Culture Prepare yourselves: Skitzocow numbers likely to explode soon - Hearing voices isn't bad, just different, say new activists who don't want to call it schizophrenia

https://www.statnews.com/2017/07/13/hearing-voices-mental-illness/

For Rachel Waddingham, who first heard the voices when she was 18, learning to cope with them without medication changed her life.

After coming across the Hearing Voices Network about 15 years ago, she made a conscious decision not to identify as mentally ill. When she told her long-term psychiatrist she wanted to taper off her medication, she got resistance. “Why won’t you let me help you?” the psychiatrist asked.

But Waddingham said if she had a choice, she wouldn’t want to get rid of her voices. They have helped her in many ways: She is good at focusing because she has to block out the voices and skilled at managing conflict because the voices can be “pretty harsh.” She also thinks she is more generous as a person, more open to others’ perspectives and more in touch with her own anxieties. The voices serve as a kind of early warning system for internal stress.

“If I pay attention, I know before it becomes an issue,” she said.

Next step: only doctors who hear voices are qualified to treat patients who hear voices!

 

[Slumber Crasher]

Well this has got to be one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Unmedicated schizophrenics are a danger to themselves and the people around them, and most of them don't have the presence of mind to choose whether they should be medicated or not. The fact that his person thinks the voices are helping her is probably just another symptom of her illness.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

This is horrific.

 

[Jan_Hus]

Has there ever been a skitzo that only heard helpful voices? Like, they'd be in their home, rocking back in forth as a voice in their head is yelling, "YOU NEED TO SEEK PSYCHIATRIC ASSISTANCE!!"

Actually, it varies by culture...

 

[redcent]

As former schizo sufferer, all I can say is that won't end well.

Wouldn't get me off my meds if you... well I would if you pointed a gun at me. But otherwise wouldn't. This woman is batshit and not just because of "voices"- if she even us schizo and not one of these idiots with "multiple systems" or whatever the fuck they call it now

 

[Johnny Bravo]

There's nothing wrong with being mentally ill. It doesn't make you a bad person, just different, so keep taking your meds.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I think it's at least partly this "there's no mental disability" attitude that's throwing mentally ill people out on the streets or in jail.

Spoiler

Is the West getting better?

 

[Dysnomia]

This is fucking terrible. Not only terrible, but extremely dangerous. Untreated schizophrenia only gets worse. Schizophrenia is a progressive mental illness. You have to be on meds 24/7, because if you go off them, you will get worse and it will not revert back to a more mild form.

There is only pausing the progression. And eventually, if left untreated, very little works. It also gets worse as you age.

My neurology prof said the worst disease he encountered was schizophrenia. Because eventually, you not only hear voices, it progresses to losing all touch with reality. Encouraging schizophrenics to not medicate or seek treatment is some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard. The things that we do for feelings these days is insane. We are actively promoting ruining lives.

The woman can ignore them now, but it only gets worse. She is going to end up homeless, screaming at traffic because eventually those voices will overwhelm her and destroy any semblance of reality.

There's so many homeless with mental conditions. This will only add to the population. But "muh schizo culture". It's easy for the tumblr kids playing pretend. But not for real sufferers. It's gone from everything being ableist to this so fast. It's like there's a portion of the population all ready to destroy humanity as quickly as possible so feelings won't get hurt.

 

[A Straight White Male]

How long until the person in the article is outed for not having schizophrenia? Her attitude alone shows that she really doesn't have it. If she did then she'd want it gone asap.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

Next up, going down the list: arguing that we shouldn't shame serial killers.

 

[Johnny Bravo]

Next up, going down the list: arguing that we shouldn't shame serial killers.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised.

 

[Begemot]

I honestly wouldn't be surprised.

Sounds like you're stopping marginalised serial killers from engaging with their lived experiences, sounds like you're erasing those very real experiences. Looks like bigotry to me, kiddo.

 

[Tragi-Chan]

I don't know a huge amount about schizophrenia, but it seems to me that this approach is only suitable where you have a fairly mild case and the person has a really good support network. It also worries me that you may well get the situation where a case goes untreated, gets worse and the patient finds themselves a lot worse than they were before, making them harder to treat.

Plus, can you really say a person who hears voices is capable of deciding whether or not they're mentally ill? I mean, for all anyone else knows, the voices could be telling them not to seek treatment because Jesus will abandon them or something.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

I don't know a huge amount about schizophrenia, but it seems to me that this approach is only suitable where you have a fairly mild case

There's no such thing as "mild" schizophrenia. Like someone said upthread, unless you're on the right meds, its a progressive disease. Unless you're an absolute freak of nature like the guy from "A Beautiful Mind", you will eventually spiral from hallucinations to delusions to psychotic breaks to full detachment from reality. And then you get a thread here.