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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (June 9, 2017)
Page 10 News Street Roots • J The renowned doctor and author comes to Portland to talk about mental health and her own experience with schizophrenia BY A M A N D A WALDROUPE Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California’s ne day, when she was 16, Elyn Saks Gould School of Law as well as the founding abruptly got up from her desk, director of the Saks Institute for Mental walked out of her classroom and left Health Law, Policy and Ethics. She also school. She headed home, but she could not holds positions at the University of explain to herself why. As she passed the California, San Diego, the New Center for houses in her neighborhood, the houses Psychoanalysis and the Keck School of spoke to her - insulting, hostile words that Medicine. reverberated in her Her academic and legal writing focuses on brain. the intersection of law and mental health, It was Saks’ first but in her memoir, “The Center Cannot Elyn Saks will be experience with Hold: My Journey Through Madness,” she speaking at the psychosis and living recounts her personal struggle living with Oregon Law & with schizophrenia. schizophrenia and how she learned to live Mental Health She continued to the life she wanted to live. A TED talk she Conference, experience intense gave in 2012 about living with the illness has Friday, June 16 at delusions, and during been viewed more than 3 million times. her first semester the Doubletree Despite her many academic and scholarly attending Yale Law Hotel, 1000 NE accomplishments, she considers avoiding School, Saks was Multnomah St. in hospitalization for three decades her hospitalized and Portland. More proudest accomplishment. restrained to a hospital information is Saks will give the keynote speech at the bed for the first time. available at olmhc. A few years later, while Oregon Law & Mental Health Conference in Portland, June 16. The conference is a org. at Oxford University, project of the Mental Health Association of she experienced a Portland, an all-volunteer, nonprofit complete psychotic organization supporting recovery from breakdown. Another decade would pass until mental illness and addiction. Saks could manage her illness with the Am anda W aldroupe: In your T E D talk, proper medication and therapy. you said that the schizophrenic mind is “not Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder split, but shattered. ” What do you mean by chiefly characterized by the inability to that? discern reality from delusions and hallucinations. Less than one percent of Elyn Saks: Some people think that people live with schizophrenia, and it is one people with schizophrenia have different of the most misunderstood and stigmatized personalities, given the word “schizo,” of mental illnesses. which means different personalities. They Saks has dedicated her career to advocate confuse schizophrenia with Multiple for people with severe mental illnesses; she Personality Disorder, which is now called argues that, with the right medical Dissociative Identity Disorder. You’re split resources and support networks, they can into different parts or different personas. live with increased independence, dignity With schizophrenia, you’re confused and and happiness. disordered. It’s as if your mind is falling Saks is now a lawyer and the Orrin B. apart. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and S T A F F W R IT E R O A.W.: How can that sense o f confusion and disorder manifest itself, day to day? E.S.: When one is symptomatic, you would be having typically delusional thoughts, like ‘I’ve killed people with my thoughts,’ or hallucinations. Once, I saw a woman at the foot of my bed. You make word salads - words that are loosely associated with one another. When I was at Yale Law School, I said, “I think someone’s infiltrated my copies of the cases. We’ve got to case the joint. I don’t believe in joints, but they do hold your body together.’” The best analogy I can give of an active psychotic episode is a waking nightmare, with the confusion and terror. When you have a nightmare, you can sit up in bed and it goes away. There’s no such luck with a psychotic episode. A.W.: Many o f the symptoms you describe, such as making word salads or having delusional thoughts, must be so confusing and scary. What cumulative effect do these symptoms have on a person living with mental illness over time? E.S.: It depends on how compliant you E.S.: It doesn’t feel.that way. I’ve had the illness a long time. I’ve talked about it. I’ve written a memoir. At this point in my life, it seems pretty easy, something for which I’m enormously grateful. A.W.: In another interview you said, “everyone becomes psychotic in his or her own way. ” What do you mean by that? And how does the individualistic nature of these illnesses impact the ability to provide good medical care? E.S.: To diagnose, you have to have certain kinds of symptoms. They vary. People have delusions, some people have hallucinations. Some people become apathetic and stop working or interacting with people. There are people who become catatonic. That doesn’t happen with the drugs that we have now. A.W.: You think people with severe mental illness like schizophrenia can live with more independence than many already do. So much o f treatment, though, is focused on things like medication and hospitalizations. Is it individual enough? E.S.: Some people think that I’m unique. are on medication. Some people stay psychotic for the rest of their life. My husband likes to say that psychosis is not an on-off switch, but a dimmer switch. A lot of the time, I’m able to say to myself, “Oh Elyn, that’s just your illness, pay it no mind.” I might have two or three days going in and out of psychosis. And at the far end (of experiencing severe psychosis), I’ll be crouching in a corner and shaking. There are different degrees in which it manifests itself. But for me, for many years, things have gone in the right direction. They say there aren’t people like me who are as high functioning. That’s not true. It’s just that the stigma is so great that people (with illness) don’t come forward. I think it’s a mistake when doctors tell patients with schizophrenia to lower their expectations. I was told to get a job as cashier at a store. I thought to myself, I’m a student. I’m good at it. I like it. If I’m down for a few days, I can make (the work) up. What was more stressful to me is the idea of a constant line of people asking for change. A.W.: It must have taken an incredible amount o f work and dedication to be able to manage the illness, and talk about it, the way that you do. A.W.: How can it help for a doctor, who is supposed to provide medical care so that you get better, discourage you from doing something that you enjoy and are good at? See SAKS, page 11
