What was it that lead me on to the path of recovery from what was then considered an incurable ‘mental illness’?



I had often contemplated the question: can’t something beautiful come out of something that is supposed to be ugly – like my Schizophrenia. What was it that lead me on to the path of recovery from what was then considered an incurable ‘mental illness’? A few people across the world had been contemplating the same question at the same time I was which was more than a decade ago!!! I had conceptualized the concept of total recovery from Schizophrenia way back in 2005 when I first started working on my PhD which culminated in a huge success in 2009 October 2nd. How a so-called ‘Schizophrenic’ could do such mammoth work was truly a matter of excited speculation for many doctors just then!!! They should have understood that anybody focusing on recovery and not illness would have done this!! While they were busy promoting an “illness” and a “global burden of disease” model for the 5 years that I did my Ph.D., I was busy visualizing recovery!! I had read lots of material in quantum physics as also quite a few self-help books to know anything was possible - anything that the mind of a human could conceive, it could achieve!!! And this despite well-meaning friends and college lecturers telling me ‘those books are written only to make money!!’. I knew better.

And yes, it was also a spirituality that enabled me to achieve my goal!!! When I read the book “Something Beautiful for God,” I knew Mother Teresa had heard the voice of God asking her to go and serve the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta (now Kolkata) !!! And she obeyed the Voice of God quite fearlessly. Who knows? If she had told psychiatrists that she heard the “Voice of God” they surely would have branded her “Schizophrenic”!!! She had better sense than to tell them that!!! Instead, she went about doing her work and following her life’s vision and soul’s command or better still, ‘her inner VOICE’ and the results were there for the entire world to see!!! Her message to the world was enough to heal me and launch me on my quest to do ‘SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL FOR GOD’ via serving humanity too!!! That was when I decided to convert every adversity I faced into an opportunity for growth despite the social rejection I faced while doing my Bachelor's and Master's degrees!!!

It was this that gave me the inner strength to pursue my Ph.D. which culminated in something very beautiful for GOD - and yes, for others and myself!!!

#DRLAVANYASESHASAYEE #overcomingstigma #crpd #rightsbasedapproaches #mentalhealthmatters #nonpsychiatricalternatives #specialschizophreniaknowledge #itsoktotalk #turningtheworldupsidedown #bustingmentalhealthmyths #whatshappeningtoclientsdeepwithin #selfadvocate #schizophreniaexpert #usersurvivor #Indiasfirstrecoveryspecialist #exschizonowDr #spiritualityandmentalhealth #criticalpsychology #MondayMotivation

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