I live with Schizoaffective disorder and it makes everyday life a challenge. It has caused me to do many things I regret and wish I could take back but all I can do now is do my best to stay sane (with the help of medication) for those who remain in my life and care about me.
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#mental illness #mental health #hope #submission #medication #schizoaffective disorderIn August of 2019, I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes and my doctor recommended exercise to treat it. This all started in 2005, when I was diagnosed with a postpartum mental illness and treated with medications that have known metabolic side effects. My diagnosis was later changed to Schizoaffective Disorder. Every time I’ve been taken off medication, I’ve gotten sick again, so I need the mental health medication, even though it has side effects.
My work provides the benefit of points towards a gym membership. So, I joined the gym after I learned about my diagnosis. As part of joining my gym, I had a free consultation visit with a personal trainer. At the end of the visit, we sat down, and he took out his notepad.
During the late 1990’s I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Before this I was working full-time and attending college full-time but I was abusing marijuana and alcohol by using it to cope with the stress of doing too much. My reality would become a distorted one for me because I started hearing voices, seeing images, and I believed I could communicate with people on television. These were the symptoms i remember experiencing before my first breakdown.
I was then arrested and felt lost in a world I had never been, on, a psychiatric unit at a local hospital. This would become a place where I felt lost, disoriented, and unhappy. By the time I was hospitalized the third time I had become aware that I had been diagnosed with a mental illness. I had stopped using alcohol but I started using marijuana again.
Hello, I wanted to write to those attempting to understand mental illness. My name is Jori, I spent my entire life not knowing or understanding why most people didn’t see the things I saw or heard the things I heard so I always knew I was gifted and a chosen one in my mind. My mother was diagnosed with 8 personalities and my father had severe mental illness too which I am not sure was ever diagnosed but because of his alcohol and drug addictions, I am not sure if people assumed his addictions were the issue which was just a bandage for the real problems in his mind.
I first began to notice I had something wrong when I was about 14 and I would snap, once attacking my mother whom I hated and throwing her to the floor in attempt to kill her. I was removed from the home and lived with a family which I observed kindness and loving relationships which was my first opportunity to see things in the home I came from were not acceptable as far as neglect and verbal, mental and sexual abuse.
I never graduated from high school and had two children with two different fathers who abandoned me during my pregnancies, leaving me to care for my children as a single parent. I did not know that I was supposed to bath my children and my oldest got an infection and had to have a surgery on his penis which flared up from never being cleaned by the age of 3. My fear was keeping him safe and not abusing him. I also would give my children a cup of chocolate milk and a vitamin in the morning and send them off to school without a lunch. The school finally began giving my children the free lunch programs so they would have something to eat. I never learned to cook or do self care until I observed friends caring for themselves. Life was tough, life was lonely and the loneliness has never left me for some reason I hold a hatred for my parents still to this day and I am 48.
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.
Please help my nephew Zechariah. On July 18, 2017, he was arrested by a police officer. He is 22; he has was diagnosed with mental illness since he was 16. His mom called the police in order to get them to transport him to a mental health facility because he was hallucinating, yelling, and being paranoid. Zack has been prescribed medication for his condition and seeing a therapist, but Instead of the police transporting him to a facility. They beat and tased him and took him to Prison on Monday night. Now they are charging him with assault on police office, resisting arrests, and disorderly conduct. His bail is 100,000; His mom told the officers several time that he was mentally ill, but they told her to “shut up.” #helpForTheMentallyiLL #notPrison Please help get the truth out🙏he doesn’t belong in prison..
My husband has bipolar/schizoaffective disorder and before he got help it was difficult for him to be stable in life, he was homeless with no clothing on but his pants. When he got help, they had told him to apply for social security disability and other state sponsored benefits, they told him “because he won’t be able to live independent of those because of his mental illness.” Boy were they wrong! Today, he is stable on medication, he works a full-time job and has a side business. He has me, his wife and an 8 year old son who adores him. Although he has come this far in life, don’t get me wrong as an individual living with bipolar/schizoaffective disorder, he does have manic times and depressive times (not as severely because he is on effective medication) but I, as his wife have learned to help support him especially in those times to make sure he has a safe and stable home, which is extremely important. He always tells me that when he looks back on his life, where he is now mentally and where he was, he his blessed to be on medication and would encourage anyone suffering with the symptoms of mental illness to get the help you need whether just counseling or both counseling and medication, do not be ashamed of your diagnosis and the treatment you may need, it does not define you.
A letter to those who have experienced schizoaffective disorder (or any type of “mental illness”) –
I’ve been there. In fact, I’m here right now.
I got my first episode when I was around the age of 17-18. I think I had just turned 18. I’m 22 now. As a kid and as a high schooler, I was pretty shy and often held everything that mattered to me in. I wasn’t assertive or very confident really. My first episode served as a blow, causing me to experience things that I had never felt before – the high and thrill of being alive. The joy of standing up for myself in psychiatric hospitals, the thrill of mania that made me feel more alive than ever before. Medications always managed to calm down my mania, delusions, and hallucinations, but they always left me feeling inhibited and no longer as brave as I had been. It’s a choice that I have to make – whether it’s being high, euphoric, fearless (sometimes delusional and hallucinating), yet in the hospital, or sane and rational, but a bit sedated and lacking the high and fearlessness I had before.
I will never forget what I read about the Shamanic View of Mental Illness, which states that mental illness signals “the birth of a healer”, thus mental disorders are “spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.” The person going through the crisis was chosen as a bridge or medium to pass a message to the community from the spiritual world. The disturbances of mental illness result when the person does not get help in dealing with the the energy from the spirit realm. Another way to look at it is that unless the relationship between the living and the dead is in balance, it is the “duty of the living to heal their ancestors.” Some spirits trying to come through could be “ancestors wanting to merge with a descendant in an attempt to heal what they weren’t able to do while in their physical body.“
I know I am not alone. I realize that now. So I want to share my story and hopefully show others that it does get better. At the age of 15 I was diagnosed with a unspecific psychosis. Before that even happened I was experiencing massive levels of depression and too many hallucinations to count. That was pre-medication and those were dark ages. I hide what I was feeling inside, the suicidal thoughts, from my mother and father. I also didn’t want them to know that I had a self-harm problem, a bad one. Though when I thought this was getting way beyond my control, I finally told them. I was taken to therapy and then from there I was sent to a partial care program. I ended up being in the program 3 times in the past 2 years. I ended up in an even higher level of care also 3 times. I was hospitalized for suicide attempts. I was abused sexually by an ex. boyfriend. To this day I have flash backs on the things he use to do and I cry at any reminders of him. I’ve been through a lot. I am 17 as of now and it’s been hard but I am now ready to tell people what I’ve been through. I call myself the Schizo Survivor because I am surviving. I am not alone. I have found many resources and help from many people. I am now medicated. I am now opening up to therapy. I am surviving! Things might get worse but I will keep living to see them get better because I will be victorious! I will continue to live my life and function even with these disorders because I can make it.
Taking one day at a time as I see my son recover from from being diagnose as having schizoaffective disorder. Everyday is struggle, however he is still trying to recover and make the best of what is normal for him in his mindset. Even though things took a turn when he was in college at the prime of his life, he made it back home safe in my arms. I welcome him with open arms as I try to come to terms of what happened to my baby, my first born. In this life he will always have a label holding him back from being all he can be because of what society shows. As I stand to help him recover, I open his eyes to not being a mental health client who is pushed to the side. I hold his hand as he walk this valley we call life and to live happy and know that he is truly loved. There is no love like a mother love for her child, so I say love your child even in the darkest time that they don’t understand.