Saturday, September 30, 2023

Personal Stories

People with “lived experience” tell of their interactions with psychiatry and how it impacted their lives, and of their own paths to recovery.

lightning

I Almost Got Hit by a Lightning Bolt

28
I am so thankful that my brain healed from the damage caused by psychiatric medications. Most importantly, finding my purpose in life and living an authentic life helped to ground me and prevent further psychosis. Psychosis is the psyche’s cry for transformation and healing. When one listens to the call, one is brought from darkness to light.

Put Psyche Back Into Psychiatry and Add Psychological Intimacy

9
Dr. Jones spoke to me in a way no doctor ever had. His affect, his demeanor, his presence, lit an ember in the darkness within my soul.

A Story of Forced Hospitalization From a Legal Perspective

8
If I had any legal rights, I knew nothing about them. And the hospital cared even less about them. As a law student, I would like to share the legal rights I did have in the state of California and how they were violated from the very start.
sister

“Floss on the Waves”: My Sister’s Journey

8
It takes a long time to recover from a psychotic episode, I understand now, and I wish someone had found a way, especially during those early years of her troubles, to give Rachel more space and time to find her own path to health.
believe

Bloodtime

17
Free flow had characterized my creative process — and now an art practice that had come naturally since my childhood was extinguished. Not only were my reproductive capabilities shut down on psychiatric drugs, my ability to create art had been effectively disabled.

From the Loony Bin To Stand-Up Comedy

0
I was sixteen and going on seventeen and I had never gone crazy before.  I think the most startling aspect of it is how...
domestic violence mental health

I Navigated the Mental Health System and Never Took Medications

44
I kept thinking, why was I the one to be labeled when my husband was doing all this unhealthy, violent stuff? I sought out doctors through health food stores and communities that didn’t believe in medications for a social and family problem. That way no controlling, pill-pushing medical doctor had authority over me.
Collage depicting Cleopatra and a snake

The Psychiatric Patient: Who Is She?

7
The psychiatric patient is interesting—not your average person. She is the one who might tell you: “There is more to this reality, and I saw the proof.”
life unarmed

Life, Unarmed

14
When I was born, everyone was expecting me to have arms. The doctor's mind raced; how am I going to tell this mother and the father that their son has hands but not arms? If he's missing so much in his extremities, mustn’t he also be missing a mind? My mom looked into my eyes and knew - in a way that only mothers know - that I had a mind, and spirit.

Necessary Powers: How I Became Fire

6
When a person is in hell, surrounded by enemies, without a protector or strong force on their side of any kind, that person needs to become their own powerful spokesperson.
full moral status for psychiatric clients

‘Full Moral Status’ for Psychiatric Clients: How I Fought Back

190
I was going to leave the 'mental health' system on my terms, with all the paperwork proving them wrong. Or I was going to run for my life with an open diagnosis, hoping I would survive withdrawal. As I surveyed the landscape for any other path, there was only institutionalization. There was no template for what I had to do... so I made it up.

Southern Vapors: A Comeback Story Not Born of Chemistry

19
Imagine my excitement, the hope that relief from the sucking tar of misery that dogged too many of my days was within my reach. From that moment and for thirty years to follow, I was the willing guinea pig for any number of drugs. Nothing helped for long.

Surviving Schizophrenia: A Memoir

45
I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was just nineteen. I am forty-three now, and I have recovered – and I use the term...
drug pushers

Keeping Meili Off Psychiatric Drugs

17
We first came under pressure to give our developmentally disabled and autistic daughter a psychiatric drug when she was in her mid-teens. She was attending a local school for autistic children but was unable to adapt to their program, and we were urged to consult a psychiatrist. What enabled us to resist the pressure to put our daughter on drugs?

Letters to My Doctors (Part 1)

12
I struggle as to how to talk to you guys, and there can be no progress without communication. Today, I am attempting to begin a bridge so that you will not be afraid of me and I will not be afraid of you.
veterans antidepressants

Abandoned in VA Purgatory — Misdiagnosed, Overprescribed & Fighting for Answers

23
Today I’ve recovered a semblance of my old life, and I, like millions of others, deserve answers. What have these drugs actually done to us? Everything I’ve learned thus far shows that antidepressants were poorly researched, and society, especially our military service members and veterans, were used as test subjects.

Burning Down the House of Psychiatry During COVID

9
If there was ever a time to re-evaluate how society deals with human suffering, it is now. The pandemic’s mental health effects strain every false narrative and misguided practice of psychiatry.

Coercion in Care

45
To this day I do not know how I found my way back. I think it might’ve had something to do with willpower, as I was NOT going to lose myself. I was NOT going to end up like those people who were living indefinitely in the hospital—those “chronic schizophrenics”, as they say. I was going to find my way back, back to myself.
alice in wonderland

Doctor O’s Adventures in Wonderland

16
I am a female physician who survived my own suicide attempt. I had managed to fly under the radar as a very progressive family MD for twenty years. And when I stumbled and bled, the sharks were there ready to devour the carcass. Do I believe that racism and sexism influenced charges being filed against me? I certainly do.

Recovering Myself

6
I have known altered states of consciousness since I was a child.  I clearly remember staring into the mirror in my mother’s bathroom and...
Little Porcupine Goes to the Psych Ward

Little Porcupine Goes to the Psych Ward

25
I was so anxious about having to raise three boys alone that I felt I was going insane. So I thought of going to see a psychiatrist. I was looking for Carl Jung. Instead I found a system where they give you pills, whether you need them or not.

Letters to My Doctors (Part 2)

4
Why am I whole when I dance and paint but deathly ill when faced by a European/American medical mechanic? Why was I locked in a room for a week in the first place? Was it to heal? Or was it to fill a bed?

Treatment Providers Have the Power to Make or Break Recovery

4
We need treatment providers that listen to their patients and treat them like human beings. Their job is to support our recovery, not stymie it.

Not Just Another Stain on the Wall

31
During my 96-hour hold in the psych unit—despite that I was rational and a danger to no one—I was made to feel ashamed and somehow unclean. I went home feeling more depressed than ever.

My Recovery from ‘Schizophrenia’ through Psychotherapy and Writing

7
I was never told directly that I had 'schizophrenia', and I am very glad about this. I know I was feeling bad, very bad, and was unsure of what to do, but I don’t see how a diagnosis could have helped me at that time. What could I have done with it? To be marked with a label like that would likely have caused me to rebel even more.