| Illness Management and Recovery Program |
[06 Jul 2009|12:04pm] |
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Dear friends,
Coming up is a 9-session support group led by trained professionals at Singapore Association for Mental Health. Personally, I hope to join the 11th run of this program as a much-needed refresher. One-time registration fee is $10. The meetings are held at Toa Payoh Lorong 4. Behind the LJ cut are details on registration and an enquiry number / email.
ILLNESS MANAGEMENT AND RECOVERY (IMR) PROGRAM Introduction Adopting the manual developed by New Hampshire-Dartmouth Psychiatric Research & West Institute in USA, The Illness Management and Recovery Program consists of a series of 9 weekly sessions to help people who have experienced psychiatric symptoms to develop personalized strategies for managing their mental illness and moving forward in their lives. Objectives ▪ To improve knowledge and understanding of mental illness among the sufferers ▪ To teach persons with mental illness to manage their symptoms and reduce relapses ▪ To enhance the coping skills of persons with mental illness How is the IMR run? In the IMR sessions, the facilitator works collaboratively with participants, offering a variety of information, strategies, and skills that participants can use to further their own recovery. There is a strong emphasis on helping them put strategies into action in their everyday lives. Topics for IMR Program 1 | Recovery Strategies | 2 | Practical Facts about Schizophrenia, Depression & Bipolar | 3 | The Stress-Vulnerability Model and Treatment Strategies | 4 | Building Social support | 5 | Using Medication Effectively | 6 | Reducing Relapses | 7 | Coping with Stress | 8 | Coping with Problems and Symptoms | 9 | Getting Your Needs Met in the Mental Health System |
( Programme Details )
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| Groups, resources, and... dang. |
[19 Jun 2009|06:58am] |
Again, this is happening in the US, but it's quite interesting. I posted to a city-based LJ community, and people were really supportive about the idea of the parade. It was quite heartening. I've also been getting linked to different organizations and anti-stigma groups that I really didn't know about, like the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign.
I've been on HealthyPlace as a support network, for those who maybe are looking for an extra online community. Another (again, based in the states, sorry) interesting program is Madness Radio – look through the show list and see if there's anything that interests you. I think the mission of the show is pretty great. :)
I always get kind of disappointed when I find out I wasn't the first person to be a rebel and chase after these bold ideas – but it's also nice to know that there are other people out there who are fighting, too.
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| you are invited! -- date's confirmed |
[16 Jun 2009|10:30pm] |
What: A cozy meet-up with members
Where: Starbucks @ The Cathay (Nearest MRT: Dhoby Ghaut)
When: 21 June Sunday, 4pm onwards
Bring a friend along if you like. We don't bite. :)
I'll be wearing green on Sunday.
Sale of silver ribbons is on, as usual. $2 each.
Contact person: runny
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| A faraway vision. |
[14 Jun 2009|11:37pm] |
I attended the [gay] Pride parade this morning; whether I'm a roaming teenager unaware of the date or a grown woman who's come to support my peers, I always find myself enjoying the festivities. People dress up, dress down, hug old friends, meet new ones, and generally create a big, gooey conglomerate of love. I quickly become drunk within this atmosphere of acceptance... there are overweight, older women in powered wheelchairs and fit, young men, traveling side-by-side. City commissioners and congressmen wave from rainbow-decorated vehicles. Drag queens, people with bull whips, lesbians on Harley-Davidsons, and gentlemen dressed as scantily-clad Street Fighter maidens are not only allowed in, but cheered on. Everyone's allowed to express themselves – whether it's roller-skating around in a bra or speaking passionately about equal rights – and are embraced for doing so. Everyone's beautiful. Everyone's good. The goal is universal: to love, accept others, and receive in turn.
I observe each year that I grow misty when the [Parents And Friends Of Lesbians and Gays] group approaches, and I see signs that read "proud dad of a lesbian daughter". This go-around, I was further intrigued to discover that my favorite floats were those of the HIV/AIDS groups. The crowds cheered as members holding "get tested!" and "end the stigma!" signs marched through the streets. I clapped too, and thought of how great it was that people would have the courage to represent something that's still so scary and "underground" in our culture.
There's a vision lurking around in my head. How I wish there could be a Mental Wellness Parade. Abuse survivors could hold signs, to be cheered on and hugged from the sidelines. Psychiatrists could drive Corvettes with crane paper and balloons attached... clients on rollerskates wheeling around behind. People would pass out brochures, and churches could welcome new members. The Grand Marshall could be a champion of service in the community. We could be seen as whole people, celebrating how far we've come and where we're going! For a glorious while, we wouldn't have to be afraid of being somehow penalized. To step out into a crowd of acceptance, and say, in public, "I have a therapist" or "I am a survivor" or "I am a representative of this condition", would be such a wonderful experience. The schizophrenic you work with is hidden away because he knows that the only schizophrenics you know are stereotypes on street corners or TV screens; he doesn't want to be judged. But after you see him waving from a float, it wouldn't be the same.
Unfortunately, our society is not ready for this... yet.
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[15 Jun 2009|12:13am] |
Hi, been a long while.
Just thought I'd share my latest creation, since it was extremely therapeutic to make, relaxing, and at the same time exciting. Patience-building. (It took me seven days to get from scratch materials to this point, the bag's missing just the lining currently.)
(Bigger image here.)
It occurred to me that I'd be happy to teach anyone here who was interested, how to knit. Though I'm really quite basic myself, don't know how to do the complicated patterns.
Well, g'day. :)
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[14 Jun 2009|12:07pm] |
Hi everyone, I'm Alex Ong here, you can also choose to address me by my online nickname eXAKR. Though I wrote in my blog that I need some downtime to contemplate things, I feel compelled to join this place and write here as part of the contemplation and healing process.
I'm 22 this year. I have been struggling with obsessive-compulsive for as long as I can remember; however, that's not what's most affecting me in recent years (though it has always been a concern). What's been affecting me most has been my depression, which I was diagnosed with when I went for professional psychiatric help a few months ago.
I don't wish to retype my whole story here (you can read about it in my post here, if you want), so I will just briefly go through it, as well as some of the things I didn't touch on in that post I linked to. I have been bullied throughout my entire life, at one point I was classified as being on the autistic spectrum, and I have always been an outcast everywhere - in school and while in National Service. The latter was especially painful for me - I was the target of a lot of dirty office politics, and I was bullied by superiors and subordinates alike. I veered close to commiting suicide several times while in there, and I was even sent to I.M.H. at least twice during that period.
It's only in the last few days, after seeing a psychiatrist and receiving some anti-depressant medications, that I started to feel better and started to think about things in my life. If you read the entry I linked to (as well as the one immediately after it), you will realise that it was a painful process, and I'm still in the middle of it. I realised recently that my dreams of going to a junior college (one that I had since young) were totally shattered, that what I wished I could have will never going to be mine's in this life. The initial reaction my mind had to this was a great mixed bag of emotions: agony, pain, anger, deep sadness, jealously, anguish, and so on. After a day spent thinking things through and a talk with my sister and her boyfriend, I decided to start on this contemplation and healing process, to decide where I want to bring all aspects of my life to.
In a way, this post of mine's here is part of that contemnplation process. By sharing my experiences here, I wish to find people who have gone through similar situations, as well as the support I need to get through this process.
Incidentally, it was a piece of that shattered dream that brought me here. If I have never found a Hwa Chong Instiution-related LiveJournal community ( ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) apollofaculty ), and randomly clicked on one of the maintainer's user profiles and read it ( ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lipsmacking ), I could have never found this community here. Funny how the universe sometimes work, no? Indirectly, a piece of my dream is helping me through the healing process; maybe it was predestined that they were going to have a positive effect on my life, no matter how odd or indirect the effect is.
I now open the floor to comments from fellow community members.
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| Community meet-up -- I want your votes! |
[11 Jun 2009|01:17pm] |
Hey! I hope this post finds you in good spirits.
It's been a while since we got to meet each other. All members are invited to this gathering, although it's understandably more convenient for those of you on this sunny island.
I'm looking at 20 June Sat 4pm or 21 June Sun 4pm. As always, your ideas on the venue are appreciated. I'd thought of us going to the museum at Institute of Mental Health, but the H1N1 flu situation makes it a lil tough. The traditional chat-over-coffee thingy seems to be safest. Let's see if we can have better suggestions for where to meet.
--> Comment to vote for your preferred day, will you? :) 20 or 21 June.
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[31 May 2009|12:52am] |
Hello all, I'm new to this community and I thought I'd introduce myself a little. I'm a 17 year old female in JC, I found this community while researching for my Project Work which is on self-mutilation among youths in singapore. I started cutting when i was 15. Was sent to a psychotherapist, but I never went back after the first sesison. I've been cutting on a less frequent basis, so I guess that's a good sign. The last time i cut was about a month ago.
I've never been diagnosed, but i've been doing some research and i think i probably have borderline personality disorder, i'm not really sure.
I've been reading through the entries, and I realise I can identify with some of the emotions and thoughts expressed here. it's nice to know I'm not alone; none of us are.
Lastly, I'd like to share some piano pieces I've composed, mostly when i was down. http://www.imeem.com/people/no13d3/playlist/58M3eHgM/encantado-music-playlist/ you might need an imeem account to listen to them.
I hope they will help you relax/calm down/cheer you up and so on.
<3.
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| My Story |
[26 May 2009|07:10pm] |
I'm 20 years old and I am a paranoid schizophrenic. About a year ago I saw the signs in myself, diagnosed myself and went on with life. I thought people around me were talking about me in coded language and then I started feeling like I was being watched and followed. I called these people papanazis, half joking half serious. I didn't know whether to believe it was real or I was just deluded.
After awhile things just seemed like the "papanazis" were every where and I began to feel like I wasn't safe in my own house. I started to think that people were speaking to me through the tv, radio and even the newspaper headings. I thought every one in the world must know me then and came to the conclusion that I was on a hidden camera show. At first I was really angry because I thought my friends or family had signed me up for a show that even put cameras in my bathroom and shower. I was really scared.
I decided to go on a trip to an amusement park with my friends. I went into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. (I thought there were cameras at the camp ground also) As I stared my face began changing into the faces of people I have known (a visual hallucination) then I started hearing voices from across the way from the bathroom, they sounded like they were talking about me (one of the reasons why I thought there were cameras in the bathroom) but I realized that the only way they could be talking about me is if they knew what I was thinking. It was then that I adopted this belief completely. I walked away from that bathroom thinking, "I'm screwed. I'm fucked. People are going to know every bad thought, every bad thing from my entire life." My brain shut down and I wasn't able to think coherently. I didn't want to think anything bad so much that I forgot how to think and I have spent much of the last year retraining myself how to think normally with people hearing my thoughts. It hasn't been easy.
After I got home from the trip, my mom, who had noticed the changes in me and some of the delusions, checked me into a mental hospital. I thought every one was covering up that they could hear my thoughts and were going to use the stigma of mental illness to shut me up. I fought tooth and nail, even got restrained and put in 'the hole' once. It was awful. They put me on anti-psychotics and told me I had drug induced psychosis. (Btw Months before I had taken too much dmx and I use to smoke a LOT of weed. And I had gotten dropped on my head on the street once while tripping on CCC) While I was in the hospital I thought God was talking to me through the settling noises in my room at night and felt happier than could be.
When I got out I smoked weed a couple times and tripped on CCC once. Both were a little disconcerning. I thought the city would run sirens trying to get me to stop thinking, because if I thought about certain things my mind would create horrible images for people. This is what I thought from what people were saying in "code". I thought people said that I hoped a couple sick people would die. I knew I would never think something like that so I freaked out. This is where some OCD kicked in. I was irrationally scared of thinking about people because I might accidently think that I hoped they would die and then they might actually die.
I then decided to go off my pills because I thought, I don't need them they just made up my diagnoses to keep me under their control. Once I went off the pills I started hearing voices. I thought this must be some kind of spiritual thing where people can hear my thoughts and now they can talk to me in my head. The voices told me the worst things about what was going on in my subconscience. Then one day I was sitting on my couch and a voice said, "Julia, this is God. Listen. I hate you." and I said, "Awesome!!" With complete seriousness, because hey this is God, he says he hates you, you still love him. He told me he wanted me to RUN to the police station and confess my sins, so I did. He told me I was going to die the next day and I said okay. Then he told me to walk home. On the way he told me to walk down the center line of the road, so I did. My dad then pulled up and told me to get in the car. God told me he had sent my father there and to get in. He took me back to my mothers house where my mom pulled up. Evidently the police had called them. God told me to run, run through the alley, into the back of the house. Inside he said, "Listen I want you to take your mother's chef knife and slice open both your wrists." I just stood there. He said, "Would God tell you to do that. Must be the devil." He told me to run out of the house and run across town and get to my car. On the way I stopped in a deep canal and he told me that an invisible snake was going to bite me. I didn't move. Then my aunt called me and told me she was worried about me and I told her where I was and that she could come pick me up. She picked me up and we met my mom and dad at the church. Then they told me (in my head) I was possesed, by a cat demon, and that they could exercise me but I would die in the process and the demon would rise out of my dead body. The voices also told me I was the anti christ, which I refused to believe. So I went into confession and confessed everything I had been thinking wrong and we left and went to the hospital. There (in my head) they told me that I could really kill people by thinking that I hope they die and that I had already killed people. They put me on meds and I agreed I needed them because they stopped the voices.
At this point the only thing I could think was I hoped people would die because I couldn't forget about it. Then I got stuck thinking about the most precious lives that I wouldn't want lost. When I was out of the hospital the voices told me I needed to kill myself or a little girl would die. So one night when my fiance wasn't staying at my house I swallowed all my pills. Anti-psychotics, pain relievers and an antidepressant/sleep aid combo. I couldn't fall asleep so I just layed there waiting to die. But death never came, I just had the worst high of my life, which lasted a couple of days. I told my fiance about it and swore him to secrecy, because I needed his help lying about losing my pills. They got me new pills and over time I forgot about the making people die thing. And after a while I convinced myself that God doesn't work that way and it must of been the devil talking to me.
Just recently my doctor re-diagnosed me with schizophrenia. The second he mentioned it I remembered my own diagnoses of it and thought it really was possible that this was all in my head. Now my goal is just to get stable enough to get through my wedding next year and then be able to go off meds to have a baby later on. I don't do drugs now, even though I do believe that God likes weed, Gen 1:29-31. I drink occasionally, but it doesn't really effect me negatively. Thanks for listening, I'll share more as life progresses.
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[23 May 2009|09:34pm] |
"Stop abandoning yourself," a therapist, Elizabeth, once said to me.
"What?" I didn't understand.
She explained it like this:
Every time you feel sad and swallow down your tears, you abandon yourself.
If somebody hurts you and you pretend that you are fine, you abandon yourself.
Every time you don't eat, or fail to feed yourself, you abandon yourself.
If you are tired, but refuse to rest, you abandon yourself.
If you drink too much and poison yourself with alcohol, you abandon yourself.
If you don't ask for what you need when you need it, you abandon yourself.
"You suffer," Elizabeth said, "from a failure of care."
From who?
"From yourself," she says. "And before that, from your parents. They are the ones who should have taught you how to take care of yourself."
A failure of care. It sounds so harsh. And at the same time so childlike. Both things are true. An inability to take care of oneself or sooth oneself is a sign of immaturity. It is a failure of understanding, or of teaching. If you are not taught as a child how to take care of yourself, you do not know as an adult. The pattern becomes ingrained. You are now an adult inhabited by a child. The child pleads, the adult overrules. You deny yourself proper care.
- From Shoot The Damn Dog by Sally Brampton
( thoughts )
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| Sleep walking |
[16 May 2009|05:19pm] |
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Has anyone here experience sleep walking before? For what reason will cause one person to sleep walking?
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| NARSAD "Healthy Minds" streamings |
[10 May 2009|02:34pm] |
... award-winning “Healthy Minds” series, which examines the impact of mental illness and what we’re learning about the causes, symptoms and treatment of various disorders ...
... “Healthy Minds” seeks to combat the stigma of mental illness by sharing the stories of patients and their families who are coping with serious mental illnesses on a daily basis, including such disorders as autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, substance abuse and other conditions...
... also offers compelling insight into how prominent researchers in the field of psychiatry, including several NARSAD researchers, are working to combat these illnesses and help those affected lead more productive lives...
http://www.narsad.org/news/video/healthyminds.html
http://www.wliw.org/productions/local/healthy-minds/healthy-minds/164/
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| beauty and daily strength |
[09 May 2009|04:27pm] |
I've been very preoccupied lately and haven't been keeping this community more current and helpful to you. What's interesting amidst these depressing times is that I text about something beautiful each day with a firend, sinnesrorelse. This nudges us to appreciate every bit of goodness around us.
Do you find it hard to pull through an exhausting day? I encourage you to seek daily strength at http://www.dailystrength.org/support-groups. This site offers free anonymous support for almost everything, from alcoholism to personality disorders. Go with an open mind and I hope you'll benefit richly.
Peace,
Runny
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| "The humanity we all share is more important than the mental illness we may not." |
[09 May 2009|03:04am] |
That said, I don't wish to be seen as regretting the life I could have had had I not been ill. Nor am I asking anyone for pity. What I rather wish to say is that the humanity we all share is more important than the mental illness we may not.
With proper treatment, someone who is mentally ill can lead a full and rich life. What makes life wonderful — good friends, a satisfying job, loving relationships, is just as valuable for those of us who struggle with schizophrenia as anyone else. For the person with mental illness the challenge is to find the life that's right for you. But in truth, isn't that the challenge for all of us, mentally ill or not? My good fortune is not in having recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.
— Elyn R. Saks
Elyn Saks is a mental health law expert and respected legal scholar. She is Associate Dean and Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, University of Southern California, an adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, and the author of several books. She is happily married. She also has schizophrenia.
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| "Memoirs of IMH" |
[06 May 2009|03:40pm] |
Someone sent these to me. I'm not sure if they have been circulating around. They made me so angry. I don't see how it can conceivably be funny, and only find them offensive, though the last "record" does make a salient point about the difference between being unwell and being unintelligent. What do you think?
A comment I wrote on the e-mail: This is insensitive, disrespectful, and shows no empathy whatsoever to other people's pain. I am ashamed that people actually write such "jokes". I seriously doubt anyone would find it a "good laugh" if it were written about something like cancer. This e-mail made me so angry.
( The e-mail is under here. )
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| swine flu -- no sweat |
[03 May 2009|12:31pm] |
SWC is one of the wards designated as quarantine zone for containment of the swine flu situation. Psychiatrists were encouraged to discharge SWC patients so as to vacate the ward. Long-stay patients were transferred to B2 and C class wards. I'm not exactly a long-stay patient, but I opted to transfer to Raffles Hospital to continue treatment till I'm stabiliized. I'm in a general ward, and it's tough getting used to round-the-clock beeps of life-saving machinery. I witnessed Code Blue for the first time last night.
I hope it's not all gloom and doom for you. Admittedly, now is not an easy time, especially for friends who have phobia of germs, and well, hypochondriac people. Come on, we can conquer paranoia, yeah! Even if you're not queasy about someone sneezing next to you, now is a dreary time to be stuck in hospital. I only have Kevin as my visitor and we can't take walks. He even started a collection of those small stickers with his temperature inked on them. And he looked pretty cute in a mask; I never appreciated the manliness of his eyes until now.
Peace to all.
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