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.

I was first diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when I was 30.  I’ve been surviving for 15 years.  I feel it is not broadcast enough that mental illness patients need a support system that recognizes when they are having an episode.  What everyone should know about mental illness is that medication can stop working after a few years.  You can take your antipsychotic medication religiously, every day, but it can just stop suddenly. I have suffered four times when my medication just stopped working and I was struck with a psychotic episode each time. It’s always scary. It is important to have a continuing relationship with your psychiatrist.  To avoid ending up in the hospital, it is important that your psychiatrist monitors your prescription drugs and sees you on a regular basis.  Schizophrenics don’t always recognize what is happening to them, or they are overwhelmed by their delusions.  Family and friends should keep a list of psychotic symptoms to recognize whether their mentally ill family or friend is suffering a relapse despite their medication.

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 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

Hi, my name is Ayana and I’ve been diagnosed with schizophrenia since September of 2016. I first noticed a lot of pain in my body. It was hard to focus on tasks due to my change in behavior. I couldn’t try to stop the spread of the disease over the years I have been a terrified lady. I am 25 years old and I manage my medication with the help of mental health specialists/professionals. I am paranoid schizophrenia and I suffer from anxiety and depression. I am very sick and it feels as though my time on this earth is gradually coming to an end. I am writing to mirror the many who have shared their story in hopes that mental health awareness will continue to take on the struggle of dealing with all of the types of mental challenges. 

She was 24, graduate of GMU after working hard around her Epilepsy & it’s side effects,  only to go down with a mental illness.  Paranoia beyond reason, debilitating, crippling, causing hospitalization, twice.   Now, at 26, she is dependent on my presents and that is all, just dependent..  24/7 she lives in fear.  Therapy & Medication seem more like an extra curricular activity more than a sizable help or resolution.   She is not getting better.  I have such deep sadness that also surfaces as raging tears of anger in the private confines of my shower.  I have fear, while I press on hoping. We need a cure.  We are both in bondage.  She, within her mind and I, within her shadow.  

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.

My hopes in writing this article is to have the reader read this and finish with a greater sense of what it is like to live life with mental illness. Stigma around mental illness can be conquered; it won’t be completely gone but it can be less frequent with education and most importantly by people who speak out. Living with mental illness is manageable with the right kind of support and treatment. So this is my story living with schizophreniforum (a type of schizophrenia) and borderline personality disorder.

When I was eighteen, as my therapist said it, shit blew up. I had just gotten disqualified from the Navy in March of 2011 after lying about some information in my medical records and quite frankly I did not feel like it was for me. As it turned out being in the Navy wouldn’t have worked out anyways because of what happened two months later. After my ordeal with the enlisting in the military, I was trying to escape from my embarrassing moments by taking medication. This medication was an anti-anxiety drug used to calm the person down instantly. What I didn’t realize that by not following the prescription directions there would be serious consequences to my health.

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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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We thought our son would be safe in a private mental health facility.  Through no fault of his own, our son suffers from Paranoid Schizophrenia further complicated by Asperger’s Syndrome, an Autism Disorder.  As parents, we believed we were doing the right thing by placing him in a private mental facility.  We could not have been more wrong.  He was not safe.

I will admit at the outset I naively thought by surviving two combat tours in Vietnam, I could cope with anything.  Vietnam was a walk in the park compared to this nightmare.

I have three goals with this article.  First, I want people with mentally ill family members to be vigilant of a dangerous pitfall regarding the rules of confidentiality.  Secondly, as Schizophrenia occurs in 1% of the population, roughly 3.5 million Americans, I want to provide the reader with additional insight into this terrible disease.  Finally, I want to educate people in hopes that the judicial system will better deal with the mentally ill.

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