Mental Disorder

Mental Disorder: What It Feels Like?

Unless you've been there, it can be pretty difficult to imagine what it's like to suffer from a mental disorder. What does it truly feel like to experience the delusions or voices that come with schizophrenia? To soar with the unbridled euphoria of a mania? To shake with the heart-numbing fear of a panic attack?

Short of actually having the disorder, there are very few ways of comprehending what it's like to be inside someone else's head. We could rattle off lists of clinical symptoms, but that would get dull pretty fast. It also wouldn't really give you a visceral sense of the experience.

Yet all of us are curious. Scientists, in fact, have tried to give other folks a taste of what mental disorder feels like. One of the most intriguing efforts is a virtual-reality setup which, using specially enhanced audio and visual effects, attempts to transport the subject into the mind of someone with schizophrenia. You actually hear those internal voices in a manner that those with the disorder say comes close to their reality.

Some sources will tell you that manic depression, or bipolar disorder, as it's also known, rarely shows itself much before the the age of eighteen. But ask any of my friends, reachers, or family – any of those brave souls who traveled with the ill person through his or her life – and they will vigorously dispute that claim.

A rapid cycler, mood changes are like gunfire in the trenches – bang, bang, bang. Light, dark, light, dark. Nobody knows if it's possible to switch a light on and off as quickly as brain manages to switch between euphoria and devastation.

These people spend part of their lives feeling as though they will never join the human race. It's as though they live in a cage where they can hear the world but the world cannot hear them. After years, they see this simply as a manifestation of their illness, which has a way of making the ordinary seem threatening and frightening. Paranoia is more than an occasional visitor. People affected have sat on the subway, convinced that others were laughing at them; they have left parties after an hour, certain that the guests thought the ill persons had no right to be among them. Manic depression can make that girl in The Exorcist (at her writhing, screaming, priest-hating worst) look like someone you would ask to babysit their three-year-old. But these people own their illness. And it will be part of them for the rest of their lives. People can't turn their back on it.

People have been asked if they see their illness as a tragedy, or at least as something that's robbed them of anything of vital importance. Sometimes they do. But stress is a killer; it can initiate the descent into depression, the rise into mania. These people have learned to be vigilant about avoiding those situations that will exacerbate their disease.

The illness also destroys relationships, chewing them up, spitting them out. These people mourn the friendships they have lost. Their behavior – especially when manic – has alienated friends and relatives. In some cases, the ill persons have never been able to reconnect with them.

And yet, many of them can't say that they think of themselves as tragically touched. It is like being born with red hair or brown, one eye or three; you know nothing different, so what does it matter^ We all have a cross to bear. They will carry their cross for all their life.

There's a saying you sometimes hear in the mental health world: Label belong on soup cans, not people. Illustration by Elena.