Tag: Mental disorder

“Satan’s Industry of Death”

An extremist Christian group called “The Watchman’s Report” put out this video entitled “Satan’s Industry of Death” about psychiatry a year ago. However, their title is a self-fulfilling prophecy about what they are unknowingly encouraging, the idea that we should throw psychiatry out the window. Personally, I see them as Satan’s hand in this whole scenario.

The “documentary” is correct in that the roots of psychiatry are dark, indeed. However, so it was in all fields of medicine. Just as medicine improved with scientific discovery, anesthesia, and antibiotics, so did psychiatry improve with time. The Watchman’s Report claims psychiatry is evil, destructive, and Satan’s hand in diagnosing and drugging the masses in order to make money. The video claims that psychiatrists have no right to play God with peoples’ minds, while I say other doctors do the same thing in other fields with peoples’ bodies. Furthermore, God works through people to bring about healing.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a documentary so skewed and taken out of context in a long time. Unfortunately, they are preaching to the choir of many who share the same beliefs. Without psychiatry, I would be a dead man. Do not be a poison to society and spread skewed lies that psychiatry does not work. You could end up convincing some of this and kill them or a loved one of theirs or make them suffer needlessly, b/c they refused psychiatric treatment after reading through rubbish such as your “documentary.” I also thought you had a nice touch with putting ()’s in to indicate what the imagery of the Bible should be interpreted as.

Bravo! And stop making a bad name for Christians!

“I Am Mental Illness” Vs. “I Have Mental Illness”

To be bipolar is to be controlled by my illness. To have bipolar is to have control over my illness. The subtleties of language have great differences in meaning. I imagine to be diagnosed with any mental illness, the initial tendency is to slap the label on myself, saying I am ADHD, anxiety, depression, bipolar, BPD, schizophrenic, <insert mental illness diagnosis here>. Likewise, the initial tendency for a person not educated about mental illness is to label those people who have it according to their illnesses.

I suspect this is the case because mental illness has an effect on the mind, which is very near to our core being. When it spins out of control, it is magnified and shows up prevalently in the forefront of that person. In order to become diagnosed, this must often happen. In my case, I couldn’t help but look out through a looking glass shaped by bipolar, interpreting a lot of the turmoils I was experiencing along with my past according to what bipolar is and does. My family did the same thing.

However, just like someone who has diabetes doesn’t say he is diabetes, or AIDS, GERD, irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, COPD, whatever illness you can conjure up, he HAS that illness. It’s something he becomes educated about, receives treatment for, and he learns how to manage and cope with it.

Mental illnesses are no different. I imagine them to be more challenging than many physical illnesses as they are much more abstract and hard to understand. For John, his recent diagnosis of bipolar may feel like bipolar is him at first, right at the core of his being, but it isn’t. It’s simply got a grip on him.

So please, keep that in mind. To label mental illness as not an illness is incredibly destructive, and so is labeling the afflicted as the illness. In time he or she will take ownership of it, manage it, and cope with it just like someone who has type 1 diabetes, say. Help him or her along by referring to the illness as something he or she has, instead. If you have been diagnosed with a mental illness, tell yourself you have it, not that you are it!

Phones and Psychosis

Phones of any kind had a strange role within my perceptions while I was in the middle of my psychotic episodes. It was simply bizarre during my first episode, which I haven’t written much about yet. During my 2nd episode, I had a few encounters with phones.

I remember making a phone call on my cell to a friend of mine. On my end, I tried to talk to him and heard him speaking, then my whole perception would change and all I heard was static coming from the phone. As it faded back in, I could hear him talking again like normal. Then it would get fuzzy, and static again. I talked to him while it was static and when I could hear him, he asked questions about what I had just said to him, so he could hear me just fine. It’s like my brain was switching channels on me, tuning in and out of the frequencies of the phone. When it tuned out, I heard the static and something… unexplainable.

The other encounter I had with a phone in the hospital on my second break was I felt an overwhelming dread when I saw the pay phone ring, and I rushed to prevent a fellow patient from answering it. I believed pay phones were dangerous from experiences I had in the hospital during my first episode. However, a certain staff member saw this immediately and told me just what I needed to hear, that this is a safe hospital with good staff, who aren’t out to harm anyone. I then thought nothing further of the issue other than remembering phones at the other hospital during my first break.

Part 2: First Break

Now and Then

I just want to put it out there that bipolar I is not who I am… It’s something I have. When I live out my day, I don’t tell most people I’m bipolar, nor do I think about bipolar. It’s become a small part of me, but I choose to reflect on it so I can write about it for others who struggle with all of this.

When I was first diagnosed, bipolar was the biggest part of who I was, and at times it was me. When I lived out my days, I’d tell most people I met that I’m bipolar, and couldn’t stop thinking about bipolar. It became all of who I was, and I couldn’t stop writing about it and thinking about it to figure out what the heck was going on. I vented to friends and family a lot about it, burning many people out.

I still remember the moment I was diagnosed, that the doctor said I would lead a relatively normal life. He was right, as much as in the past I wanted to slap him in the face for what he said as it seemed impossible. It’s taken over ten years for normality to become reality, and it’s worth all the hard work, no questions asked.

Do you know any people who are mental illness survivors?