How do we manage our schizophrenia during times of COVID? HERE IS A MESSAGE OF HOPE FOR ALL OF US!!!


While psychiatric medication and psychological therapy may be what most people turn to we also have alternatives to accompany medication and user survivor-led counseling to lift us out of the depths of despair instead of victim-blaming psychological therapies. One of my peers, Nirupama [name changed] would seem to most clinicians to defy understanding. But all of these exceptional peers have stories to tell and lessons to teach. It is not just a matter of being “lucky” or having a little less of the Schizophrenia. What we need to understand is that there is a biology of the individual as well as a biology of the disease- each affecting the other. But on the diagnostic platform, we don’t know either of them well enough to use a silly pathology report to predict the future. It is now 4 months since the pandemic occurred and spread across India but we are forced to wonder – ‘what happened to Nirupama’s Schizophrenia?’ She has a goal, which is, to grow the best garden in the city and become a gardening expert – she even dreams of doing a Ph.D. in gardening at a foreign university!!

Gardening can be an excellent remedy for Schizophrenia and other mental health conditions. Whether a psychiatric medication is an add on or not is left to the individual and what the individual is comfortable with. Some people are harmed by psychiatric medication and others are helped by the same. Nirupama is enjoying life so much that the Schizophrenia is absent. Whether she has already eliminated this so-called ‘disease’ or the Schizophrenia is still in there enjoying the gardening with her is what doctors would wonder!! Today Nirupama is still planting and pruning and like our Jawans who are prepared to die fighting heroically on the battlefield Nirupama says ‘’I pray I’ll die at work gardening”. Nirupama is too busy to be sick. And that is the secret of her recovery!!!

#alternativetherapies #gardeningastherapy #crpd #itsoktotalk #specialschizophreniaknowledge #usersurvivor #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthspecialist #womesmentalhealth #selfadvocateinmentalhealth #recoveryspecialist #specialgyaanonschizophrenia #womesactivist #mentalhealth

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