Find a therapist to treat psychosis

Don't ever dismiss your odds of recovery—you never know what is around the corner.

Doors can close with impairment, but others may open.

You can gain skills and qualities through your battle with cognitive impairment.

Focus on what you can control, how you identify with yourself, and what life lessons you can glean.

I faced what should have been a difficult decision for me immediately after my first full-blown psychotic break, where I was an inpatient for three weeks and then a partial daytime patient for two weeks. I decided without hesitation to still begin a PhD program that started in two months, where I would move to another state all by myself in a month after daytime hospitalization ended. When leaving the daytime program, I was given a Global Assessment Functioning score of 60%.

I refused to let anything stop me, even a psychotic break that left me cognitively impaired. I saw getting a full academic scholarship and stipend to a prestigious University as the honor of a lifetime. But in that year, I could not hold a train of thought, focus well, or think on my feet. In my second semester, there was a teaching style that called for me to enroll in disability services and receive accommodations. I made a full cognitive recovery by the one-year mark of a school calendar, after two semesters and a summer term, but I was soon taken off my antipsychotic by a psychiatrist. I then started to slip back into another break. I left the program, moved in with my parents, and then had my second full break and then another.

After three breaks in two........

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