10:43pm April 29, 2014

With regard to the psychosis not being discussed here often…

patternsmaybe:

youneedacat:

…I feel a little the same about delirium. I know it’s not the same, because delirium is considered a purely physical condition that goes away (eventually, sort of, usually) when the physical cause goes away. So it’s considered in some ways more ‘acceptable’ to have than psychosis is.

But I had a lot of experiences akin to psychosis that I sometimes feel like I can’t talk about at all — delusions, auditory hallucinations, etc. (In fact at one point, if it weren’t for the fact that I had pneumonia and that was obviously the cause, it was very akin to what schizophrenia is supposed to be like, right down to hearing voices discussing my every move with each other and humiliating and mocking me.) Because I’m so afraid how people will respond to those experiences in general. They feel like something outside of what is supposed to exist. That’s one reason I made my comic. I go between wanting to discuss it, and fearing to discuss it.

The delirium tag has pretty much nothing to do with delirium, also.

That’s also true of dementia I think. People don’t talk about it as something that people experience. They talk about it is something that happens to families of people with dementia.

There’s a very strong attitude that having dementia is the same as dying and people don’t matter anymore once they start experiencing it/stop being real. It scares me.

It scares me too.

A lot.

Especially since dementia runs in my family, and I now stand a chance of getting old, and I have some other risk factors.

I’m not so much afraid of dementia itself. I’m afraid of becoming an unperson again.

I’m afraid of what will happen to my parents if one of them develops it. My family used to have a very strong set of values where if an elder was sick you took care of them, you didn’t dump them in a home. I still have those values, but I’m unable to take care of my parents if that should happen to either of them. I think my brothers are able to take care of my parents, but I don’t know if they share my values in that regard. The thought of either one of my parents shut up in a home scares the bejeezus out of me, but my father especially. My mother is more adaptable in that regard, I think, although I don’t want either one of them to feel they have to adapt to such a place in the first place.

Whenever I talk about people with dementia needing human rights, someone always asks me if I’ve ever known anyone with dementia. As if, if I simply knew, had family members, etc., then I’d understand why human rights are impossible. At the same time I feel like trotting out the people I’ve known with dementia to win an argument cheapens my relationship with them.

I do see a lot of differences between how people are treated when they have psychosis, delirium, or dementia. But I also see a lot of similarities. And the conditions themselves can have a lot of similarities. And when you’re written off for having each one, you’re written off in a slightly different way – but again, with similarities.

When I was delirious, people acted as if I was an object that didn’t exist and had no awareness of what was happening. I’ve seen people do the same to people who have dementia and people who are, or appear, ‘actively psychotic’ or 'psychotically withdrawn’. Among other things.

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