how to advocate for schizophrenics and psychotics in every day life:
correct people when they misuse the word “psychotic” (as in if they use it in any other way but a serious disconnect from reality, delusions or hallucinations)
correct people when they use the word “schizophrenic” as an adjective (its not!!! its a severe and persistant mental disorder)
correct people when they call people “crazy” aka “shes been acting crazy lately” (they likely dont actually mean it and this word is thrown around a lot, but as a schizophrenic im asking you to not use this word to describe people since this has been tied to me and my fellow psychotics for ages)
do not assume that a psychotic person is dangerous in any way (psychotic people are more likely to be the victims of abuse than be the abusers)
when talking about mental illness or the mental illness community as a whole consider, does this apply to psychotic and schizophrenic people as well? (if not, youre not talking about the whole community! its that simple)
do not purposley trigger someones paranoia aka telling people that theres someone after them (this is always harmful and potentially life threatening, its not a joke and never was)
dont assume schizophrenia is “just hallucinations and delusions” (its much more than that, it has negative and cognitive symptoms as well, which for some people is much worse than the positive symptoms of hallucinations and delusions)
dont make lobotomy jokes aka “lobotomize me” jokes (these procedures were used to turn schizophrenics into “pets” so that other people could better deal with us, its not a joke)
dont act “crazy” for shock value aka wide eyes, rocking back and fourth, shaking (our mannerisms arent for you to pretend to be crazy with, this is who we actually are, im looking at you rock bands)
dont fear the people on the street talking to themselves aka calling the cops on them (these people are suffering, these people need help, them being psychotic doesnt make them any more dangerous than anybody else)
dont use the word delusional for every idea you dont agree with aka “that conservative politician is delusional!” (delusions specifically describe strongly held beliefs outside of reality, not just beliefs outside youre specific world view)
dont expect people to express emotions the same way you do aka “why arent you reacting?” (many schizophrenics stuggle with flat affect and cant change it, it doesnt mean we dont feel things, just that we dont express them the same way)
dont expect us to be able to do the same amount of, or intensity of work you do aka “i work 5 days a week, you have it easy!” (executive disfunction is very common in schizophrenia, it doesnt make us lazy, we are just disabled)
dont post derealization without tagging it or TWing it as such aka that post with a fake european country saying that americans dont even know what country this is (we already struggle enough with figuring out whats real and whats not we dont need “pranks” or “jokes” trying to fool us without any TW)
dont assume schizophrenic and psychotic people cant see your post or view your media or anything else (we are real people interacting with the world just like everybody else, we can see your jokes about us, or your media portraying us as dangerous, we arent fictional characters)
dont assume youre superior to, or smarter than us (once again we are real people, we deserve the same respect as anyone else on the planet)
dont call someones delusion stupid aka “obviously youre not the reincarnation of kurt cobain thats stupid” (you have no idea how real these are for us, they dont always make sense to you but they do to us, please respect that)
dont ask if were hallucinating right now (its none of youre business! and if we say yes youll likely ask where it is, and if we show you youll likely look in the direction of the hallucination which is dangerous, it blends the real world with the hallucination and its already hard enough for us to tell the difference)
dont stop trusting us and what we say just because were psychotic (we still deserve to be listened to and trusted just like everybody else)
learn about less talked about symotoms like catatonia, avolition and word salad (these are just as common as the talked about ones, but just less talked about cause i guess it doesnt make for an intresting horror movie)
learn more about schizophrenia and psychosis from actual schizophrenics and psychotics (a great example is the podcast Inside Schizophrenia, scrolling through this blog, looking up students with psychosis)
TLDR: no go back and read it, its the least you could do
i thought of some more:
dont call us gifted or psychic or anything like that (its not a gift! most of us arent happy we have it, plus you could easily trigger a delusion like this)
dont compare hallucinations or catatonia to sleep paralysis (ive had all three, and they are very different)
dont watch or film “public freakouts” (these people may being going through the worst time of their life, its not funny)
dont say “schizo” if youre not schizo-spec (this term has been used agaisnt us for a long time, its not that hard to type out schizotypal, schizoid, schizophrenic, or schizoaffective)
A 10-millionth visitor to the Rijksmuseum of Netherlands was allowed to spend the night at Rembrandt’s painting “Night Watch” with a bottle of wine and dinner.
me in my animal crossing house after that fox has sold me another fake painting
I am obsessed with this park that combines all midcentury dangerous playground elements into one awful whole. witness this steep metal slide descending from the top of a jungle gym into a concrete pit
if you fall off the jungle gym, you too will be doomed to the pit
there’s very little opportunity to get out, too. the only handholds are the ones on the left. Sendai gets a lot of rain, almost as much as Vancouver, so imagine being mangled from sliding into concrete and having to climb a sheer, slippery slope to freedom. I think I would just make a home down there and give up on life
I’m sure it does.
This looks so badass, i would have went wild for this as a kid
