Personal Medicine: Consumer's Strategy For Recovery

Consumer’s strategy for recovery As Patricia Deegan stated in her article, The Importance of Personal Medicine, recovery is not the process of passively swallowing pills. Rather, she states that recovery is composed of a myriad of things individuals do to feel better. I found this statement to be true when talking to Erin, our consumer educator. Erin is a 35 year old female who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Erin reported that she began having auditory, visual, and olfactory hallucinations at age 13 and has struggled with these symptoms ever since. Erin is currently being treated at Frontier Behavioral Health and Passages Family Support. Erin stated that she is currently on a lot of medications; however, she could only remember two …show more content…
To gain more insight into these concepts, I utilized two articles that discussed stigma and mental illness. The first article by Corrigan and Wassel defined stigma as a “stereotypical and prejudicial process.” They also defined the three types of stigmatization that exists around mental illness: public stigma (public stereotypes individuals with mental illnesses as dangerous or to blame), self stigma (the individuals with mental illness lose self esteem and self efficacy due to stigma), and label avoidance (individuals with mental illness avoid situations where they may be labeled, such as treatment) (Corrigan & Wassel, 2008). The second study conducted by Schulze and Angermeyer, found that individuals with schizophrenia felt that their illness and the stereotypes associated with it, defined others attitudes and behaviors towards them. Similarly, relatives and mental health professionals observed incidences of stigma and discrimination that they believed defined attitudes towards their loved one or patient (Schulze & Angermeyer, …show more content…
I was amazed at the consumer educators’ courage and their stories about living with, confronting, and recovering from mental illness. During the panel I began to see the importance of separating the person from the illness. At first this was very hard for me especially with Sean, as discussed above. Another person I found this to be difficult with was Jeff. During the panel it was clear that Jeff was not on his medication. Initially, when he began speaking, wanted to laugh because the things he was saying seemed so off the wall. However, after thinking about it for a minute, I realized that what he was saying was his reality and that this was the disease speaking for him. When thinking of Jeff as one person and the disease as another it became easier for me to separate the