From the Diary of a Survivor of Schizophrenia

I was told I had a disease that was like diabetes, and if I continued to take neuroleptic medications for the rest of my life and avoided stress, I might be able to cope. I remember that as these words were spoken to me by my psychologist it felt as if my whole teenage world - which I aspired to dreams of being a valued person in valued roles, of playing lacrosee for the US Women's Team or maybe joining the Peace Corp - began to crumble and shatter. It felt as if these parts of my identity were being stripped from me. I was beginning to undergo that radically dehumanizing and devaluing transformation from a person to being an illness: from being a Pat Deegan to being "a schizophrenic."

As I look back on those days I am struck by how all alone I was. This profound sense of being all alone only served to compund my sense of feeling worthless and of having no value. Granted, people gave me medications, people monitored my blood pressure, people did art therapy, psychotherapy, occupational therapy, and recreational therapy with me. But in a very fundamental way I experienced myself being all alone, adrift on nameless sea without compass or bearing. And that deep sense of lonliness came from the fact that although many people were talking to me about my symptoms, no one was talking to me about how I was doing. No one came to me and said, "Hey, I know you're going through hell righht now. I kno you feel totally lost in some nightmare. I know you can't see a way out right now. But I've been where you are today. I got labeled with schizophrenia and a whole bunch of other things too. And I'm here to tell you that there is a way out and that your life doesn't have to be about being in mental institution. I'm around if you want to talk."

No one ever came to me and said those words. All I knew were the stereotypes I had seen on television or in the movies. To me, mental illness meant Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde, psychopathic serial killers, loony bins, morons, schizos, fruitcakes, nuts, striaght jackets, and raving lunatics. They were all I knew about mental illnesses, as well as the possibility of recovering, of healing, and of building a new life for myself. It would have been good to have role models - people I could look up to who had experienced what I was going through - people who had found a good job, or who were in love, or who had an apartment or a house on their own, or who were making valuable contribution to society, but as I said, this did not happen for me in those early years.