Notes on being labelled ‘paranoid schizophrenic’

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On hearing voices, dissociation & being labelled  – ugh! – ‘paranoid schizophrenic’.

I may go about my life, like most other people, maintaining my place of abode, holding down a fulfilling job, keeping contacts with friends and family etc.

I was recently at the GP’s and to see my diagnosis splashed across the screen ‘PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIC’ feels like a slap across the face, a massive affront.

I try not to think about this term for the sake of my day-to-day happiness and well-being. As a friendly doctor once told me, “They’re just words”. I find the term scary and enormously stigmatising. It’s hard to even conceptualise or even say it.

Yes, I have occasional episodes of voices in my head, recurring nonsensical thoughts sometimes but otherwise I don’t perceive myself that much unlike other ordinary working people. 

A physician – Max Bleuler coined the term ‘schizophrenia’ around the 1840’s to describe this mental health condition. The term is from the Greek and means ‘disturbed mind’.

The term ‘paranoid’ derives also from the Greek – para nous which means ‘being beside oneself with fear’.

I do not consider myself to be ‘beside myself with fear’ or have for many years. Nor have I suffered major delusions in over 20 years. I may initially have suffered these, but that was 28 years ago. Do I still deserve this label? I’ve asked my local Department of Psychiatry to change my diagnosis to ‘discrete episodic psychosis’ but they refuse to.

Many of us recover and many more can recover given adequate psychotherapeutic support, healthy lifestyle and meaningful occupation. I guess many get stuck in an institutional rut of polypharmacy and poverty – because of the neoliberal erosion of support services etc, and fail to boost themselves out of the chronic stages of the condition. 

Across our so-called ‘Western world’ the social connotation of the term ‘paranoid schizophrenic’ is – I perceive- one of revulsion, suspicion, danger and violence. 

How can I sit with this – just block it out, don’t think about it. It’s almost like it’s a self-fulfilling term i.e. it makes one ill to even conceive of it in the mind.

One reason the ‘independence model’ of disability – I believe – is the best is because it gives us agency in our own recovery. If I was for example detained in an institution, I would not have control over my daily routine. I would have to get up at certain times, have meals at certain times, take psych drugs at certain times and be prohibited the holistic treatments that I am free to take in my own residence – which are essential to my well-being (as are the one or two types of pharmacological drugs I consume, I’ll admit). My independence and privacy would be severely compromised being in a psychiatric institution. 

Also, in relation to the State as a person, the way I feel about it is: I sing to the Irish political elite “where’s your head at?” and they say “…and this, from a paranoid schizophrenic!”. In short it makes me feel like a lesser citizen, though I know I’m not.

‘Paranoid schizophrenic’ is not a very nice label to have on one’s head.

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This is part 1 of a two part series.  

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