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Dear Mental Health Professionals – You Need People With Lived Experience On Your Team. Here’s Why.
Dear researchers, clinicians, and other professionals who work with people who experience psychosis, My name is Katie and I have been living with schizoaffective disorder since 2008. And you need people like me. I don’t mean as patients or research subjects or consumers of any kind. I mean as a fellow professional. Because my lived experience, and that of others, can change the way we look at and treat those living with psychosis. I can give you insights you can’t find anywhere but the minds of those living with psychosis. I’ve been a psychosis advocate for years. I’ve worked independently, as an ambassador for NAMI Chicago, and, most recently, as…
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A Stereotype, Schizophrenia, and How I Had It All Wrong
Before I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, I believed some of the stereotype. Here's what the stereotype got wrong and how it impacted me.
- Adapting to life with schizoaffective disorder, Cognitive Symptoms, Recovery, Schizoaffective Disorder, Schizophrenia
Adapting to life with schizoaffective disorder (part 4) – cognitive issues
In the beginning of my senior year of high school, I found myself sitting at my desk in AP Calculus staring at the result of my test. D. How did this happen? I studied harder. C-. I broke out the flash cards, had friends help me study, but I could not do it. It felt like it didn’t matter what I did, I couldn’t reliably remember the formulas. For someone who was used to straight A’s, this was like a blow to the gut. No one had told me that schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder came with cognitive deficits. Before then, academics had always come easily to me. At the time…
