Doing the Impossible

This year I began my second semester of graduate school at San Diego State. Outside of the shock that I am attending the very school I loathed growing up, I'm really enjoying it!

This semester I began my Psych emphasis. It is very interesting to be on the otherside of the coin and watching how professionals view my illness and the illnesses of those I've come to love. I am grateful my program is focused on the rehabilitation of others. I think that is what makes the perspective so different rom that of my own and that of others, even that of medical professionals. For the majority of people in the program, they are there because they genuinely want to help others. There are a couple of people who genuinely want to help, but who haven't had much experience dealing with people who have disabilities, let alone working with people who are diagnosed with a mental illness. I can tell by the thoughtless comments they make, comments which are just plain clueless.

Gratefully we have come far enough in this society that we no longer use the "N-word" when talking about African Americans, don't refer to Native Americans and Mexicans as as lazy or drunkards, no longer refer to Japanese as Japs, use other racial slurs. I am interested to see how long it takes for people to stop using  crazy, mental, psycho, loony and schizo to describe the behaviour of someone because we don't understand the motives behind someone's behavior. I mean, hey, I use those terms one in a while even refering to myself! But I think I use them in the same way that my Aftrican American friends use the "N-word"  with their African American friends. It's okay for one of them to say it to the other, but if I were to utter it, I think they would all stare at me in disgust, and rightly so.

The other day I was trying to describe something that I saw to some loved ones. It was a video presented by a man who is a very sucessful clinical psychologist. He is also schizophrenic. It's not often you hear about people with Schizophrenia who are living sucessfull lives. Unfortunately, you only hear about the ones who aren't, just like you only hear about Mormons in the news, when they've done something wrong. (ie: So and so, a Mormon, was caught in . . .. Where as you'd never hear, "so and so, a Jew, was caught in . . .. Well, you get my point.)

Anyway, this man made some very interesting observations about some of the characteristics often seen in people with a schizophrenic diagnosis. It was so insightful that I just couldn't get over it and had to share it with some loved ones. He was describing what he refered to as non-linear, paleo-logic, or poetic logic. Evidently people without schizophrenic characteristics have a linear or logial train of thought (A+B=C), where as a person with Schizophrenia has non-linear thought process (A+ B . . . I got an A once! A stands for airy!). Kinda like those commercials they have right now comparing one search engine to another.
 (http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/bing-search-engine-commercial/12814g0m4?q=TV+commercials+for+Bing+search+engine or http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/bing-search-engine-commercial/12814g0m4?q=TV+commercials+for+Bing+search+engine)

So when you think about it, what are some of the things that come to your mind having to do with Mental illness. I know that before I was diagnosed I had this idea in my mind of people rocking in the corner strapped into a straight jacket, drooling, mumbling insessantly to themselves or to their imaginary friend, acting out violently, wearing dark clothing, obsessed with death, drugies . . . unsafe . . . the list goes on and on. I made fun of them, never thinking I'd be one of them. When I asked those people here with me this afternoon some of there words that come to mind when thinking about people with mental illnesses they came up with a list including diseased, slow, disturbed, handicaped or crazy. After I had lived with my illness for a while I discovered the stigma of mental illness is actually stronger than that. It's kind of like that smoking campfire. Somehow that smoke penetrates every inch of your clothes, hair, skin . . . and just becomes part of you. Where mental illness is concerned it indirectly creates this belief that the ill person is unbalanced, deceitful, incompetant, forever ill, degenerate, worthless and a waste of space.

If a person walks into an emergency room with violent vomiting, a doctor would assume they have the flu. Perhaps the Dr would ask how long they've been experienceing those symptoms, what they've had to eat in the last couple of hours, asked them how long they can keep the food down, taken some blood samples, asked them for some other samples, asked them if they had any exposure to poisons . . . maybe give them a shot for their nausea and hook them up to a saline solution to rehydrate them. If that same person is a known person with mental illness and walks in to the ER with violent vomiting, the doctor assumes they are forcing themselves to be sick and skips questions of symptom duration, exposure to poisons, blood tests, rehydration and helpful nasea shot, instead sending them to the mental ward. I know it's happened to me. I made the entire ICU unit at the mental hospital ill---you do NOT want another acutely ill patient mad at you because you made them sick!

Things like that happen because of the pervasive stigma of mental illness. In this extreem example, the doctor relied on his ability to read a chart and ignored the obvious symptoms assuming I was lying, wanting attention because . . . who knows why? Why would anyone fake flu symptoms? Stomach ache to get out of school when you're nine, I get that. Forcing yourself to throw up every 15-20 minutes? Unless they person is a bulimic, it just doesn't happen---and if the person is Bulimic, they aren't going to go to the ER and tell the doctor they have the flu!

What is my point? Being MOPS, by definition I don't need a point! However in this case I have one!

My point is we make assumptions about people all the time. Perhaps we are judging them by what they're wearing, the color of their skin, job, religion, gossip we've heard from others . . . their labled illness . . .  you name it. It is intrinctly part of our innate human nature. We all have to do that little something to break down stereotypes and stigma.

As far as mental illness is concerned. If you had looked at my life three years ago you would have never believed I was capable of  contributing to society, serving others, attending church, wanting to have a full-time job, searching for that love of my life, skilled . . . etc, etc . . . let alone one day have a full-ride, three year scholarship to graduate school, living independantly, paying taxes, and all that other important stuff. Yet, I am the same person. Its funny becasue even some people who knew me then are incapable of believieving I no longer regularly go to the hospital, have experienced acute symptoms once in the past two years (lasting only 36 hours). The interesting thing is, people who've met me during the past two years would never guess I have EVER lived in a group home, was inpatient at a mental hospital, had over 100 shock treatments, experienced psychosis, depression, delusions or institutionalized for months at a time. Nope. Infact I've had fellow class members ask me how I come up with such good questions in class or how I come up with such good senarios for role playing in class. The odd thng is, I still have the same illness. I'm not denying my illness, nor am I denying the symptoms I've experienced or situations I've been in. They are part of me. However, regardless of my situation, I always knew somewhere in my being that I would be sucessfull and I would be an active contributing member of society, even when, for years I was told otherwise. It took a lot of love, hard work, patience, using selective hearing when communicating with others unwilling to think outside of my labled box and a passion to work with what I knew I had.

I guess the true question for you is . . . which do you want do believe? Who do YOU want to see? I want to see me. I am eternally grateful to all you who are willing to do likewise.
-MOPS