Blog 12

• Have you ever known someone with a mental illness? How did/does the illness impact his/her life? What have you learned about this mental illness just from knowing them? You may provide pseudo names to protect their identity.
  
  
  When I was in high school I actually had a field trip for clinical rotations. We went to the Terrell State Institution to visit with people that had illnesses. Our class got to listen to one lady who had voices inside her head and it was astounding to hear about it but also frightening. She was an African American and was taking medication to control the other person she talks to. She also talked about how the voices would tell her to kill her mother and brother. And it got to the point where she feared herself because she attempted to kill them. 
  The illness impacted her because if she didn't take her medication she would go back to her dark place and continue to hear negative things and she wouldn't be able to move on with her life. I learned that her illness was dramatic everyday and it wasn't the life she wanted to live. She talked about if she didn't have to take her medicine and was normal she would go back to college and get a good job and survive on her own. Before we left she said she was going to enroll back in college once she got out of the Institution as well. When we left her room the doctor said statistically people who leave the institution will eventually come back because they refuse to take their medicine and they go back to the way they were. It made me sad to think about that happening