On Mental Illness: Delusion

This is our first blog post by Kathie Harrison, a Bozeman writer who lives with serious mental illness. NAMI Montana is honored to count Kathie as a supporter and we're happy to share her views with the world.


On Mental Illness: Delusion

I saw A Beautiful Mind and began to compare experiences. He was living as a spy in the cold war and acting on information from television and news reels. I had believed the world is a criminal delusion and I have not, to my knowledge, broken the law and as of this writing have not been arrested. I am a consumer.
I had two perceptions at once. I observed typing errors in paperwork, credentials, and mailings that looked like I was being framed so my identity would be stolen or I could be replaced. The facts were convincing me I might be in a criminal system. My cousin, a sheriff deputy, once asked me “How do I approach people like you?” I told him to remember we are reacting to something in our brain.

As with most of the mentally ill I hear voices. I was untreated for three years. In that time I was homeless a month; I was being told to steal an infant and hide. Voices urged me to kill others. I got help even though I never spoke of my experiences. My voices had me in fight; flight, or freeze mode as a counselor told me. Talk, you die! And so I was silent many years. The three F’s ran me. On rare occasions voices comfort compliment and are supportive.

I lived delusional for twenty-five years. Stigma keeps a lot of people silent and I thing also the fear of being laughed at and disbelieved. Paranoid Schizophrenic was my first diagnosis. Paranoia meaning living in fear, schizophrenia meaning one works well alone or likes to be solitary. The first thirteen work years I had I changed jobs may times; my last job lasted six to ten years, You can train people to be more social in the clubhouse setting, and in a job with the public. I am now diagnosed a schizoaffective bi-polar disorder.

Ridiculous is what the mentally ill face when they expose their story. We had a saying in the sixties, “Let all hang out!” Most of what our voices tell us never happens. Mean teasing could follow. I have sixty years of experiences to talk about. I am going to write more often and make a book of collective writings. Perhaps they’ll be in print and read. Life can turn on a dime as a friend said once. Another friend died and the lesson is; do it now; no one knows their future the paranoia is completely gone.

Kathie Harrison