Suicide? Nah… Ice Cream.

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*Trigger warning- Suicide*

I woke up to my cell phone buzzing, upon answering it I find my test results for a certain physical problem were not determinable with the tests done at that lab, as a result, I will have to see a specialist.

This could either mean 1) my symptoms are psychosomatic (common problem with me) or 2) I have a serious problem.

In any case, I went along my day. I went to my second day back at college and it started horribly. At first I had the patience to be involved in the 3 hour long lab. But it dragged on, describing all the intricate details of animal reproductive anatomy. I’m not quite sure what there is even left to learn for the rest of the quarter.
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Another Hockey Mask: Andreas Lubitz

*TRIGGER WARNING*

square855I must tell the truth here: I do not understand what Andreas Lubitz did. In my suicidal fugues, I thought of many ways that I might kill myself that involved others such as throwing myself in front of a truck or crashing my car into a tree or driving it off a cliff, but the idea of taking others with me — that wasn’t the self-annihilation that I planned. When I came close,I found a secluded place where someone would eventually find me. That was the maximum involvement of another that I planned. Though I thought capital punishment might work for me — and send a message to those who loved me — I did not want to assassinate others.

>Rumor has it that Lubitz was going through some catastrophic issues with his girlfriend. He knew that he was ill and he was seeking treatment for it. The day of the crash, his psychiatrist issued a sick leave note. Andreas did not use it, however, and his doctor could not call the airline to tell them that he was at risk. But Lubitz did not stop at ending his own life:

Andreas Lubitz was breathing, steady and calm, in the final moments of Germanwings Flight 9525. It was the only sound from within the cockpit that the voice recorder detected as Mr. Lubitz, the co-pilot, sent the plane into its descent.

The sounds coming from outside the cockpit door on Tuesday were something else altogether: knocking and pleading from the commanding pilot that he be let in, then violent pounding on the door and finally passengers’ screams moments before the plane, carrying 150 people, slammed into a mountainside in the French Alps.

In a different article, The New York Times reported that Lubitz concealed his illness from those closest to him:

Peter Rücker, a member of the flight club where Mr. Lubitz learned to fly, told Reuters television on Thursday that he knew the young man as a cheerful, careful pilot, and that he could not imagine him committing such an act.

Online, Mr. Lubitz appeared to be a keen runner, including at Lufthansa’s Frankfurt sports club, and had completed several half-marathons and other medium-distance races, including an annual New Year’s run in Montabaur in 2014.

A Facebook page with a few tidbits of his possible “likes” was visible Wednesday but had been removed by late morning on Thursday. It showed a photograph of a young man near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, though there were no clues to when the image was taken or any other details….

Data from the plane’s transponder also suggested that the person at the controls had manually reset the autopilot to take the plane from 38,000 feet to 96 feet, the lowest possible setting, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracking service. The aircraft struck a mountainside at 6,000 feet.

Before Mr. Lubitz, 27, a German citizen, set the plane on its 10-minute descent about half an hour into the flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Düsseldorf, Germany, the cockpit voice recorder picked up only the usual pilot banter, “courteous” and “cheerful” exchanges, the prosecutor said.

Then the commanding pilot asked Mr. Lubitz to take over. A seat can be heard being pulled back and a door closing as the captain exits the cockpit.

Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, takes the position that nothing could be done, that even the best system in the world cannot protect the public 100% from such disasters. And they are confident that they have a good one.

I am not a big fan of willy nilly violations of confidentiality. It seems to me, however, that there should have been a way for the doctor to tell the airline that Lubitz was a danger to self and others and see that he was grounded. There should be ways for the pilot to open the door from the outside of the cockpit or to place a toilet inside the cockpit so he doesn’t have to enter the passenger section of the plane. So many things can have been done differently, but I am afraid that this is not where the media, public opinion, and politics will take us. The Times’ restraint will almost certainly be accompanied by more shrill attacks on the mentally ill among us. Lubitz, I dread will become another hockey mask, another poster child who will be held up as a clarion call for denying the mentally ill their confidentiality. Laws stand before Congress that call for allowing “caregivers” to be informed of what goes on between psychiatrists and the most severe mentally ill. Will Andreas Lubitz’s crash take us another step? Who else will psychiatrists be forced to inform? How will confidentiality be broken after this incident? Who else will be able to enter the circle that HIPAA laws now defend? I shudder at the possibilities.

We must look, I think, at another major factor in this crash: stigma. Some out there think that stigma like racism no longer exists or impacts on lives. Believe me, it is alive and well. I know people who have lost jobs because their employers found out about their illness. We are told that we are ax murderers even though we have no history of violence or making threats. Friends decide that they want nothing more to do with us. Spouses panic and file papers for divorce. Now they will say that we harbor these impulses in secret, that we are all ticking time bombs.

Andreas Lubitz kept his illness a secret, I suspect, because of what would have happened to him. He would have lost a lucrative job. He might have found himself unemployed for months or even years. Friends would shun him. He would find himself very alone. In the final analysis, because he could not reveal his ache — because he could not talk about it without bringing an end to the life he had worked so hard to create for himself — the pressure built on him. When he found himself alone at the controls of the jet, he forgot the passengers. Only his pain was real to him and he ended it in the most powerful way he could.

Not sure which is worse?

I think we’ve all done it. The smiling through our tears. Putting on a facade that we are happy even though we are miserable inside. I do that a lot. I don’t want people to worry. Sometimes, I can’t help it. It would frighten my children when I would cry for no reason so I got better at hiding my feelings.

But, other times, I tell people how I am feeling. But, I still have the smile. I can laugh at a joke after I told them I was contemplating suicide. They don’t take me seriously because my words don’t match my affect.

So, sometimes I am hiding and sometimes I am not believed because I am scared to show outside how I feel inside. It seems better to cry inside than to shed actual tears.

The Dangers of Online Mental Health Quizzes

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Alright so this is a big topic for me. A fellow author posted a link to a ridiculous quiz on Facebook that I feel the need to (and was asked to) write about.

I am going to take this quiz, step by step, and report exactly what I think about it. And after I will tell you why these quizzes aren’t just silly or stupid, but dangerous (with my anecdote evidence- reliable I know).

Alright, so when you click on the quiz, it starts off by saying, “Are you prone to dramatic and unpredictable mood-swings? What about anxiety and frustration? What’s your level of uniqueness? Find that all out right here.” Right off the bat I am annoyed. This perpetuates the stereotype that bipolar is sudden changes in mood. Going from happy to sad and back in a second. Unless you have extremely rapid-cycling bipolar, this is very unlikely. Bipolar is experienced in episodes. Generally meaning they have to last at least a few days. Although I do have little spikes of bipolar feelings, they aren’t full episodes and are mostly just annoying.

And for anxiety and frustration, yeah those can happen. I have anxiety that is sometimes correlated with my bipolar. But bipolar itself doesn’t specify that you need to have anxiety. Additionally, “frustration?” Really? Who doesn’t experience that? And lastly- “What’s your level of uniqueness?” That makes me want to hit my face on my keyboard. Being bipolar is unique in a sense, because a small amount of the population experiences it. But in this context it is taken in a positive way. In the United States we have a culture where individualism and self-expression is very important. If you’re unique, then it’s usually considered a good thing. But as far as I’m concerned, bipolar is not a good thing.

And then, of course, it adds that this should be used as a diagnostic test. And I’ll explain later why that really doesn’t matter.
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“It gets better”

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*Trigger Warning- Suicide* The realization I describe in this post made me feel very suicidal when I had it several months ago (I am fine now), read at your own risk, and please be safe.

“It gets better.”

The most depressing realization I ever had about being bipolar was when I read a 17 year old girl’s account about her bipolar. She says she sat on the edge of her bed with pills in hand, ready to swallow them all. But instead of taking her life, she went to her mother’s room and sought comfort.

She ended it by saying, “It gets better.”

(I wasn’t very inspired.)

We’ve heard that a million times- “It gets better.”

And it does get better.

Before I read her post, I would say that too, “It gets better.”

But dear sweet little 17 year old girl, if the doctors say you’re bipolar. Then you’re sick for the rest of your life.

I was your age when I found myself holding a noose, what stopped me was that I couldn’t find a place to tie it up at. A month later, I was put on medication, and for what seemed like the first time in my life- I was happy. I was just like you, trying to tell everyone how things “can get better.”

And then two years later at the beginning of winter, I slit my wrist open and the consequences led to a hospitalization which led to me getting suspended and much more. Suddenly I realized how deep I’d fallen again. And then about a year later, I had a job and I was doing well in college and I was so very successful. And I was saying, “Things do get better.”

And then another year passed and I fell and broke my wrist. And with my wrist, my mind followed suit and I found myself more manic than I ever knew I could be. I made many plans to vandalize, let a man film me doing a sexual act, popped pills like candy, and more. That winter I spent my days half cracked open. Then school started again, and I was too far gone. I dropped all my classes, and took the time off to heal bone and brain.

When I broke my wrist I was told, even with the surgery, that it would “never be the same again.” But what’s scary is that that same phrase can be applied to my mental health. That manic episode changed me, I will “never be the same.” So when I read that 17 year old girl’s account of how everything gets better, I looked at my own life. At the cyclic nature of my disorder.

And I realized something terrifying.

It may get better.

But it can, and probably will, get worse again.

It’s a pattern, don’t you see?

Good to bad, bad to good, good to bad… and so on.

They say bipolar is a chronic, life-long illness.

And they say that for a reason.

-Quinn

A Fragile Mind

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I want to take Xanax the way I used to. The irresponsible and reckless way. The dangerous way. The way I don’t advise anyone to ever take it.

I want to drown out how awful I feel. I may have taken a quarter off, not to heal my broken wrist but to mend my manic mind, but I am still fragile.

I took an incomplete in a class, but I have to finish it sometime. And that deadline is right around the corner. I am not prepared and I do not have the strength to care.

Part of me is giving up, ready to fail a college course for the first time. Ready to ruin my future as a psychiatrist or psychologist. But part of me is still squirming to hold onto my dreams, to finish this class, to stay in the game.

Just listen to the online lectures, take notes, and memorize everything. Yet I can’t even tell you the names of the diseases I’ve learned, let alone their symptoms or treatments.

This should be an easy class, even an enjoyable one, but some professors know how to make even the most interesting of subjects into a nightmare.

Maybe the mania is gone, a vague memory where I was someone possessed by the need to vandalize, pop pills, and stare at Christmas lights. But I’m not stable. I’m always a little up or a little down.

I don’t think it is possible for me to be perfectly stable. It’d be like trying to balance a coin on its thin side in a windstorm.

My bipolar is and never will be the productive type. Some people go manic, and get everything done. Me? I destroy everything I can, myself included, and I want the world to see that. And the depression? It just doesn’t care enough.

I go to two types of therapy right now. One for my wrist and one for my mind. It has taken months to repair my wrist, but the evidence is visible, I’m always going forward, I’m always improving.

But the mind isn’t like a broken wrist. I’ve been going to therapy for years and yet I can go backwards. Some days I even fall and break all over again, as if I never healed to begin with.

When I was hospitalized at 19, another bipolar patient took me by the shoulders, looked at me very carefully and warned me- “You’re already so young to be in here. It’s only going to get worse. Be careful.”

And maybe you’d think he is wrong for saying it’ll only get worse. But he wasn’t. It has gotten worse, just in a different way. Yes, my youth is an advantage. Getting help early on may have saved my life more times than I know. But he was right- It’s gotten worse and I do need to be careful.

But what is being careful when it comes to your mind?

-Quinn

Psychiatric Hospitalization- The feeling, not the story.

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I’ve only been hospitalized once, although there’s been multiple times when I needed it.

I always had a curiosity about what it’d be like in a ward.

The background story is: I had/have issues with self harm. And when it was at its worst, I cut myself deeply. Deep enough to see the tendon and to be rushed to the ER. Long story short- my parents found out and asked what they could do to help me. I told them I needed outpatient care and they said okay. I called the local psychiatric hospital and they said I could come in any time for a psych evaluation so I could start outpatient care.

I went in for my evaluation and left 5 days later.

The hospital had decided that I was too unstable/unsafe after my self harm incident, so they required me to stay. I remember sitting in the evaluation room, staring at the window. It was dark and all I could see was my reflection. I don’t know what I felt. It was a mix of wanting to cry, wanting to run out of the place, wanting to scream that they couldn’t do this to me. But mostly, I just felt defeat. Eventually a lady retrieved me, asking if I was okay. She informed me I could go back to the lobby. I ran back in there and hugged my friend, sobbing as I told him they weren’t letting me leave. I could feel everyone in the room staring at me. But at this point, I was certifiably “crazy” so who cares, right?

I won’t go into the details of my psych ward stay. Instead, I will tell how it felt for me.

At first, it was terrifying. It was nighttime when I was admitted, and I told them I wouldn’t be able to sleep since I had a nocturnal sleeping cycle to begin with. I sat, alone, in the one room where you could just hang out. I sat with a puzzle, and tiredly tried to put the pieces together. My mind felt both overwhelmed and slow. Like the puzzle, none of the pieces were coming together.

When everyone woke up for breakfast, I had to face the other patients. I had no idea what to expect of them. A million different versions of “crazy” went through my head. And yet, I didn’t expect them to be … so much like me. They seemed normal, for the most part. But what stood out was how friendly they were. I was invited to sit and share my story.

I grew comfortable in the hospital. I knew my parents must be upset, I knew that my dad was probably having anxiety over it. Anxiety that would make him angry, that would make him yell at my mother. And what about my mom? How would she feel? Scared? Or would she feel like it was completely unnecessary? Would she be mad too?

But honestly, those questions barely crossed my mind. Because I knew I was safe from them. I knew that while I was in here, they couldn’t really hurt me. My dad wouldn’t yell at me. They’d awkwardly visit at visiting hours. Just to clarify, my parents have never been physically abusive. But I do fear their tempers. Mostly, I fear the control they have over my life since they’re completely supporting me through college.

It didn’t matter though. I was hospitalized, they couldn’t do anything about that. Plus, I could control all communication with them. I felt safe. Everything was so routine, we’d wake up and take our pills. Then we’d eat breakfast and go on a smoke break and go to group therapy and then a smoke break and then group therapy and so and so forth, all day.

I was able to talk about my problems and I was able to bond with other people who were going through exactly what I was- not necessary a “mental crisis” but more like we were all stuck here, and that brought us together.

I put the pieces of that puzzle together with the help of the other patients. We’d sit and talk and figure out the puzzle together.

On maybe my 2nd or 3rd day in the ward, I was given terrible news. News too long to explain right now. But news that shook me and turned my life upside down. I felt as if the walls of safety had been broken down. All it took was two police officers and suddenly I didn’t feel so safe anymore.

You see, the world had stood still for me. During my stay, nothing could hurt me. I was impermeable. The outside world could do nothing to me. But those police officers proved me wrong. The outside world could come in, it was just me who couldn’t leave.

I stopped socializing with the other patients, I curled up in bed. Sobbing until there were no tears left. At once, I felt like the hospital was both a prison and a sanctuary. I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t take care of the responsibilities the police officers had informed me of. But still, I was safe from myself. I was safe from my family, friends, everything.

I felt the desperate need to leave, I had things to do- immediately. But I was so sick from the news that I wanted to stay. And the staff agreed- I needed to stay. My 5150, or a 72 hour forced hospitalization, was changed to a 5250, where they could keep me for longer. I stayed an additional two days.

We weren’t allowed on phones during group therapy, that was our punishment for not going. But I was given special permission to use the phone to sort out my personal life because it simply could not wait. I was given a room with a phone. And I sat down and made all these phone calls, with the occasional call to my mom or to my friends to tell them what was going on.

It was a mess. I felt very stressed out and my memory of those hours I spent on the phone are best compared to the way you feel after crying- broken, defeated, but mostly tired.

Very, very tired.

My time in the hospital was ruined by those two police officers. Had I been able to stay non-interrupted, I imagine the stay would have been rather pleasant. For the most part, I actually enjoyed my stay. My fellow patients were all friendly and their company was desirable. The food was decent enough. I got to smoke cigarettes every now and again. Group therapy was fun to me. Doing the puzzle in our spare time gave me something to obsess.

The puzzle let me forget about all my troubles. About the predicament I’d gotten myself into. I loved that puzzle.

I still remember walking out of my family therapy meeting, eyes puffy and red, sniffling from the tears. And when I arrived to my fellow patients, my support group, they handed me a puzzle piece. I looked at the puzzle and realized they’d left me the last piece. I probably cried, I don’t remember. All I knew was that these people understood me, they understood how important this puzzle was to me. And they had saved the last piece for me.

Ultimately, I loved the hospital. It was a safe place for me. Many of the patients reported they’d been transferred from other facilities, and they said those places were nightmares. I guess I was lucky.

I’ve wanted to go back. To remember the safe feeling, to know everything I needed was taken care of, and that all I needed to do was work on making myself better. But you can’t forget the locked doors. Even though I enjoyed the hospital, the patients and I would scheme on how to act to get out sooner. Once you’re in there, you want out.

On the smoking patio, there was a giant fence that had a green canvas blocking our view out. It rose far above our heads, but I would gaze through the little holes at the corners. A glimpse of the real world, I could even see plants if I looked hard enough. But I also saw another gate.

It is bittersweet. There is no good way to summarize my stay there because it was such a conflicting period. On one hand, I was safe from the world. But on the other, I wasn’t. The world was still moving even though mine had made an abrupt stop.

I needed to be in the hospital. I needed that experience- all of it. I needed the feeling of security. And then feeling that security ripped away from me. I needed to learn that I could withstand all of this.

I needed the hospital to give me a place to experience all my emotions… while keeping me safe from them.

-Quinn

Cults, Witches and Mental Illness

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When I was 15, one of my brothers, who was 21 came home from college because he wasn’t well. He would sit and stare and do nothing for awhile. Later he would start talking but he said strange things and acted bizarre. He could be generous but was also unpredictable. I feel bad now because I was afraid of him for no real reason. He scared me because he seemed unusual.

My parents tried to figure out what had happened to him. He seemed fine when he had left home. They suggested maybe someone slipped him some drugs but settled on that he had been brainwashed by a cult at college. That his new girlfriend had brought him into the cult.

Of course, there was no cult, but the story grew. I was told not to speak to certain neighbors as they were part of this cult. My father didn’t believe in mental illness or psychiatry. He thought the hospitals were like the one in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and discouraged my brother from going.

They also accused people of being witches. It was like mental illness was contagious. It was scary and confusing living in that home.

It can be difficult to be the sibling of anyone with a chronic illness. All the time and attention was on my brother and I felt ignored. My older siblings moved out and i just had my younger brother to confide in. I felt everything was strange at our house and didn’t have any friends over. My brother felt like every family has their own issues and we weren’t that unusual. I think he was able to roll with everything easier than I did.

Sonya Sones wrote a book of free verse “Stop Pretending, the day my big sister went crazy” about how she felt as a sibling, that I read as an adult and could relate to. I didn’t want to be home. I stayed out and used alcohol, other drugs and later sex to escape.

My brother didn’t get treatment except when he would get picked up for 3 day observational holds. This started in 1979 and it may have been easier to be taken in. He would be yelling or saying he was some famous person and the police would take him to a hospital. They said he had paranoid schizophrenia and put him on anti psychotics. Not Thorazine, but similar. All they did was slow him down. So, then you had a slow moving psychotic man. He knew he was not acting normal, so he would imitate people around him, which was even stranger.

The last time he was picked up, it was in a different county. They tried lithium this time. It was 6 years from when he had originally come home. Everyone told me it was like magic. He was back to his old self. I don’t know what his diagnosis was. Maybe bipolar, or schizoaffective like me. I was looking forward to seeing him. But, when I visited him, he wasn’t well. He was edgy and nervous. My mom said they had to adjust his medication, but she was waiting until Monday ( I think I came there on a Friday night). My brother took off and we didn’t know where. He had been talking about hiking at Yosemite. On Monday I got a call that he had fallen at a waterfall at Yosemite and died. No one knows if it was a suicide or accident. People do fall there.

Recently I was talking to my oldest brother and he was saying that he wished there was the information then that there is today. I thought he meant support, but he then said that we would know it was a mental illness and not a cult. I was perplexed that he had believed that. The 1980s weren’t exactly the dark ages. I have had to let go of a lot of anger towards my parents for what I now feel was dependent adult abuse by not getting him treatment, and all the time he thought they were right.