This is a blog about another proactive coping skill that has helped me immeasurably over the years. It deals with refusing to let yourself become self-stigmatized.
How many people with schizophrenia have heard their psychiatrist, therapist or personal advocate [whether a family member or a treatment professional] say "You've got to recognize the fact that you have a serious disability [i.e., a mental illness, or brain disorder] that you will never overcome?" This statement and variations on it are stereotypes that give rise to the most insidious of all forms of stigma.
When the diagnosis of schizophrenia is first made, how many consumers and their families are led to believe that the above stereotype is true? How many hopes and dreams are forfeit? The forfeiture of one's own hopes and dreams constitutes the most destructive form of stigma, i.e., self-stigmatization. This form of stigma robs consumers and their families of their potential for happy and productive lives.
Well, excuse me!
I also have unstable angina, hypertension, high cholesterol, coronary stent implants, Crohn's disease, infectious arthritis [with chronic pain], sleep apnea, diabetes, osteoporosis, chronic back pain, COPD [chronic bronchitis], and an overactive bladder. I take twenty-one different kinds of medicine every day for a total of 56 to 62 pills, depending on the severity of my pain. I receive treatment from a psychiatrist, diabetologist, gastroenterologist, cardiologist, internist, urologist, orthopedic surgeon, dermatologist and an ear, nose and throat specialist.
Because of my jobs, or my wife's, my family and I have lived and worked in San Francisco and New York, and lots of places in between, both north and south of the Mason Dixon line, so I've had many personifications of all of these types of doctors. The only physicians that have ever told me that I have "a disability that I cannot overcome" have been psychiatrists. Even though it raises a serious question about the type of treatment I will receive, the first time a psychiatrist tells me this, I give him, or her, the benefit of the doubt. I form the working hypothesis, however outrageous, that the psychiatrist simply doesn't realize that recovery is possible. The second time a psychiatrist says this, or something comparable, I fire him or her and look for a psychiatrist that has kept current in his or her profession.
During my life I've been a member of the Teamsters Union and a medical research scientist. I've worked in a lumber mill and on Wall Street. I've routinely traveled on Greyhound buses and in corporate jets. I have lived in a $40/month rooming house and in a high rise on the upper east side of Manhattan. I've borrowed money to buy food and negotiated highly sophisticated financing transactions in the 100's of millions of dollars. More than once I've been confined to a single room against my will [in psychiatric hospitals], but have also transacted business throughout the US and abroad. I've been involved in corporate turnarounds, and have created, bought and sold companies.
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