Personal Narrative: My Experience With Mental Disorder

When I heard that these disorders could also affected me resulting from major depressive disorder, I was still in denial mode. Then I came to realize that having MDD was only affecting me, but also affecting my family and my friends. I became a bother to them and also came to realization that I needed help. So I asked my parents to help me seek treatments to where I can get back to my normal self. My normal self was a person that was cheerful, always making jokes, happy, and just lived life to the fullest. I miss my normal self. The treatments that I had were very affective. The disorder that I was treated for is psychotherapy, where I talked about what is making me think negative thoughts and it allow discussing how I can improve on thinking

Still till this day he hasn't got arrested or the detectives have not gave me updates . RIght now am doing very good i still go to therapy if didn't i think i would be a big mess.it has helped me alot i have become a better person it made see things different. I do sometimes have my bad days and weeks but i go thru them . it's hard for me to come to school every year since i told my parents . if we have a 3 day weekend it hard for me to come back to school and get used to the people .

Growing up in Reading, Pennsylvania in a lower-class neighborhood being raised by my maternal grandmother, I did not realize how different my life was from those outside my community. It was normal for me to see empty drug baggies on the ground, people coping drugs on the corner, abandoned buildings, and crime. As I got older, and my network of people grew, I started to notice some differences. However, it wasn’t until I left home at age 18 to attend college did I fully realize that my “normal” was not the “normal”. Most people I grew up with came from low income households and had one or both parents addicted to drugs or alcohol and mines were no different. The 80s-crack cocaine epidemic hit my family hard and by the end of that era my mother and her 6 siblings were all addicted. My mother’s disease progressed over the years and by 1999 she was an IV drug user, who attended 17 different treatment centers, been to jail 3 times, and overdosed countless times.

When it comes to my mental health, I can honestly say so far in my personal life, I have never experienced with any mental health issues. I think that I am very unaware what people go through when they have a mental health issue and I would really like to know more about the different mental health problems. People whom I am close with that have experience with mental health. My sister suffers from anxiety, but not severely. I have a few cousins whom I am close to that have experienced with mental health problems. One of my cousins suffers from the mental illness, anorexia. My sisters and I were very close to her when we were younger, but when her mental illness took over her life, she became a different person.

No one considered that Schizophrenia was the ailment that tormented my brother. We assumed it was just stress and anxiety that stole his nights, his sanity, and his joy. We all believed that it was just a phase my happy, go-lucky, comic brother would get over. After all, doesn't everybody go through these rough patches of their life, and like a phoenix tried through a fire, rise triumphantly? That was my hope for my brother. But as the days progressed, fatigue mixed with delusions consumed my brother’s thoughts and disrupted his ability to function. As a sister, I felt helpless watching my big brother, my hero, and my confidant going through the greatest battle of his life - mental illness. Episodes and psychiatric breakdowns were constant,

It’s a struggle to get out of bed sometimes, I often just sit there struggling to comprehend the sequence of events which have taken place over the past year. I mean, I’m used to this now, its normal to me, but the fact that this has happened and that I am now ‘disabled’ as people would put it is hard to get my head around. And every time I look down I’m reminded of the pain and the struggle I faced, it’s a physical scar which links me to my grueling past, a physical and emotional journey.

The depression is overwhelming. I cry uncontrollably. At its worst, I cannot move. Gravity seems to have added weight tenfold. I wake up in my bed, struggling to get out. I am unable to. Breathing hurts. I try to cry out for help, but I cannot move my mouth to form the words in my disgusted mind. I am trapped in my own head. I am trapped in my own body, a body that is entirely numb.

Working with substance abuse clients fits with my career goal as I am pursuing the degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. The reason for entering the counseling field was/is a genuine desire to help people who are going through difficult time in their lives and to show them there is a way out and there is a life that is worth of living. Personally, I have not experienced or have had people who abused substances, (overly) however, from the grief experience to a caregiver role intrigued me to pursue mental health as a whole. It is clear that mental health and substance abuse can have a powerful effect on one health, his/her family, and community. Having this in my mind, is nothing could be more rewarding than knowing that I could save

An accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that played a key role in shaping who I am today was we when I no longer treatment for my mental illness – Major Depressive Disorder.

Mental health disorders can affect anyone regardless of how much we make, what we do for work, or where we live. It is also very difficult for most people to be able to afford to pay for mental health services. In a recent article in the newspaper it mentioned how people are having a hard time to afford rents in this area. When it comes down to be able to pay your rent, paying for mental health therapy, or mental health prescriptions, rent will win every time. I work full time and I looked into how much it would cost for ongoing mental health treatment if it were necessary, and the cost is astounding, and that’s with insurance. There are regular visits with Primary Care Physicians that are required to monitor your progress which has a

Before beginning this personal narrative, I read and re-read the instructions. They clearly stated that one must be able to describe a health, illness or healing experience in detail. I guess I must consider myself fortunate that I haven’t had much to associate with illness. The people dearest to my heart have been mostly healthy. As a family we had not had much experience with hospitals. Besides an occasional visit to the doctor for a cold or a general checkup, our encounters with doctors had been minimal. Personally, I don’t like doctors or medication; the less medical attention I seek the better. However, I am grateful to live in a country that offers a free health care.

I sat on the table covered in all too familiar low grade tissue paper that everyone recognizes from their yearly physical check ups. I despise being at the doctor's office, but I needed to figure out what all these panic attacks meant. I remember feeling foolish going to the doctor for such a thing. It was embarrassing to think I had some sort of issue that I couldn’t contain. After running through a long list of fixed questions such as: “Does your breathing increase? Yes. Do your extremities go numb? Yes. Can you feel the attacks coming on? Sometimes.” etc.

I have schizophrenia and I live with schizophrenia. This is my story. I remember being a teenager and loving every bit of life from school work, my family, my dogs and my friends. I was always known for my positive attitude and energy and being the life of the group. This all started to change around the age of 13 or 14 for me. The voices began one late afternoon on my way home from school. At first I thought it was just my imagination until I realized there was no off button for them. The voices continued to appear from this day on and I gradually lost myself within them. I started to shelter myself from my family and friends and believed I was slowly losing my sanity. I was scared to share my experience with anyone so I kept to myself withdrawn from the world I once loved.

I am a warm hearted person, a superb student—and a victim of a mental illness. I bet you didn't see the last one coming, did you? Didn't think so. Of course on the outside I look like the basic mill-of-the-run teenage girl: long hair, even longer eyelashes, a flamboyant romper, and, of course, a pair of Tory Burch sandals. I even act like an average teenage girl: obsessed with coffee, shopping, grades, and my social life. However, I am much more complex than that.