dispel the myth that mental illness is something to be ashamed of

that I’m taking a social hiatus. They don’t need to know why or that the hiatus is permanent. But I did offer that if they need me on the sidelines, such as running errands to pick up fundraising materials, I can do that. No parties or meetings or fundraisers though. I just do not have the energy or even the desire anymore to deal with people.

I was successful in informing professors, but was unsuccessful in my internship. I may have to retake it next quarter with a new internship somewhere else. It’s a long story.

I was diagnosed with it over the course of last summer. It’s comorbid with GAD. I learned about this last week. At the same appointment last week, we arranged for psychological testing for ADHD, and a referral is in progress for case management at another clinic.

Here are informative links to MDD and GAD.

What a mess. You know, none of this was supposed to have happened, I was trying to avoid a mess like this, and it happened anyway. Why?

No problems so far with the learning disabilities arrangements. But I did hit a battle with one of my assignments. The class is based online, on WebCT, and we were all given an assignment to introduce ourselves to the others in the class, and talk for a few paragraphs about our life challenges, who we are now because of those challenges, a little about psycho-social issues where we live.

And I honestly didn’t know what to write.

So, that’s what I wrote about. I spelled out what I did in the bay area and who I was at that time, and then explained briefly that I’ve been unable to adjust and fit in socially in Bakersfield and, aside from a brief description of my getting back into animals, really didn’t want to talk about it.

But in the one paragraph that I did write, I went into detail about my learning disabilities and ADHD, and how that has helped me encourage other students at my job, and how they all felt like they mattered after that and went on to earn A’s and B’s. And that totally rocked. And I miss my job.

In my Challenge, I put “drop classes” as the consequence, because it has been my experience, ever since beginning college ten years ago, that sometimes there just is no working out anything with anyone. You get a “my way or the highway” teacher who refuses to negotiate, or a whole group of classmates who seek to make life miserable, or a failure to form study groups because of the stigmas attatched to disabilities, or a mentor who you learn you can’t communicate with effectively, or any number of other negative social situations that have the potential to have a large impact on class performance, and in that situation, the best solution is to walk away. I have had to change mentors or drop a class and retake it the next term with a different professor, and different group of students, in which the dynamics are different, and it works out better the second (or third, or fourth, or in one case seventh) time around.

What I will NOT do, ever, is give up.

It’s the first week of classes for Fall quarter. Every first week or two of classes, I go through the process of obtaining documentation of my learning disabilities for professors, and working with them to figure how to best be accomodated in their classes while still being fair to other students. I go beyond this in being open with other classmates about these disabilities, so they can understand why I can do things like use a calculator, use a voice recorder, etc. and they cannot, debunk the myths about learning disabilities (the most popular one being that they’re equal to mental retardation so if I really have that then how am I in college), and teach people how to get tested themselves if they think they should be.

The whole thing raises more awareness about these disabilities, which is especially important in Fall quarter, when so many new students and Freshmen are on campus who may not have a lot of experience with different types of people.

It’s a suprise to a lot of professors, who are used to keeping things very hush-hush for fear of being sued. So another part of my challenge every quarter is getting them to also relax. With me, anyway. :) Some students don’t want to disclose disabilities, but I have no problems at all talking about them.

It intrigues me that the place I have the most struggle with this, is the psychology department. I wonder why?

the Victorian era.

Until very recently in history, people who had behaviors that no one could understand were locked in assylums, out of the way of mainstream society. The “treatments” provided in these assylums were deplorable, even torturous. In other parts of the world, such folks were labeled as witches or demons and lynched. Due to these approaches, society in general thought of mental illnesses, or anything that might appear as illness, as something to be ashamed or even afraid of, something that had to be hidden, lest one faces those consequences.

For many decades now, almost an entire century, we’ve collected a lot of information about many, many different types of mental disorders. Things go wrong with brains just like things go wrong with any other organ. It’s time to evolve out of that old stigma and learn to accept ourselves, and other people, the way they are.

I have to admit that when I was first diagnosed with a mental illness (schizoaffective disorder) I was devastated – and ashamed.

A few months ago I was preparing to go to a glass sculpture class and I asked my NAMI support group what to say if someone asked what I do. I got a variety of answers – none of which indicated that I have a mental illness.

I brought this issue up again at a support group that was held at the NAMI National convention in Miami this June. There was some feeling that the stigma that NAMI is dedicated to getting rid of, may in part be self inflicted.

It is difficult to tell someone you hardly know that you have a mental illness, and are on disability. Just yesterday, someone at Curves asked me what I did, and I said I made glass beads. I feel strongly that my health is personal and doesn’t need to be discussed with everybody I meet. But on the other hand, I do want to be open about it, and not feel ashamed about it.

Here is a mood chart that shows various mental states that can come with bipolar disorder (manic-depression):

+5: Psychotically high mood. Total loss of judgement, exorbitant spending, religious or other delusions or hallucinations.

+4: Semi-psychotically high mood. Partially lost touch with reality, incoherent, no sleep, paranoid and vindictive, reckless behaviour.

+3: Very high mood. Inflated self-esteem, rapid thoughts and speech, counter-productive simultaneous tasks.

+2: High mood. Very productive, everything to excess, charming and talkative.

+1: Happy mood. Self-esteem good, optimistic, sociable and articulate, good decisions and get work done.

0: Mood in balance, no symptoms of depression or mania.

-1: Sad mood. Slight withdrawal from social situations, concentration less than usual, slight agitation.

-2: Low mood and anxiety. Feeling of panic and anxiety, concentration difficult and memory poor, some comfort in routine.

-3: Very low mood. Slow thinking, no appetite, need to be alone, sleep excessive or difficult, everything a struggle.

-4: Extremely low mood. Feeling of hopelessness and guilt, thoughts of suicide, little movement, impossible to do anything.

-5: Severest low mood. Endless suicidal thoughts, no way out, no movement, everything is bleak and it will always be like this.

It is okay to be at zero where mood is balanced. The ideal position is being at +1 (this is called euthymia or good mood). The scale is exponential, not linear i.e. being at 5 is much worse than being at 3.

http://cultureventure.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?t=17
Being Happy in the Real World: Skills for a Fulfilling Life

http://cultureventure.freeforums.org/viewtopic.php?p=27
Explore Religions, Philosophies, Ideologies and Life Stances

Both of the ONLINE courses are FREE for ALL. You can register right now!

To mark the World Mental Health Day on 10 October 2007, http://www.CultureVenture.org and http://www.CanWithCandle.org are jointly running the two courses for free. Thank you for your interest.