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Media’s Misrepresentation of Criminality and Psychosis: How it Affects Real Life

Guest post written by Samantha Jane From Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho to M.Night Shymalan’s Split, the media has long been guilty of using psychosis as a scapegoat for fantastical criminality. Even among newsrooms and journalists, crimes attached to any iota of mental illness are sensationalized with splashy headlines. This macabre fascination has only worsened the existing […]

Writer’s Block?

Readers may have noticed that my productivity on my blog has decreased in recent months. Over the past couple of years, the community mental health program where I have worked for seventeen and a half years has undergone change. This has been a significant source of grief for me as the community has lost six […]

Overcoming Factions, and Politics in My Recovery from Psychosis

In my experience, being singled out and excluded from the discourse because I don’t fit in is what causes me most pain. It is taking me a long time to realize exactly how and why this happens to me repeatedly. For me it is not a simple process. It seems to do with people who […]

The Neurodivergence of Fawning for Mental Health

Fawning, saying yes sir, or shining it on is such an important skill in enduring life, especially during a break from reality. It is a skill I struggled with during times of mental health crisis prior to my break. Indeed, I have had to get pretty good at this fawning skill to survive. Prior to […]

All I Ever Wanted, by Larry “Lorenzo” Quan

was to love from my heart to help out & take part all i ever wanted was to not be alone not be on my own all i ever wanted was to be fed and make sure no one goes hungry all i ever wanted was to be clothed of my nakedness to cover & […]

Learning Self Compassion After A Psychosis Episode:

It’s been nearly twenty years since I came out of a two-year break from reality. I am no longer faced with the prospect of homeless and unable to find work. I have a career, a marriage and a sense of stability. But in other ways I am just starting to realize how fragmented and dissociated […]

A Celebration of my Book with NAMI

If you’ve ever wondered how Holden Caulfield turned out, you’ll want to meet our guest Timothy Dreby (pen name Clyde Dee). Six years into a clinical career, anonymous mental health worker Clyde Dee starts work in a notorious housing project in Seattle. Navigating a fractured system, he finds himself mysteriously compelled to break the codes […]

It’s Never Too Late to Assert Yourself

In a personal story I am currently working on for publication in Mad in America, I am starting to realize the impact of the 2015 release of my award-winning memoir: Fighting for Freedom in America: Memoir of a “Schizophrenia” and Mainstream Cultural Delusions. Six year later I am still dealing with a sense of alienation that preoccupies me. I […]

WAKE UP, I’m Coming Out of Hibernation!

I am writing to alert my community and tell them to WAKE UP. I am coming out of hibernation! I have always been grateful to my community of readers and want to thank you for supporting me. But I admit my emails have been personal amblings and links to my blogs. First, they were monthly […]

The Cultural Delusions that Put Vulnerable Communities Out on the Streets!

I have come to believe that one can learn more about on the ground social realities from personal stories than the news media or researched academic books. In fact, one could take this argument farther and suggest sometimes true reality may be more hidden in fiction or comedic insights than it is in the cultural […]