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Travels Through Psychiatry

Psych Memes I Made

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- December 22, 2021

I created all these memes over the last couple of years. Please feel free to save/share any.

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Why I Need to Call it Mental Illness

- July 05, 2024

My mind and body balance all aspects of me so well at times, then not. I’ll be thinking I really have it together, creatively drawing and painting, enjoying cooking and tidying and going out for walks, even liking some light socializing out in the big world. My goal is to move forward, carrying stability achieved as I accomplish and develop more skill and expression in art, as I find home activities and exercise and being in real life more natural and less infused with anxiety and need to force myself. So, there I’ll be, pulling elements of good life for me together, and then a small piece breaks off. Maybe I’m extra tired, or maybe I get a twinge of how useless it all is, or maybe the buzz of doing gets so exciting it spins all colors into a whiteout and I can’t tell what I’m moving through. So, I stop, a little bit, joined by more bits, until I’m walled in by what I feel I can’t do, until I’m paralyzed inside, just gazing out a small window and wondering, so bitterly, why eve...

Life Beside Mental Illness

- February 08, 2025

self-portraits from 1980 My first psych hospitalization lasted two months. I was 17 years old. My psychiatrist discharged me in February, and I caught up on all my schoolwork by April so I could graduate with my class. That fall, I enrolled at a university but freaked out on day one and left. Instead, I went on a job search. The first opening I saw, in the want ads of the newspaper, specified doing lab work, night shift, call this number if interested. I was and I called. I wanted to stay busy, not to deny my mental illness or make a misguided attempt to avoid it, but because I had the desire to live my life. In this blog post, my aim is to show that mental illness hasn't blunted my life, hasn't numbed me to the flavor and variety in living, but is an interruption. The stops and starts don't prevent me from getting back on the horse. I illustrate how mental illness operates side by side with having a "regular" life. I offer the example of my start in treatment...

When Crisis Intake Undergoes Beneficial Changes

- January 14, 2025

Seeking help in a mental health crisis is daunting, especially when that involves entering the emergency department (ED) at a hospital. For me, it’s always been like stepping through a portal into a realm with no certainty of respect, efficiency, or good choices. Yet, step one in accessing acute care starts in the ED, where blood and urine tests and EKGs are run, and where mental health assessments happen, and where the wait time for an available psych bed can become excruciatingly slow. I’ve often been through ED screening and always thought it could be done less harshly, without the sharp edges, in a way that doesn’t leave me, and other patients, further traumatized. And now, a hospital in my area has invested funds into improving the psych ED experience, providing a specialized waiting area and an alternative to psych unit inpatient stays. This is long overdue and will hopefully become a model for many other healthcare systems. (In this blog post, I won’t be naming the hospita...

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How I Became, and Unbecame, a Psych Patient

- March 08, 2022

Early on, I was about 13, hormones kicking in, when family issue upon family issue invaded without knocking, slinking around the corners, under the rug, behind furniture in the secrecy of things we all know about, but we don’t talk about. I was on the edge of entering adulthood, desperately needing guidance that was lacking, so I set out to fill my own aching void. It was the 1970’s, with the popularity of Sybil, the drama of a young woman with multiple personalities embraced into integrating by such a caring psychiatrist, and Lisa and David, disturbed young people so attentively observed in some ward, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, a tempting tale of a woman grasped from the bizarre world of schizophrenia. These portrayals resonated with me as so much better than my life as a quiet good girl, ignored in the shadows. I desired that attention I’d never get, not in the midst of generational and current family trauma, and I was compelled to read and watch these storie...

This Psych Unit is My Prison

- September 02, 2021

I have a lot to say in this post, so it will go on a bit longer than my usual posts. Indeed, I did end up in a psych unit again, this time for 3 weeks, same psych unit as July, same psychiatrist in charge of me. Yes, I do mean in charge of me, but before I get started on that, I’ll provide some of the back story. I’ve been in psychiatric treatment on and off, mostly on, since 1980. At times treatment was outright abusive, such as strapping me to a bed, often coercive, and usually a process of psychiatrists prescribing this, then that, then stopping that and trying this and adding this and then these, or even insisting I have ECT. My psych hospitalizations total around 60, with 28 of those from 2016-2019 when the psychiatrist had me on up to 8 psych meds at once. And then in August 2019, she stopped 5 meds cold. After recovering from severe withdrawal, I left psychiatric treatment and stopped the remaining 3 drugs. Due to ongoing withdrawal sickness, I stayed mostly isolated at ...

Yes, I’m Seeing a Psychiatrist Again

- March 21, 2023

After over 3 years off psychiatric medications, letting my body clear them, coming to terms with my hurt and anger over that last psychiatric stopping 5 meds without taper, and working on my issues in isolation, free of irritation from others’ interference, I came to realizations. My mind is definitely clearer (7 different meds daily clouded everything) and I’ve learned so much more about my personal issues through writing and art. I’ve also tightened up my finances, providing more of a sense of independence. This is all good, helps me tremendously, but it’s not enough. I still experience too many lows tinged with suicidal thoughts, resistance to stepping out of my apartment (or off my sofa most days), mired in life’s pointlessness and drudgery. And then there’s the flip side. When I do get moving, I’m propelled into some sense of never stopping, sure I have all the answers, and happy like I’m high, flitting from one thing to the next, whirling about until I drop back into exha...

So Has My Mental Health Actually Improved Off All Psych Meds?

- June 29, 2021

I've been off all meds for about 18 months now, and generally I'm better mentally in many obvious ways. For instance, I no longer self-injure, something I'd felt compelled to do almost monthly when I was on quetiapine, lithium, benztropine, gabapentin, desvenlafaxine, Vivitrol depo, naltrexone, pramipexole, and levothyroxine (yes, the last two were for adverse effects). And my moods can still elevate and then dip, but not in such extreme ways as they did for my years on so many meds. My days aren't always productive and I still feel ill too often and yet I care for my basic needs, and did care also for my cat Iris very well until she died last week. And there I thought I would face insurmountable crisis, a test of how together I really was as I stared into a dark chasm of losing my constant companion, the little being who'd lived with me for 8 years and stayed close by my side through all of the horrid parts of meds withdrawal. I was convinced I only wanted to st...

Five Months on a Psych Med

- July 24, 2023

Five months ago, after finding a psychiatrist who met my criteria, I reached out for help. I’d already spent over 3 years clearing out 7 medications. I’d already delved into my personal issues and worked on identifying and addressing my issues. On my own, I came that far, but it wasn’t enough to ward off cycling moods and an ever-present wish to just not exist at all. I approached that first appointment, the initial evaluation, with trepidation. To my relief, all went well. This psychiatrist met my expectations. He took a thorough history, heard my realist goals, and suggested a medication that might help without clouding my creativity, inflicting intense sleepiness, or entangling me in disabling adverse effects. My goals were simple. I wanted to be more physically active, develop social interests outside of my apartment, and make new art. This psychiatrist asked what I might like to do socially. I told him I’d really enjoyed, while in art school years ago, sitting with a...

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Travels Through Psychiatry

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Why I Need to Call it Mental Illness

Life Beside Mental Illness

When Crisis Intake Undergoes Beneficial Changes

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