was also beaten up during my arrest....yet I was given a FELONY for resisting arrest because I have terrible PTSD, flipped out when I was being slammed to the ground during a SEIZURE and ran away screaming "help me rape" and then when the cops tried to hog tie me, I had a seizure and kicked out.....all caught on tape......WHat prompted all of this mess? When I turned 50 a few week before, my GYNO took me off all of my hormones for menopause....putting me in instant menopause, (I had a hysterectomy in my late 30's) and we didn't know this would effect my mental state so much....I then caught my grown children were having a love affair, (I know, I know...…) and I snapped.....full on psychotic break...…
so my original point in making this response is that I didn't have bipolar that bad....I DID have severe PTSD (DO have PTSD, I should state) and this effected my seizures....I still smell phantom smells.....hear sounds that are not there......have strange memories or "flashbacks" from the past...….yet all of this can be controlled with the right combination of medication.....if I don't mind the side-effects....like hair-loss.....kidney failure....diabetes.....rash all over the body.....weight gain....insomnia...…
with mental illness, it seems, there is no winning...…..

a reply to: Cornczech

To moderate highs and lows of many mental illnesses, a person can try to moderate dopamine levels on a medium low and consistant side. Also sometimes seizures come from too much histamine from consuming high histamine foods or just from the release of histamines from the muscles when a person gets mad or is stressed. Histamines can power stuff like PTSD and bipolar, but do not cause it. It is like fuel for our fight or flight response.

Tomatoes and avacados and some other food chemistries like pineapple that has been cooked will destroy the DAO enzyme that actually moderates histamine.

As far as dopamine spikes, dopamine jumps up when you get excited or even when you go out shopping. It is countered by an enzyme that breaks it down. It is a feel good feeling. It is boosted by sugar and alcohol and many other foods that have aged properties. Glutamates can increase dopamine too high in some people, but that is only a part of the problem.

When you eat a lot of dopamine producing foods you feel great. Then a normal person creates more of the enzyme that breaks down dopamine and the level plummets too low, fuel for Bipolar disorder, but it does not actually cause the disease, it just fuels it. If you moderate your consumption of dopamine producing foods it can help, and keeping it level all the time helps to keep the body from making too much of the enzyme that crashes you when you do not have it. So keep the diet moderated, not so easy to do without trial and error, and it can help to get rid of the highs and lows of dopamine. It takes a few weeks for the body to straighten itself out, work towards the goal, do not push it or you might have problems.

The change in hormones will effect everyone. I have no solution to that. That change of hormones will make things worse for a while till you acclimate. Also some people actually have success with using birth control hormone therapy to control panic disorder, which is related to Bipolar and ptsd because like them it is related to the fight and fight syndrome becoming a problem.

I would say do a little research on the histamine intolerance and see if that fits and the dopamine foods to make sure your diet is not way off balance, remember, high dopamine foods one day can lead to a crash when levels drop like a rock. We need dopamine, hyperactivating the break down by eating too much at one time can make it go to low.

I would discuss what I have mentioned with your doctor, he/she may be able to suggest some things that will help if they have heard things from others controlling their problems naturally. You may need medicines, the idea is to need less of the medicines to do the job, that way the side effects will be less. Most people have enough enzymes to properly detox a little medicine, but not consistantly at higher doses.

I am not an expert on mental illness, I just have been researching ways to slow progression and moderate the highs and lows somewhat. This might work in conjunction with what the doctors can do. Now, alcohol can be a problem for many people but like other dependencies, if you make a lot of the enzyme to break down alcohol and it's metabolite aldehyde, then levels of those two can go too low in your body. Alcohol and aldehyde in small amounts are essential in many processes in the body, but not at high amounts. Your body hypes up enzyme creation so you get a partial addiction which takes a while to overcome to bring those enzymes down to normal levels. Two weeks tapering down can help some people to do it with less side effects, but sometimes it is a lot harder than that.

I am just trying to explain how things work in the body, not giving medical advice. There are people that specialize in this stuff out there, what I am saying may help some but not others. This is not a simple cut and dry thing, everyone has different metabolisms where they create more and less of enzymes. The body attempts to make homeostasis so that is why I stress I am talking about trying to moderate fueling of the conditions, not curing the problem. The problem could originate from a TBI or just a tiny bit of brain damage from a very minor stroke in the past. The problem could have many ways it was created. I actually have genes that can cause me to get mental problems if I eat too much vegetables. Go figure. Too much plant defense system chemistry can make me Hulu.

Talk to your doctor, he she may actually know more about this than handing out pills.

a reply to: tonycodes
When I was sick a lot of my delusions revolved around religion. It was the only explanation I could come up with as to why I was hearing voices. Even though I was sick there was still some form of logic in my head. The logic was flawed because what I was experiencing didn't exist in reality. I went through a phase when I was getting schizophrenia. At first I thought the voices in my head were the FBI. As I got worse the delusions evolved. Then I thought the voices were aliens. Then I thought the voices were religious in nature.

They've done MRI's on people that when they are listening to music or listening to someone talk a certain part of the brain lights up on the MRI. They found that with schizophrenia that part of the brain is lighting up when there is nothing to hear. The hallucinations he is having you and I can't see them. We know the hallucinations aren't real but to him they are because his mind is tricking him into seeing and hearing stuff that don't exist.

I might be crazy on paper but I'm probably one of the most rational people you'll meet. I have a lot of insight into this illness from years of experience and reading about it. I've been to the furthest reaches of insanity and back.

I'm not a religious person. I don't think religion has anything to do with schizophrenia. The brain is the most complicated organ in our body. It makes us who we are. Just like a finger print no two minds are alike. When the pancreas malfunctions a person gets diabetes. The brain can malfunction just like other organs.

You're a good guy for being his friend. It can get lonely for people with mental illness.

a reply to: tonycodes
Another thing I'd like to add is about that voice in our head. We all hear that voice when we are thinking or reading or whatever. When I went schizo it was as if my mind turned against itself. That voice in my head had split into many and it no longer seemed like me. The voices I had were mean. It was also very terrifying at times. The voices would say they were going to harm me. Looking back in retrospect on the experience it was as if there was a disconnect in my brain between what I knew as me and what were figments of my imagination. Like I said it was as if my mind turned against me. I suffered a lot of severe abuse growing up. I think it's what contributed to my mind turning against me. I felt like I had no one to trust. It fed into the paranoia and it grew and manifested in my mind. I think thats what may have triggered my illness.

a reply to: rickymouse
All schizophrenia drugs block dopamine. People that get parkinsons the brain quits producing dopamine. The dopamine receptors in parkinsons patients are damaged. People on schizophrenia meds long term develop pakinsons like symptoms from the medicaitons. It's a syndrome called tardive dyskinesia. It's irreversible damage from the meds. People on these meds long term also can develop a life threatening illness called neuroleptic malignant syndrome. It can kill you if you don't stop taking the meds.

originally posted by: wantsome
a reply to: rickymouse
All schizophrenia drugs block dopamine. People that get parkinsons the brain quits producing dopamine. The dopamine receptors in parkinsons patients are damaged. People on schizophrenia meds long term develop pakinsons like symptoms from the medicaitons. It's a syndrome called tardive dyskinesia. It's irreversible damage from the meds. People on these meds long term also can develop a life threatening illness called neuroleptic malignant syndrome. It can kill you if you don't stop taking the meds.

Wow, you know your stuff. It's nice to know I am not alone in my obsession to find how things work.

originally posted by: rickymouse

originally posted by: wantsome
a reply to: rickymouse
All schizophrenia drugs block dopamine. People that get parkinsons the brain quits producing dopamine. The dopamine receptors in parkinsons patients are damaged. People on schizophrenia meds long term develop pakinsons like symptoms from the medicaitons. It's a syndrome called tardive dyskinesia. It's irreversible damage from the meds. People on these meds long term also can develop a life threatening illness called neuroleptic malignant syndrome. It can kill you if you don't stop taking the meds.

Wow, you know your stuff. It's nice to know I am not alone in my obsession to find how things work.

Thanks when I was a kid I had a near photographic memory. The school system thought I was stupid. I was failing all my subjects and my teacher complained to my mom all I did was stare out the window. They tested my IQ and my memory skills were off the charts. The school system kept tabs on me over the years and leading up to getting schizophrenia my IQ was dropping. It had the school psychologists puzzled. No one knew I was getting schizophrenia. I probably lost 20 IQ points since getting this illness but I still retained some of my intelligence.