When first diagnosed and placed into the category of being a 'Paranoid Schizophrenic', I was glad that someone had finally shed some light on the distress / experiences I was having. Nobody else had been able to relate to what was happening to me or understand my thought processes before. Initially I took the Doctors’ words as gospel. I saw myself as 'Schizophrenic' and soon developed an identity in both the inner and outer worlds accordingly.
When I was given the label ‘schizophrenia’ everything was falling apart. I had just had a bereavement that I couldn’t see coming. I lost my dad and I was far far away from home with no relative and no one to talk to about it. I had financial problems at that time and I began to lose everything. I had to stop my studies at University, I went downhill quickly. It was too much for me to take. I ended up homeless and began to go in a new direction that I’d never been in before – drinking, selling drugs to get bits of money just to survive, even smoking marijuana myself.
I have personal experiences of living with an uncle who has been in the mental health system for a number of decades, labelled with ‘schizophrenia’. The label covered and hid the underlying problems that he was dealing with as a young migrant to the country, a young man who loved his parents, wanted to become a doctor and be with his friends. He ended up in Bradford, I suspect without much consultation, working in a factory and, as they say up north, ‘grafting’.
Raza Griffiths, Service User Campaigner and Trainer
Some years ago, I was in a desperate situation and was rushed off to hospital after I collapsed, unannounced and without appointment, on my doctor's surgery floor. I told her the moon had been talking to me and directing me to do things that were placing my health and wellbeing at risk. This had been going on for some time and I found my feet were running me quickly to my doctor after a particularly frightening incident in which I had a narrow escape.
I believe that the way ‘schizophrenia’ is being diagnosed – and has been for decades – is nothing more than a social construct. Looking back at historical facts (e.g. see how mainstream psychiatry sided with the pre-Nazi Eugenics at the beginning of the 20th century) one can observe how this particular diagnosis is part of a wider social project established to maintain inequalities between people.
This is my personal experience of having my son labelled. This is what it means to us.
Of all the labels to be given, ‘schizophrenia’ is the most debilitating. Our son has a label of Paranoid Schizophrenia! It is the label used by the media to create fear in the public. It has disempowered our son, taken away his confidence, independence and self-esteem. Thanks NHS!
I first came into contact with psychiatric services when I was twenty-five. I actually went in as a voluntary patient as I had no idea what the services were like. I had read a few psychology books and I honestly expected the professionals would be empathetic and interested in finding out about my experiences and feelings. I thought there would be lots of therapy and the drugs would be optional.
I was diagnosed with schizophrenia back in 1968 at the age of 18. I had sought psychiatric help myself and agreed to go into hospital as a voluntary patient. At the time of hospital admission, I had a job, a boyfriend and an active social life, although I was a painfully shy teenager. I was dissatisfied with my lifestyle, struggling to come to terms with the loss of my religious beliefs, felt life was empty and meaningless, and I was living with my dysfunctional family.
One way to libel, dehumanize, and sometimes destroy people you don’t like is to label them “schizophrenic,” “psychotic,” or “paranoid.” I should know. In 1951 when I was 20 and locked up for 15 months in McLean Hospital (a notorious psychoprison near Boston affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital), the shrinks labeled and stigmatized me as “schizophrenic” while I was struggling with a common identity crisis that neither my family nor the psychiatrists recognized.
