My husband has suffered from mental illness for approximately 30 years for paranoid schizophrenia,manic bipolar,anxiety,depression and now diagnosis e early stage Alzheimer disease.

  He has never received adequate treatment when he would get off his medication and get in trouble with the law and then sent to prison. 

  He got off his medication because he couldn’t find help to pay for it then he called 2 state hospitals and a crisis center for help they told us that if he’s not suicidal the could not help so eventually he went out of his mind and committed a crime now after 3 years awaiting trial pursuing the insanity defense he was basically force to enter  a plea of guilty to avoid a possible life sentence for habitual offender. yesrsI mandatory .but we are seeking time served and civil commitment to mental hospital and get him treatment without incarceration because he’s never been given treatment just thrown in jail and released w 30 day medication and become I’ll and right back In prison system Now he’s awaiting a sentencing hearing where the judge can give him 0-15 .can anyone speak for him at his sentencing hearing to make the judge understand the importance of treatment for his mental illness and incarceration is not the answer to this problem

            My name is Jennifer and I am a recovered mental illness survivor—

            I have endured severe mental illness for over half my life.  During that time, I suffered from clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and borderline personality disorder.

            Due to the depression, my behaviors ranged from excessive crying to excessive sleeping to suicide attempts.  I felt feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness.  All I thought I wanted to do was die.   But in fact, what I really wanted was help with overcoming my severe sadness.

            During my manic states, I endured impulsive, spontaneous, and irresponsible behaviors.  I felt on top of world.  I felt excessive amounts of energy.  I had racing thoughts.  I had delusions of grandeur.  I’ll be honest.  It felt great to be so high, but it is also very dangerous.  Risky behaviors can lead to much endangerment of self and others.

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Mental illness and addiction runs rampant in my family. Mostly on my mothers side where it can be traced back for generations. As for me I feel lucky that my mental health seems to be centered around depression. I say lucky because my brother has been institutionalized with schizophrenia for over 30 yrs. I have two cousins who are gone now that also had schizophrenia that lived on the streets mostly and who are an example of the poor mental health care system we have in the US. Don’t get me wrong, their are scores of wonderful folks out their doing great work in helping the mentally ill but the resources they have are limited. My uncle and grandmother committed suicide which is something I have thought about almost daily for many years. My grandmother walked in the ocean back in the 1930’s 9 months after giving birth to her 6th child. PPD was probably the reason but unfortunately back then it wasn’t recognized.

 My history includes lots of alcohol and drug abuse. I look back and see that I was treating the symptoms of depression without even knowing it. Alcohol worked really well and I had many fun and enjoyable times in the beginning although like most alcoholics I drank irresponsibly. Long story short those substances stopped working and the spiral down continued. I am clean and sober now and depression and it’s systems are a daily occurrence. Support groups have been helpful and medication has given me temporary relief but like all the substances I have used, medications turn on me. Lots of anger and thoughts of suicide occur after a short period of taking medications so I gave up on them. Today I use the tools I have learned over the years. Focusing on gratitude is the most powerful. I am grateful my illness isn’t so severe that I would be unable to access the part of my brain that sees normality. Thanks for letting me share.

TO ANYONE WITH ANY MENTAL ILLNESS OF ANY AGE:

(you don’t have to be in middle school)

Middle School’s known to be some of the hardest years of our lives, between hormones and homework it’s tough enough to make it through without mental health and the stigma it so often carries. As it’s impossible to make it through a class without someone making a joke about a mental illness either a friend of mine or I have, I’ve come to a certain conclusion. Teenagers will be teenagers, it shouldn’t be that way, it shouldn’t be an excuse to kidding about things that people truly struggle with on a daily basis, but it is. Sometimes things in life are just stupid, but we can’t let that get to us.

I’m a 13 (almost 14) year old in the ignorant year of 8th grade, towards the end of last year a few things in life went really, really wrong, and it resulted in a series of unfortunate events (no pun intended). Basically, by the time 8th grade started, I had not only experienced my fair share of panic attacks, gone to a therapist several times, but I had also been diagnosed with depression and an anxiety disorder. I had basically hidden from my entire grade during the summer, so as school started up again and I was struck by a mass of indirect insults towards my mental illnesses, let’s just say there was a lot of tears at the beginning of the year.

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I thought that I had accepted my mental illness long ago.  After all, I was taking medication and attending counseling after being hospitalized for months in a state psychiatric hospital.  Here I was an “advocate” for mental health but refused to disclose to anyone that I was suffering.  It wasn’t until I moved back to my hometown and got involved as a mental health advocate for NAMI that I realized what exactly accepting a mental health diagnosis meant.

Accepting meant that I was going to no longer stigmatize myself for being ill.  A condition, is a condition, is a condition.  I wouldn’t treat someone with diabetes any differently for being ill so why was I holding myself up to such a ridiculous standard?  Accepting meant that I was not afraid to stand in front of a group of 20 strangers and disclose what I thought was my biggest secret in order to educate the community.  For so long I wanted change to the system, change to mental health care.  The only way that change is going to happen is if we all accept our conditions and reduce the stigmatization.  Through acceptance and education comes change.

That change is exactly what I am seeing in myself and my community now.  After going through facilitator training for the NAMI Connection Recovery Support Group program I started a support group for adults with mental illness in my community.  I now sit on the advisory board for my mental health agency and my local NAMI affiliate as a mental health consumer.   I am no longer afraid to say that I have a mental illness and advocate for those who have not yet reached that stage in their recovery or are unable to advocate for themselves.  There is help and there is hope.

Mental health coverage should be a top priority.  Anybody disagreeing lives in their own bubble.  And that bubble can burst anytime with  family strife/hospitalizations/unrealized dreams/wasted and lost lives, etc.  The monster of mental illness is not limited to the poor and homeless.  It can cause strife and disaster for people in all walks of life.  We need more research for better medications and better treatment and parity coverage with insurance.  Most families know someone in their own family or friends/co-workers/neighbors who suffer from mental illness.  It is vastly widespread  and affects everyone.  The affluent catering to insurance and wall street profits is doing immense irreparable disaster to our population. 

Poem 33 Voluntary Work Helps My Life

VOLUNTARY  WORK  HELPS  MY  LIFE

I have been doing Voluntary Work for Many Years now.

My Mental Health Problems which are Also,

Mentioned about in my Poetry Book,

“SOME OF THESE MAKE SENSE, SOME OF THEM DONT,

BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT LIFE IS.”

Post Traumatic Stress, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,

Depression not Clinical and Schizophrenia.

Pricing Books for a Local Hospice and working on the Till,

Another Charity Shop Pricing Dvd’s, Computer Games and CD’s.

Welcomer at a Cathedral, telling History,

from Roman Times to the Present.

18^th Century Church near my Address, again talking History,

Which is what my Degree was in.

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My father was a drug addict, paranoid schizophrenic, dealer and hoarder.

Growing up was traumatic to say the least, I ended up moving out at age 15.

Currently I am 28, a father to be, high school teacher and martial arts instructor.

My whole life I have been dealing with depression, anxiety and other mental health concerns.

I found that the best therapy came from writing my story, first in the form of poetry then in a book. Even if you only write for your self, please do it. It will help!

Hello, I have always thought that sharing my story with the mental health community is important to bring hope to others that are just like me.

I’m a 37 year old divorced mother of two boys. I have been in therapy of some kind or another since I was 7 years old. Mental illness runs in my family as well as substance abuse addiction. I believe I was born with my many disorders that progressed and worsened as I got older, abused illegal drugs, prescribed medication and had my children. In my early childhood I showed all the many signs of OCD. I also grew up in an extremely chaotic family where my mother suffered terribly with her own mental illness that was never acknowledged or treated and an emotionally absent father. My two older siblings coped with this by using and abusing drugs and my older sister was put into rehab when I was seven. My older brother simply moved away and is still an addict today covering up his own mental health issues. My younger sister was extremely emotionally disturbed and would act out violently towards my parents but especially towards me. She would later become a drug addict for many years and thankfully entered recovery 4 ½ years ago.

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