Columns

When I write my columns, I hope that I am not getting excessively preachy or excessively autobiographical. However, this week I am talking about myself as the main subject. 

I believe that teaching by example is the most effective way of imparting something, whether that something is good, bad, or neither. I am trying to become an example of how recovery from a mental illness is done. In the distant past, I had times of becoming noncompliant with treatment. Every time that I discontinued medication, bad results followed. Yet, I had long timespans of being compliant, and this caused me to forget just how bad it is to go through a psychotic episode. 

Some family members of mentally ill offspring have contacted me, even while I can't give advice to individuals. Often, they've been unable to get their psychotic son or daughter to take medication and get well. A symptom of psychosis is to blame the world for what is actually in one's own diseased mind. 

Following my most recent episode of complete psychosis, which happened to me in 1996, I made a commitment to never again go off medication against medical advice. And if any doctor believes I can get by without antipsychotics, 'they don't know me'. Such a long time has passed of me being stabilized that many people may not understand that I suffer from a severe case of Schizophrenia, Paranoid-Type. 

If a mentally ill person takes their prescribed medication and works hard to forge something good, they have a better chance than otherwise at getting good results. 

In the past five years, my condition hasn't been as good. Thinking back, this coincides with a very nasty Presidential contest and a very nasty President. At the time I'm writing this, I do not know the outcome of this week's election. I do not know for certain whether my condition is exacerbated by the societal civil war taking place, or whether I should look for a stronger antipsychotic cocktail. 

No, I'm not quitting the column and not taking a break from it. 

However, I'm going to adjust what I do with the premise--a significant number of my thoughts are delusional and/or paranoid. This premise will work as a filter for the content in this column. I do not know how many people read this column, but for those who do, I want to serve you as well as I can. 

My perception of personal circumstances is probably distorted due to distorted thinking. Actually, my circumstances are currently pretty good. This is because I've made my circumstances good through doing what is needed. 

What worked for me in the nineties was to do a quest to find reality. This was done at home, in a corner of a tiny apartment, in a chair, with pen and paper. I might try the same thing again. The quest led to a lot of understanding of what makes my mind work or not work. 

This week's column replaces something I almost sent titled "What we are up against." It was dismal and I hated it. So, I decided to throw it out before sending it to Becky and write this piece instead. 

There is hope for people with schizophrenia. We just need to be proactive in our treatment, and we need to work hard at making our lives better. You should have hope, no matter which candidate has won the contest as of the time you are reading this. The human species is extremely adaptable, and, in the long run, we will evolve into something better than we are now. 

So, this is not a "goodbye" this is a "hello!" 

I hope to make my mind work better than it works now. The result could eventually be better external circumstances, albeit the current ones are not bad. Your mind to a large extent is the author of your circumstances--not always, but very often. The better your mind grabs the truth, the better your actions and speech will become, and this means that you will act and speak in ways that make things better. 

ADDITIONAL NOTE: 

As of the time I'm writing this, I've been viewing historic election coverage on television. The coverage is compelling. However, becoming too fixated on it, as it turns out, is not good for my mental condition. But that is not the point I'd like to make here. 

The reader could be wondering. In this week's column I said I have some amount of psychotic thought. You might wonder, doesn't that disqualify me from writing a column such as mine? Am I not supposed to be fully recovered? 

That's where an important point needs to be made. If I were suffering from cancer, no one would doubt my ability to function within limits imposed by the cancer or the cancer treatment. Mental illness isn't cancer, but like cancer, it is a biologically created condition, and it does not say anything about my merits or lack thereof as a columnist. 

I've seen a person discontinue an awfully expensive and important employment project, because the person (the director of the project) was "still mentally ill" and wasn't "cured" of their mental illness. I thought that it was dumb to discontinue a project intended to help mentally ill people for the reason of having a mental illness that has not gone away. Yet, psychiatrists and therapists were part of the program, and apparently, they went along with the decision. 

The reader should not miss the whole point. 

Having a psychiatric condition is not disqualifying for most things. You can still do many things as a qualified and sometimes expert individual. I am not invalidated because of having symptoms of mental illness--on the contrary. 

People need to rise out of this almost superstitious, Stone Age manner of thinking. Mental illness doesn't intrinsically say anything about a person's qualifications to do something, and it doesn't say anything about a person's character. Mental illness must be accepted as a normal illness. If someone must take a day off work, so be it. If someone must have better pills or more pills, so be it. 

It is okay to be mentally ill, and we can still accomplish things. Therefore, I categorically reject any possible notion that I ought not be writing a column on mental illness. (As of the time I'm writing this, such objections from people are hypothetical.)