*Trigger Warning*
I’m a social worker and I love my job working with the homeless. I also have Schizoaffective Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I have an amazing wife who is a cancer survivor. While I feel that I’m a very blessed man, there have been times that have been extremely difficult dealing with having a chronic mental illness. I know that my illnesses are chronic and that I will never be “cured” of them. I also know that although I still have symptoms from time to time, with the help of my wife, my family, my psychiatrist and medications, life has again become enjoyable. However, there have been times in my life where the emotional pain became unbearable. I will start by telling my story from when I first became mentally ill.
When I was 19, during my first semester of college, my moods began to fluctuate for no apparent reason. I would become very depressed and suicidal and then go back to feeling fine to in only a few days. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason behind why my moods started to change so rapidly but at the time, I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it and just hoped it would go away. Unfortunately, the symptoms only grew worse and I began having strong obsessions and urges to cut my wrists. I tried to ignore these urges but they only grew stronger. When I would look at my wrists I would see a knife cutting my wrists and then disappear. My wrists would tingle and at times I felt there was something down in my wrist that needed to be cut. The worst part was the longer I went without cutting, the stronger the urges to cut my wrists became. I was terrified and eventually told my parents about it. They set up an appointment for me to go see a psychiatrist although no one including myself understood why I was experiencing the urges to cut.
My first psychiatrist didn’t seem to take my situation too seriously although he did put me on an antidepressant. The medication only gave me side effects and I felt worse after taking it than I did before. I eventually gave into the urges and cut myself on several different occasions. I never actually had a suicide attempt but I cut so the urges would subside which they would after cutting although only for a short time. I eventually changed psychiatrists after he tried me on several different medications, none of which worked. My new psychiatrist hospitalized me almost immediately and that was the turning point for me. They did some psychological testing, diagnosed me with OCD and Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features(which they later changed to Schizoaffective Disorder) and from there put me on an antidepressant and then an antipsychotic that worked.
I got out of the hospital and gradually began to improve. The whole experience of having mental illness was very traumatic for me. I continued to have symptoms and urges to cut but they were much more manageable.
The medications helped my symptoms to improve but the thing that I feel kept me from suicide was my faith. There was a time when I was so depressed that I could not feel any love for anyone including my family. As much as I hate to say it, in the state of mind I was in, at times my family was not a strong enough deterrent to keep me from committing suicide because I truly thought they would be “over it in a few days” if I committed suicide.
I did however, believe that God would be greatly offended if I committed suicide and that I would have to answer for that if that’s what I decided to do. I believe strongly that there are 3 things that last: faith, hope, and love and that if I held on to these, maybe I would last too. I decided to keep my faith and keep praying to get better, to never lose hope even though my mind was telling me there was no hope, and to keep an open heart and to show love to those around me.
While at first my family didn’t understand what was going on with me mentally, they remained supportive and encouraged me throughout. The whole experience devastated my family but also brought us all closer together after going through it. I’ve been tried on numerous medications since I got sick 23 years ago but with treatment, I’ve been able to live a relatively “normal” life.
I graduated from college and grad school getting both my Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Social Work. I’m now a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and have been working in the mental health field for over 15 years. I’ve been happily married for 11 years to my soulmate and love of my life.
I’ve become closer to God, my family, have become more compassionate and less judgmental after experiencing severe mental illness. I never would have gone into social work and met the people I’ve helped had I never had mental illness. It’s tragic that someone has a mental illness, but it doesn’t have to end in tragedy. I still struggle at times but I’m at a place where I can say the good outweighs the bad and I’ve grown more through it than I ever could had I not gotten sick years ago.