Poem: GENETICS

There’re just too many

Thoughts.

What gene did I come from?

Who had it?

Twenty centuries ago?

I often wonder who passed along my Bipolar gene.  Generations ago, a lot of people didn’t think mental illness was inherited, and even now, some families still don’t.  Understanding the source of your illness can be challenging when family members have different attitudes and trepidations surrounding the idea of a bloodline carrying a mental illness.  Fear, denial, and ignorance can take center stage.

Especially when it comes to the word: Inherited.

The current state of our treatment of the mentally ill in some inpatient psych wards is not acceptable. And those that “whistle blow” on pertinent issues and concerns surrounding our treatment of the mentally ill, and get disciplined for it, point to a real problem:  What are they hiding?

Today I’m going to address three significant issues I witnessed in acute inpatient psych wards:

With our current economy, none of us are in a position to lose our job.  So – what – does this mean we have to put up with endless psychological nightmares at work?  When does bullying in the workplace become worse than waking up with no job?

The current economy puts us in a situation of being victims at our job, and in our lives.  This is a terrible situation that demands attention and guidance.

Back in the day we didn’t have texts. Now, sexting is a colloquialism in our culture that can cause an endless amount of trauma and confusion in relationships.

When a sextext is discovered, the mental torture begins; we may find ourselves dissecting every word, analyzing every sentence, and frantically searching for the details about when it happened and the length of time it took our partner to reply. Everything turns into a mental nightmare as we slowly lose our common sense and ability to see clearly.

I think bullying is a crime.  What kind of crime is up for discussion: Is it a misdemeanor, a felony, involuntary manslaughter?  Once the severity of the bullying is determined, and the circumstances and outcome are considered, it should be handled as one of the three crimes mentioned above. We especially need to consider the many children with mental illness that are bullied.

Are there hyper religious people walking around with schizophrenia or hypo mania that don’t even know it?  Can religion be a springboard to help uncover a mental illness?

A Quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

In the truly great poets… there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a poet that was known to be Bipolar II – A Chronic Hypo Manic.  His disease led him to pay acute attention to his diction in his writing and reflected his condition.

There was a patient in a psych ward I worked with that refused to take her meds.  A lot of my patients refused meds but this particular case haunts me every now and again.

I let a trash can ruin my morning.  When you do something, or don’t do something, and it begins to eat away at you you must learn how to mentally let it go, stop obsessing, and move on.

Especially the stupid small stuff that you mentally turn into a big deal and it ruins your day.

It can be challenging to find, select, & stick with a therapist, especially when issues arise regarding problems between you and your therapist that you are not willing to discuss with him or her openly.