AbstractsPsychology

Deprived of Reason is a work of creative nonfiction that illuminates the beginning stages of a personal experience with chronic mental illness and depicts examples of events chronicled for years in personal diaries and medical records, including bipolar disorder, PTSD, and dissociative disorders. The illustrated memories are sometimes written as jumbled stream-of-thought, as in the over-medicated or manic or psychotic. This series of experiences illuminate how difficult it can be for someone who is mentally ill to maintain the very same personal relationships that would most greatly improve the lives of both the ill person and their significant others. Implications from these experiences reflect on the inadequacies of our mental health system and the relentlessly demanding task of both the supported and supporters in dealing with the individual whose illness, by definition, makes them impaired in perception, communication and behavior. They are therefore compromised at a time when they greatly need to convince others to remain in their lives, to remember the person they are and were when not symptomatic, and to help them navigate and find options in order to find the resources needed to get better.