Family members are often told that the refusal to take psychiatric medication is an irrational reaction driven by their loved one’s mental health symptoms. The term anosognosia, a mystifyingly long and obscure bit of medical verbiage, is often employed. Anosognosia is a word used to describe a lack of insight. Insight is the understanding that [...]
Show me a psychotic child and I will write you a tragedy. "Your boy is sick," the fire chief said. "And very dangerous." No one had ever laughed when shown photos of burned bodies. Teachers, however, praised the unkempt loner who rode a skateboard, wore tie-dyed jeans, and excelled in mathematics, philosophy, and foreign languages. [...]
*Trigger Warning: Suicide* I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital for the first time when I was 20 years old. It came after a long period of severe anorexia and malnutrition, progressive dysfunctionality and decline in my physical and mental health. What I didn't know back then, I'm 30 now, was that it's not because [...]
Thinking back to my childhood, I believe that even back then there were obvious signs of what I insist on calling “a restless mind.” I remember always being a very agitated child, in my head mostly, and this has persisted into adulthood. When I was a child, gradually more and more, I distanced myself from [...]
*Trigger Warning - Suicide* I am 70 years old. My story won't end stigmatization. It was around in the earlier years of my life and it is still around. It doesn't bother me much 'cause I don't wear a flag'. "Crazy" is not 'who' I am. Schizophrenia is my diagnosis. In Canada, the disorder [...]
In the spring of 2015, after a stay in a psychiatric ward, I was diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. For a long time, I struggled to accept my illness. I was ashamed of it. The very idea of talking about it to anyone was embarrassing to me as if having a mental illness made me [...]
*trigger warning - self-harm* When I first became mentally unwell, I never thought I'd be here now, sharing my story—a survivor of my own minds torment. I was 16 when I was first diagnosed with clinical depression. I was in such a dark place, scared of the thoughts in my head, scared of what people [...]
Oprah said that when something isn’t working right in our lives first the universe gives us a whisper, then a nudge, then a push, then a shove. Then we’ll get hit with a brick and if we still don’t listen an earthquake will come along and totally disrupt our lives. Well, I waited for the [...]
