The question that’s been gnawing at me is whether I should write about myself as a patient in a psychiatric hospital.
It’s somehow difficult, because I tend to lose credibility by the fact that I would also be complaining—besides, it’s already known that patients, or rather some patients, suffer from persecution mania.
To a certain extent I suffer from it too, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t abuses that happened to me in the hospital or outside it—and that happen to more people, not just me.
And I’m not talking only about abuses, but also about mistakes in prescribing and administering treatments. YES, I have insight into my illness. I know that something isn’t right with me. Unlike other people, I truly know that I’m mentally ill. At the moment I’m on a treatment that works; I take it regularly and have for over 12 years, and I feel OK. As OK as someone can feel with… but I won’t say the diagnosis.
There are so many people who behave horribly with their families and perfectly in society… There are so many undiagnosed people who pass as normal their whole lives. Some end up in prison—I know a case of a person who self-harmed, shredded their arms, neck, and body with a blade through self-injury—so you can’t say that person’s place should have been in prison, but in a psychiatric hospital. And they walk around proudly, showing off the fact that they’re ex-cons and part of the criminal underworld. Personally, I empathize with them to some extent.
I’m thinking about whether I should write about my life as a psychiatric patient over a period of 19 years. Why? Because I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what certain higher-ups people from there might do to me if I were to reveal the darker parts. But we all make mistakes, including me—I’m not 100% right either. Still, I feel like I’d like to move forward with my life as a psychiatric patient.