Find a therapist to treat psychosis

There were many missed opportunities for getting me help for mental illness.

I wish I had been required to accept help from friends and family.

I wish the campus counseling service office would have offered me a counselor.

I wish that law enforcement would have identified me as in need of help and had the authority to get me help.

Life radically changed for me at age 20 due to emerging schizophrenia. I experienced delusional thinking, paranoia, and hallucinations.

Before schizophrenia interrupted my life, I was a biochemistry student at the University of Southern California. My first psychotic break happened during the fall semester of my senior year when I went from a student in good standing to failing all my classes. I never told anyone, but I believed it didn’t matter because I was about to become a prophet.

Looking back, I ask myself what opportunities for intervention were missed during this difficult time of my life.

One of my first symptoms of schizophrenia was paranoia of friends, family, professors I had known, and most of all, my parents. My parents would have done anything to get me to a doctor, find the best treatment for my erratic behavior, and support me in any way possible, but I was afraid of them. They would have welcomed me to live with them while I was getting back on my feet. Instead, I found myself living outside.

Looking back, had my parents managed to see me while I was ill (which I continually refused),........

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