I’ll trade you my manic depressive for your schizohrenia
Let me clear the air up first. No, I don’t think I have/want schizophrenia or any diagnosed mental illness for that matter. Fingers crossed it stays that way.
First order of business, apologies for not writing for a while.Gen surg was quite busy in Nowra and the lack of internet was frustrating. That was compounded by my Experia x10, which is supposed to be my WordPress machine, broke. It’s lying on the floor awaiting my parents arrival to take it home to Indo to return to the dealer. My second reason was due to my mental health rotation, which was quite stressful really. That brings me to my second point.
I DO NOT LIKE PSYCHIATRY! I think the main reason why is because it scares me in so many ways. First week in there, I felt like I was the patient. I had no swipe card or key access and had to be let out by the nurses. When a door closed behind me (mind you the doors were big and heavy), it would slam every time. I came home everyday feeling like a clinically depressed person and would continually start existentialistic or nihiistic or pessimistic arguments with my housemates. In the end they would tell me that psych rotation was messing with my mind.
Psych also scares me due to my family predispositions to mental illness. I have had a couple of relatives who have been hospitalised in a mental institution. Suicide attempts are prevalent in my family to the point of mom telling me when I’m home who else in the family has attempted suicide this year. I am pretty sure there are some cases of pro-dromal schizophrenia in the family (albeit covered up by the ultra-religious nature of the persons; i.e. the belief of seeing the devil or hearing the voices of the Holy Spirit). Now, that’s even scarier to me. I mean, my normal mood is slightly manic (a lot of arm movements when I talk, the affinity to doing random things like hopping or mewing), I have flights of ideas and thought blocking sometimes, and I have internal convo with myself; I’m OK with those, but I don’t want a full blown mental illness.
I am now done with my psych rotation thankfully. I’ve returned to my baseline, but honestly I wouldn’t touch REAL psychiatry with even a yardstick. Let’s end this with a lighter note, shall we? I really wouldn’t want to trade my manic characters with even the slightest of schizophrenia. No, thank you.
Write soon,
N
