Help for Psychosis

Speaker: CJ, an Oaklawn client. My experiences with psychosis have been going since as long as I can remember. Just seeing and hearing things that like weren’t there and that like didn’t seem like something that should be there. Seeing figures in the dark, hearing things that I’m like, I don’t know what could have possibly made that noise or said that that voice. I knew they weren’t a normal thing and I didn’t know who I could talk to about it. So I just got used to not saying anything about it. I was just withdrawn and just sat with everything. I just wanted to know why I was felt so alone.

Speaker: Cristina Reyes, Therapist, MSW, LSW. Psychosis is a set of symptoms that can affect anyone at any stage of their life, with symptoms varying in severity and affecting everyone very differently. The symptoms are auditory hallucinations, visual those nations delusions and maybe, difficulty performing and work and school.

CJ: I didn’t start receiving treatment until I was about 15. I first got referred to a client through my guidance counselor at Central, mostly because I had a lot of potential, and they wanted to figure out why I was, living up to that potential.

Speaker: Katie Miller, case manager. The Insight program is working with people who have experienced psychosis and different capacities. And I think that through this program, we’re able to find ways to help people understand that even others who have been diagnosed with psychosis or other mental illnesses are good people, functioning people, people who live everyday lives working and driving and having families. And that’s a wonderful thing. It can be helped. And that’s what we’re here to do, is help others to feel capable of living life.

Cristina: Insight delivers comprehensive care by assigning everyone a care coordinator who can link you with any additional resources needed in the community. I’ll teach you activities of daily life, and also educate your families on symptoms and how to address you in a crisis, as well as medication management with the psychiatrist at the team meets with regularly to discuss progress and maybe some ongoing barriers in their treatment, as well as the therapeutic team that, also provides family therapy and education.

CJ: Oaklawn has been very helpful to me and my journey through getting diagnosed. Just having someone to talk to, having someone that can help me get resources that I was lacking, what I was looking for, a job like that. They had resources helping me, like look for a job when I didn’t have any food resources for that. I see things and hear things a lot less often. They’ve been so present to me in the last six years.

Katie: Just because there’s been a diagnosis. It doesn’t make them the psychotic person. They’re a good person with psychosis, and we need to work with them to cope with the psychosis. Not to change who they are as a person. The diagnosis you’re given is not the person that you are. People say, well, I’m psychotic. I’m depressed, I’m bipolar. But that’s not who you are. That’s what you’ve what you’re dealing with. But you as a person are so much more than that.

Cristina: Recovery is possible, right? That is, our tagline, recovery is possible. And it can look like whatever you want it to look like.

Katie: There are people who want to help, who understand maybe not exactly what you’re going through, but how it feels to need to talk to someone. And so I would encourage people who are scared about what their experiencing to just start talking and understand you’re not alone.

CJ: There’s nothing wrong with asking for help. It’s not going to diminish your personal effort. If anything, it’s going to boost it. With the amount of people, just trying to help others in this day and age, they’ll be able to find what they need if they look for it.