The first woman is Joanne Greenberg (fully recovered for fifty years), the bestselling author of I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. The second is Catherine Penney (fully recovered for thirty years), a mental health nurse in California whose healing tale was chronicled by her therapist, Daniel Dorman, MD, in the book Dante’s Cure: A Journey Out of Madness.

Their accounts are interwoven with interviews with giants in the field of schizophrenia recovery. These include Peter Breggin, MD (author, Toxic Psychiatry), Robert Whitaker (journalist, author, Mad in America), and Bertram Karon, PhD (author, Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia: Treatment of Choice). Also featured throughout the film are over 100 interview clips of strangers filmed in New York City’s Washington Square Park who share their points of view on schizophrenia.

Here is Daniel Mackler talking about why he made this documentary:

For more information or to purchase the video, please visit here.

In the fall of 1999 I had my first of two major spiritual/emotional life crises that some term madness.  I was 26.  I had just moved 3,000 miles to a graduate school in Massachusetts from my familiar and somewhat normal life in Oregon.The stress of this new experience was too much for me.  Within one week later, after little sleep and several wonderful, strange, and frightening experiences, I had totally lost grips with physical reality.
I eventually convinced myself that my car could fly and slammed into the back of a semi-truck while accelerating to 80 mph (preparing for takeoff) on a small country road.  I immediately blacked out.

Hello Psychiatry!

Miraculously I survived, but two days later, after the doctors heard about how I had been behaving from my mother, I was sent directly to the psychiatric ward of UMass Medical Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts.  I was terrified.  Visions of electroshock, lobotomy, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest flashed before me.

Of course, these days the treatment of choice is psychiatric drugs.  In the psychiatric ward we were lined up like cattle and I was coerced to take drugs I never wanted to take.
I was told I had bipolar disorder and was given the party line that I would need to be on these “medications” for the rest of my life.  Never a word about the “side effects,” and of course I wasn’t given informed consent.  After all, these drugs were supposed to be like insulin for diabetes, at least that’s what they told me.  I left the hospital on September 28, 1999 with a prescription for 2,000 mg of Depakote and 1.5 mg of Risperdal.  I also left determined to prove them wrong on all counts.
Shortly after my release, I got severely nauseas about 3 times per week and vomited uncontrollably.  At first I thought it was a reaction to the food I was eating, bad pizza or something.  One day I was talking to my psychiatrist, Dr. Attiullah, over the phone and mentioned my nausea.  She casually commented, “Oh, that’s a side effect from the medication.”   Hmmm.  Wouldn’t that have been nice to know a little earlier!?

In Search of Support

After seeing four psychiatrists during the course of a month, the second I walked into Dr. Ascher’s cozy University of Massachusetts office, he recognized that I was severely “overmedicated.”  Dr. Ascher reduced my dosage of Risperdal by .5 mg immediately, and then had me reduce by .5 mg every week.  Within two weeks, he helped me to get completely off the Risperdal without any “relapse” or withdrawal difficulties whatsoever.
Soon, however, I would be twenty-five pounds overweight due to the Depakote.  Always an athlete, the extra weight left me feeling sluggish, gross, and unattractive.  Subconsciously I realized the Depakote (or “Depacrap” is more like it) was turning me into a chronic mental patient.  Something had to be done.
Even while in a severely drugged state, I still had insight into how important having support would be in my withdrawal journey.  Even though I wanted desperately to get off of Depakote, somehow I knew that it would be extremely difficult to withdraw alone, without any support.  Everybody in my family trusted the doctors at this point.  I can see now that they cared about me and were afraid of losing me.  But I think they also feared I was “mentally ill” and wanted me to be “medicated.”

Steep Learning Curve, Gradual Withdrawal

During the course of a graduate school independent study, I took the opportunity to meet and interview people who had recovered from periods of extreme emotional distress and were now living psychiatric drug free.  I called David Oaks, the Director of Support Coalition International (SCI, now MindFreedom).  David affirmed how I was feeling and sent me a copy of the Dendron Journal (now the MindFreedom Journal).  Dendron illustrated for me that there were people who totally rejected biopsychiatry, were living psychiatric drug free, “symptom” free, and who were now organizing for social justice.  I finally felt affirmed for feeling extremely pissed off at how I had been treated!
By the end of the semester, after gradually weaning off Depakote, I had found the confidence to stop taking the drug completely.  My physical injuries had finally healed, it was spring, and I didn’t want anything holding me back.  To my dismay, Dr. Ascher, who had been so supportive, said he couldn’t recommend that I go completely off.  Something about liability or something.  He would still see me if I went off, but it would be totally my decision.  By now I was only on 250 mg and I felt I was ready.
In June, I returned home to Portland, Oregon for the summer.  I brought my pills just in case I felt I needed them.  I didn’t.  It had taken 9 months, but I was finally rid of the Depakote.  I felt free.

A Second Chance at Life

Fully healed, I was striving academically, athletically, and socially.  It was in graduate school in the fall that I met Kristin, my future wife.
In March, David Oaks invited me to attend Support Coalition’s second Highlander strategy conference in Tennessee.  We met in the same room where Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks organized many of their great civil rights campaigns.  I was in awe of the center and especially of all the veterans of the (ex-)user/survivor movement, which included Gabor Gambos, the then chair of the European Network of (ex-)Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (ENUSP) and Dr. Loren Mosher, who directed the successful and well researched alternative to hospitalization in the 1970s known as Soteria.  I mostly just listened.
That summer, I interned for David Oaks at Support Coalition International directing their oral history project (www.mindfreedom.org/histories.shtml).  I interviewed over 50 psychiatric survivors about their experiences with extreme emotional states, psychiatric abuse, and recovery.  With every interview, I felt more affirmation for my experiences.
I found people who had gone through much more horrific experiences than me, yet were not only surviving, but thriving.  I interviewed people like Judi Chamberlin, author of On Our Own.  I sat in Leonard Roy Frank’s book filled San Francisco apartment as he patiently explained to me how he survived over 50 electroshock and insulin coma treatments in the 1960s to become one of the fathers of the modern day   (ex-)user/survivor movement.  I realized then that I was extremely lucky to have gotten rid of psychiatry so quickly.
Earlier that spring, David Oaks introduced me to Will Hall, a psychiatric survivor who had recently moved to Massachusetts.  That summer I found out that we received a small grant to start a group called Psychiatry Alternatives Support Group.  Little did we know at the time that this small group would turn into the now internationally respected Freedom Center (www.freedom-center.org).
With each new experience I was growing more confident.  Overconfident even.  I felt invincible.  There was no way that what happened two years ago could happen again.  I felt great pride that I wouldn’t let it happen again.

Destined for a Second Date with Psychiatry?

After completing graduate school I decided to work in the mental health field to see if it really was as bad as all of these people had been telling me.  My curiosity has sometimes been a problem for me, dating back to the time when I was 5 years old and stepped on a nail to see what it felt like.  It hurts.  And then you get a shot in your butt.  I got a job as the director of a group home for people with “severe and persistent mental illness” with eerily similar results.
I found out that the mental health system really is as bad as it is cracked up to be.  I found eight disempowered, heartbroken souls waiting for their weekly Prolixin injections surrounded by six well-meaning, but equally apathetic T.V. watching and solitaire playing staff.  And I was in charge!
Completely stressed out by all of this, I stayed up nights planning.  Within one week my thoughts and notes became more and more bizarre and desperate.  This time I recognized what was happening to me and I was terrified.  The fear just made it worse.
I knew I was losing it but I would rather die than go back to the hospital.  I was so desperate at this point that I even tried taking some Depakote and Risperdal that I had saved in the medicine cabinet.  Nothing helped.
Saturday morning, after another intense, sleepless night, I agreed to go to a hospital.
This time my experience was much better, mostly due to the wonderful support network I had developed over the past two and a half years.  Kristin proved to be the best advocate in the world.  She was with me the entire time and came to the hospital armed with my own personal Support Coalition oral history freshly printed.
I can’t overemphasize how important it is to have a strong support network that truly advocates for what you want.  My brother Abe was still living in the area at the time and he came to the hospital as well.  So I was surrounded by Kristin, my brother Abe and Kristin’s mother.  Their presence was crucial, perhaps life saving.  In fact, every time that Kristin left my side, I panicked and got extremely agitated.
I hadn’t slept for days.  Probably because of the excellent advocacy that Kristin and Abe provided for me, the hospital staff refused to give me any drugs against my will, something I am very grateful for.  Eventually though, my brother and his beard convinced me that it might be in my best interest to take some sleeping pills, as I obviously needed some rest.  Five minutes after swallowing the little white tablets, I fell into a deep sleep.
Thanks to the excellent advocacy of Kristin and my family, this time I was treated very well by the hospital staff.  However, the well meaning hospital staff was still very much entrenched in the medical model and soon I was prescribed a nice cocktail of Zyprexa, Depakote, and Klonopin.  After a week of attending their groups and swallowing their pills like a good boy, I was released back to the big bad world.

Withdrawal: Take Two

I was raw.  For a few weeks, little things would set me off.  A dropped phone call would cause flashbacks of my altered experiences, causing terrifying panic attacks.
Amazingly, in this state I interviewed for a job Cheryl Stevens recommended me for because of my work co-founding the Freedom Center.  It was a job helping (ex)-users/survivors of psychiatry to pursue their personal and small business dreams at the Western Massachusetts Training Consortium (The Consortium).  It is the vocation I still enjoy to this day.
The worst attack came when I went to visit Dr. Ascher again.  The shame I felt was devastating.  This wasn’t supposed to happen again.  Not to me.  Not after all I had been through.  Kristin was driving me to the appointment and it was all coming back to me at once.  The car crash.  The car ride to Kristin’s parents when I lost it a couple weeks ago.  It all hit me at once and I felt like my heart would literally explode.  Terror invaded every cell.  I felt myself being pulled into the other world again.
But besides the all encompassing shame I felt, the appointment with Dr. Ascher went alright.  At least he didn’t have me locked up again.  And he did give me some insightful advice about the importance of sleep.  But even though he is understanding and better than most psychiatrists, he is still a psychiatrist.  In his mind, my “relapse” gave him good reason to stick with the psychiatric drugs.  He would not be such a strong supporter of my wish to withdraw this time around.
I decided to withdraw on my own this time.  I felt the longer I stayed on Zyprexa, Depakote, and Klonopin, the more difficult it would be to withdraw.  I was on average doses of Zyprexa and Depakote.  I cold turkeyed the Zyprexa and Depakote, but because I was still feeling a little shaky, I kept them for emergency use only.  I absolutely hated the Depakote so I figured it would have to be a warm day in a New England winter before I took that.  So as much as I also hated Zyprexa, after my next bad panic attack a few days later, I was so desperate for some kind of relief that I took some Zyprexa.  That was the last time I took either Zyprexa or Depakote.
For awhile I took Klonopin two or three nights per week to help me with sleep.  I was terribly paranoid about getting my sleep after my recent altered state where I convinced myself that I did not need sleep.  The connection between regular sleep and sanity was now very clear to me.  I was having such difficulty with sleep that I feared I would never be able to wean myself from the Klonopin.  And about once a week as I was falling asleep, I had mini-panic attacks which felt like heart attacks.
I noticed that when I took Klonopin for sleep I would have difficulty falling asleep the following night.  I would later learn that this is a common “rebound effect” of the drug.  This may be part of the reason that benzodiazepines are so addictive, especially if you are using them for sleep (besides being one of the few “feel good” psychiatric drugs).  I knew if I kept using them regularly, I would need more and more to achieve the same effect.
It was crucial that I reduced my dependence on Klonopin.  I only resorted to Klonopin when I felt I had exhausted all other options.  I experimented with Valerian, which worked when my insomnia was mild.  I feared that my psyche would not be able to handle even one night of minimal sleep.  Sometimes just having one glass of beer would be enough to settle my nerves enough to sleep through the night.  However, I also noticed a rebound effect with alcohol.
As my body and mind healed, I was able to reduce my use of Klonopin to once a week, then once every week and a half, then once every two weeks.  By the time Kristin and I moved 60 miles east to her hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts in May of 2002, I was taking Klonopin about once very three weeks.  The three months since my hospitalization in February felt like a year, but with every day I grew stronger.
Of course it helped that I enjoyed what I did during the day.  My sense of purpose remained.  I loved my new paid work at The Consortium, as well as my volunteer gig with the Freedom Center.  The fact that I lived 60 miles away from these vocations gave me a healthy separation from what I knew would be my life’s work.  I reserved weekends just for myself and Kristin, a policy I still employ today.
Still, I felt tremendous shame as a result of my “relapse.”  I had much respect for Rene Andersen, my new boss and mentor at The Consortium.  Yet it would be two years before I told her that I was in the hospital just a week before I started working there.  She couldn’t believe it.  I don’t think I’ve ever told David Oaks what happened the second time.  When facing the outside world I basically pretended my second hospitalization had never happened.
Internally, I was hyper-conscious of what had happened.  Never again would I have the attitude that this couldn’t happen again.  I now realized that if I encountered enough stress, combined with lack of sleep, that an altered state would likely occur.  This realization left me feeling quite vulnerable.
Reading Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America solidified my initial feeling that psychiatric drugs were not the way to go, at least for me.  Here was very Western medicine, very “scientific” data that suggested that recovery rates were actually higher for people who never went on psychiatric drugs in the first place.  The data also provided hope for people who had been on psychiatric drugs, like me, but wanted to try to live without them.  Part of my wellness or preventative maintenance was to avoid psychiatric drugs if at all possible.  I felt that taking these substances would increase the likelihood of future problems.
I had met several people through Support Coalition who had lived for years successfully without psychiatric drugs.  Ironically, because of the intense shame I felt, I did not reach out to these people at this difficult time for encouragement.  But just knowing these people existed helped immensely.  I knew it was possible, even probable, to live a healthy life without psychiatric drugs.
I started going regularly to the Freedom Center support meetings.  The more I went, the more I got out of them.  I found the peer support model exponentially more helpful than the top down doctor-patient model.  I also felt a sense of pride that I helped to start this group.  Typically there were 8 to 20 people who came to our weekly group.  We rotated the facilitation amongst the more experienced group members.  It felt so refreshing to be able to talk about whatever was on my mind and not be judged.
Not only did I find support for my wish to live psychiatric drug free at these groups, but I have had some of the deepest intellectual and spiritual conversations in this circle of so-called misfits.  I have also made some of my best friends there, including Will Hall.
In September of 2002, I took Klonopin for the last time.  I had the support of Kristin, the wonderful folks at the Freedom Center, and this time, my family as well.  Their support made the transition off the drugs much easier.  The only person I knew who did not support my decision was my psychiatrist, Dr. Ascher.  Not that it mattered much.  I had fired him months ago.

Finding Intimacy

Without a doubt, the most important ingredient to my successful recovery is my life-affirming love with Kristin.  She was there for me through it all, even when I doubted her loyalty.  She stayed by my side when she didn’t know if I would ever come back.  And Kristin trusted and still trusts my judgment about the medications.

Exercising Life

Another key to my wellness or enthusiasm for life (a term I like better) is that I have interests I pursue outside of work.  I have a strong love for sports and competition.  I play in basketball leagues every year.  Basketball is awesome because it keeps me in shape during the long New England winters.  There are many times during the course of the year where I get stressed out from work.  When I feel the tension starting to build and recognize that I’m having more difficulty with sleep, I will go play basketball or go for a long run.  Getting a good sweat in breaks up the tension.  Almost immediately after I work out I am much more relaxed and my sleep patterns return to normal.  For me, I find exercise an excellent alternative to psychiatric drugs.
The sport I am most passionate about right now is golf.  To play good golf, your mind and body have to work in perfect harmony.  In this way, much like yoga or Tai Chi, golf can be an excellent grounding exercise.

A Real Future

Kristin and I were married on June 12th, 2004.  In a country where I once could have been forcibly sterilized and institutionalized for years, and where people labeled with “mental illness” are still brutalized on a daily basis, I now have a real future.
I have a few final reflections.
I see my so-called psychotic breaks as perfectly normal reactions to extreme stress.  People cope with difficult situations in different ways.  Some turn to drugs, some exercise for six hours per day, some watch television excessively, some obsess about sex, some get angry, some do yoga, some meditate, and some medicate.  There are any number of ways that people cope.  Twice in my life I have coped with what I experienced as overwhelming situations by retreating so far within myself that I created my own imaginary, yet very real world.  I see madness as a coping strategy no less valid or human than any of the others.  The difference to me is that I lost conscious control, and I believe a part of wellness is making fully aware, conscious life choices, even in the most difficult of circumstances.  At present, I consciously choose exercise, yoga, acupuncture, golf, sleep, friendship, love, and meaningful work.
Still, life is not always easy.  There are times when I overextend myself.  If I feel myself getting extremely stressed out, and I feel I have exhausted all other alternatives, I am not averse to taking an over-the-counter sleeping medication to make sure I avoid problems.  This has happened maybe once in the past year.  Overall, if drugs were used as a last resort, temporary tool, I think our society would be a lot better off.

Since I was a child I’ve struggled with extreme emotions, voices and powerful out of body experiences. I remember falling to the ground once in third grade, writhing in agony because I believed something was grabbing my back. I saw cartoons projected on the ceiling, and my fear was sometimes so strong I fell mute. I often hid away, alone, overwhelmed and unable to describe what was going on.At age 26, I hit a breaking point and wandered the streets of San Francisco all night hearing angry voices telling me to kill myself. I ended up on a locked psychiatric ward. For the next year, I was in and out of hospitals and homeless shelters.

My diagnosis was schizoaffective schizophrenia, and the treatment was powerful anti-psychotic medications. What the doctors had to offer didn’t help me, however. I left the hospital with more problems than I had going in, and I had to cope with the trauma of restraints, seclusion, plus a stigmatizing label that offered little hope for the future.

With nowhere to turn, I started to search for an answer on my own. In 2000, some friends in the Northampton, Mass., area let me stay with them, and I got a job in a local convenience store. Then I worked in a bookstore. The daily routine of a job, getting away from the memories in San Francisco, the small town tempo–it all helped. Step by step, over these difficult years, I learned a different way of responding to my madness.

I learned about nutrition and changed my diet. I took classes in yoga and meditation and began to see an acupuncturist. I watched for early warning signs of problems and began to consider the spiritual aspects of what I was going through, listening to the voices I heard and exploring their meaning. At one point back in San Francisco, for example, I heard a loud voice telling me I had to do yoga or I would die. It was frightening, but I realized it was like the voice of an angry parent or guardian looking out for me. So that voice is why I began to practice yoga.

I might be different than most people around me, but being different also means being creative and sensitive. I stopped seeing myself as a broken person with no chance for recovery. Most importantly, I reached out to other people who had also been diagnosed as mentally ill, and we began supporting each other in discovering our own pathways to healing. For too long I had been trying to do this all on my own.

The upshot is, as I grew stronger and healthier, I was inspired to dedicate myself to helping others make it through the ordeal I had survived. Though many people find good support from doctors and medications, growing numbers around the world are calling for alternatives to the mainstream “one size fits all” approach to mental health.

In 2000, I met Oryx Cohen, a University of Massachusetts graduate student who had suffered similarly to me. We hit it off. We were both looking for treatment alternatives, and we wanted to meet others like us. So in 2001, we co-founded the Freedom Center in Northampton, starting with a public library computer, a free e-mail account, and one support meeting a month held in a local church. The meetings took off. People came in to share their amazing stories. Check out the Freedom Center

Today we’ve grown to a weekly acupuncture clinic, two yoga classes, a writing group, meditation group and two peer support groups. Thousands have been helped by the Freedom Center. We’re trying to reach people not helped by traditional care, people looking for alternatives to medication and diagnostic labels.

We try and give people space to find their own pathway and treatments and let them explore, with support, a variety of “wellness resources.” That might include medications or it might not. We do make people aware of the downside of the drugs, but we let them choose how they want to proceed.

Last September, for example, the Freedom Center and the Icarus Project (where I am on the national coordinating collective) jointly published a Harm Reduction Guide To Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs. There are a lot of risks coming off psychiatric drugs, and if someone is finding it too intense, we often say, “Why don’t you consider going back on the medication and focus for the moment on finding yourself a stable housing situation. Or feeding yourself better.”

The Freedom Center does a lot of educational work and public events, and we have been invited to talk in places like California, Alaska, Utah, Ireland and Europe. We had a “Bed Push” last summer, where we rolled a hospital bed around town to call for more choice and compassion in hospital care. I also founded “Madness Radio,” a community FM radio show now heard everywhere via the Internet. So the Freedom Center is growing from a local service to a national voice for mental health alternatives.

Hard to know where this will all lead in the future. I myself am now in Portland, Ore., completing a Masters Degree in psychology at the Process Work Institute. I miss my friends in Northampton.

Experiences that get called mental illness are shrouded in fear and misunderstanding. Take the time to listen without judgment or preconception to people diagnosed with mental illness and have the courage to speak up if you’ve ever had a brush with madness yourself.

I invite you to learn about alternative and holistic approaches and to take a stand for greater choice and options in treatments and care. And, if you are in Massachusetts, please come by and visit one of our acupuncture sessions or yoga classes.

When: Monday February 23rd, 2009 6:30-8:30

Where: Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre 1499 Queen Street West

More info / RSVP:

naomibe@houselink.on.ca

Book Launch sponsered by The Dream Team and Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre. Publication of the book was made possible by Houselink and Toronto Arts Council.

When I was asked to formally write and discuss my Recovery journey, I was quite scared and excited, because I have been able to successfully re-integrate myself into “sane” society for some time now. The fear is of exposing my past and allowing others to see my vulnerabilities, but the fear was overshadowed by the idea that I could some how be an ambassador of hope, and to assure you that recovery is absolutely possible.

Hope according to the Webster’s dictionary is “a desire to search for a good future” Which I believe is every human beings right. But at the start of my recovery journey I did not even have that. I grew in a large Irish Catholic family; my parents came to Canada with the dreams of building a good future for themselves and their children. My mother often described me as a vivacious, highly energetic yet terribly sensitive little boy. When I was nine years old I was on my way home from school one day, and I was abducted off the street. The atrocities that occur when children are taken happened to me. My entire world changed in the blink of an eye. This occurred back in the mid seventies and back then people did not talk about therapy or counselling it was simply never discussed. Although everyone around me knew what had occurred no one said a word. All I knew was People treated and looked at me differently than before. As a highly sensitive nine year old I was not equipped emotionally to understand what had happened to me was not my fault. I began to withdraw and felt very uncomfortable and agitated in unfamiliar settings. I began to have this sense of hyper awareness always needing to know what was behind me. I would frequently stand with my back to the wall and would always check around corners and in closets if the setting was unknown. An incredible sense of overwhelming sadness permeated everyday and I vacillated between sleeping for days or not sleeping at all. I began to use food a source of comfort and by the time I was 16 years old I weighed 380lbs. Also at that age I was introduced to alcohol and Marijuana. I distinctly remember a sense of ease when I took my first drink and I got high for the first time, finally I could let my guard down a bit and relax. For a long time these substances were my saviour. The unfortunate thing is that the substances I was using were getting stronger and the frequency of the use was increasing.

By the time I was 24 years old I was a full blown addict and was formally diagnosed with severe depression and post traumatic stress disorder. This diagnosis just fuelled my shame and I began to believe that I was defective and any hope for recovery was futile. I was unable to maintain any semblance of a life. I floated in and out of jobs and was not able to maintain housing for more than a couple of months at a time. I was completely estranged from my family and I had no friends. I felt like there was nothing to live for I sunk into depths that blacker than despair and I could not pull myself out. By this point as well I had developed a severe eating disorder and had gone down to 130lbs. all I wanted to do was die.

I was arrested one evening and did not realize that that arrest would be the start of an incredible journey back to life. As I sat in a jail cell, I wondered how I got there. This is not who I wanted to be! I was blessed to be held for a couple of weeks, although I did not think so at the time. This forced me to get clean and sober for the first time in many years. All the feelings and fear and shame and utter sadness and hyper vigilance were overwhelming because I had nothing to suppress it. But in all that madness I had a moment of clarity and I asked for help! I spoke to a counsellor through the courts and she assured me that she could help me. That individual gave me my first glimmer of hope in over 20 years of struggle.

How does one foster hope? It is done when we offer someone the right and dignity to dream again.  I remember this incredible sense of being overwhelmed. My life had become such a tangled mess and the thought of unravelling it seemed impossible. A very wise person said to me once; if you can’t take the book, take a page, if you can’t take a page take a line and if you cant take a word because it is all progress. I lived by those words and still do to this day. So where do I start? How do I begin to untangle this mess that my life had become? I desperately reached out for all the support I could get, because I did not want to die. I was connected to the mental health and Justice Program through the Toronto Bail Program. This program focuses on people with concurrent disorders who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless; I fit the bill perfectly and was given a small apartment to call my own. It was my first sense of belonging in a very long time. I sat down with my case Manager and worked out a plan of action for reclaiming my life and my dignity. Bit by bit and with ongoing and caring support I began to address my issues. Slowly I was able to overcome each hurdle. As the fear and anxiety started to become manageable I was able begin to dream again and set in place some goals. I wanted desperately to become self sufficient and I went back to school and graduated with honours. I currently work with the mental health and justice housing support program as case manager. I wake up most mornings smiling and looking forward to not only the day ahead but what incredible experiences lie ahead in my life, I try to find the humour in my mistakes and I laugh a lot. I have rebuilt my connections to my family. I have amazing friends and I have a wonderful partner. I see my journey of recovery in a totally different light now. It was possibly the greatest gift I have ever received. I know now that I am vastly more than my diagnosis. It has become very clear to me that each one us has an amazing story of resilience and triumph, and it is that commonality of our human experience that bonds us. It always amazes me how fragile the human mind can be yet how incredibly powerful the human spirit is. I truly believe that recovery happens in relationships. For me I sum up recovery in three words Hope, faith and humour.

One day I was working as a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. The next day I was signing myself into a locked unit at another area psychiatric hospital.

The one thing I had never realized while working in the hospital (including doing admissions work) was the sheer terror and sense of loss of control that a psychiatric hospital admission causes. What an identity shift is required. A letting-go of identity and taking on an unfamiliar one.

I was at work when my doctor and I decided I should admit myself. I went home to pull some things together, but I didn’t change out of my work clothes. I think I wanted to hold on to some shred of my identity as a functioning person (even though I wasn’t really functioning very well at that point). I must have looked so odd to my soon-to-be fellow patients as I toured the unit in my dress and pumps. And it was a locked unit!

At the hospital where I worked, adult patients were in an open unit and I breezily asked (masking my fear) the admissions person as we went to the unit if it was a locked or open unit – my heart sank when she told me it was the former.

So, there I was at the hospital. Alone. It was a long and lonely first night. But I didn’t know then that in addition to working on my own problems with depression and anxiety I would be learning some valuable life lessons as well.

Lesson 1: The first morning I was at the hospital I joined the other patients for a unit meeting. Who should I see but two former clients from my first social work field placement in a day program for people with serious and persistent mental illness. They didn’t recognize me at first, but there was an immediate “a ha!” moment as I felt the great equalizer of psychiatric illness. Eventually they both recognized me, each asking me “Wait, aren’t you a social worker? What are you doing here?” And I could only reply “Yes I
am, but I am having problems too.” We were all thrown off-kilter by the role-shift.

Lesson 2: While being herded to the dining room one day, I saw across the room a woman I had gone to social work school with. She was obviously working at the hospital. I saw her a few times and we never spoke. Finally I went up to her and said hello, asking how  she was doing and suggesting that she was probably doing a little better than I was, given our current roles. I was determined to speak to her and not give in to the stigma of being ill. It felt good to take the first step by approaching her.

While that first inpatient stay was valuable in many ways, I came to feel safe in the patient role – passive and protected from myself – and it was difficult to regain the lost time. But that’s another whole topic. This stay did bring into sharp focus the fact that there are no major walls between the well and the ill. Defensive barriers notwithstanding, we are all on a great continuum in our level of functioning, our level of pain, our ability to deal with the challenges of life, with or without a mental illness.

My lessons continued after I was discharged and finally ready (I thought!) to go back to work. At one interview, touring the inpatient psychiatric unit of a local hospital, I ran into my room-mate from my hospitalization, disheveled, being led out of a “quiet room”. She said hello and I felt that I should respond – to do otherwise would be belittling to her and not honest. At virtually the same time I saw another former classmate of mine, who wondered how I knew the woman. I fumbled a bit and then said that I knew her from another program. Not graceful, but it was the best I could do in the midst of a job interview!

So, it’s illusory, any division we place between ourselves and our patients or clients. In any group of social work, psychology, or psychiatry professionals (or students), one need only look around the room to see the walking wounded. Chances are that one or more of your colleagues at any given time is feeling as desperate as I was that day that I went into the hospital. We must not prevent people (ourselves) from getting help because of some defensive construct that divides “us” professionals from “them” patients/clients.

Yesterday I had the key. Today I neither need the key nor to be within the confines of a psychiatric unit. I am working at NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I work on a toll-free helpline, talking to family members of people with mental illness and to those with mental illness as well. I was 10 years away from clinical social work. Now I provide direct service of another kind. And I’m happy.

Tomorrow is an open book – and I hold the pen.

It took years before I really thought that I would get better. I was stuck in a cycle of pain and running to the hospital for help. But it wasn’t really the type of help that I needed. Once I got to hospital, I wanted out. But there were people who helped me out of the mire.

They were like the exceptional jewels in the system. These were the people who believed in me. They never judged me and always held me in high regard even when I was doing some really reckless and potentially catastrophic things.

The journey to recovery took time, work and deep soul searching. My journey led me to learn about other ways to stay safe in tough times. It led to me discovering other ways to interpret what was happening around me. It guided me to discover the things that I needed to do on a daily basis to stay well. I still do these things daily. When I don’t do them I can see the storm clouds of despair forming on the horizon.

Recovery for me isn’t living without these feelings of suspiciousness or sadness but learning how to incorporate them into my way of being. It’s about learning how to make them a part of me to navigate the world. They are a gift, a crazy mad gift. But it allows me to be more sensitive and empathetic to people and my surroundings. It allows me to care about my work and school and gives me passion. These feelings aren’t present as often and as for long as before. Now they act like my early warning system when my life is getting out of control.

You never know where you are going to end up in life. Once I decided that the pain of changing was less than the pain of what was happening, I started a new path from illness to wellness and hope. I’m still on that path. I stumble but I have hope and can see a better future.

“Greg Kim is the chair of the Consumer/Survivor Information Resource Centre of Toronto and treasurer of the Ontario Council of Alternative Businesses. During the day he is the Consumer Participation Initiative Coordinator at the Canadian Mental Health Association – Toronto Branch. Greg also loves his cat Minoune.”