Elyn Saks, a professor from UCLA, speaks candidly about her experience with schizophrenia throughout her childhood, as a student at Vanderbilt, Oxford and Yale, and her career. Saks said she had “nice enough” parents and a reasonably normal childhood, but she started having phobias, night terrors and obsessions at age five. During her teen years she suffered from anorexia and had a brief bought with drug use. However, her illness really took a turn for the worse when she went away to college at Vanderbilt. At Vanderbilt Saks became interested in philosophy, which she believed gave her life order, but she still suffered from major psychotic episodes.
Saks, now associate dean of research at UCLA law school and well-known scholar on competency and the right to refuse treatments in patients with mental illness, talked about her book about her life; “The center can not hold; my journey through madness” at the UCLA Medical school grand rounds, which you can view by clicking on the link from this blog entry at schizophrenia.com. Elyn is quick to say that she’s not a person who has overcome a mental illness, but someone who has lived a full and rich life with a mental illness. Saks also goes on to say that without extensive mental health treatments, she would probably not be able to manage outside of a hospital.
(4 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Links to This Article
University Update - UCLA - Professor from UCLA speaks openly about her experience with schizophrenia (3/9/2008)
3 Comments to
“Professor from UCLA speaks openly about her experience with schizophrenia”
I applaud how Elyn Saks has brought schizophrenia and mental illness into public awareness as part of her ‘rich and full life’. Whilst we provide the cloak of anonymity on emotional health specialist bigwhitewall.com it is vital that more people in the public eye talk of their own experiences to help with the destigmatisation of mental and emotional crises - after all, one in six of us have one during our lifetimes.
Professor Saks I applaud you as well. I am giving a training this weekend for a NAMI program called “In Our Own Voice” that teaches consumers that have gone through the process of recovery how to tell their story, from their Dark Days to Successes Hopes and Dreams. This program has been a huge success for not only the general public by raising awareness but for the individual presenting. The public needs to know that recovery is possible it just takes time, support and understanding to get through the process right now.
To bring everyone up to date the NAMI group and other groups that has splintered of NAMI. FAMI, AMI and a host of others have pitied them selves against anyone they identify as “mentally ill”
The group NAMI originally started 20 years ago by a consortium of pharmaceutical companies and Mental Health businesses. The group has scents organized very control freak that they could reach to promote their purpose and philosophies.
The NAMI philosophies in a nut shell are: 1. Medication is the and only answer to all MH issues. 2. That all other treatments including therapies, rehabbing, stress management techniques or even socializing and recreation is a waste of time for those they identified as the “mentally ill”
Those that attend the NAMI meetings are given a glossy and rosy picture of a brave new world where everyone identified as “mentally ill” would be rounded up, confined and kept heavily sedated out of sight of society in big state run asylums.
NAMI organization strongly encourages and supports its members to infiltrate as many MH groups and service providers at every level as possible for the purpose of promoting there own agenda and philosophies.
Join the Conversation! Post a Comment:
Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 9 Mar 2008
