Esmé Weijun Wang‘s The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays consists of 13 pieces regarding her schizoaffective disorder, late-stage Lyme disease, severe depression, and bipolar disorder. Although it’s in the title and she begins her book, “Schizophrenia terrifies,” it should be noted here that none of her diagnoses are actually schizophrenia.
Perceived as “high functioning” regarding her mental health diagnoses, Wang admits she doesn’t like the stigma. “I’m uncomfortable because I don’t want to be lumped in with the screaming man on the bus, or the woman who claims that she’s the reincarnation of God.”
The essays involve such issues as leaving college due to psychosis, involuntary hospitalization, society’s views of suicide, the health insurance industry’s faults, post-trauma experiences, and the connection between mental illness and spirituality.
Ilana Masad, NPR, reviewing The Collected Schizophrenias: “One of the more frightening things about any painful experience that isn’t outwardly obvious to the people around us — like some mental and physical illnesses or disabilities — is how difficult it is to communicate what it feels like to those around us. Writers like Wang, however, give us a gift in their ability to convey the indescribable through language.”
Two women who’ve been open about being people with schizophrenia are Susan Weinreich, an artist diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and Elyn Saks, author of The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.
From Andrew Solomon‘s Far from the Tree, meet Weinreich:
Elyn Saks is an author, attorney, professor, and founder of the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics. She wants us to know, “There are not ‘schizophrenics,’ there are people with schizophrenia. And each of these people may be a parent, may be your sibling, may be your neighbor, may be your colleague.”
Saks explains the three things that have helped her survive (from CNN): her treatment (including psychoanalytic psychotherapy and medication), a community of friends and family, and the support of her workplace, the USC Law School. “Even with all of that — excellent treatment, wonderful friends and family, enormously supportive work environment — I did not make my illness public until relatively late in my life. And that’s because the stigma against mental illness is so powerful that I didn’t feel safe with people knowing…”
Her story is available as a TED talk:
Selected Quotes from The Center Cannot Hold:
My good fortune is not that I’ve recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.
No one would ever say that someone with a broken arm or a broken leg is less than a whole person, but people say that or imply that all the time about people with mental illness.
Dropping in and out of your own life (for psychotic breaks, or treatment in a hospital) isn’t like getting off a train at one stop and later getting back on at another. Even if you can get back on (and the odds are not in your favor), you’re lonely there. The people you boarded with originally are far, far ahead of you, and now you’re stuck playing catch-up.
