Mental Illness, the ultimate lie!

I have paranoid schizoeffective dissorder I was diagnosed at age 19. Let me enlighten you a little about how I came down with this illness and what I went through.

As a kid I was normal I was an honor role student that played football. I first started comming down with this illness at age 17 in the beggining of 11th grade. It all started with conspericies. I remember sitting in class and I thought my peers were secretly communicating someone would move thier arm and I thought it was a hidden gesture to others. I started thinking everyone was conspiering to somehow do me harm.

I soon dropped out of school quit leaving the house. The conspericies started involving my step dad and my step brother and sister. I started thinking they were conspiering against me in the same way my classmates were. I started waking up in the middle of the night thinking my step dad was putting subliminal messages in my head. So I started pushing my dresser up against the door at night. Mean while my step family was getting hostel they couldnt understand what was going on. Which made things worse and only reaffermed in my mind they were against me.

One night I woke with the dresser up against the door and I still thought my step dad got in my room somehow. So I got a bucther knife and stood outside his bedroom. I thought about stabbing him for about 20 minutes. Then I walked into my step sisters bedroom and I punched her in the leg as hard as I could. She woke up screaming. I staired for a minute then went back to bed.

Things got realy bad from thier. My mom called the cops on my step dad because he threatend her with a gun. She was trying to protect me. He went to jail and she got a restaining order.

Shortly after I quit leaving the house. I wouldnt even go to the store to get cigarettes. Meanwhile my mom was calling doctors trying to find out what might be wrong with me. She couldnt get me to go see one because I wouldnt leave the house. My mother was the only person I didnt think was conspiering against me. I didnt leave the house for 8 months.

My mom bought a hamster she thought that I might like it because I had several when I was a kid. One night I started thinking the hamster was in on the conspericy. So I thought about killing it but decided not to.

After 8 months of complete isolation I snapped it was like a switch went off in my head and I started hearing voices. My mom had me commited to a hospital shortly after. I've been on medication ever since.

Its been 8 years since then and I'm hallucination free as of now. Looking back I had no sense of reality. I didnt think there was anything wrong with me I thought it was everyone else. It all seems like a nightmare I couldnt wake up from. Ever have a scary dream and wake up and be like wheh it was only a dream? Imagine being stuck in that frame of mind with the fear and panic while awake. When survivle mode kicks in and I'm thinking its them or me its scary to think what could happen. Thats why I dont quit taking my meds.

People in that frame of mind can be dangerous but its not nesasairly thier fault. I cant help it I came down with this illness. Now that I'm on meds I couldnt even think about stabbing someone now. I work and lead a normal life I have friends and I go fishing all the time. I'm your average Joe alot people I know dont know I have schiz. I met someone recently that has a sister with this illness. When I told him I had it he was shocked and said he would have never guessed it.

Schizophrenia affects 1% of the US population thiers 3 million people wandering around with this illness. Out of all the metal disorders next to depression its the most common and is highly treatable.

wantsome,
I hope you do well. As a side note, don't buy into that you'll have to medicated the rest of your life so PAY, PAY, PAY! routine.
Studies outside of this one (the US) indicate that the brain (mind) will restore itself to balance after so many years. Maybe not, but most likely. After all, people with massive head trauma tend to be rehabilitated, don't they?
Don't stop taking your meds all of a sudden, but insist (or get a new doctor) that your meds be reduced once every so often to see if they are any longer necessary.

To throw a curve, the Health Care Crisis is real.
There are cases of "forced treatment" where someone who would otherwise be productive is "slated" into "care".

Although rare, it is real. Then people "Bit** & Moan", well why...?

Don't try so hard, next time you decide someone doesn't fit your constraints of acceptable reality.

Originally posted by bothered
wantsome,
I hope you do well. As a side note, don't buy into that you'll have to medicated the rest of your life so PAY, PAY, PAY! routine.
Studies outside of this one (the US) indicate that the brain (mind) will restore itself to balance after so many years. Maybe not, but most likely. After all, people with massive head trauma tend to be rehabilitated, don't they?
Don't stop taking your meds all of a sudden, but insist (or get a new doctor) that your meds be reduced once every so often to see if they are any longer necessary.

Yeah My doctor said I might not have to take meds the rest of my life. When I was first diagnossed I was on a cocktail of 5 meds I'm down to 1 now and its a low dose. I havent had hallucinations for a couple of years.

I learned along time ago not to tell people about my illness. Theres alot of stigmas and styreotypes. My family and friends know but other then that I dont tell people. Thiers alot of ignorant people that think because thiers nothing wrong with them the rest of the world is or should be the same.

I met a guy a couple of years ago he owned his own petshop. I used to go up there everyday and just bullsh*t. One day he mentioned he had a sister with schizophrenia then I told him I have it. He couldnt belive it and asked how could I seemed so normal. His sister is 53 years old and refuses to take meds. Alot of older schizoprenics refuse treatment because of how the treatments were 30 or 40 years ago. Alot of older meds had severe side effects.

Yeah, I've heard horror stories.
Of course nowadays they tend to try to over-medicate, insurance allowing. I'm glad you're down to one.

This notion that mental illness if fair game for any type of ill-treatment is one set up by those who are people you probably wouldn't want to associate with anyway. I understand mental illness to be nothing more than some type of overactivity in certain centers of the brain/mind/body. Very controllable these days by proper use of the right dose of medication.

That is such rubbish, i use to suffer psycotic episodes ( not anymore ) and i use to hear voices and that, I also know 3 people with skitsofrinia, they have there moments but are good people really, also a man who kills his wife becasue God told him too, would usually be put in a institute becasue a physcatrist would have seen he was potentially dangerous.

wantsome, I commend you for opening up like that. I just recently was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and schizoaffeective disorder. at my worst, I wouldn't leave the house, and then I snapped out of it all of a sudden, at which point my doctor made a house call (rare here in the states), and let me voluntarily hospitalize myself for treatment. I spent a week in a private hospital, and have to take 4 meds a day... but really, what might I have done if I didn't snap out of it on my own for that brief period, and I kept diving into my own paranoid delusions? suicide? murder? assault? who knows, but I'm glad I didn't have the chance to find out...

Originally posted by CYRAX
when a patient says he has gone to space
he has
reality is what we make it

I have to say, CYRAX, I think the field of mental illness is where post-modernist thought goes to die.

I met a woman in a mental hospital who told me she was Jimi Hendrix. (She wasn't. She never was.)

I have only ever known a couple individuals who suffered from schizophrenia, but they were both tortured by their disconnect from reality. They hated the lack of faith they had in their own brain.

There is truth.
There is reality.
You can interpret it, but you can't change it. And that's why schizophrenia is very real, and very sad.

Two main resources that help people deal effectively with mental illness:

1. The psychiatric manual DSM-II published by the American psychiatry community. These are available in some public libraries. It can be quite illuminating to look at the DSM-2 description, for example, of the behavior profile associated with Borderline Personality Disorder. In particular, family members of BPD people can cope much better (and may be successful in persuading the person with BPD issues to consult a mental health professional) just be being aware what kind of diagnoses may be involved. Obviously, however, only a mental health professional can accurately diagnose a mental health problem. (DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.)

2. The U.S. insurance industry has a long history of avoiding or extremely limiting its coverage of mental health problems, thus forcing these problems underground, blaming the victim, etc. ...just follow the money on the logic of that situation. Former First Lady Rosalyn Carter for that reason has long lobbied for affordable mental health insurance coverage.

Originally posted by FutureLibrarian
Two main resources that help people deal effectively with mental illness:

1. The psychiatric manual DSM-II published by the American psychiatry community. These are available in some public libraries. It can be quite illuminating to look at the DSM-2 description, for example, of the behavior profile associated with Borderline Personality Disorder. In particular, family members of BPD people can cope much better (and may be successful in persuading the person with BPD issues to consult a mental health professional) just be being aware what kind of diagnoses may be involved. Obviously, however, only a mental health professional can accurately diagnose a mental health problem. (DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.)

2. The U.S. insurance industry has a long history of avoiding or extremely limiting its coverage of mental health problems, thus forcing these problems underground, blaming the victim, etc. ...just follow the money on the logic of that situation. Former First Lady Rosalyn Carter for that reason has long lobbied for affordable mental health insurance coverage.

I agree the health care system in the US is a joke when it comes to mental illness.
I have blue cross the copay is cheaper to go to the emargancy room then to see my psychiatrist and my psychiatrist charges 10 time less.

Just to gripe, I tire of hearing people say those with mental illness are too much of a liability and don't contribute.
I then watch someone park in a Handicap space at a store with DD plates, get out skipping, and humming some tune.
There are those with problems, and those that "just can't seem to get going, if it pays" it seems.

I have a schitzo friend. He sees things, and he hears things. His meds made him crazier, at first. He had to drop out of college. I think he's regulated right now. I haven't run across him in about 6 months. He was one of the sweetest people I knew.


Step back and look at a less violent disease: ADHD.
Many people labled with this don't have it.
Many more who do, don't really care and won't get treatment.
You can have diffrent levels of severity.

I fit into the second category, and it's hireditary, along with similar complexes. Dad is ADHD, and he refuses to admit it when we all tell him he is. His mother definately has something; don't know what. I may be the only child affected, as the boys are rather normal. Holding conversations with me is like talking to someone who comes out of left field every 5 minutes or less. I function without much need of help..only gets bad when I'm nervous. Like right now, I'm having trouble finishing this conversation because I keep thinking of barely connected tangents. I've spent 20 minutes writing this, to this point.

Since your brain has electrical impulses, any electrical impulse that goes wrong on a regular basis ought to be fixed (mostly twitches and tics).
Since your brain is a mass of chemicals, any chemical that goes out of balance needs to be fixed.


This is something pretty much everyone can test:
Go buy some serotonin and take it on a regular basis. I think you can still find it health stores. Your mood will elevate. This is something the majority of people are low in because they work in stressful environments, don't get enough sleep, don't make enough through sunlight exposure, etc. Tell us how much your mood has improved in only a week, and then again in a month.
Here is basic info

Keep in mind that there is also a conspiracy idea that states that some people are used as guinea pigs for mind control experiments. With all the chemicals they're throwing at us (flouride in the water, chemtrails, etc), you never know how all that crap is affecting people. Just something else to consider.

Take care.

Originally posted by Essedarius

Originally posted by CYRAX
when a patient says he has gone to space
he has
reality is what we make it

I have to say, CYRAX, I think the field of mental illness is where post-modernist thought goes to die.

I met a woman in a mental hospital who told me she was Jimi Hendrix. (She wasn't. She never was.)

to you and me she is not Jimi Hnedrix but her reality she is Jimi Hendrix
"when a patient says he has gone to space
he has"
that was a quote i used by Jung

Originally posted by CYRAX
to you and me she is not Jimi Hnedrix but her reality she is Jimi Hendrix

In her delusions she is Jimi Hendrix.

In reality, she has been admitted to a mental hospital for attacking a record store owner who wasn't paying her royalties on "Purple Haze."

Trying to turn her situation into some kind of "interesting choice" does not give proper weight to her illness, and does not help anyone.

Hey!! watch out man you might set one of us crazzzzzzys off and will start watching you from the bus stop across the street

Meet Thomas Szasz:

The Myth of Mental Illness

en.wikipedia.org...

www.bigeye.com...

I've never heard of Szasz before, so I enjoyed reading those links about him.
Well, I should say that I didn't "enjoy" it so much as I was "angered by them."

You know the people who name threads on ATS so that they sound really controversial and fascinating, but then when you enter the thread you find out that they really don't even believe the outrageous claim they made in their thread title?

That's who Szasz is.

"The Myth of Mental Illness" is a GREAT title for a book. It really draws you in, no? The thing is that Szasz does not actually believe that.

His argument is not that people cannot have problems with their brain, his argument is that those problems should not be called "Mental Illnesses", they should be called "Brain Diseases."

So really, he has taken a VOCABULARY lesson and dressed it up as an amazing medical assertion.

The problem with Szasz is that he then goes on to use the term "Mental Illness" under HIS definition (an ethical issue, not a medical one)...as opposed to the definition that most people attach to the term (brain disease), and makes statements like:

…mental illness is a myth, whose function it is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.

Eventually you end up with some moron who didn't take the time to read the whole book (but maybe borrowed the cliff notes from his cult) spouting off on national TV that people who suffer from legitimate medical conditions are simply wussies that haven't taken the time to cure themselves.




(Yes, that's Szasz on the left.)

Originally posted by MacDonagh
Okay, I've just been thinking about folk with mental disorders, folk who do bad things because they are schizophrenic, or temporary insanity. Those who have schizophrenia, or temproary insanity are apparently devoid of rationality, so much so, that we excuse them from any responsibilty. Because of this, we excuse them as moral agents, just like we excuse, children, wild beasts, plants, and rocks because of their lack of rationality.
In short, I am guessing that people who hear 'voices' and give an excuse 'God told me to eat the raspberry' is not the same as not having reasons for eating the raspberry in the first place. It's my view that the schizophrenic person who kills his wife because "God told him too" is not evidence that of how valid his explanation is. Such a person kills his wife because he wanted too, but he disavowed his intention to, and casts himself as an obeying slave who could not help but obey. It's all in their own self conversations they ultimately disown.
There is probebly never been a single account on a schizophrenic's voice telling the subject to buy his wife flowers, or take her to a romantic cruise. So I will guess that there is motive behind the most senseless act, because he or she wants to achieve something.

One Question;

Are you in any way affiliated with Scientology?