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.

The Mystery is Solved, and Now I’m Undoing the Harm (With Strength and a...

I’d like you to get to know me as you read this.  I think I have an important personal story to tell.  Frankly, I...

I Know With a Sane Mind When I’m Going Insane

20
This was my son’s answer when I was questioning him, trying desperately to find out what was going on in his mind. Why did...

Reconstruction: A Recovery Narrative

25
When I read recovery stories, I am sometimes challenged by the prospect of thinking about my life in linear terms, "Here are the years...

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...

The Manifesto of a Noncompliant Mental Patient

19
I see it everywhere: People with mental illness need medication.  It sounds reasonable. Today, there are even political organizations that seek to make it easy to force a person to take it.

A Psychiatrist Remembers His Recovery from Schizophrenia

5
A psychiatrist since 1949, I was psychiatrically hospitalized on December 21, 1963 at New York City's Mt. Sinai Hospital.   I stayed for three months,...

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...