Life

Last week I talked about staying positive with all the news.  I am going to talk about having hope all the time.  This came to me this week when talking to my daughter.  Life has a way of going up and down.  One week or day things might be going good.  Then the next week things might starting happening that bring you down and you just want to give up.  That is what my daughter told me.  You just have to try and stay positive all the time and know that time will pass.  It is the same as if you were locked up time will pass and you will get out.  That is so hard to do wait for time to pass until things get better.  I know I have been locked up and the worse was the state hospital.

I always tried to hurry things up.  In the state hospital I said now I am on this ward I want to go to the Circle program and learn about drug use.  I knew that was something I would have to face sooner or later. I thought if I face it now I can get out sooner.  It still took longer than I had wished.  Throughout all my time in the state hospital taking things slow did teach me a lot that you have to do the work to change yourself.  Why can they not have a speed course and just get through it and you are well.  I wished that many a time.  You just have to be patience and wait and things will change.  They always do nothing ever remains the same.  You have to keep hope that is for all things.
Even with all those years of hurry up and wait in jail or anyplace it still did not give me the patience I need.  It did give me hope that things will change for the better you just have to keep struggling along and you will see that things get better.  I know that people say I don’t have the time to wait for things to change.  I always say what else are going to do in that time might as well make it work or learn something in that time.  I once was facing twenty four years and I took the case to trial it all was going right in the trial until they told me just before lunch they were trying to bring in a witness from the past.
Well that had me worried all during lunch we went to a fast food restaurant and a person I knew from that past kept talking to me and I could not remember her and she came to my house almost every day.  Although my mind was not on lunch it was on the trial and did I make a mistake in going to trial?  When I received the food and went out to the car I remembered the girl and did not know how I forgot her.  Well after lunch my lawyers had been still working and they did not allow that witness in the trial although the judge took a law away from me after lunch that would be crucial to me winning this case.
I was found guilty of one case and acquitted of the other.  Although I would win on appeal because of the law the judge took away from me.  Although I would be in prison for two year until my appeal and would become mentally ill in prison.  I had hoped that I would soon get out and I did not and was not the same person who went in although I won my appeal.  That stress in prison or some stress sooner or later would have set off my mental illness.  If they would have taught me what a mental illness was maybe I would not have had to go to the state hospital and maybe I would have never went to college otherwise.  Through it all you have to have hope that sooner or later things will improve for the better.  Come this April which is also my not drinking anniversary also I will be out for twenty years since I last was locked up.  That came with hope and change of my life.

Staying Positive

That is hard to do with all the news being negative and life just getting a person down in the dumps.  I am doing better than I used to be at staying positive.  I can remember why I started reading positive books when I was going to college and had just been released from the state hospital.  Nothing went right before that when I received my driver’s license at sixteen I had just backed my car into my uncle’s car that he had just fixed up a 1966 Chevy super sport he forgave me but that is how my life went negative. It seemed nothing went right.  I was always in trouble and my uncles would always bail me out.  The news now has a lot of people that do things that are not because they have a mental illness.
If they do have a mental illness they make the news right away.  Delusions I can understand although these people without a mental illness I do not understand what makes them that way.  If you do have a mental illness they stick you in jail where you should not be. As this article says. Which I agree with is why I am putting up the link.  I still get down now days after reading all those positive books years ago.  Life has a way of doing that to a person.  Although I also know that I will get through those bad days and they will look sunny again.  You just have to have the hope that the future will be better again.
I don’t say the affirmation’s like I used to although if times get really tough I will.  I have been locked up before and know that sooner or later you get out and life hopefully will be better.  It takes work though you have to work on yourself.  I know that going to groups and working on your self requires a lot although a person is worth it. As I wrote last week and the week before college was no walk in the park.  I wanted it more than anything I knew I did not want to go back to work construction it would mean driving again and when I did work construction I was drinking and that was before I was twenty one.  I remember my girlfriend saying one night when I came home from work you’re already drunk and you just got off work.
We would get off work and have shots in a parking lot that is how bad it was.  I never want to repeat those days.  I only hit a parked car and it is only by the grace of God that did not hit another car and kill someone.  I was not even nineteen when I hit that parked car. It was the beginning of jail for me and it never ended until I went to the state hospital and changed my life around.  Everyone does not get the time or work to put in too lead two different lives.  I did and I still have compassion for my fellow man when I read they have a mental illness or a substance abuse problem.  I was there and that is all takes to remember and stay positive because I went through a lot.
I can always think of how my life could have been different if I would have stayed in school and went to college before I was middle aged.  My uncles that went through a lot to always bail me out their life might have been better also. I will never know.  Through it all I have to stay positive and help and guide my grandchildren so they do have the chance to go to college when they are supposed to a live a good life.

Mental Illness and College

This is the second half of last week’s blog .  I never gave up on college as I knew it was my only chance at succeeding in a good life.  As I did not want to work a construction job any more.  The disability office was going through changes and I started working with a program called student support.  I kept taking computer classes and they were not working out and they told me one lower grade and I would be suspended from college.  I told the professor as I did the work that if he would pass me this semester I would not take any more computer classes.

Student support told me to look for a new major and they told me since I had drug and alcohol experience I should take those classes as a major.  I did and I still was going half time to school so I would not fail. One class I had to take was geography and was not doing too good in it. We went on a field trip to red rocks and the teacher drove me back as I do not drive.  On the way we talked and I ended up telling her I had a disability she told me about the disability office and that she would give me a no credit if I wanted to go to the disability office and take the class again next semester.  I told her no I would talk to the disability office and still try and pull this class with a good grade.  The whole class was not doing so great and the teacher gave us a copy of the final test to review.
I took my home and that whole weekend at work and at home I studied that test and memorized it.  I passed all except where places are in Colorado.  The teacher had said never ask me the directions because I will get you lost.  I passed the class and I think my being locked up for the last ten years is why I never knew where to go in Colorado.  I only knew Canon city and the state hospital in Pueblo.  Also for that test the disability office let me take the test in private and with someone reading me the questions. I read the answers right off from memorizing the test.  In another class I had failed the first test than I talked to a student about helping me with the notes.  She did and I brought up the grade and the girl that helped me was the top scorer in the class from helping me.
I finally was at the last year of my classes and took internships in drug and alcohol counseling. It all went good until my last internship then I was leading a group of teenagers about drug and alcohol.  I was not supposed to be leading groups since I was not certified yet but wanted to learn all I could.  There was a young man in the group that did well in the group but the people who owned the center were going to have this young man kicked out and fail him because his parents did not see anything wrong with marijuana which he had been caught with at school.  That was the people I wanted to help teenagers from making the same mistakes that I did.  I was angry and finished and graduated but that spring I enrolled in a Master’s program at University of Colorado at Denver. It had took me eight years to finish my bachelor’s although I wanted to work at something I felt good about so I went back for my Masters.
I finished that Master’s and learned how to do research.  That is what I wanted to do now. I also was involved in the disability office there and had a note taker.  I finished faster in three years and finally was able to work in research.

College and Mental Illness

College and mental illness have been in the news lately here is one link.  I am going to write this blog about when I went to college and some of the struggles I had.  I was released from the state hospital in 1993 around April and was sent to live in a boarding house. You had to be out of the boarding house from nine to three in the afternoon.  So I decided college that fall.  My first day in college I had a relapse because a few months before they had lowered my medication.  And the stress of finally starting what I had wanted to do was just too much.  There were over one thousand five hundred people on campus that day. I am a paranoid schizophrenic person and all those people were just too much for me.  I did my best to walk through them and head to downtown.  I reached downtown and called my mom on the pay phone and told her I could not make at the school.

She said “Call your doctor” I was afraid to because people who went back to the state hospital did not get a chance to come back to the streets for a long time.  I went back to the boarding house because there was no place to go being the way I was.  They let me in even though it was day time.  I gave the program manager most of my money because I was scared I would start drinking and get in trouble and be in worse shape.  A day went by and they called the state hospital and told them to come and get me.  I said fine you people do not have any French dressing anyway.  The state hospital came and picked me up and we drove back to Pueblo.  I thought it was the end of my being on the streets although when I told them they had lowered my medication to low.  They upped my medication and I was only there for a weekend and they let me come back to the boarding house.
When I was at the state hospital they had told me I could go to college half time and still graduate if it was too much for me.  I had a Spanish class and the professor had said that if you miss more than three days a person would fail.  One of the social workers in the hospital had a brother that worked at the college.  I went to him and explained what happened he dropped the Spanish class and put me in an English class that was a beginner course.  Also I was taking computer classes.  Well as the semester finished I did not do so well and they were going to kick me out of college.  This lady who my friend’s brother had introduced me to told me if you had a disability you could stay in college.  I said I have one and I was able to prove it with paperwork. They sent me to the disability office it was small back then.  They told me to ask someone in my computer class if they would tutor me and they would pay them.  I also only took two classes because I was going go to school half time.
It worked I was getting very good grades in computer with the tutor’s help.  He did this for about three semesters than the disability office told me after one of the semesters they did not have the money for tutors anymore.  I continued to go to college without help from the college disability office.  I continued taking English classes but to this day I do not get the hang of it.  One of my professors told me you are always here and you do the work so I have to pass you even though you do not get it.  Another subject I did not get was math and I had been so good at math in grade school.  I started that at CCD also at the beginning to try and learn and I never was good at that either.  Well I will finish this next week how I finally graduate and how long it took me and the changes I went through.

Inside a Mental Hospital Called Jail

That is the title of this article click on the link to read the whole story. “The largest mental health center in America is a huge compound here in Chicago, with thousands of people suffering from manias, psychoses and other disorders, all surrounded by high fences and barbed wire.  Just one thing: It’s a jail. The only way to get treatment is to be arrested.  Psychiatric disorders are the only kind of sickness that we as a society regularly respond to not with sympathy but with handcuffs and incarceration.  And as more humane and cost-effective ways of treating mental illness have been cut back, we increasingly resort to the law enforcement toolbox: jails and prisons. More than half of prisoners in the United States have a mental health problem, according to a 2006 Justice Department study.  Among female inmates, almost three-quarters have a mental disorder.” That is a drag when the only way to get treatment is to go to jail.  What about the regular inmates the ones that do not have a mental illness.  You have enough doing your time than you have to worry about someone who has a mental illness to.  When I went to jail from the state hospital no one messed with my stuff do you know why because I had a mental illness and they did not know what I would do if they stole or did anything to me yes they were frightened.

You have games in the state hospital now in jail and prisons too.  You just want to do your time and get out. “People are not officially incarcerated because of psychiatric ailments, but that’s the unintended effect. Sherriff Dart says that although some mentally ill people commit serious crimes, the great majority are brought in for offenses that flow from mental illness.  One 47-year old man I spoke to, George, (I’m not permitted to use last names for legal reasons) is bipolar, hears voices and abuses drugs and alcohol.  He said he had been arrested five times since October for petty offenses.  The current offense is criminal trespass for refusing to leave Laundromat.  The sheriff says such examples are common and asks: ‘How will we be viewed, 20, 30, 50 years from now? We’ll be looked on as the ones who locked up all the mentally ill people. It really is one of those things so rich with irony: The same society that abhorred the idea that we lock people up in mental hospitals, now we lock people up in jails.’”  They should not be there in jail for petty crimes.  It seems like there are far too many not getting the treatment on the streets that they need.
The article goes on to say: “ A few data snapshots: Nationwide in America, more than three times as many mentally ill people are housed in prisons and jails as in hospitals, according to a 2010 study by the National Sheriffs’ Association and Treatment Advocacy Center.  Mentally ill inmates are often preyed upon while incarcerated, or disciplined because of trouble following rules.  They are much more likely than other prisoners, for example, to be injured in a fight in jail, the Justice Department says. Some 40 percent of people with serious mental illnesses have been arrested at some point in their lives.  In the 1800s, Dorothea Dix led a campaign against the imprisonment of the mentally ill, leading to far-reaching reforms and the establishment of mental hospitals. Now we as a society have, in effect, returned to the 1800s. In 1955, there was one bed in a psychiatric ward for every 300 Americans; now there is one for every 3,000 Americans, the 2010 study said. So while more effective pharmacological treatments are theoretically available, they are often very difficult to access for people who are only borderline.” I am different if I ever was in trouble again I would want to go to jail if I am medicated.  I’ve been to both the state hospital and jail.  I did not like jail unmedicated but would prefer it if I was medicated.
Ending the article: “TAXPAYERS spend as much as $ 300 or $400 a day supporting patients with psychiatric disorders while they are in jail, partly because the mentally ill require medication and extra supervision and care. ‘Fiscally, this is the stupidest thing I’ve seen government do, Dart says.  It would be far cheaper, he adds, to manage the mentally ill with a case worker on the outside than to spend such sums incarcerating them.  Cook County has implemented an exemplary system for mental health support for inmates. While in jail, they often stabilize.  Then they are released, go off their medication and cycle repeats.’”  They need the stabilization out here.  When a jail becomes a mental ward we need help.

Schizophrenia in the limelight: Film-industry technology provides insights

That is the title of this article I am reviewing for this blog.  “The first 30 seconds of a social encounter is crucial for people with symptoms of schizophrenia for establishing contact with people, according to new research carried out at Queen Mary University of London.  Using motion capture technology more commonly found in the film industry, the researchers studied social interactions of patients in a group and analysed the patterns of verbal and non-verbal communication.  Publishing in the journal PLOS ONE today, researchers found people with schizophrenia are sidelined in conversation even when other participants are unaware of their illness.  To examine this, scientists set up a conversation between three people and investigated how peoples’ involvement varied.  Each participant wore clothing with 27 reflective markers, which were tracked in 3D by an array of infrared cameras in the Augmented Human interaction Laboratory, part of Queen Mary’s School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.”  I already know I hardly start a conversation.  I have always been shy all my life.  I have to know a person before I will open up.  So I cannot say if it ties into my schizophrenia.

People talk to me I will answer. “This is the first time motion capture techniques have been applied to clinical populations to analyse how people relate to each other, and the complex social barriers faced by some people with mental health problems, said co-author Professor Pat Healey, head of Cognitive Science Research Group, which is part of the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. ‘Nonverbal communication, such as gestures, nodding and posture, are key part of face-to-face communication.  The motion capture equipment allows us to study this non-verbal choreography in live interactions in an unprecedented level of detail.’ In the study, the team observed that people with symptoms of schizophrenia were more withdrawn and less likely to be spoken to in the opening moments of the conversations, and found it harder to engage the other participants.  The difficulties in these opening moments are connected with other participants feeling less rapport immediately following the encounter but aren’t linked to the severity of the patient’s illness, which were measured by standard assessments of symptoms.” I always nod yes or no.  Although I learned in prison when I was running a gambling table that you never show any emotion on your face if you are trying to make money. I have developed that so I never show what is going on with me.  Except with my family they know sometimes when things bother me.
The article goes on to say: “Co-author Dr Mary Lavelle, now based at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, said: ‘This research demonstrates the impact of first impressions on interpersonal success for people with schizophrenia.  Understanding why this happens could be key in tackling the social difficulties experienced by patients.’ It’s known that interactions with others are important for people showing symptoms or that have been diagnosed or treated for schizophrenia—those that have better social networks are more able to cope with their illness.  Co-author Professor Rose McCabe, now based at University of Exeter Medical School, said: ‘The research could be critical in supporting patients with schizophrenia because we know that those who have good interpersonal relationships have much better health outcomes, and it will help us take the next steps toward improving outcomes and reducing social exclusion.’ Professor Healey added: ‘In future it may be possible to use motion capture from video game technology such as the Kinect system to get similar data from more everyday surroundings.’” I know from reading the web that other schizophrenia people have this same problem.  Some cannot like be start a conversation unless it is about the weather. If someone knows me I talk about my grandkids.  Although it is hard for me to keep a conversation going.

Bacteria May Be at Fault in Antipsychotic-Induced Weight Gain

That is the title of the article I am writing about.  Sooner or later they have to find out why we gain weight with medicine and what can be done about it. “The 100 trillion or so bacteria that reside in the human gastrointestinal tract may offer an unexpected benefit—a means of countering weight gain from use of antipsychotics.  A solution to the problem of antipsychotic-provoked weight gain may lie in the bacteria that make their home in the gut, some researchers believe.  Animal research has suggested that bacteria that reside in the gut play a key role in energy regulation and obesity.  A link between obesity and gut bacteria has also been found in humans.  Moreover, John Cryan, Ph.D., chair of anatomy and neuroscience at University College Cork in Cork, Ireland, and his colleagues recently found, in rats, that chronic olanzapine treatment altered the composition of bacteria living in the gut.  Cryan and colleagues thus reasoned that if they were able to find a way of reversing olanzapine-induced weight gain in the animals.  I hope they find out what causes this weight gain and find something that works to reduce it.  I really doubt that I will ever be at the weight I was for thirty years till I stopped smoking and gained all this weight.  It did not happen slowly either I gained pretty fast.

All I really want to lose is my stomach. “First they gave the rats olanzapine and found that it led not only to rapid weight gain and an increase in visceral fat, but to shift in the abundance of the major types of bacteria inhabiting the animals’ guts.  Specifically, it increased the phyla Firmicutes and decreased the phyla Bacteriodetes. This same shift had been found in obese animals and humans in the past.  They gave the rats a cocktail of broad spectrum antibiotics.  They found that the antibiotics not only caused the bacteria in the guts of the rats to shift back toward their original state, but attenuated the rats’ olanzapine-induced weight gain and visceral fat accumulation by some 20 percent.  Thus it looked as if antibiotics might be a way of countering antipsychotic-induced weight gain in humans.  A problem with this strategy, though, is that it could increase antibiotic resistance, which is of broad public-health concern, the researchers pointed out in their report which was published online October 1, 2013, in Translational Psychiatry. We all know that taking antibiotics lowers them working the next time or in the future.  At least they are working on the problem.  Do not know how long it will take to find a cure so people do not gain weight in the future off of antipsychotics.
The article ends with: “Nonetheless, they believe that gut bacteria might constitute a new target for finding a way of countering antipsychotic-induced weight gain in humans.  And as Cryan told Psychiatric News, ‘We are currently investigating whether other strategies for manipulating the gut microbiota may be useful in animal models and then [Tested] in humans.’ Meanwhile, other research groups are using gut bacteria to counter obesity due to causes other than antipsychotics, Cryan noted.  ‘This is a really exciting area, probably the best developed in microbiome research.’” Yes it is exciting that someone is working on this and they are finding out what is causing all this weight gain from antipsychotics.  Now if they can find a way to stop it that does not hurt people with mental illness.