In 1999 Ronald F. Levant EdD told a group of fellow psychologists how recovery from a major disorder such as schizophrenia was not only possible, it was happening regularly. "Recovery from schizophrenia," a colleague snorted, "Have you lost your mind too?
Source: Why Can't They Recover?
We who have recovered from mental illness know from our personal experience that recovery is real. We know that recovery is more than remission with a brooding disease hidden in our hearts. We have experienced healing and we are whole where we were broken. Yet we are frequently confronted by unconvinced professionals who ask, "How can you have recovered from such a hopeless situation?" When we present them with our testimonies they say that we are exceptions. They call us pseudoconsumers. They say that our experience does not relate to that of their seriously, biologically ill, inpatients.
I recently re-experienced this negative attitude about recovery. A friend of mine, during a discussion in a psychology class, said she knew someone who had schizophrenia, recovered and became a psychiatrist. "He must have been misdiagnosed," was the professor's response. So my friend reviewed my earlier symptoms with me. I met the DSM IV criteria for schizophrenia in the interval from 1969-74. When she presented my history to her professor, he reversed his position and said that the diagnosis of schizophrenia must have been correct. He doubted I had recovered and said, "we now have a case of an impaired physician."
By having earned board certification in psychiatry, having worked as medical director of a community mental health center for 11 years and having directed the National Empowerment Center for 3 years I have proven that I am not an impaired physician. This episode reveals the depth of negative expectations which are taught to students. After all, mental illness is considered a terminal condition for which there is no cure. Therefore anyone who appears to have recovered must not have been sick. This leaves no one with first hand experience of what helps and what hurts to speak for those who currently cannot speak due to their distress.
This example illustrates the dilemma many of us face who have recovered from mental illness. It would be easier in the short-run to forget and not tell others of our experiences. But for many of us the benefits of telling outweigh the risks. For in the telling we open wider options for peer support, we continue our healing and we help reduce the stigma of others. Yet to have our story discounted after we risked our social position, jobs, and insurance by giving testimony is an affront to our integrity.
© Daniel Fisher
Source: Healing and Recovery Are Real
See also: Learning From Northern Europe
