A Day in the Life

So, this is going to be an intimate blog about that most private and personal of things- intimacy. More specifically, it is going to be about how having a diagnosis of schizophrenia can affect you in intimate relationships. For a start, medication would appear to rear its ugly head again when talking about intimacy. Along with many of the negative side-effects of anti-psychotic medication, it can bring about a certain amount of sexual dysfunction . For example, it may cause "erectile dysfunctions ", such as having painful erections or out and out impotence. It can also, as far as I know, affect the experience of orgasm. Even more outlandish, it can cause the growth of "breasts" in men, and lead some even to "produce milk". I was told by my psychiatrist that this was due to the fact that some medications contain the female hormone, prolactin , leading to these bizarre side-effects. It would seem, then, that by having a diagnosis of schizophrenia, where you ...

The other day at the Media Action Group for Mental Health, we were discussing what the most harmful element of stigma was. Some felt this was in the area of employment. But, for me, if we are talking about "harm" in terms of how traumatic stigma can be, I think it is when it comes from friends and family, the people who are closest to you, who sometimes convey a complete inability to understand what the ill person is going through. Indeed, sometimes there is even very open hostility, and in my previous blog, I pointed out that, in one survey, over half (56%) of people who had experienced mental ill health had faced unfair treatment from their families, ranging from lack of understanding to outright hostility, name calling and enforced isolation. In my own experience, I seemed to face most prejudice at the inception of my illness, what must now be nearly twenty years ago, and I feel it came in the form, mostly, of sheer misunderstanding. In terms of family, my brother and pare...

I have been thinking recently about how the stigma surrounding mental ill health directly affects me, and I have come to the conclusion that, despite suffering certain unfairness early on in my illness, from friends, family and I have to say, mental health services themselves, the discrimination I now face seems less "real", in that it is anticipated, rather than actual. In fact, it could be that it is "all in my mind" sometimes. If I use an example to explain. Often, when I go to get my hair cut, the barber will inevitably engage me in conversation and ask, "not at work today,then?" At the sound of this question I often recoil in horror, because I often think it will lead to me having to explain why I do not do full-time paid work and, as an inevitable consequence of that, revealing the fact that I have experience of mental ill health. While I do not wish to censor myself or be dishonest, I feel I am faced with a difficult choice. Do I tell the truth and ...

So I was going to take a break from all this serious mental health stuff and write, as an homage to my great blogging and now also 3D friend Klahanie (aka Gary), a "real surreal" blog. I have been promising him I would do this for some time, so here goes. So, what will my subject be? Well, I was going to write about apathy, but then felt that I just couldn't be bothered! And, I was supposed to write this blog yesterday, but the procrastination board had it postponed until today. OK, so these are both jokes we know well from Klahanie himself (and for those of you who don't know, he's the l il' dude in the dress in the sepia coloured photo in my list of "followers"). So what will I write about? Well, I could write about cheese, but Id have to do it very Caerphilly ! I could write about chips, but that would be just another chip off the old blog. And there I go again. More Klahanie jokes. It just seems that the man's influence is so gargantuan (...

OK, so it's time to remember exactly what this blog is supposed to be all about. Initially, I was asked by the Media Action Group for Mental Health ( MAGMH ) to keep a record of my so-called "progress". If I recall correctly, it was as part of the " mindbloggling " project, which was still in operation at the time, but now is sadly no more, that I was asked to do this. So came about the "Dave's Progress" chapters which are supposed, in some way, to reflect my journey through coming to terms with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. For a start, I notice that there are various themes which seem to emerge from my blog. Perhaps three stand out most of all. They are: medication, its effects and my resultant feelings of a "flattening of affect" or dampening of emotion. For this see chapters like, "A Weighty Issue", "Don't Take away my Demons, Because you'll Take away my Angels too", "Me and My Anhedonia ", and ...

It would appear that one of the major issues facing those who experience mental ill health is whether or not, and to what extent, they disclose information about their experiences and diagnosis. Because of the high levels of fear and ignorance which surround diagnoses of mental ill health (one could argue, in particular, schizophrenia) many face the the threat of discrimination or rejection if they disclose information about their illness. This threat may not need to be actual, but rather anticipated, so affecting the behaviour of those with a mental illness. However, there are also great advantages to revealing one's illness. The matter of disclosure, then, would appear to be a somewhat confounding double-edged sword, with both advantages and disadvantages. As Professor Graham Thornicroft points out, the advantages include allowing other people to help, enabling a person to join self-help groups, being able to advocate for one's own treatment and care and to join groups camp...

As one who has experienced mental ill health, and yet is in so-called "recovery" (I am not cured, but my illness is rather "controlled" by medication) I find myself in the peculiar position of being relatively well and yet, because my diagnosis is regarded as a severe disability, perhaps unable to gain any meaningful paid employment. As some of you will know, I do work voluntarily for the Media Action Group for Mental Health, write articles for an occupational therapy magazine and also this blog. I do what I can, then, to fill my time, and to my mind, this is good for my mental health, maintaining a structure to my life and giving meaning and purpose to it. After all, most of this blog is about mental ill health and trying to combat the all too prevalent stigmas which surround diagnoses such as mine. As I have, perhaps, written before, it is a continual bugbear of mine that those with a diagnosis of schizophrenia find it hard, nay almost impossible to find paid work...