Survivor mission…

Pat Deegan who I’ve mentioned on this site before speaks in this video of her experience of being diagnosed with schizophrenia and recovering. She also talks about what all of us who have been labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis experience—the loss of identity as it’s handed over to us being our disease.

I met Pat Deegan once and listened to her speak at a conference when I was a social worker. I was heavily medicated at the time.

I wish she would talk more about the importance questioning the overuse of meds. She’s gotten off meds but she takes a somewhat laissez faire approach to suggesting others are often extremely over-medicated. I don’t know if that’s quite fair to say, but she does work within the system, so she only rocks the boat so far, even though her story is a radical message and if one listens carefully she is certainly suggesting just that.

But I listened to her all those years ago, only half-way functioning, half a sleep on drugs and never realized just how much her story applied to me. The drugs were killing me just as they had muted her life completely before she freed herself from them. Perhaps she planted some seeds that took root later in my life.

And another great one:

Her website is here. It’s also been in my sidebar a long time and will remain there.

There is also a great interview with her on Madness Radio, which I may have actually put on my blog already….not sure. Much more details about her story in this interview. It’s truly worth listening to and it’s about an hour long.

So much for being told “schizophrenics” can’t recover! We all can recover. We need to believe it though!

First published 2008