MY name is J and I'm a 21-year-old woman. I have schizophrenia, a chronic brain disorder, whose symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, lack of motivation and trouble with thinking.
But my life with it shouldn't have to be a secret.
In recent years, the importance of providing better mental health advocacy, treatment options and services for people with mental illness has been encouraged more than ever before.
However, those of us living with schizophrenia, and other serious mental health conditions are being left behind because of the strong stigma that comes with it.
Researches have said that stigma is a form of social injustice that delays treatment attainment, promotes social isolation, stress and even puts individuals with schizophrenia at a higher risk for a more severe illness course.
I remember at the age of 15, a few months before my first psychotic episode, I started experiencing a sudden decline in my overall daily functioning. It was a shock to my friends and family to see me losing weight at a tremendous rate, and my lack of interest in school and daily activities.
I was also isolating myself from everyone and appeared tired all the time. It was a shock for them because I had always been the one known for being 'the life of the party', 'the social butterfly' or 'the people person'.
BEGINNING OF DETERIORATION
As time went by, there was this deeply isolating feeling of a great growing distance between myself, everyone and everything around me. Before long, I began hearing mean voices in my head.
Suddenly and mysteriously, there were visions of people staring at me from afar, and I thought everyone hated me and wished me dead. Dealing with the symptoms is hard enough for me now as an adult, but as a child, you can imagine how truly frightening it was. I felt so alone.
My deteriorating situation began worrying my family so they decided to take me to see a psychiatrist. Getting help was not easy, and neither was the process of getting a diagnosis.
On the one hand, there was this frustration of not knowing how to explain what I was feeling or what was going on in my head; and on the other, the constant distracting hallucinations were making it hard for me to pay attention to what was real.
After a lengthy process of getting evaluated, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and began getting treated for it with medications and frequent therapy. The symptoms persisting despite being in treatment meant that I had to put my studies on hold and proceed with finding other treatment options.
Considering the psychotic state of my mind, I was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric unit of a hospital for seven days as an inpatient for the first time. My second involuntary admission was for 14 days — merely a week after the first.
I was told to take my medications and rest until I felt better to be out and about. However, the sight of how the ward looked and the way the patients were being treated didn't help to make me feel better. The weeks that I spent in there, locked away from the outside world and my family when I needed them the most, has left me traumatised to this day.
LIVING WITH THE STIGMA
Just as I thought that it was all over, I was forcefully held and brought into a van by a group of nurses after my discharge. They drove me to a psychiatric rehabilitation centre and got me admitted against my will — yet again.
This time, I was getting inpatient treatment away from home for almost six months. Although we were living in a home-based treatment centre that provided us with facilities and offered daily activities that the hospital did not, the way most of us in there were treated (as patients) was unkind and even cruel, at times.
They made us feel like we were incompetent by stealing our voices, taking control of our lives, and treating us with little to no respect. From being the youngest patient in a facility that treated patients like prisoners doing their time, to disregarding our needs to speak with our family and calling us manipulators, I realised stigmatising views or attitudes about mental illnesses are not just limited to uninformed members of the general public. Even well-trained professionals act by it.
Throughout my journey with schizophrenia, I have faced stigma while being in treatment, at school, college and work. Of course, I can't speak for everyone but in my experience, the stigma that's associated with schizophrenia has been harder to live with than the symptoms of the illness itself.
Today, despite taking my medications every day, going to therapy, getting enough sleep, exercising daily and getting the right support from my family, my psychiatrist and psychologist who believe in me, I continue to live with the symptoms and will most likely have to for the rest of my life.
However, I have learnt to adapt to the inconsistency of my mind's wellbeing; to make peace with my disability by redefining recovery in my own words, which would mean to be able to live and lead a quality and fulfilling life independently, despite my illness.
