OCD – who knew?

For the past several years, I’m guessing four years but it could be more as time is passing so quickly, Chris has been struggling with motor tics. They didn’t exactly come out of nowhere as ever since starting on antipychotics Chris has exhibited mild twitches and odd mannerisms which I describe in my book. That has led me all along to question whether what I was seeing was the effect of the drugs or the underlying condition. There are a lot of other odd things that go along with schizophrenia, and as most of you only too well know, we parents are always asking ourselves concerning the drugs if the chicken came before the egg and vice versa.

A neurologist Chris consulted twice ruled out tardive dyskinesia and any other neurological condition (although I never spoke with him and was getting my information from Chris and Dr. Stern. The consensus between Dr. Stern and the neurologist seemed to be that Chris’s motor tics were caused by anxiety and they would go away when his life normalized (?) after he had successfully transitioned to Florida. Well, he has successfully transitioned to Florida, he’s in good mental shape, and his motor tics are still there, causing some of the people at the program he is in to ask him if he has Tourette’s Syndrome.

Let me be clear. His motor difficulties wax and wane. I have seen them disappear for a few months then creep back in. Recently, Continue reading “OCD – who knew?”

NAMI’s 12 Principles of Support

One evening last week, in an effort to be more of a joiner (and for the material, naturally!) I headed to a church for the monthly parents’ meeting of the local NAMI chapter. The turnout was impressive and as people came in and sat down there was a lot of joking and general bonhomie. Hello, I thought, these people don’t seem to fit my image of the stereotypical NAMI members as sad, depressed, and blaming. This is great. We introduced ourselves to each other as we sat in chairs forming a circle.

The circle got bigger as more people arrived. There must have been at least twenty five parents in attendance. The leader for the evening had us read aloud from handouts the 12 principles of support, guidance on how we should conduct ourselves during the meeting, how we are should view mental illness, our loved ones, and each other. We see the individual first, not the illness, we are not to judge others, we embrace humor as healthy, etc.

Before beginning, we were asked to accept these principles of support as the basis for what goes on in the meeting. I asked if we had to support every principle, which got chuckles, but no answer. I did had a problem with Principle no. 2 We recognize that mental illnesses are brain disorders. Wanting to be more of a joiner, I raised my hand along with the rest of them as a show of general support for the principles.

Each of us then had two minutes to introduce ourselves and our situation. Continue reading “NAMI’s 12 Principles of Support”

Schizophrenia: Not a laugh a minute, but salvageable

This the second guest post that I did recently for Virgil Stucker and Associates. I was given free reign to “be myself,” so I decided to run with my funny self, always a gamble as I’m not a professional humor writer and there’s a good chance that I’m not even that funny. Thanks very much to Stephanie McMahon for allowing her funny bone to be tickled and for contributing a better blog title. If this piece starts off sounding too logical, (“I’m here to make the case”) stay with me. The best humor is never logical and is almost always at someone else’s expense! There will be no puns or spoonerisms here.

When Schizophrenia Drops From The Sky, What Do You Do?

September 25, 2018

My son Chris and I have tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld this week and consequently I’ve been giving some serious thought to the lighter side of life and what makes things funny. My first reaction many, many years ago to seeing a Seinfeld episode was, ‘But this show is about nothing!’ I was used to watching sitcoms and his show broke that formulaic mode. It wasn’t what I was expecting. But once I got it (whatever “it” was), I loved it.

In 2009, Benedict Carey wrote an article the New York Times titled, How Nonsense Sharpens The Intellect. Carey wrote about experiences that violate all logic and expectation. Kierkegaard called it “…a sensation of the absurd.” The article goes on to say that “…at best, the feeling is disorienting. At worst, it’s creepy… Now a study suggests that, paradoxically, this same sensation may prime the brain to sense patterns it would otherwise miss — in mathematical equations, in language, in the world at large.”

According to the article, “…the brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns. When those patterns break down — as when a hiker stumbles across an easy chair sitting deep in the woods, as if dropped from the sky — the brain gropes for something, anything that makes sense.

Our minds may retreat to a familiar ritual, like checking equipment. But it may also turn its attention outward, the researchers argue, and notice, say, a pattern in animal tracks that was previously hidden. The urge to find a coherent pattern makes it more likely that the brain will find one.”

Does that chair in the forest analogy remind you of our groping to make sense out of non-sense that happens to us when schizophrenia is dropped from the sky upon us?

I’m here to make the case that by taking more of a comedian’s cynical worldview parents can make the most of the disruptive change that schizophrenia brings about. Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld identify and exploit patterns in human behavior. They seize on the absurd and run with it. They make us laugh!

The best comedy is not logical but contains threads of patterns of behavior that are familiar to most of us (fear of being different or inadequate, fear of not being understood, fear of something foreign and new, etc.) You want to make the most of this journey of change? Enjoy it, mine it for the material, become as cynically aware of human nature as comedians are, because, like most of us who find ourselves in this theater of the absurd, fear is what drives us all.

Before I get to the lighter side of madness, I’d like to share a pet peeve of mine: People who put the Serious in Serious Mental Illness.

People who are so Serious about mental illness that they want everyone else to be unhappy. “My neighbor got casseroles when she was undergoing kidney dialysis. Where were my casseroles when my son was in the hospital with a Serious Mental Illness?” I want to scream “this is not about you, sweetie!” The egocentric mother wants a full freezer, obviously, but knows she isn’t going to get it so she’ll settle for sympathy.

Another pet peeve of mine is READ MORE

My guest post for Virgil Stucker

In August I answered an invitation from Virgil Stucker and Associates to submit a post to their site in anticipation of September being the month dedicated to mental health advocacy and suicide prevention themes. The request was open-ended: I could write on basically whatever I wanted to write about, and if I had any particular treatments that I thought others would want to hear about, they wanted to hear about those, too. I thought that was a pretty decent invitation because it didn’t filter what was considered “acceptable” treatment from “unacceptable treatment.” Anyone reading my blog this past year knows that I’ve been pushing Focused Listening, so if you don’t want to hear any more about this treatment, you can stop here. On the other hand, if you are curious to read different perspectives on mental health recovery from parents and professionals, you can find them on the Virgil Stucker and Associates blog.

Virgil Stucker has over thirty years of leadership experience in the recovery movement (encompassing therapeutic communities and directorships of not-for-profit organizations). Virgil Stucker and Associates empowers mental health decision making for families and individuals facing issues due to serious mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, bipolar and personality disorders, schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorder as well as substance abuse.

Rossa Forbes reflects on where an open mind led her when she sought help for her son, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

August 29, 2018

Guest Post

Guest post by author, Rossa Forbes.

I wish recovery were simple and straightforward for people like my son Chris who have experienced a serious mental illness. Often parents speak about recovery in terms of getting their old son or daughter back, meaning I suppose that their child’s personality, skills, and accomplishments before the onset of psychosis were pretty darn close to being as good as these things can be.