Mental illness has been a part of my life for the past 30 years.  There have been many ups and downs.  There have been times I was hopeless and wanted to die.  Mental illness has even consumed my life at times.  Even so, mental illness does not define me.  I am more than schizoaffective disorder, depression, and bipolar 2.  I am not ashamed to have these disorders.  But I am also more than a label.  I am a unique person who happens to have a mental illness.  I do, however, understand that these labels are important, since they are used in giving the doctors direction in the best treatment for me. 

Having a mental illness has been the worst and best thing to happen to me.  It has been the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with.  It has disrupted my life.  It has caused much pain for me and my family.  And it has moved me to the point of almost taking my own life.  Yet, having a mental illness has taught me many things about myself and about life.  I have learned that joy can be found in the simplest of things.  Every day is a day to start over and begin again.  I have seen more love and compassion from family and friends than I may have never seen otherwise.  I am more capable than I would have ever imagined to stand up to the hardest of life’s challenges.   Perseverance has become my friend.  And faith leads to healing for mind, body, and soul.

This thing we call life throws things at us sometimes that can overwhelm us and push us to our limit.  It dangles hope in front of us sometimes, only to jerk it away in an instant.  And just at the moment we think we have it figured out along comes a curve ball in the form of unforeseen relapses and occasional hospitalizations.  Mental illness has robbed me of many years of productivity and happiness.  But it has also led me to where I am today.  And that is a good place.  It is a place that I never dreamed I would be.  I am blessed with a wife who loves and understands me and a son who loves me unconditionally.  I have a sense of purpose and a desire to help others who are living with a mental illness. 

Yes, having a mental illness takes away so much from people.  However, learning to live life with a mental illness can give a new sense of meaning and purpose.  Finding this meaning and purpose is a process that takes time and patience.  Rome wasn’t built in a day.  And discovering meaning in the pain of mental illness won’t come overnight. 

I believe that real meaning in life can be found in the quality, not quantity, of life that we have.  Because, of the treatment I have received and the help of many caring people I am able to experience the quality of life that escaped me for many, many years.  Now, I am convinced there is a purpose for my pain.  My life has meaning.  And, hope, is a common word in my vocabulary.  There is hope.  There is always hope.  Mental illness does not define me.  It is not who I am.  It is something I am learning to live with and overcome every day.  By the grace of God, my future is bright.  And I am determined to shine the light of hope on others who may also be living with a mental illness. 

My name is Melinda Talarico and I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder about 10 years ago. I wanted to share two poems that I really loved and that really helped me get through my mental illness.

A SILENT LANGUAGE

My mental illness is

a silent language…

for, it is masked

by happiness and sunshine…

my mental illness is faded

by aspects we  have traded

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A year after I lost my dad to high grade sarcoma (a very rare form of cancer), I lost my mom to mental illness. Three years after the journey to help Mom learn to live with her illness, I finally was able to give it a name: schizoaffective disorder. Have you heard of it? Neither had I. When doing the research I found out about 0.3% of the population are diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. My parents were always good at standing out from the crowd.

Joking aside, the journey has been a challenging learning experience for all. She moved to Arizona after my father had passed where she then began to think the mob and cartel were after her. After spending well more than my father’s life insurance policy gave her and living out a real life Bourne Identity movie, we were able to convince her to come back to Minnesota. Here she has the resources and support she needs to help her with her journey.

We are going through another challenging time with her right now. My family will most likely have to wrap our heads around another new version of normal for our mother. But she is a fighter and wants to live as close to a normal life as she can. I’m very thankful for groups like NAMI and the mental health care system Minnesota provides. As flawed as it may still be, other states are not as advanced.

No matter if your journey with mental illness is your own or a loved one, never give up. Always love them and yourself. Change your outlook of “bad days” to life lessons and find what you can take from the experience.

You are amazing! You are doing a great job! You are loved! Don’t give up!

My name is Julie.  At age 18 my son Josh had a psychotic break. He was later diagnosed with a mental illness; schizoaffective disorder. I couldn’t sleep; I wanted so much for him to be okay, for God to heal him. I wish it was me, not my son, I would trade lives with him if only I could. I became obsessed with doing everything I could to get Josh the best help I could find. I made phone calls, I attended doctor and therapy appointments, I educated myself about Mental Illness. I attended therapy with Josh and I sought help from a local NAMI support group, I discovered I was not alone. Knowing this was comforting during this difficult time in my life.    

For several years Josh was in and out of psychiatric hospital wards. On two occasions he attempted to take his life, this was devastating for me. I was mad at God and was miserable. How could He let this happen to Josh, my son, my beautiful son?  I didn’t understand why He would allow this to happen.  Looking back I can see how God planned everything in my life to happen for a reason. With the support of others that have experienced similar experiences I gradually I learned that I am not in control and that God is. I slowly turned my life over to Him; I began to accept that I could not make Josh get well. But I could allow God to take care of him for me. I also learned to trust Josh’s doctors that they knew better that I and they were doing the best they could.  

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I am too emotional to do this as a video. I am emotional because the mental illness affects my youngest son, who I still consider as my baby. He is 22 years old today. His mental illness, schizoaffective disorder, first appeared around 2010. My children’s father died that year and my youngest son went into a deep depression. 

I am a social worker and have been one since 1999. The first social work or case management job I had was at a Psychiatric Hospital in Gadsden, AL from 2000- 2001. I thought I would do well there because I had some personal experiences with mental illness in my family. Growing up in my mom’s home, I had two siblings diagnosed with Schizophrenia. I thought my children would be safe from this disorder, because I heard it is inherited from the father’s gene and I did not have the same father as my siblings.-However those thoughts began to change after working at hospital. Some of the signs, symptoms,and behaviors that were exhibited by the patients were like my son’s. I shunned it off as simple discipline, teenager, impulsive, and defiant behaviors, but I still tried to get him into a counselor. It was difficult because something always came up; his criminal actions would always override the mental issues and he would be placed in detention or rehab for smoking marijuana. The main issues of his delay in care were my self doubt the symptoms that were present, my denial, and lack of education regarding mental illness.

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            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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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.

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What I’ve learned from having mental illness

1. Like everyone else, I am vulnerable. I cannot do anything on my own. Every moment I depend on God for giving me the health(mental and physical) to live at the moment. Knowing that you are vulnerable makes you grateful to God for giving you the moment, the health, and the strength to live.
2. Sacrificial Love. I have learned to love others even when it is difficult. When I’m at work and I show love and kindness to someone even when I feel bad, it is a sacrificial love that I’m showing. I may want to show frustration or go home but I try not to because of love for others. Jesus showed us the ultimate sacrificial love by giving his life on the cross. We like Jesus must show love by sacrifice, which may mean being by showing others love even when it is inconvenient. When we suffer, have pain, and make the choice not to get bitter and show love instead, we then have turned pain in to a sacrifice and a gift to give to God.
3. Dealing with pain. When we feel pain, we have a choice. We can either get bitter and pass that pain on to others by being unkind, or we can say “The pain stops with me.” We can add to the pain in the world or we can refuse to add to it.

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I am the first Portland, Oregon-area woman author to publish a memoir about schizoaffective disorder (a little talked about diagnosis of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia).  Most books on mental illness are written by doctors and clinicians, but I feel the personal stories of “lived experience”- like mine and others fighting the pressure of stigma with mental health disorders- are more meaningful because they help us to see the person first, not the diagnoses. Schizo-affective disorder is a hard disease to tackle. Societal pressures seem to dominate your routine and the sheer process of overcoming the stigma of this disease is complicated

I remember when I was young, I used to think people were talking about me and judging me because of who I was. My paranoia carried over into my adulthood. I felt paranoid because I couldn’t focus on something beside myself when people looked at me funny. When I was really upset about something I shook. My knees became rubbery as I disagreed with a speaker in a meeting. Being around higher ups, I felt like I was going to erupt like a tempestuous volcano. I hung my head, not humble like, but in disgrace of not accepting myself for being me. My ship was sinking. My shakiness and weak knees didn’t necessarily stem from my disease. It happened when I was physically abused by my stepfather for defending my brother when he was 7. My stepfather and my mother left him alone to go drinking and when they came back home, I arrived home from work and stood up for my brother. I took a blow to the jaw. My world fell apart and my life changed course.

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You always hear about Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder, but Schizoaffective disorder is not nearly as widely known. My name is Rose, I am 21 years old, my mental illness started when I was around 12, and came to a peak again when I was around 14 and attempted suicide twice.  Fast forward to age 18, I was just out of high school and ready to start college.  I started having mood swings, deep depressions for weeks and weeks of extreme hyperness and sleeplessness.  It effected my school work very negatively and I ended up dropping out.  I became extremely isolated, even from people in my own house.

Things started getting worse rapidly as my mental health was declining.  I began hallucinating and started having paranoid delusions about the government and those around me.  I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder which later changed to Schizoaffective Disorder: Bipolar Type.  There are 2 types of Schizoffective, Depressive type and Bipolar type.  The psychotic symptoms happen both during and in between mood episodes.

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