Surviving and Thriving After a Diagnosis of Schizophrenia

What a wonderful and courageous story. Congratulations on healing from psychiatry and reclaiming your life. You are a stellar example of natural healing, very inspiring.

I think when we experience quantum growth and healing, it challenges those around us. That’s a good time to discover where our support and friendships truly exist, and a whole new reality emerges for us–much clearer, and filled with compassion and wisdom, as you talk about. That’s what I refer to as “transformation,” which, I feel, has the power to change the world. I’m so glad you found the inspiration to tell your story!

I believe in the wisdom of what Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Very best wishes on your continued evolution.

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Hi Margaret, Thank you for your sharing and congratulations! I can so understand where you are coming from on multiple levels. Its so hard when your are off medication and the people who are in your support network have no understanding of why you are on the journey. It would really help if there were support for people going through withdrawal. Kind of a support system people who helped out with those who were dying from AIDS. Not exactly the same level of seriousness but I think to be fair to those around us who see us in distress they need to have skills in helping us live and survive the distress. Another metaphor would be the ancient Druid schools where they induced an altered state. Most schools have PTAs and I would guess back then there was probably either a formed or organic support group for the families of druids or druids to be.
I think the intent of NAMI was sort of like that but they were taken off course in one of the ultimate acts of evil I can think of.The Pharma folks saw an entrance and ran with it. Talk about birds of prey.I have tried and am still working through this with others. There is no societal pathway for this mutual experience to follow, I guess we are making it ourselves.Blood,sweat, and many ,too many tears.
Good for you. I hope one day to follow in your steps.

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Just a thought. “Gathering Blue” by Lois Lowry is a young adult novel that beautifully deals with differences, disability, separteness, and inclusive communities. A nice read for anyone thrown into this world.

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Thank you for sharing your story, Margaret, and congratulations on recovering from the psychiatric iatrogenesis to which you were subjected. To that point, and as to, “I just grew worse and worse despite the various antidepressants that my doctor prescribed.”

Combining the antidepressants and/or antipsychotics is known to make a person “psychotic” via what’s medically known as anticholinergic toxidrome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome

So it’s possible your so called “schizophrenia” diagnosis was actually a misdiagnosis of antidepressant induced anticholinergic toxidrome. This psychiatric drug induced toxidrome is not listed as a billable disorder in the DSM, so it’s almost always misdiagnosed by the psychiatric practitioners as one of the billable DSM disorders, since this is the only way the “mental health care professionals” can get paid.

If you have not yet gotten the “schizophrenia” diagnosis/defamation off your medical history, pointing this medical information out to your doctor may help. Best wishes.

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“My life seems to be divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’ the most defining point in my life — a late spring day in 1994 when a psychiatrist explained to me that as a schizophrenic, I would probably be on medication and under the care of a psychiatrist for the rest of my life.” <– From Margaret Fong, above….
You don't have "schizophrenia", Margaret, you have IATROGENIC NEUROLEPSIS. I know, because I have it, too.
My "I.N." came when I was in 10th grade, in High School. My parents took me to see a type of pseudoscientist known as a "psychiatrist", who gave me an arbitrary and bogus "diagnostic label" used as an excuse to sell drugs. I was told the same load of psychobabble that you were. But today, (2017), I haven't seen a shrink ("psychiatrist"), or taken any psych drugs in well over 20 years! Gee, Doc, what happened to my supposed "mental illness"? Today, I'm more whole, healthy, & happy than ever!
As you cab see, Margaret, as different as you and I are, and as different as our stories are, there are almost identical parallels in our bogus "diagnoses", and subsequent drugging-for-profit.
I'm really happy to see your story here! THANK-YOU! ~B./

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I was shocked and unprepared for the amount of disbelief, opposition, and jealousy that I encountered with my recovery story. I naively thought that everyone would be happy for me that I had recovered without pharmaceutical drugs. However, not only do I have the stigma of once being diagnosed with schizophrenia, I also have the extra stigma of not being on medication.

Surprise! As far as the system is concerned you’re another potential Sandy Hook waiting to happen. Even though all those guys WERE being “treated” with psychiatric neurotoxins.

You broke the code, like the psychically attuned folks in Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind who ripped off their gas masks and went running through the desert when the government was trying to maintain an Anthrax hoax. You’re supposed to obsess on your difficulties and disappointments, identify as a damaged person and consume massive quantities of drugs until you die. And be grateful on top of it. As you are learning, your experience of “recovery” is now to be considered a sign of denial, not something to cheer. But now that you’ve realized all this you can never un-realize it. (Congratulations!)

If Laura Delano, the force behind the Mad Film Festival, is reading this I know she’ll be thrilled to know that it helped you decide to speak out.

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Mental illness diagnoses exist because our society needs scapegoats, it needs people it can marginalize, as there is an ever shrinking labor market.

Lots of people are completely locked out of the labor market. And this is only going to be increasing.

Welfare money is intended to regulate the poor, not to provide for their needs. But we need to have it. So Citizenship Pay would seem to be the only answer.

And like I’ve been trying to say, if someone has been treated with dignity and respect and allowed to develop and apply their abilities, then the chances that they will be one of those shut out are much lower. So if you see people who’s lives have fallen apart, look to their parents and hold the parents financially accountable. The US is just about the only industrialized country which allows one to disinherit their child. We must change this, because it legitimates child abuse.

Capitalism has always depended upon having scapegoats. We used to get these in the immigrants and racial minorities who did low wage labor and slave labor.

But today there is far less need for any kind of labor. So today Capitalism gets its scapegoats directly from the middle-class family. And most middle-class child abuse involves doctors of one type or another. So the scapegoating involves the fallacies of mental illness, or things like Autism, Aspergers, ADHD, or Eating Disorders. What this is, is the resurgence of the bogus sciences of Social Darwinism and Eugenics.

We must put these doctors out of action. Crimes Against Humanity prosecution would be best. Other counties have the laws which will facilitate such prosecution, according to Nuremberg precedents. And then we must hold the parents financially accountable, as this is the only language they will ever understand. After all, the only reason they even had children in the first place was just to gain social status.

Nomadic

Move from passive collaboration with injustice, to active opposition, Please Join:
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/fighting-to-eradicate-the-mental-health-system-and-incarcerate-the-practitioners-f2.html

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Hi Margaret,

It is good to see more people speaking up about having undergone very difficult extreme states and overcoming them in a variety of ways. I assume you have seen some of the many other accounts of such experience on this site, perhaps including my own.

I think there is nothing to be ashamed of in revealing that one was once paranoid or delusional – it can happen to anyone under enough stress – nor anything to be ashamed of in revealing that a psychiatrist once labeled one “schizophrenic”. As Rosenhan once demonstrated, the darkly funny thing is that almost anyone who goes to a psych hospital and reports hearing critical voices can get a diagnosis of “schizophrenia”. That doesn’t mean that all such people are unable to function and handle their feelings – as is someone experiencing a genuinely incapacitating extreme states of mind – but it does illustrate what I am going to discuss below.

Reading your piece, I was reminded several times how arbitrary and invalid the label of “schizophrenia” is – how there is not a valid illness called schizophrenia delineated by any biomarkers outside of a psychiatrist’s subjective judgment. From the psychoanalytic viewpoint that I use to look at these problems, extreme states represent an early emotional development state in which terror, rage, and despair result in regression to a childlike state of mind. Usually such a transition can be correlated to specific stressors such as abuse, divorce, job loss, neglect, financial stressors, etc. The terror usually results in a regression to a state of self and other fusion, in which a person cannot really tell emotionally what thoughts/feelings are their own and which thoughts/feeling belong to other people. Thus their own fear and suspicion gets projected into other people having malevolent intentions, as for example in the paranoid fears you once had about your coworkers.

But the notion that such a regression can be concretized as “schizophrenia” and pegged at “6 months’ duration of psychotic ‘symptoms’” (in a psychiatrist’s subjective judgment) is just bullshit. These experiences vary greatly from individual to individual, plus there’s no sharp cut-off point along the continuum at which one becomes “schizophrenic” or “non-schizophrenic”. Richard Bentall explained this well in his book “Madnes Explained”, in which he discussed how the paranoia, terror, and suspicion that people who get labeled “schizophrenic” experience is not different only in degree, not kind, from lesser experiences of the same things that any of us can and do experience under stress.

There is not one distinct class of people that “have schizophrenia” and another majority group that don’t carry the “schizophrenia genes”. The mistaken assumptions around all of these issues – which relate to the non-validity and poor reliability of almost all psychiatric diagnosis – explains how psychiatrists deluded themselves over the last several decades into believing that a discrete “schizophrenia” existed (as opposed to a continuum of extreme states varying in severity and without a clear division from less severe distress). Psychiatrists also made the mistake of believing that extreme states are primarily caused by faulty genes, rather than being caused primarily by environmental stress interacting with the brain/epigenome in a dynamic interpenetrating fashion.

And of course, the notion that “schizophrenia is a lifelong, incurable disease”, is one of the most pathetic, stupid, harmful, and blatantly false (in multiple ways) things research psychiatrists have ever said, an outmoded delusion on psychiatrists’ part that needs to be consigned to the trash heap of history.

Regarding this, “I was now coping with the fact that I had been diagnosed schizophrenic — and that proved to be more difficult to recover from.”

Yes, this is one of the most insidious, harmful things that psychiatrists do – tell people that they have a lifelong brain disease and will not be able to fully recover. The terror and pessimism created by such false prophecies can be devastating and even lead to suicide. And many people do not dare believe at first that the psychiatrist is simply spouting bullshit and that the notion that there is a lifelong incurable illness called schizophrenia is, quite simply, an untruth.

Regarding this, “Well, I believe any schizophrenic on medication is a walking time bomb, because any day they could stop taking their medication — secretly, out of desperation — and all those repressed emotions and thoughts could come exploding out in uncontrollable fury with unpredictable timing.”

I couldn’t have said it better – the ugly truth is that antipsychotic “medications” are not bonafide medications treating any well-defined illness entity in any way – a far cry from insulin for diabetes. They are nothing more than heavy, numbing tranquilizers that dull down the ability to feel the terror, rage, and confusion that are so overwhelming when one is in an extreme state of mind. This numbing and quieting of the person is what is called “effectiveness” and “response” in reviews of the drugs, pathetic and short-sighted as that conceptualization is. Meanwhile, absolutely nothing is done by the drugs to enable the person to develop more ability to handle their emotions and to face and work on the life problems and stressors that may have led them to break down. On the contrary, the ability to think clearly and to process emotions is progressively eroded by the neuroleptics with long term use.

Not being on antipsychotic drugs after a diagnosis of schizophrenia to me is something to be proud of. It is a sign of insight, willingness to take an intelligent risk, ability to think for oneself, and often-times the ability to realize that one’s psychiatrist does not know what they are talking about. More than once on this forum I have recounted how tapering off antipsychotics against my psychiatrist’s wishes was a decision I am proud of and never regretted, and would do again.

Well done again for sharing your story Margaret.

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I am awed with how you questioned your diagnosis of schizophrenia as a lifelong tragedy and going on with your life. So many times I wish I could be more vocal about what happened to me, how the polypharmacy made me into a bizarre incoherent person and the diagnosis stigma. Thank you so much for writing your story on this site.

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There are 2 inter-related reasons shrinks say we will “need to be on drugs (“meds”) the rest of your(our) lives”.
The first is the drug racket angle. They want you on drugs your whole life, to keep the money flowing to PhRMA.
If you get off the drugs, you stop buying the drugs, so the $$$$ flow dries up.
The 2nd reason is more insidious. Over time, the chemicals in the drugs interfere with normal brain function, which reduces chances for recovery, and makes the person less functional, therefore more helpless, and they begin to “look crazy”. The more “crazy” they look, the more OTHER people *think* they need the drugs, (because they’re “crazy” – you see how this SCAM works?). The drugs are a form of self-fulfilling prophecy.
And very profitable, too. That’s what makes the pseudoscience of psychiatry a drug racket.
Honestly, Margaret, I have to question your story as you tell it here. To me, it just does NOT sound, – or read – like it was written by a schizophrenic. I was always told that so-called “schizophrenics” are CRAZY people!
And I’m sorry, Margaret, but you just don’t sound “crazy” to me. Or “schizophrenic”, either! Your story just makes too much sense to me. You sound like somebody I’d enjoy going out for coffee with, or working on a community garden project! I think maybe you were mis-diagnosed. 🙂

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Margaret, I note you’re a runner? Have you ever run in the Hood To Coast Relay in Oregon?

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Margaret, (and also all my other friends here at MiA!….),
I want to make explicit how you’re helping us all here. You have taken the brave and healing step of telling your story. That makes it safer for others here who haven’t yet found your courage. You inspire and encourage us by your clear, concise honesty. You give us something to think about, and that helps *US* think about *OUR* situations and life, too. You also give US a chance to put our thoughts into words here, which again, HELPS US ALL. That’s how it is for me. So let me share an idea, and hope it comes out clearly.
You had “therapists”, and whoever, who wanted to somehow “blame” your troubles on your childhood. You didn’t find that very helpful, and I agree. There’s too much “blame the victim” in that, and blame & victimhood are NOT healthy, in my view. But what works for me, is to look at *RELATIONSHIPS*, both among your family when you were a child, and also others in your life as you grew into adulthood. By looking at these relationships, as relationships, we can begin to see patterns of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, expectations, etc. I have gotten great value by re-framing my own recovery work in this way. Unlike you, I became an alcoholic, like my Father. It was in A.A. that I encountered the “12 Steps” of A.A., and used them as a guide, as a framework to do some very solid self-analysis. So, even though you’re not much a drinker, and probably NOT alcoholic, still, I think you might find some benefit by looking at the 12 Steps as discussed in Chapter 5, “How It Works”, in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”. A.A. talks about looking at relationships, and avoiding “blaming”.They served as a good guide for me to get my head straightened out after the mess the quack shrinks made of it, with their neurotoxins!Thanks for making my Monday morning a little more productive! ~B./ 🙂
I

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Schizophrenia indeed exists.It’s matter of human hormones,not matter of dopamine or glutamat imbalance
hypothesis.Both substances aren’t in group of hallucinogenic substances.Human hormones.This is all what define anyone normal or crazy.Agree with me or not *audience* here,many of you here are only serving some Psychology and Psychotheraphy agenda,with aim to manipulate crazy people for your own *Cause*
and personal benefict.

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Wow, what an inspiring story Margaret – you are truly a brave and determined woman wanting nothing but to reclaim your life. I have a dear friend who suffers from schizophrenia and he tried nutritional therapy but unfortunately he couldn’t carry on with the program. He was admitted to hospital 4 months ago after trying to come off his meds cold turkey. He relapsed and his family sectioned him. He’s adamant not to take his meds when he comes out. I wish I can do more than just being a good friend.

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God bless you, Margaret. You are not alone. I sat in a conversation with two psychologists yesterday who were casually diagnosing public figures with major mental illnesses, oblivious to their own transference issues or the unethical nature of their behavior. Being a mental health counselor myself – who also was harmed by the industry years ago – I listened and just shook my head. This kind of thing is endemic among mental health professionals; diagnoses becomes a way to gossip without looking like you’re doing so. I wish you the very best.

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Hello Margaret

A friend kindly sent me a link to your article. I want to thank you so much for getting into this. I have a diagnosis of schizophrenia and also PTSD and also Bipolar and a variety of illnesses that are linked to repressed anxiety. As I see it.

After two utterly stupid (too stupid) psych ward experiences I have only ever taken Ativan as I worked with Dr. A Hoffer ‘ s naturopathic remedy using diet and vitamins in combination with therapy and exercise. I have been accused as deluded and hallucinating by psychiatric communities when it comes to how I have chosen to deal with my mental illness. And I agree with you about how much excercise and meditation increase wellness and coping. This is becoming more accepted as research into Excercise physiology for sport increases. Strange bedfellows. ☺

My brother was diagnosed schizophrenic long before I was and did not fare so well. He was diagnosed very young and it was the early 70s. My mother fought the psychiatric community and was treated to the hysterical mother antifeminist guilt trip. Long story short : my brother died of a seizure from a toxic overdose of his meds at age 45. Right in the new mean of death related to the new order of antipsychotic and psychotropic drugs.

Resperidol was also responsible for an ex girlfriend of his contracting cancer when she was in her late 30s.

I am alive and quite healthy but suspect I am more the norm for people who refuse meds. We are struggling at the bottom of the economy and trying to maintain our feelings of self worth and value to our families as we feel guilt and horror for not contributing our share. Stigma and bullying of the mentally ill by the business sector not only can retraumatize us but make Anxiety chronic as we negotiate the reality of loss of belief in any goodness or ability for the culture to perceive that we are essentially no different than anyone after treatment.

I would underline thst the air role that meds have in treatment is an actual form of sadistic and homicidal punishment.

I am so amazed that you are in a place where you can share easily your experience and am grateful for it. Thank you.

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It’s odd–but not surprising–that they blamed your family of origin while completely overlooking your troubled marital relationship.

Despite psychiatrists blaming my defective brain chemistry and genetic makeup, my parents also received a great deal of finger-pointing. (My trauma stems from being sexually harassed in high school for 2 years. They never talked about that.) I think they had it in for Mom and Dad. The charges were that they wouldn’t let me grow up and become independent. By growing up, they meant letting the MI System make all my decisions for me. By independent, they meant depending on the MI system for everything.

Leaving my family of origin and segregating myself from “normal” society was strongly encouraged. I was repeatedly told I should only date other “bipolars” because only we could understand each other! Not true at all. Lots of folks on psych drugs with labels are too incoherent for anyone to understand.

I finally got sick of being told who I should hang out with, who to date, how to spend my days, and how to practice my religion. (Plus after 4 years of careful research I came to the sickening conclusion that psychiatric “meds” and diagnoses were a bunch of hokum.)

So I left the system. How? I simply moved to another town and didn’t sign up for any services. I’m in an isolated, rural area. The people are nice and helpful, which is a safe and effective treatment for me. Best of all, the nearest shrink and Mental Illness center are more than 50 miles away. The closest psych ward is well over 100!

I feel much safer now. 🙂

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Dear Margaret,

Thank you so much for sharing your story. Our stories are similar in many respects. I was also “late onset” and had been working successfully for many years when I was diagnosed. And like you, I successfully weaned myself from medication and I have worked mostly full-time and mostly professionally throughout my adult life. I think I was successful because I was stubborn enough to question the need for ongoing medication and succeeded in weaning myself – twice – as I was “recovering” from two extended periods of distressing hearing voices and being paranoid. Unlike you, I shied away from meditation, as I’d had bad experiences in my twenties (I started falling all the time because I associated my mantra with negative words – anger and anguish – not healthy). So my forms of focus and reflection included being the best possible mom to my son, joining a faith community that focuses on social justice and social action, singing – to recordings as well as in choir — and of course work—which is vitally necessary to sustaining our lives as well as to maintaining balance—the requirement to keep our jobs forces us to negotiate the terms with the voices—whether negative or absurdly flattering. I would love to communicate with you further about your experiences. The one commonality I didn’t mention above is that we’re both Asian.
At the risk of shameless self-promotion, I’d like to let you know that I’ve written a memoir, Hearing Voices, Living Fully: Living with the Voices in My Head, which was published last June. I would be very interested in learning your thoughts about my experiences if you’re willing to read it. It’s been very well received and has gotten some great reviews, including one from Ron Unger, who is a leader in the Hearing Voices Movement. I’ve also had occasion to meet and talk with some young people who struggle with voices and paranoia and am told my story helps. Those interactions have inspired me to go back to school – I’m now 65(!) and work toward the clinical degree that I abandoned in my twenties because I kept making myself physically worrying about the student clients I saw in “Practicum” as part of my program. I’ll be going very part time, as I must work nearly full-time for another five years. But by the time I’m ready to “mostly” retire, I’ll have my degree. We’ll see where this leads – but one of the best things that I am doing for myself as I continue to struggle sometimes, is adding my voice and story to the survivor movement.

Very best wishes,

Claire Bien

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I have been returning to this discussion and have been spending time putting time lines together on the method of delivery of psychology psychiatry medicine social work and the comments left here.

My perspective comes from a multi-generational family on my father’s maternal side which also is Irish and therefore fighting the stereotype that all the Irish are schizophrenic. Therefore vilification and denial have shrouded the large conservative and extended family. And So, it is difficult to really get the goods but I can tell this: that from the time of my Great Aunt’s kidnapping (for what was likely post partum induced “schizophrenia” ) to the North Battlefield asylum and treatment with shock treatment for three months ar a rate of 12 over the monthly legal limit. Through the years the conservative family both vilified those going through “beak downs” and used the “victims” as allies or foes in their personal politics in the family: a thing which is for me an easily identifiable status war in what has grown out of the situation of the extended family to be a tangible social bureaucracy and is now a multi million dollar industry – – managing the mentally ill and mental health system. Bodies are needed and also are stories. Stories are graded on who is more acceptable to the reigning political elite in MH which is always weighted down by political conservatives: wherein the stereotypes of the male-centric business modal rule.

Yet: following the time line analysis it is obvious that the Conservative and anti-feminist business modal is not only seriously involved with the dark side of psychiatry but also too easily dismisses the statistical early deaths of the mentally ill; of which my bother ‘ s death at age 45 was a mean.

The time line establishes that people like me who have struggled with diagnosis with being victimized in the psychiatric, social work, medical, and business communities which then turn their negativity to families who are struggling with the social negativity and the financial stress: take the brunt of abuse while conservatives are careful not to get caught as resposible for abusive social perceptions. We are looked upon from the conservative status as invisible yet we are the ones doing all rhe work and changing the game.

But: for instance, I clean houses for a living and despite nine years post secondary education I am treated as intellectually challenged and insane. The community as a whole believes the stereotypes of marginalization but adds to it the time line of recovery so that people who have bridged the political gap of socialist vs. conservative medicine are not so perceived. Rather we are eliminated as a trial generation and no one will ever apologize to us or thank us for our revolution which is changing psychiatry: for our courage to stand against the conservative business and scientific community. The thing I resent the most is being castigated to poverty and having to worry about my old age and being a burden to my family: while the next “generation”‘s ( according to the misleading conservative social analysis which is a corruption of scientific reason) conservative cultural elite gets the benefit of the time line of socialists who still bear the brunt of stigma.

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Margaret
I didn’t mean that you earning some money,by helping any *crazy* person with your voluntary work.
I warn you,that you are real-life activist with your own mind and each word you wrote and stood for even in hell,
if needed,until you aren’t payed for your activism!So I think that I was now more clear about what I wrote,then
in my first comment,it’s hard for me with brain cyst and with over drugged mind,to wrote perfect comments in english.

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O well. The anti-psych movement will still be here for you when you feel the time is right. But if you identify as a “peer,” who or what represents the “greater-than-peer” and what gives them that supposed greater wisdom?

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Dear Borat, oldhead and madincanada: Well, I’m back to being an unpaid mental health advocate. I finished my paid internship and they even asked me to interview for a position, again one day a week. I declined because of the timing and some other personal goals I have. Also, I grew frustrated with the limitations of what I could say or do. I just seemed to be perpetuating the medical system to a large extent. You’ll be happy to know that I passed the police check. I’m lucky that I wasn’t on social assistance because the way the hours were structured, I would have been disqualified. Sorry to inform you so long after the stint ended. I have been very busy with my gardening club. madincanada please try to connect with me via Facebook or through CRAGS. Our new website is up and is looking pretty good.

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Hi Margaret, great article and I am glad you are feeling better. I do know that stress can induce suspicions and I think the suspicions are often not wrong. I am not suggesting the thoughts should mean they are true in the literal sense, but I think are often warnings. Stress also causes huge changes in the cells and people are often found to be depleted in nutrients. All I know is that most often people who are affected by unusual thoughts are in their teens. I have gone through immense stress in the last 5 years and I definitely have to repress my anxiety, (which is caused by fear, frustrations) so I let it out in bursts, which conveniently looks like anger to onlookers, which of course makes me more frustrated.

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