Become a psychiatrist.

I’m currently a psychology major going premed (starting this fall- 8/07). I’ve also taken college courses in abnormal psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology and basic psychology and AP Psychology within the past two years.

Ever since I was 10 or 11, I have been interested in psychiatry.
One of the first triggers was my grandmother’s schizophrenia. Looking back, she was probably the disorganized subtype. Most things she would speak of made no logical sense and she had a way of mumbling phrases. As I learned of her life story (an early marriage and full-pledged household responsible age at the age of 15) I started wondering if all of that could have been avoided.
Before I had the mental capacity to ponder all of this, my cousin on my father’s side, who was very dear to me, plunged into Jamaica Bay- she was depressed. However, looking back, I have reason to think she was bipolar. Her father passed away when she was young of a brain tumor and her mother was negligent.
Another cousin on my father’s side is battling with anorexia and she still denies it. This is particularly hurtful because I grew up with her. She was taunted for her weight, to the point of anorexia, when she was in her teens. As I am struggling with my weight, this has affected me in the most negative ways.
My mother’s aunt, who was like a mother to her because of my grandmother’s schizophrenia, experienced periods of psychotic depression after the death of her husband. She was a newly wed, only married for six months, when her husband died. The stigma associated with widowhood in India is immense- it drove her to insanity.
Another one of my mother aunts was an epileptic who did not have enough support to follow her treatment. The repeated seizures resulted in significant brain damage. Still, most of my ignorant family blamed her for her situation.
Although these issues all drew me closer to psychiatry, I think that the one thing that has influenced me the most is my own affective problems.
Ever since I was 11, I felt there was something wrong. For some reason I hated myself and I started cutting myself before I realized other people did it too. I started reading books on various affective disorders hoping that I would know what was wrong. Later years, I found solace in suicide, but seeing how my cousin’s suicide hurt my family, I stopped dreaming about it. Then the mania took hold and I denied my problems. I didn’t want to be treated. However, I still loved psychiatry. It was this faith in the subject that led me to seek treatment when I hit my low. I gave myself an ultimatum- I would kill myself in a week if I don’t seek treatment even if treatment may be worse than the depression.
It was worse. My depression made me forget that I had once been manic. I was tried on several medications that flared my mania. I didn’t tell anyone that I was manic because i enjoyed it. Finally this resulted in a multitude of hosipitalizations and, long last, a diagnosis.
I always felt that I could relate to those with mental illness, but I never thought to this extent. I don’t think there is anything else I can be but a psychiatrist.