Imagine that someone has received a blow to the head somehow – an accident at work, a fall at home, perhaps – somehow the person’s head was struck hard enough to injure the brain. Now consider what would happen if this injury affected the person’s behavior, causing him to act in a bizarre or irrational manner. Those who knew of the injury would feel compassion. Poor guy, he can’t help it, he has an injury to his brain that causes him to act that way.
Continue readingFirst Hospitalization
One wild night, I was about to kill myself with a shotgun. I was interrupted and ran off into the night. The police found me in a park, where they surrounded me at a distance. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, so I surrendered peacefully and was taken into custody.
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Futility
I am weary. I’ve been struggling with this for forty years. I gave it everything I had. I have nothing to show for my efforts.
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Posted in Symptoms
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Out of the Closet
There is a stigma attached to mental illness. People who would never ridicule a person with a physical disability, think nothing of making fun of someone suffering from psychiatric illness. The reasons are numerous and complex, but admitting to having mental illness is an invitation to ridicule, scorn, abuse, and prejudice.
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Posted in Social Impact, Stigma
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Saying Goodbye
I am able to afford therapy because I receive it at a teaching hospital. They offer reduced rates. The down side is that as the interns complete their course work and other requirements, they move on. That is what is happening now.
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The Lives They Left Behind
That is the title of a book about the inmates of a mental institution – who they were, what became of them, based on the institution’s records and the luggage the patients brought with them and never retrieved.
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Love
Posted in Healing, Social Impact
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Suicide
IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS IN CRISIS, PLEASE CALL THE SUICIDE AND CRISIS LIFELINE AT 988. THEY ARE OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY.
For many of us, psychiatric illness is fatal, ending in suicide. Despite everything, help isn’t always enough. Tormented beyond bearing, misunderstood, often rebuffed by the people who could be trying to help us, we may turn to that last desperate act, hoping by it to find relief.
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