I am a woman with chronic schizophrenia. I have spent hundreds of days in psychiatric hospitals. I could have ended up living most of my life on a back ward, but things turned out quite differently.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I was diagnosed with everything from schizophrenia to multiple personality disorder.
I was never in a mental institution for a long time. I was in psych wards.
Some people say I'm unique, that there aren't other people with schizophrenia like me. Well, there are people like me out there, but the stigma is so great that they don't come forward.
I might have been just as happy to have been a practicing primary-care doctor. But as a medical student, I had interacted with patients suffering from neurodegeneration or acute clinical schizophrenia. It left an indelible mark on my memory.
Growing up, I was in and out of trouble in group homes and other institutions, and when I was 14, I was locked up in a psychiatric hospital for a number of months for behavioral problems.
We need to ask whether, in the long term, some individuals with a history of psychosis may do better off medication.
I would say I see myself as a psychiatrist in remission.
I am one of millions who have been treated for depression and gotten well; I was lucky enough to have a psychiatrist well versed in using lithium and knowledgeable about my illness, and who was also an excellent psychotherapist.
Before I got on full-time medication, I believed that my mental disorder was the reason I could create so much and create well, because it made me crazy. I could go to these dark places and then come out of it and just be human again.
A lot of people are living with mental illness around them. Either you love one or you are one.
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