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The article that follows is part of the Schizophrenia Bulletin's ongoing First Person Accounts series. We hope that mental health professionals -- the Bulletin's primary audience -- will take this opportunity to learn about the issues and difficulties confronted by consumers of mental health care. In addition, we hope that these accounts will give patients and families a better sense of not being alone in confronting the problems that can be anticipated by persons with serious emotional difficulties. We welcome other contributions from patients, ex-patients, or family members. Our major editorial requirement is that such contributions be clearly written and organized, and that a novel or unique aspect of schizophrenia be described, with special emphasis on points that will be important for professionals. Clinicians who see articulate patients with experiences they believe should be shared, might encourage these patients to submit their articles to First Person Accounts, Division of Clinical and Treatment Research, NIMH, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rm. 18C-06, Rockville, MD 20857. -- The Editors. Nearly every person I've talked with who has a mental illness can come up with a date that it began. What they really meant was, the date when it got so bad they could no longer function. Around July of 1987 I was doing a lot of self-examination. I became obsessed with the Bible, particularly the book of Revelation. Up to that point I had not really studied much of the Bible. But it seemed as though my life was coming to an end, so what better book to read than Revelation? At that time I was working on an entirely new reality, one with mysticism in it, one with emotional gratification beyond any reasonable comprehension. In fact, I experienced it, but I also experienced terror and hell. This was all due to my illness. It was during this time of reading the Bible and fasting that I had my first emotional trauma coupled with a hallucination. At the time I thought it was evil. I thought people could transfer themselves, their thoughts and minds, from one body to the next but it was more complex than that. In fact when this transfer occurred you would actually "see" the person from whom the transfer had been taken. For example, you imagine person A transferring his or her mind to person B. Although in "reality" person B is the physical entity before you, person A is the one you actually "see." I could actually see both (hence the hallucination). Deception thus existed because of this mind switch. In reality I was looking at a co-worker and nothing more. I think it was later in the week when I began to have more serious delusions. I was responsible for loading copies of programs for the online system programmers. This authority was given to one person to consolidate the process and avoid costly errors. It was usually quite stressful on Fridays because the online transfer would happen Thursday night. This meant the freshly changed program might develop problems the following morning, thus requiring a "dynamic load" to change the erroneous copy to a working copy. So one Friday, I imagined that the end of the world was coming and those programmers who wanted their names in "the book of life" (Rev. 20:12) would have to go through me to save their lives, or was it the end of their lives? I didn't know. It was so real. I felt as though I was a demon and a savior, holding the key to all these people's lives, and that the computer was actually determining their fate via every key I punched. I imagined the file cabinets (full of microfiche) were in fact transcripts of every thought and every statement anybody had ever made -- the necessary "goods" by which to judge each individual's salvation. Instead of a merciful judgment, it was a financial enterprise in which corruption pervaded every corner. The "higher-ups" would have the power to manipulate records that would incriminate or discredit them. I dealt with the concept of killing the people (via the dynamic load process) by denying it was actually happening and being totally unaware of the killing. I was imagining myself a pawn in a giant game of deception against humanity. I lived all this as if it were reality. It was terrifying. However, now I know this was all due to my then undiagnosed mental disorder. Back then my delusions caused tearfulness at times and consequently my boss suggested I see a psychiatrist. I did go and see one, but I was too sick by then to be able to realize all this was in my imagination. I was certain the therapist did not have my best interest in mind and in fact considered him a part of the corrupt system of knowledge/judgment that I referred to earlier. Trusting your therapist is essential in getting on the road to mental health. These thoughts and others caused my breakdown and finally my decision to quit the company I was working for. Unfortunately, I lost my disability benefits when I made that poor decision. I decided to go back to school to get a bachelor's degree. I struggled further with my mental illness at Wichita State University and could not complete the first semester. Finally my parents came from Oklahoma and picked me up. I went to a clinic and had my second experience with the mental health profession. The clinic first gave me talk therapy from a psychologist. Next I'd be ushered into a room where the doctor prescribed medication; my first was Mellaril. Later, a "friend" of mine curious about my problems, called and I told him I was taking the Mellaril. He, being a pot smoker, just laughed and thought I was doing it for kicks. I have since discontinued my friendship with him. Disassociation with friends that use drugs is highly advisable. The problems I have are not easily understood. They have pretty much rendered me unemployable for any length of time. In some cases, I think my illness aided me in dealing with abstract programming applications. But I would gladly give up the abstract thoughts and creativity for emotional receptiveness, stability, and energy. My brother said the other day, "You are very creative." He went on to say I should write a book about my illness so people could try to understand. In fact, it is true that this illness enriches my imagination, but it can be very frightening and at times debilitating. It seems my mental illness will not just go away. It is a chronic situation in which the complications are mental and not physical. With the body, when an organ fails, sometimes complications develop in another part of the body. With the mind, it is a thought or thoughts pervading the conscious and/or subconscious that build up, yielding false beliefs. I would like to describe the few delusions I've had in the past to help others understand how frightening and real these thoughts can be. They are a thumbs up from President Clinton on TV, a nip on the thumb from a dog, a smile from my mother while my nephew had difficulty swallowing a piece of potato. I now recognize all these past delusions as false, caused mainly by my condition stabilizing with the medications I take. The sign from Clinton stems from my uncertainty about whether to vote for the Governor. I was wavering between Clinton and Perot. On the morning of the vote, as I drove to the polls, I decided to vote for Clinton. (Most of the time I felt that I would vote for him anyway.) When I went to the polls, voting was not by machine but rather by ballot. After receiving instructions on how to fill out the ballot I thought I heard the registrar say to initial it in the lower right-hand corner. I wondered why I would have to initial a ballot. It is supposed to be a secret ballot. Immediately I suspected that my vote and my vote alone would determine the destiny of the presidency for election year 1992. (In fact there were initials on the form itself, which needed to appear through the ballot holder so the ballot would go into the ballot box face down.) Later thoughts of my "sentencing" those individuals at work to death (the computer incident) crept in. I thought Clinton was the power boss who controlled everything including this "evil empire." So later, while watching TV, I saw what I perceived to be a rather sheepish, maybe slightly devilish glance from Clinton and a thumbs up (presumably at me) for having cast my vote the way I did. You see I had an additional delusion that while watching TV the subject being televised can peer right into your living room (which, by the way, is not far down the road technologically). In my deluded mind, the thumbs up was for me personally for voting as I did. I thus made myself responsible for voting in somebody who at the time I felt participated in the knowledge/judgment system of corruption I described earlier. The Clinton delusion stemmed from the "voice" that said to initial the ballot.
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