December 2011
1 post
1 tag
Over a decade of hindsight ( some of the reasons I...
Mary Maddock
While I was slowly dying from toxic, mind-altering, addictive drugs I was not aware that they were the real cause of my problems. I was prepared to do foolish things because I was severely cognitively and emotionally impaired by extremely long term multi-drug use. I continued to do this for such a long time because I lived in FEAR. I was afraid that I would be worse if I stopped my...
October 2011
26 posts
1 tag
My Labels are Metaphors for ???
David Bates
Its been 31 years and counting, since my first experience of psychosis was labeled as schizophrenia within 15 minutes - an all-too-quick reaction that left me bewildered and re-traumatized by the subsequent heavy-handed use and sole reliance on psychotropic medications. The ruddy-faced 30-something psychiatrist never did find the time for an empathic human communication during our 3...
1 tag
Saints and Demons (Part II)
Joseph Carson
Joseph has submitted his story before, but he expanded on his experiences. This is the second half of Joseph’s full story, Saints and Demons. You can read the first half here.
Several months later, my folks came from 5000 miles. First, mother, then 2 months after that, Dad. The staff had refused to answer their questions, saying “It has to come from Mr....
1 tag
Saints and Demons (Part I)
Joseph Carson
Joseph has submitted his story before, but he expanded on his experiences. This is the full version of Joseph’s story, Saints and Demons. Given the length, I will post the first half today, and the second half tomorrow.
A chemical Plexiglas. A funnybone nerve hell. I push out a few words from my semi paralyzed chest to my psychotherapist Dr. T.B. at the Cambridge Hospital...
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Adjustment Disorder Unspecified
Aki Imai
This is my label, and it is strange that my idiosyncracies can be simplified into one phrase. My therapist gave me this diagnosis after talking about the sense of alienation and loneliness I constantly feel in a life of repeatedly leaving places that I considered “home.” However, I want to point out that I also told him that I occasionally hear voices, and that I have cried of...
Joseph Carson
A chemical Plexiglas. A funnybone nerve hell. I push out a few words from my semi paralyzed chest to my psychotherapist Dr. T.B. at the Cambridge Hospital psych unit. I can only choke out haltingly 2-3 words. Catatonia and rigour mortis had settled in. I had asked agonized questions to others on my treatment team. They stay mum about my condition. Finally I yell out my...
My Stories and I
Sheila Israel
There have been stories for decades now before labels and after labels.
I think they’re my stories, but I don’t know for sure. I didn’t sit down and make them up, and I don’t know where they came from.
They played vividly in my mind as if I was only observing them, not creating them.
The stories are important to me because they have been a...
6 tags
Courage Grows Strong at a Wound
Paula “vaquous” Stewart
The following was written in July 2011 - I was in a state of panic and very, very ill.
I was very tired and I had not eaten properly for days - this was in 1994. I went to a restaurant with my sister and had an argument. I decided to leave the restaurant abruptly (Basha on Guy). I walked so fast that my sister Sylvia did not see me All I remember is walking...
5 tags
My Story
Gail
My story started when I was in my late forties. I had pressure on my chest following a migraine headache. My sister said to go to a hospital and have them completely check me out.
So they asked if I wanted to see a psychiatrist. I said yes, not knowing what they do with drugs . After all, I have been friends with a psychiatrist for many years and he didn’t see anything wrong with...
The Space Where Icarus Flew
Ken Paul Rosenthal
I stood on the bridge
I howled at the stars
Tried to deposit my madness
In a bank of fog
Tried to navigate between
My brilliance and my blues
In the space where Icarus flew
In the space where Icarus flew
I’m porous and plastered
And split to the core
I’m wired to the manic static
I’ve hit transparent doors
I lingered in the labyrinth
‘Cause I didn’t have a clue
In...
Share Your Story
Wyatt Strother (Mess With Texas)
This song was not a submission, but I talked to Wyatt and asked for permission to post it on this blog. The title “Share Your Story” inspired the tagline for this site, “Share Your Label, Share Your Story.” The song is perfect for this blog, because it reflects how the term “suicidal” has become an institutionalized label; once...
Diagnonsense
Katie
My current label is “Schizoaffective F 25.1”. I find this amusing. The “F 25.1” part makes it look serious and scientific but when you read the definition of this psychiatric label, and of any other psychiatric label, you might as well be reading the description of your sign of the zodiac. A lot of things correspond to who you are, a lot of things don’t. Taken together they are pretty...
5 tags
AMA (Against Medical Advice) in 4-Wheel Drive
Sarah Knutson
Putting this out to the universe. Turning 50 today, felt like a time to do something I’ve always wanted to do - come out in a more public way with some of my writing and thinking - a way of taking off the socially imposed seclusion & restraints that perhaps many of us continue to carry, whether in or outside an institution & moving toward, in a hopeful way, an honoring...
5 tags
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Crafting a Life after Labels
Sonia Weaver, MindFreedom Eastern PA
I got my first psychiatric label at age 27: post-partum depression. After that I got more labels: obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, atypical psychosis, and generalized anxiety disorder. For 13 years I really believed in these labels, especially “bipolar.” I thought of myself as a person with a diseased brain who would never be able to ...
5 tags
"That's Not Your Business!" - This is Everyone's...
Udo Schumann
I am a 39 years old German. In the end of 2005, I went to Vancouver, Canada to make a claim for refugee protection. During my stay, I talked to psychiatrists and was hospitalised involuntarily at Vancouver General Hospital. They told me that they don’t have a room, so I had to stay on a bed at the floor of the emergency room. Later on, two other people with mental...
5 tags
Life After Labels
Bob Bennett
Having adopted the Buddhist perspective of mental health problems; that is to say anyone who is in the grip of a strong emotion – anger, hate, fear, ignorance, or even love… is showing signs of having a mental health problem, the label throwers just don’t have any power over me.
Love is the mental health problem we all want to experience; and love begins by getting in...
5 tags
I Survived and So Can You
A psychiatric SURVIVOR of 25 years under the system, with multiple diagnosis, forced hospitalizations, restraints, assaults by staff, forced drugs, multiple suicide attempts
To anyone who trusts the mental health system, Big Dogma:
There are very few in traditional mental health who realize that people are NOT mentally ill! Many of those mislabeled are either TRAUMA SURVIVORS, brain...
5 tags
Life in the Teeth of Labels and Idiocy
Allan Slaughter, MFI
“Paranoid schizophrenic.” When I was locked up and intermittently tortured for 28 months between ages 11 and 13, that could mean anything—or nothing. Usually it meant that you or your parents differed with Joe McCarthy—just as, on the other side, ”Enemy of the people” was used the same way.
That label meant a barrage of humiliation for the entire span, and...
5 tags
Life After Shock Treatments
Hadiyah Carlyle
I am seventy years old now.
I had many shock treatments in my early 20’s.
I have spent my entire adult life healing from those shock treatments and I can honestly say I have a vibrant, rich life.
How?
By working with the body, by working with non-traditional forms of healing, by finding caring,loving professionals who never would label me, who believed in me. Now,...
5 tags
Sign me: Healed in spite of it all
I was a really sensitive kid born in the early 1960s, growing up in an emotionally and physically abusive home, and by the time I reached 14 years old I had what would have been called “bipolar” and/or “schizophrenic”, had I allowed anyone to know what kinds of strange thoughts, emotions, fears, and plans I had (like imagining I was part of a real “underground”...
5 tags
When It's Time to Just Say "No"
Beta Sheep
Drugs and alcohol, coupled with an over-the-top attitude, pretty much caused my problems.
I have an old Axis Report where they reference “alcohol abuse, episodic; mixed substance abuse, continuous.” They list some other things on it: depression, paranoid delusions, a sketchy work history. Under those labels, they note “see substance abuse.”
I’ve...
5 tags
True Mental Health Recovery goes beyond Coping -...
David McCannon
I have been on Social Security Disability since September 2005. I thought my days of being a working man were over. After my mom’s death in 2002, my life was not the same. I was defeated and living in despair. All my hope was gone and I had nothing to look forward to. I became totally depressed and was placed under the care of Psychiatry where my condition got worse and my...
5 tags
My Life After Labels
David W. Oaks
Back in the 1970’s, I was a troubled teenager growing up on the south side of Chicago in a working class neighborhood. I was diagnosed with a lot of psychiatric labels by a dozen psychiatrists back when I was a teenager and young adult. I was labeled schizophrenic, psychotic, bipolar, clinically depressed. Then I got a scholarship to go to Harvard and my stress level went...
November 1999
4 posts
1 tag
Recalcitrant recovering refusenik
Recently I came out - not as gay, though the response might have been somewhat similar - but as a non-compliant non-service user.
I quickly realised that I no longer fell into any of the pre-existing categories. To be fair, the occasion I chose to issue my heretical statement was amongst many of my friends and acquaintances who were very supportive, though worried about the ramifications on other...
1 tag
Second Half of My Life
I was dealing with a thyroid problem and on meds for it. I went to work and felt dizzy, so I called my sister who said go to a hospital and ask to see every doctor there . Instead, I went to my doctor and he said I was having a reaction to my thyroid meds. He said he’s seen this happen. He said don’t go to a psychiatrist they wouldn’t understand the thyroid problem. I also had...
1 tag
my trEvolution: the Pitfalls of Western Medicine...
TJ Eyster
I am not ashamed of what I am.. OR what western medicine THOUGHT I was for 17 years, and how I suffered through it. I kept fighting. I kept believing there was a deeper truth, something that remained hidden. Turns out? I was right. Thank you Annie Lennox. Thank you Ross Frankel, Michael Hagar, Jason Jenn, Barbara Eyster, and William Eyster and Marianne Williamson, and Sister Morticia,...
1 tag
Chicken Wing
Recently I was invited on public radio to talk about mental health reform. The guests were a revered doctor, a lobbyist and me. The host introduced me as an “ex-mental patient” and I didn’t even flinch. It’s become part of my livelihood to talk about what madness feels like and what is left when the madness is over. But a few of my friends called me on the phone sounding unhappy that I would be...