Another good book about mental heath care (also dated) is Listening to Prozac.

Margaret, there’s a great book called Women of the Asylum. it’s a bit dated now (published early ’90s?), but omg–it shows how far we’ve come just in treating mental illness. no, the negative attitudes are still there, but we really have come a long way.

April, i know, right?

Here’s another thought for people who think filing for SSDI is the lazy, easy way – Just wait until you have to show the government your personal financial records and every aspect of your medical history since birth. Tell me how easy that is. I keep having nightmares about George Orwell, 1984, and being trapped in an Animal Farm much than the City of Dallas. Then there is the horror of a government worker looking at my “life story” and joking about how bad I screwed up. Once upon a time I was very functional then I couldn’t hold a job longer than six months…

Seriously, it hasn’t been quite as bad as I thought. I have gotten much needed understanding from those who have interviewed me for my claim. Maybe they do have so many who try to abuse the system they can really recognize those who need help. Anyway, I don’t know for sure yet. So I best not count my govt. employees before I get my check!

Get started on the paper work if you are going to do it. Its a lllloooonnnngggg process. I finished the paperwork last July and I am still waiting.

mizeeyore, i’m so glad you stopped by and now i have a link to your blog. thank you for expressing yourself–i don’t mind long comments at all. this is a subject that i struggle with all the time. i look ok on the outside. i can even “pass” for normal (whatever that is), but it’s the inside that’s all torn up and that’s what people can’t see. i mean, part of the problem with the stigma is that this disability is invisible.

those of us who are “high functioning” mentally ill people catch a lot of shit from those negative nay-sayers who would like nothing better than to call us “lazy” and say that we are “trying to get over” on the system. nothing could be further from the truth. when someone i know asks me why i’m on disability and i CHOOSE to divulge the information, then i get, “well, you seem like you’re doing just fine.”

NEWS FLASH: just because i take the time to keep myself groomed, smelling nice and can hold an intelligent conversation DOES NOT mean that i am OK on the INSIDE. my attitude is until these people have spent a day inside a psych ward, cried all the time for no reason, heard voices, hallucinated, or went manic and went on shopping sprees, or drove recklessly, or worse, attempted suicide, they cant say a goddam thing to me about what I FEEL inside!

it’s a damn shame that the media and TV shows always seem to portray mentally ill individuals as either knife-wielding psychopaths, or dirty, disheveled and walking around mumbling to themselves (altho it is sad to say there ARE some folks like that).

IMHO, mental illness does not discriminate as to who it affects. and these ignorant, uninformed, judgemental individuals neet to get some enlightenment and some knowledge about our illnesses, rather than make blanket statements like “you look normal to me.”

i have read on another blog where this idiot talk show guy was talking about “high functioning” mentally ill people, that if they “can walk and talk, then they can do SOMETHING” meaning work or find a job. first of all, NOBODY asked to be in this condition, okay? none of us sat down and plotted out how we can “get over on the system” by collecting a check for Social Security Disability; on the other side of the coin, there ARE trifling people who make it their business to “get over on the system” by committing fraud, and they DO get caught, but then they make it bad for people WHO REALLY NEED IT.

sorry this post is so long, but this is one subject that really gets my goat. i say until these uppity assed muthafuckas have walked in my shoes, there aint shit they can tell me about HOW I FEEL. PERIOD.

Can’t we just crucify Tom Cruise?