Published Author Battles Schizophrenia

By William Jiang, MLS

New York City Voices helped me along the way

New York City Voices was founded by Ken Steele in 1995, 17 years ago. I was recruited by Dan Frey in early 2000, shortly after Ken died and left Dan at the helm of the newspaper. I shared my own personal story of recovery at that point in 2000 with the paper, and now, in 2012, my personal story of recovery continues.

A lot has happened in my life since then. When Dan recruited me I was fresh out of library school with my Masters, and I was excited to work with a newspaperman. The internship at City Voices was a good idea to get some job experience. Dan got me to work as a grant writer, webmaster, advertising manager, and freelance journalist. I parlayed the City Voices experience into my first career position as an adjunct lecturer at Kingsborough Community College as a librarian. The Kingsborough Community College position led to a seven-year position at the prestigious New York State Psychiatric Institute as the chief librarian of their Patient and Family Library. At New York State Psychiatric Institute I wrote my autobiography titled A Schizophrenic Will: A Story of Madness, A Story of Hope, which, recently, has outsold Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind on Amazon.com. I am now in the process of returning to university part-time to study German at Hunter College, and to keep myself busy. I am currently tutoring people who seek further knowledge in Spanish, French, math, Photoshop, video editing, and book design.

However, life has not been an easy, straight road. I continue to struggle with clinical depression, physical aches and pains that I have accumulated over the years, as well as the schizophrenia that I have had since 1992. I was lucky to survive 2011 as I had two hospitalizations in November that involved suicidal ideas and urges. In November I welcomed the institutional halls of Columbia Presbyterian in White Plains because in that hospital was a measure of safety. I was afraid of what I might do to myself if let go without a medication regimen that did not work. After the mood stabilizer lithium failed, I was scared that nothing would work. The doctors were going to try Depakote on me. After an empowering conversation with a mental health therapy aide, I convinced my doctors to try me on Saphris or Fanapt as a mood stabilizer. My doctor put me on Saphris as a mild mood stabilizer, and the good news is that in addition to regular exercise, the Saphris seems to be helping me to stabilize my mood.

Another thing that has helped me, over the years, is my power of insight and my ability to fine-tune my medicines, with my doctor’s ok, to keep me out of the hospital and out of trouble. For some odd reason, when I start losing touch with reality, I sense it happening. I am able to take a little more of my antipsychotic, Navane, when this happens, and by using this technique, I have been able to keep myself out of the hospital for many years. This apparent control I have over my medication and neurochemistry has been a blessing for me because I’ve been able to take less of the antipsychotic than otherwise, and I have had the benefit of less sedation than if I were on a consistently higher dose. I feel that I work as a team player with my psychiatrists in my recovery. The game plan is to stay in therapy and keep an eye on my medication so we can beat the unbeatable opponent that is in my head: the schizophrenia. Although, I have not beaten schizophrenia for over 19 years now, neither has my competitor beaten me, and we continue to play the game. I feel I am playing as a worthy opponent against a formidable diagnosis.

My great regret is that I have had few girlfriends over the years and that none of them have stuck. That is the one thing in life that I feel that I am missing right now: a good girlfriend to share the highs and lows, the good times and the bad, in this drama that is life. I know I’ll meet her someday, and the figurative hearth burns with a steady, warm flame.

In the meantime, I work, I hang out with friends, and I study. I salute New York City Voices for their continued role as the oldest, and largest free newspaper for the people of New York City who suffer from the slings and arrows of mental illness.

Note: The author does not suggest that you manage your own medications as he does unless you talk to your psychiatrist and decide together that it is a safe and practical thing to do. As always, the medical advice of your doctor or your pharmacist should be heeded. To contact Will email fishmonger1972@gmail.com.

Ward Stories

A column organized by Jack M. Freedman, Poetry Editor

This edition of Ward Stories features poetry from a couple of sources.  One of those sources is Ted Wainer.  This poem was written during a hospital stay.  Many of us can relate to the sheer boredom that many experience within the confines of a psychiatric ward.  This in turn inspired me to share one of my own pieces.  This is a piece that outlines my current views on the practices of psychiatry.  I have done a lot of self-discovery and now know that personally, I need alternatives in my life for my own treatment.  With that said, I know there may be a lot of people who will not agree with my statements, but I hope that City Voices will outline a wide variety of views on psychiatry as a whole, so with that, I present one of my poems.  I hope you enjoy this edition of Ward Stories, as well as the rest of the paper.

In These Chains of Boredom

by Ted Wainer

To aire, to reap, to sow , to sleep

To sleep within the air so fine.

To leap, to lash between the sheets

To hate the air that glistens through.

Yes glistening through yet not touching it.

Healing hands yet a smile without grace.

Without the grace to heal the hurt

within.

Without the power of empathy to go that last stand.

Yes boredom resides here big time, you know.

And yes Thomas, that’s the way it is.

Today, tomorrow , and possibly in the future it seems.

It leaps, it jumps, it escapes and it hits you.

It kills at times and menaces with the scales

of your mind.

Yet oh those scales so ponder deep.

Pondering deep within the realm of this insane mess.

Yes the insanity keeps me here.

But how sane am I in boredom.

To laugh, to hold, to cajole and to convince.

To try to see the light.

Yes reading away those hours

                         of discontempt.

Holding onto future grains and learning a lot

along the way.

Yes this field of discontempt.

This hallway of horror.

Passing, passing through all this

 nonsense.

As I’m bored , as I sit here writing these passages.

Hoping for salvation, only time heals they say.

I want immediate release, instant gratification.

And so I wait in these chains of boredom.

Prescribe This

by Jack M. Freedman

I'm done with lurking behind

A marmalade bottle

Filled with false miracles

The ties that bind throttle

Therefore it is empirical

To free yourself

From the shackles

And the cackles of doctors

Dictating our treatment

Treating us like children

Kidding us into thinking

The pills we chase with drinking water

Foster recovery.

My discovery

Of myself

Leads me to shelf

All the things I used to know

And let it fall by my feet.

It would defeat me to entreat

Corrupt forces of mind control

Patrolling and enrolling me

Not in the school of hard knocks

But mental cell blocks

With electroshocks forced upon

By pigs carrying glocks.

We want rights without having to demand them

Without day treatment programs

Where brains get programmed like robots,

Reinforcing paranoia

Validating low self-esteem.

We've moved past possessing psyches

Of Phineas,

But can you gauge what the future holds for us?

We've moved past our head structures being analyzed

Past insulin catalyzing seizures

Leisurely knocking us unconscious at will.

The abuse must end

And we must suspend this systemic oppression,

Before all of our rights undergo regression

And receive justice

At the sharp end of the ice pick.
FREUD CAN SUCK THE FAT END OF MY CIGAR!

New York City Voices is Back!

We apologize for the big delay—it’s been at least a year—since we published our last newspaper. There are many reasons why we did not publish. Among them are lack of staff: all of the work falls on the shoulders of one, maybe two people who are also coping with mental health issues; financial problems; and technical difficulties: learning new technologies and coordinating production in a technologically sensible way has always been difficult.

We are back and starting off humbly with a smaller budget and a smaller newspaper. Still, we intend to print on a regular basis while we get our house in order.

Marvin Spieler, Voices’ current general manager, rehired Dan Frey as Editor in Chief. Dan was on hiatus for a while because he had a mental health setback, hospitalizations and so forth. He’s back and in recovery with new wisdom, which is what recovery from relapse can bring to an individual.

Although the economy is having a weak recovery, we hope to raise enough money to continue publication because we know the value of sharing stories and important information within our community. We tried to get information on how our entitlement benefits may be affected considering the status of the economy and the politics in Washington and New York. We all know that mental health is one of the first things to get cut. We plan to continue to seek answers for you and to publish them.

We now have an Internet blog at newyorkcityvoices.blogspot.com and an archive of most of the articles that have ever been published at nycvoices.org. There is a retrospective documentary short that you can see by visiting youtube.com and searching for “videoguynumerouno city voices.”

We are currently seeking a general manager and an advertising director so please write us if you or someone you know would want more information on these positions.

Here’s to a long overdue issue. Thank you for being a loyal reader.

The Eye of the Storm

By Robyn Carrothers

Even tornadoes pass eventually

My life is like a tornado—that strong powerful wind that causes death and destruction. I live in a chaotic situation where my mental illness has taken its toll. It’s a funnel cloud just waiting to touch down and wreak havoc. I just want to be in the eye of the storm.

It was a beautiful day in the city of my mind. I felt the day was peaceful except for the wind. It was a little breezy. Then suddenly, the wind got stronger. “Wow,” said the elderly man. “I never felt wind like this.”

“Sometimes the wind gets stronger than this,” I said

Then the mailman came along. “It’s starting to rain.”

“Ain’t you supposed to be delivering mail?” asked the old man.

My mind was going crazy as the tornado began to swirl. The mailman and the old man began to argue. I’m on the outside with this F3 tornado in my head. It is getting bigger by the minute. Then at that moment came the rain and thunder. I thought I was losing my mind.

The tornado was getting stronger. The old man and the mailman were still arguing in my head. Then it happened. The damage was beginning: depression, seeing and hearing things. This was a F3 tornado.

Then suddenly, there it was: the eye of the tornado, calm and peaceful.

I saw the mailman and the old man. They were calm, no fighting; the serenity of the eye. It was weird that a wind of 200 miles-per-hour had a calm center.

All of a sudden the twister picked up again. The depression came back, along with seeing and hearing things. I grabbed my head. I wanted this tornado to stop. There the wind suddenly stopped. The damage was done: broken relationships, drama and a lot of chaos. The old man and mailman disappeared. Everything was all in my mind, yet I survived. I was able to pick myself up, and go on with life. I looked back and said, “I will be ok.”

Rainbow Heights Club Helped Restore My Soul

By Julie A. Cipolla

It’s important to have a special place to go

8 ½ years ago my life was very different than it is today. I slept 15 to 18 hours a day and saw no one (I live alone and have no family).

I’d been on Social Security Disability for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder for 7 years already. I was not doing anything with my life. I was merely existing in the haze of semi-suicidality so common to people with my diagnosis and family abuse history.

The one bright spot in my life was a monthly group I started and ran for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people with disabilities, called “Disabilities Who Need Each Other.” The group was held the second Sunday of the month from 2-4 p.m. at the LGBT Center on 13^th Street in New York City.

One day a nice young man attended the group and told us about a club for LGBT folks with mental illness that he worked at as a peer specialist. I was so intrigued by his description of the Club that I decided to go.

I walked into the building at 25 Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, saw the sign for Rainbow Heights Club and I went to the 4^th Floor. There I met a smiling young man who introduced himself to me as Christian Huygen the current executive director of the Club.

I was given a tour by the peer specialist who had come to my group that Sunday. I was impressed with what I saw. There was a gorgeous, huge kitchen, a cozy, sunny club room with a huge rainbow flag and couches. There was also a computer room with newly installed Internet access as well as a large art room with a real kiln for firing ceramics. All around the room were pieces of artwork made by club members. “Ah!” I thought, “I am home!” Then there was the day room which I was informed was referred to as the “Gay Room,” by members.

I was handed an application for membership and on it was the following question: “What can you offer the Club?” I was floored! Here I was being asked what I could contribute—I was not to simply be a passive recipient of help from higher-ups who were “wellies.”

So I mentioned my Karate skills (I am a first-degree black belt, acquired before I got sick). I also put down my writing skills, and that I was a good listener.

Then I went to the kitchen where Christian was preparing the 4 o’clock dinner. I was encouraged to participate in preparations, so I put some mild spices into the Black Bean Soup and I felt very happy that I was trusted to add the spices and that my input was wanted.

That day I sat in on a group that was constructing a “Code of Conduct” for the Club. I made some suggestions about the wording which the group adopted into the final version.

Next, I sat in the kitchen and talked with a member who seemed to need a listening ear. We talked for an hour before dinner and resumed the conversation afterwards.

When it was time to leave the Club at the end of the day, I felt so happy because I felt I’d helped somebody and I’d contributed in a meaningful way to the Club. That was on January 28, 2003.

I returned to attend such groups as the Assertiveness Group, where I learned strategies for setting boundaries with people, and expressing my needs. There were (and still are) other groups such as Thoughts and Feelings, Lesbian Group, Art Group, etc.

Eventually, I offered to lead various activity groups at the Rainbow Heights Club and in my 8½ years there, I have variously led the Stitch n Bitch Group, the Writing Group and gave a short course in Karate.

I’ve also served on the Community Advisory Board, I’ve prepared taxes for the Club members, cooked at some of the Club barbecues, and I also took a turn working at Rainbow Heights as a peer specialist, which was very rewarding.

Currently, I’m no longer a peer specialist, but instead I’m a regular member. I’m not leading any groups right now. But I do attend several groups every week, including the Alcohol and Substance Abuse Recovery group because I have an eating disorder which is now in remission.

Today, I no longer sleep 18 hours a day, just 8 or 9. I have a whole host of friends at the Club. We support one another. The staff is outstanding and is very responsive to our needs, whatever they may be at any given moment. Just the other day, before Hurricane Irene blew into town, I asked to sit in the director’s office while the director did some paperwork. Just sitting there with her helped to quell my fears about the impending storm.

Rainbow Heights Club is family to me—it’s my second home. It’s where I go to share all of my tragedies and triumphs. It’s a place where I feel heard and loved and I extend this to the other members—we do this for each other. The staff provides an atmosphere of mutual respect and belonging for us members. And we have a heck of a lot of fun, with Bingo and movie nights, karaoke, birthday parties, open houses and barbecues. We also have outings to such places as the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.

Yes, my life is radically different and better because I belong to Rainbow Heights Club.

What I Learned From the Psych Out 2011 Conference

By Melissa Farrell

Seeking a new vision for mental health care, I attended the Psych Out 2011 conference at the City University of New York (CUNY)’s Graduate Center in Manhattan on June 21, 2011. The conference was sponsored by the PhD Program in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate School and University Center of CUNY. The main organizer of the conference was Lauren Tenney, along with Dally Sanchez and Eva Dech, and many others.

Robert Whitaker, a journalist, spoke about his monumental book, Anatomy of an Epidemic. Whitaker was critical of modern medication treatments for mental illnesses. Whether you’re for medication or against it or whether you have found some kind of middle ground, Whitaker presented valid data about the subject. Whitaker’s first book on mental illness was Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill published in 2001. In it, he presented the history of the mentally ill in this country going back to the nation's beginnings. Whitaker argued that society does not have time for moral treatment. It is much cheaper and more time efficient to use medications even though they are not as effective as we would like to think.

Dr. Philip Sinaikin, through his book, PsychiatryLand provided a raw assessment of the field of psychiatry and recommended that drug therapy be replaced by empathic talk-therapy. He gave us a handout that included the stories of individuals termed “Poor Pete” and “Helpless Bill.” According to Sinaikin, no one tried to get to the root of their problems. Instead they were given medications and sometimes forced to take them against their will. Dr. Sinaikin described PsychiatryLand as a Disney Land, which has been hyped-up as a great place, but in reality is just a hot, overcrowded, noisy and expensive amusement park. Similarly, PsychiatryLand is where millions visit to reap the benefits of a rapidly advancing “brain science” to identify and treat the underlying physical cause of painful emotional conditions. Since we don't know exactly how the brain works, let alone how to fix it, is this not also a case of “image” supplanting “reality?”

I also learned about Soteria House in Alaska, a home-like alternative to hospitalization for people who are newly diagnosed or having their first break. The original Soteria House was created back in the 1970s in California by a psychiatrist named Loren Mosher. He advocated for a home where patients who were suffering from “extreme states” could heal as naturally as possible. The environment was meant to be a safe haven with caring workers who were not trained in the medical model. Research indicated that more patients were able to recover in this model without drugs, though some were not. If a person was not able to recover without drugs, attempts were made to help the person minimize their need for medication. The National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) eventually withdrew funding for this project possibly because it is cheaper to give someone medication and discharge them then to allow them to heal naturally in this type of setting.

Ann Rider, MSW, CPRP presented and discussed many revolutionary ideas in mental health including the use of “Narrative Therapy.” Narrative Therapy focuses on the stories of people’s lives and is based on the idea that mental health problems arise in social, cultural and political contexts. Each person produces the meaning to their life, so critical for recovery, from the stories that are available in these contexts.

Darby Penney, one of the authors of The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases From A State Hospital Attic presented a social history of everyday patients in a state hospital and what they went through. It chronicled various individuals’ lives from what their lives were like before and what became of them after being admitted to a state hospital in New York. They were people with careers, ambitions and livelihoods at various points in their lives. These people “fell from grace” as so often happens in the mental health system. I am happy that their stories live on.  

Hopefully, the Psych Out conference will promote the inclusion of alternatives to traditional mental health practice in a realistic and practical way that does more good than harm for patients’ well-being.

Note: Melissa Farrell is an advocate and writer. You can reach her at mfarrell079@aol.com.

Life-Threatening Effects

By Nancy Solomon, Saint Louis University

Mixing supplements, herbs, over-the-counter medications and prescription drugs

People are mixing supplements, herbs and over-the-counter medications and prescription drugs to cure themselves of ills, unaware that they could be making themselves sicker, says George Grossberg, M.D., director of the division of geriatric psychiatry at Saint Louis University.

Dr. Grossberg is about to change all that. He is the co-author of a new book, "The Essential Herb-Drug-Vitamin Interaction Guide," which is a comprehensive listing of what various herbs and supplements do, possible side effects and how they might interact with other medications and foods.

"People think if it doesn't require a prescription, it's got to be safe, and that's not true. There could be life-threatening effects."

Dr. Grossberg first became interested in the topic after a routine six-month visit with a patient he had successfully treated for depression. He had been seeing the patient for four or five years, and asked if the man was dealing with any new health problems.

The patient mentioned that he was scheduled to go in for cystoscopy in a couple weeks because there had been blood in his urine. The procedure involves inserting the pencil-thin tip of a probe through the urethra, up to the bladder to detect the cause of the problem.

The patient had undergone thousands of dollars of MRIs and CAT scans of his lower abdomen and pelvis, which had not revealed the reason for the bleeding, and the test was the next diagnostic step.

Dr. Grossberg asked if the patient had changed anything—perhaps had started taking a new medication.

No new medicine. Then the patient's wife pulled from her purse a vial containing a supplement she had purchased from the health food store to enhance memory. Both husband and wife had started taking the herbal memory enhancer, which largely contained ginkgo biloba

"One of the side effects of ginkgo biloba is an increased risk of bleeding. He had no awareness of this. I told him to stop taking the herb and get rechecked before having cystoscopy. The bleeding stopped, and he didn't need the test."

Dr. Grossberg ticks off other common herbs that people take without realizing their side effects or how they might interact with medications.

St. John's Wort sometimes is taken for anxiety and depression. Those who also are taking antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications, such as Prozac, Zoloft or Paxil, should beware. Mixing St. John's Wort with these medicines can cause serotonin syndrome—with symptoms that may include agitation, rapid heartbeat, flushing and heavy sweating—that may be fatal.

Dong quai, which some women take for menstrual disorders and to ease symptoms of menopause, has been linked to cardiovascular problems, such as irregular heart rhythm and low blood pressure. If a patient takes the herb along with an antihypertensive drug, her blood pressure could plummet, putting her at risk of stroke.

Some people take echinacea, which enhances the immune system, for the common cold. However, those who also take Lipitor, Celebrex and Aleve face an increased risk of liver damage. Echinacea also can be harmful for those who have multiple sclerosis, diabetes, HIV infections or allergies.

Dr. Grossberg and his co-author Barry Fox make it clear that they're not anti-herb or anti-medicine.

"There just are a lot of things people can take that have a lot of bad interactions. And on some level it makes sense for them to think that what they're doing is safe. They associate natural remedies with nature and think if the supplement wasn't safe, they couldn't pick it up without a prescription.

"Hopefully this will get them to think more about it so they look before they leap. People can look up what they're thinking of taking and see if there's efficacy. And they should always talk to their doctor about everything they're taking."

Many doctors don't know much about herbal remedies, which have been used as medications for thousands of years.

"When I trained, there was nothing like this in our medical education," says Dr. Grossberg, who graduated from medical school in 1975. "The younger doctors are more likely to know this than older doctors."

Elderly people, he says, use herbal remedies and don't always tell their doctors and pharmacists. They should.

"A lot of our older patients are buying herbals and botanicals. In addition, while those over 65 represent about 14 percent of the population, they consume 40 percent of over-the-counter medications," he says.

The book, published by Broadway Books, a subsidiary of Random House, is being released in mid-April.

Note: Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/66399.php. Any medical information published is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional.