Psychosis is treated like a crime, and the sentence is social death.
There is no place in society for people like me. I’ve known it deep down for a long time, but I was ashamed to say it out loud. Having had a psychosis is treated as worse than having committed a crime. Few experiences carry as much stigma, and the shame doesn’t fade when the psychosis does.
For more than twenty years after my first psychosis, I was barking up the wrong tree. I believed the main problem was that psychosis was misunderstood. I thought that, at least sometimes, it should be seen as a spiritual or religious experience that goes beyond medicine, and not simply as a mental illness. I spent years trying to prove that nothing was wrong with me, and that I could do not only as well as those we call ‘normal’, but even better.
On the surface, between my ‘psychoses’, I look like a successful, capable person. I have lived in four countries, speak four languages fluently, have a PhD, am raising my son on my own, and have a job I love. In reality, every day is a battle, and the weight of performing ‘normal’ threatens to pull me under. What I really need is a break, something like a stay in a Soteria house, where people can go through a crisis in a calm, homelike place instead of a hospital. But instead of resting, I always chose to carry on. I felt I had to show everyone that I am capable, smart, hardworking and valuable. That I am ‘normal’. That I am enough.
But can I ever really prove it? Time and again, under extreme stress, I have experienced psychoses. They are short, and I have learned to find my way out of them at home, without a hospital. Shortly afterwards, against all odds, I am back in society as if nothing happened.
Yet coming back is not always welcomed. ‘How come she’s back, after posting online that she’s Jesus?’ ‘How dare she just carry on?’ I have seen the smears, the eyes that avoid mine, the whispering, and the hints that perhaps I should do what so many people with a serious mental illness are quietly expected to do: disappear onto benefits and never be heard from again.
To be honest, for a long time I didn’t see any of this. I was too busy trying medication after medication, looking for one without crushing side effects, and working hard to keep my livelihood, wherever I lived. I refused to be put in the box of forgotten people, labelled with a mental illness our society cannot tolerate.
Now I see it. Some people don’t just misunderstand us; they resent us. You can hear it in remarks like ‘just wait until she’s ill again’, and in the disbelief that someone like me dares not only to exist, but to do well.
I am not alone in this. Look at Britney Spears. The world cheered when she won back her freedom, yet now many people mock her. She isn’t doing anything outrageous. She dances, she shows her body, she expresses herself, and somehow that is enough to invite ridicule. What I see is a 44-year-old woman who looks amazing and is finally living on her own terms. Her diagnosis seems to follow her everywhere, and so does the permission to laugh at her.
The worst part of having had a psychosis is not bad medication, or even being sectioned. It is the stigma. I didn’t expect it to be this strong today, after so many charities told us that mental illness is ‘just like any other illness’. Who still remembers Time to Change, the campaign run by Mind and Rethink Mental Illness? It closed in 2021. Heads Together, backed by the royals, faded from view too. And many of the celebrities who once opened up have gone quiet.
Did these campaigns change anything? For psychosis, they may even have made things worse. Telling people it is ‘like any other illness’ promised an understanding that never came. Nobody really knows what psychosis is or how to live alongside it, so the gap between the friendly slogan and the frightening reality was filled with shame.
Until recently, I was naïve. I thought stigma had eased, that people like me had paved the way, that there was finally a place for us. For me, my psychoses had become a closed chapter. It happened, I recovered, what’s next?
But many people can’t forget, and they can’t forgive. I have seen partners walk away from the parents of their children, friends disappear, families go cold, all because someone became psychotic. The shame is so strong that it turns into a moral judgement. I feel judged not for my illness but for my character, as if I wear a Scarlet Letter that says ‘bipolar’ and means I will never be enough, never fully loved or accepted.
The thing is, I am not dangerous in my psychoses. I start believing I have the powers of Jesus and post strange things online. The real damage is to myself. I give money away, far too much, and once that made me an easy target for a serious scam. But I am not violent. I don’t hurt anyone. And yet one strange post is enough. You are not executed physically, but morally. People look at you as if you are unworthy, ignore your calls, and treat you as an outcast who should stay silent.
Psychosis needs treatment; there is no way around that. So I put my own safeguards in place, such as an agreement that my phone and bank cards are taken away if I seem to be slipping. My psychiatrist and I have also agreed that if a psychosis comes again, I can go to a small, calm place he set up, much like a Soteria house, instead of a hospital. Treatment can be humane. What is not humane is the verdict that follows.
For years I chased the system from the wrong angle. Insisting my psychoses were spiritual rather than medical was my way of saying I was different, not sick, and that I could still thrive in a high-pressure society that prizes being able above almost everything else. I proved all of that. And still I have to call it a crushing defeat, because I am not judged by my achievements. I am judged by a few strange posts.
This matters beyond my own life. In countries where euthanasia for psychiatric suffering is allowed, people with mental illness are already part of that debate. I fear that people with psychosis, carrying this much shame, could one day feel quietly pushed towards it, and that society would call it compassion.
But here is the thing: I am also a rebel. Everything I have, I earned on merit. I am capable. I am enough. I matter. And I will not let those who look down on me decide how my life should end: dying of shame.
I refuse to die. I am not leaving.
