Introducing “Hidden Pictures”: A Film About People with Mental Illness Globally

Introducing “Hidden Pictures”

By Dan Frey

A Film About People with Mental Illness Globally

Filmmaker Delaney Ruston's father was lost to schizophrenia and he, along with the 450 million people globally who have a mental health condition, inspired this documentary entitled, “Hidden Pictures.”
What is great about this film is that on Ruston's journey to India, South Africa, China, France and the United States, she spends a lot of time speaking to mental health recipients, sharing their much-valued perspectives with viewers.

We learn through Ruston's travels that human rights violations against the mentally ill are common, mental health services are lacking and stigma is everywhere. Services are best in France where recipients are well provided for in the community and family members receive counseling. However, the stigma of mental illness has not changed, whereas families avoid discussing their ill loved ones even with members of the extended family.

Still, there is a message of hope. Good deeds do exist in the world, as seen when a caring U.S. citizen adopts a homeless person with mental illness after the system fails to provide shelter and care. Ruston discovers a school in the U.S., perhaps a high school, where the students learn about mental illness through books and games and learn to empathize with recipients. Actress Glenn Close has an anti-stigma campaign, “Bring Change to Mind,” that is battling stigma today. Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy came out as a mental health recipient to help fight stigma.

Ruston speculates that if a fraction of all those who experience mental illness in themselves, or in their families, started coming out globally and mobilizing for change, global policies and local attitudes would have to change. The result would be that individuals and families would have more support, more resources and feel less shame.

The film is only an hour long and pretty fast-paced. It is artistically done and well worth the viewing. You should see it.

To learn more, visit www.hiddenpicturesfilm.com.

Girl, Continued: The Double Bind of Being a Creative Intellectual with Mental Illness

Girl, Continued

By Heaven

The Double Bind of Being a Creative Intellectual with Mental Illness

Ever since I was little I imagined someone coming to my home to take me away from my family. I never quite fit in with them. It wasn’t that they were bad people, just different. Now I’m starting my second year of college in the fall. I suppose I am a young woman (if it suits you to say that), but in my head I am a child. I see things in a way that others don’t and am amused by things that others have ceased to take pleasure in. I have yet to find a way to express myself understandably with words and with a language many people choose to communicate with.

They always called me “different,” and by they, I mean everyone in my life. I cared about writing and reading. I would try to talk to family about perception vs. reality during the 1920s about the American Dream in The Great Gatsby, or get their opinion on Saint George and the Dragon by Raphael, but they laughed and said no one cares about that kind of stuff.

I used to want to be normal. People used to want me to be normal, which was clearly but inexplicably defined as having friends, spending time with family, and people being able to decipher whether you’re happy or sad. By the time freshman year rolled around I realized I was turning into this bizarre, eccentric, schizoid teenage girl and I was falling in love with her. I didn’t mind. In fact, I preferred eating lunch alone in the cafeteria and completing and/or presenting projects solo. The one thing I hated and loved, and still do hate and love, is my mind. It never stops and so I began wearing headphones.

It started freshman year in high school and never ceased. It became a signature thing. Every time anyone saw me, I had my headphones on and my music loud. Teachers hated it. They wanted me to point fingers at my best friend across the room at the mention of partners. They wanted me to spend the hour completing homework and only read the allotted reading material by each deadline and no more. But I didn’t have best friends, I didn’t have friends and I could not figure out too many other things to do with my time but read. I didn’t care about having friends either, about being liked, fitting in. It was irrelevant.

I never cared for gossip or small chat and every girl my age did exactly that so no one talked to me. And so I didn’t talk. I read. I wrote. Sometimes I’d look up from a book and get disorientated because I was really in my room or the library or someplace that was the setting in the book. I joined a book club sophomore year but sometimes the club members would lose me. I would talk about the characters as if they were real. I would scribble in the margins, break the spine and book ear the pages. I would laugh out loud or cry while reading. I eventually quit because of the awkward looks and depressing books I suggested that everyone hated.

I am both happy and sad. I know I should be happy and grateful to be alive and be healthy and blah blah blah, but sometimes I don’t have the strength to get up from the kitchen table. I daydream often. For hours a day and it's one of my favorite things to do. I assumed I was just different with my flattened emotions and eccentric behavior. I wasn’t like everyone and it wasn’t something I did intentionally. It wasn’t something I did to make my mother angry, friends hate me, or to piss my teachers off, although it often did. It was and is who I am and I don’t know how to be anyone else. I didn’t know the things that made me “different” were symptoms of mental illness.

Things I’ve learned:

*Make sure to kiss the boy who makes you laugh, but if he takes you home and he doesn’t have any books, don’t fuck him.

*Sorry's are like oxygen masks on high jacked planes.

*Keeping things hidden is a quick way to isolate yourself and go crazy.

*Fear of suffering doesn't rule out the fact that sometimes a person has to die young as a matter of principle; such a superhuman sacrifice is no longer beyond my strength.

Note: Heaven plans to serve two years in the Peace Corps teaching English in third-world Spanish-speaking countries and after that she hopes to teach English Literature at a university. NYC Voices and its volunteers wish her the best.

An Account of My Depression in Southern France

An Account of My Depression in Southern France
By Francois
I am currently 59 years old. I started working at a semi-familiar company with international customers and wrote my first novel at age 23, and did some law and English linguistics. Then, after a series of heart strokes, I worked in computerized billing at a transport business. Thanks to that, I did a remunerated computer training for 8 months and undertook several jobs for a couple of years.
At one point, I held a job working for a newspaper in the French Pyrenees for six years. Once every week we would work one night in addition to the working day. I had a heart condition and for this reason only did 22 hours on end on such long working days. Eventually I got so exhausted I fainted and could no longer work.
In December 1991, I was diagnosed with depression and started taking antidepressants, tranquillizers and sleeping pills. I was put on a long sick leave for three years and during this time did an interesting psychotherapy based on several cycles of some sort of rebirth therapy, noticeably through the existential, living and social layers of psychic development. Some odd things happened in the meantime. I would be unable to lace my shoes. I dangerously burned myself with an electric heating pad, unaware that I was burning. It was as though I were in a vegetative state, and for a long year was unable to write simple letters. I struggled with agoraphobia, as well.
In 1994, I was declared disabled and settled in Toulouse. A sleeping disorder and vigilance specialist and a psychotherapist resumed my treatment, and have been doing so until now in mid 2013. In this process it appeared I didn’t have a reactive depression but a major depression. Besides my heart treatment, my psychotropic medical treatment consists of two Effexor and one Abilify in the mornings, Victan as a tranquilizer, and at night two Norset and a sleeping pill, Zopiclone.
In 1997, my former boss came to see me in Toulouse. He invited me to a restaurant and told me that I would be welcomed back at the newspaper again. He conveyed that he understood that none of what had happened to me was of my own making but to a great extent the result of the crazy hours the newspaper kept. But it was already too late, because my major depression had become awfully difficult to handle.
In the late 1990’s, I was able to live with a New York retiree here in Toulouse, take some trips, be more active, and indeed write. But in late 2000 we split up, and since then I've been living alone.  In principle, given that retirement age for my generation is close to 62 years, I will become a retiree in late 2014.
Because I was a smoker, I developed lung cancer which required surgery. I had a successful left inferior lobectomy and haven’t needed chemotherapy or radiotherapy. I just wish major depression could be healed with the same efficiency. Sometimes, yes, I manage to go out with a few great friends or enjoy long stays with my mother, but this is a very treacherous illness and as soon as I am alone I go down the tubes. Since I live on a modest disability pension with rent relief and my mother’s help, I manage to get along economically, and I must be grateful I only have to send a form every three months, so I am not otherwise subject to inspections.
Not long ago, a non-profit had invited me to run a writing workshop, but I had to let it go because the ups and downs of my illness made it too difficult to handle. So I really can’t work, not even for my pleasure, and I keep being subject to agoraphobia so the shortest walk on my own becomes hell. I need to be in the company of a friend to enjoy a walk.
I have given up the hope that I will be able to know a true life in the company of a woman I would love. The only person who is ready to share my ordeal so far is my mother and I plan to live with her. I still hope to build a circle of friends thru which to enliven my relationships and enrich my own life.

A New Fix for an Old Problem

A New Fix for an Old Problem

By Nicole

Depression and anxiety have been the bane of my existence since I was ten. I grew up with few friends, no family confidants, and a crippling sense of loneliness. Social isolation and darkness followed me into my thirty-first year, where, mangled by the stress of a PhD program (in psychology, no less), and incapacitated by the pain of living moment to moment, I became obsessed with suicidal thoughts for weeks. Finally, the taut wire of my equilibrium snapped. I attempted suicide and landed in the psych ward on the top floor of one of Chicago’s best hospitals.

I was angry. My admittance, while “voluntary,” was actually just an alternative to being arrested. I did not belong there. After all, I had been managing this pain for years, and although the pot had finally boiled over, I believed that I could bring it under control again. My denial and lack of insight were shattered during the next five days, however, and in the best possible way.

The transformation began when I acquainted myself with some of the other residents. My roommate, suffering from depression like me, was a large crack-addicted black woman, prostituting to support herself. Her boyfriend stole copper wire for a living and sold it for what she said was “big money.” She was also funny, caring, nurturing, and I loved her the most.

Those of us who were depressed were in the minority; the ward was full of people suffering from psychosis. T was a delightful Irish woman in her mid-fifties who had “adopted” another resident, an elderly woman in perpetual confusion. T was convinced that her husband and daughter were keeping her there against her will and that the people on television were lying about the real date. She was capable of carrying on a lucid, even intelligent conversation, and at times I wondered whether she was psychotic at all. But then I would hear her at night, sitting on her bed in her room all alone, wailing. “God help us all!” she would yell. “Let me out! Why won’t they let me out?”

R was a large Mexican woman, missing both legs from the knee down, who would roll around aimlessly in her wheelchair, with a big toothy grin on her face. Many times I saw her sitting motionless, carrying on a conversation softly in Spanish, with someone I could not see. Also, she refused to wear pants.

These women were just a few of the colorful characters I met. At first I was scared because a number of them were underprivileged or homeless, malodorous, and plain incomprehensible and I felt that I was on a higher, saner level than everyone else. But I quickly learned that they were considerate, funny, and very likable, and the one thing we all had in common is that we were human, which is easy and dangerous to forget. Being diagnosed with a mental illness can be a very dehumanizing process; others tend to equate your illness with your core personality, and they may treat you as that illness until you internalize it and dehumanize yourself.

The staff in the hospital treated us like the disorders they thought we were, not people at all, and by day two, I felt like the crazed lunatic that I swore I was not on the first day. Ironically, it was the other “lunatics” who brought me back to earth, and reminded me that we are all individuals, with unique personalities, worthy of consideration and respect. They showed me the light at the end of the tunnel, which I reached a couple of months after I left.

I was prescribed Zoloft and Lamotrigine, a mood stabilizer generally used to treat Bipolar Disorder. I had never taken a mood stabilizer, although I had been on plenty of different antidepressants. My doctor must have gotten it exactly right with this cocktail; after two months of continued depression, the world brightened suddenly. Everything changed for the better: My attitude, my goals, my relationships. I do not believe that these changes were one-hundred percent due to the medication, rather, they jump started my recovery and I gained momentum as I made changes along the way. It saddens me a little to know that I never really experienced happiness, or what other people consider a normal life, before now.

For all of my resistance and anger, I am grateful for my visit to the psych ward. I met delightful people who, just by being themselves, taught me about myself. I also met a wonderful doctor who started me on the path to recovery. To anyone who is struggling to make it through life, I recommend this: Seek help, even if you think you do not need it. It may be the best thing that you ever do for yourself.

Book Ends: "Eyebrows and Other Fish" by Anthony Scally

Book Ends: Eyebrows and Other Fish by Anthony Scally

Reviewed by Columnist Kurt Sass

“Eyebrows and Other Fish” is a self published book written by a mental health consumer from England. I found the book to be both extremely impressive and interesting.

The impressive parts of the book is what I found to be the amazing insight Mr. Scally has into his schizophrenia, its manifestations and consequences. The truly impressive part is his keen awareness of the full picture even when he is going through the worst of his symptoms, including extreme paranoia and obsessiveness, for example. He is able to identify when he is being paranoid and obsessive, and can relate it in full detail, which I will give a partial example of later.

Mr. Scally also does an excellent job when it comes to defining what he is facing and what he has to deal with when going through an episode. One example is that absolutely everything he reads, hears or sees takes on added significance and he must analyze it backwards, forwards and sideways. Things such as advertisements, license plates and colors all have special, important meanings that must be figured out. It becomes a mission to him.

The interesting parts of the book to me are the details of the thought patterns that go on while Mr. Scally is going through an episode. Just one of the many examples in the book is as follows: His girlfriend’s mother had given him a present of aftershave with the word BOSS on it (I’m assuming Hugo BOSS). This immediately got Mr. Scally to thinking this was a way of the mother letting him know that his girlfriend was sleeping with her boss and that is how he got the crabs he had just contracted a few weeks ago, and that this was her way of warning him about her daughter. Or perhaps, he then thought, the gift was the mother’s way of saying that she was the boss and that she holds all the cards. Then his thoughts raced to the possibility that maybe BOSS stood for something, perhaps “Back Off, She’s Sorry,” or “Brain Operation Soon, Scally.”

This book chronicles Mr. Scally’s life from 1990-2006. During this time he has many good phases and some dark ones, too. As with many people that have psychiatric disabilities, he has stopped taking his medications on numerous occasions, and that is usually when his symptoms started to reoccur.

It would be so easy to condemn Mr. Scally for ceasing to take his medication while they were obviously working, but once again, he does an excellent job in explaining their debilitating side effects. He writes that, in addition to the various side effects he suffered, from muscle stiffness, Parkinsonism, erectile dysfunction, constant dry mouth and sedation, that the medication also “impedes my momentum for life itself.” After reading that, it is very easy to see the struggle of medication vs. side effects.

I did not even get into Mr. Scally’s childhood, which sadly was horrific, nor his support system, which between his girlfriend, social worker and advocacy group is for the most part pretty good. You’ll have to read the book to find out more, which I totally recommend you do.

Undercover Nutcase

Undercover Nutcase
By Heather
Adventures in Creative Thinking
My name is Heather. I am twenty-five years old and have lived almost my whole life in Connecticut. I graduated from high school in the top ten percent of my class, started at the University of Connecticut in one of the top three academically challenging programs and graduated five and a half years later, with a major and a minor. During middle, high school and college I was strongly involved in volunteering, community service and student organizations, often considered the quiet leader (or very outspoken leader toward the end of college). I have worked off and on since starting college and am known for being one of the best workers in the office, when I do work. One job I have always held is an Official Undercover Nutcase.
My current diagnoses are borderline personality disorder, schizoaffective, post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. I started therapy at age fifteen, but have lived with mental illness much longer. One running theme my life follows is that no one seems to notice that I am mentally ill. I move through the world with everyone thinking I am "normal." When I am hospitalized other patients don't believe that I have the diagnoses that I do. I recently told one of my aunts about my schizoaffective and she remarked that I seem so normal and well-adjusted, she had no idea. My whole family and most friends have no idea. This has led me to feel like a secret agent in my own life.
Every morning I put on my "normie" uniform and see family, friends, co-workers, the public and none of them are the wiser. Sometimes the uniform is comfortable, but other times the paranoia, anxiety, hallucinations (auditory, visual and command), depression, flashback and triggers make the uniform feel like itchy wool in the summer.
Aside from the uniform, there is always the idea that my cover may be blown. At my last paying job, I was sure I would be found out by my supervisor. More than once my supervisor made demeaning comments about the people seeing the talk therapist that shared the building with our office. I was placed there by two organizations working with disabled people and have no visible disabilities. Even after I was sexually assaulted by a co-worker I was able to keep my cool outwardly, although inwardly I was screaming.
My demeanor has changed since then, probably because of the mood aspect of the schizoaffective. At my current volunteer job I am the go-to person for the impossible projects, though I have been there less than a month. More than once I have been told they weren't even sure if the project could be done, but I did it. I am still mostly quiet, but I have mentioned an idea I had in a hypomanic state. Luckily it just looked ambitious instead of insane. I am less worried about being found out here, but am worried about the day that I will be too depressed, too schizo, or have someone set off a trigger to make it that I can no longer be there. If and when that happens, I will go back to headquarters, have a brief sabbatical and then be sent on another mission to infiltrate another organization for The Institute.
Undercover Nutcase Heather, signing off.

Losing Our Minds Over Mental Illness

Losing Our Minds Over Mental Illness
By Reginald Coleman
We Must Evolve Our System of Thinking
Nearly a year has passed since the December 2012 massacre in Newtown, Connecticut where twenty prepubescent children and six adults were savagely killed by a mentally ill gunman, and the Washington political culture has jumped out of their cushy seated slumber. With President Obama’s taskforce to curb gun violence activated, nearly two dozen formerly opposed politicians are quickly favoring a bill to ban assault rifles.
To date, 2013 has seen several more fatal incidences involving guns in the wrong hands. While talk for stricter gun policies continues, what about addressing our nation’s mental health policies?
In light of recent mass shootings by mentally ill men the fury of debate sweeps across America concerning guns and mental illness. Gun lobbyists and the President seemingly agree we need to create better laws to keep guns out of mentally ill hands. Existing federal laws prohibit anyone who “has been adjudicated as mentally defective, or has been committed to a mental institution” from purchasing a firearm. Observing the above mentioned statute, considering many Ground Zero first responders, survivors, police, firefighters and military veterans, have filed claims for post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental illness, little thought was put into drafting the law prohibiting mentally ill individuals from buying guns. The same lax, irrational, problem-solving mentality continues.
NYS Senator Kathleen Marchione and other gun advocates are speaking out to have mental health policies addressed. They claim guns aren’t the problem, but the hands they end up in, stating we must keep guns out of mentally ill hands, whom they claim are more violent. According to statistics, the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by those who are not mentally ill, and the mentally ill are 12 times more likely to be victims of violence.
Our country is at a crossroad of its “civil health,” our collective conscience deeply shaken by these events. A social attitude change about gun use similar to the one about public smoking, and drinking and driving, has evolved the past three decades.
The abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements were born of social indifference and intolerance to the subjugation of fellow Americans. However, this parallel consciousness doesn’t exist between the growing movement for gun law repeal and the push to improve mental health policy. The push to repeal current gun laws can be affected by the social attitude of intolerance.
On the other hand, the push to repeal the current mental health policies cannot be sufficiently affected by a social attitude of indifference, an attitude which has allowed our mental health systems to deteriorate, so often leaving those living with mental illness and those caring for them to be overlooked, ostracized and fending for themselves.
We cannot continue this current culture of ignoring the mentally ill and side-stepping the need of mental health policy growth. We need comprehensive mental health services and a mental health system based on transparency and compassionate treatment. We must recreate a system of care that inspires the mentally ill to seek needed treatment and those who care for the mentally ill to feel comfortable reporting relapses or changes in behavior. More importantly, there must be a social attitude change toward the mentally ill. The social and political move to improve mental health care must be a distinct movement. It cannot ride on the back of the gun law repeal movement. Both movements are inherently different.
Will this social attitude of understanding and compassion for the mentally ill take root now? Or will the outcry for gun law repeal overshadow the need to reverse the current mental health trend? Will this be another case of political pandering? Will the sound bites and blame game of the NRA and the gun law repeal advocates relegate the important issue of mental healthcare to the cellars of our social conscience once again?
Mental illness is not like a cold or flu. We don’t catch mental illness from one another. Although some mental illness is hereditary, there are no solid predictors. In fact, mental illness is often experienced by those whose parents have no history of mental illness. In many cases, the illness is brought on by childhood trauma or other psychological traumas in adulthood. There are also cases of “psychotic disorder due to a general medical condition and substance-induced psychotic disorder” whereby there is a prominent and persistent disturbance in mood caused by drug abuse, medication or toxin exposure. So, who is to say “it will never happen to me,” or that it hasn’t already begun to happen?
Mental illness is not “his/her problem”—it is our problem, a human problem. We must solve it with humanity, compassion and a sense of fellowship. We have a responsibility to ourselves. So, as we push forward to evolve in our thinking and treatment of the mentally ill, we must stay mindful of what we stand to lose.