OK. I go to a clinic. They have difficulty keeping shrinks, so now I'm doing "telepsychiatry," which is where I see a dude in another part of the state over a hi-def webcam. Its...odd. I kind of feel badly for the staff at the clinic, because it seems that it takes a lot out of their day, making this run smoothly.

Anyway...dude has me down to 2 daily psych drugs. lamictal and abilify. I am (apparently...) "clearly, Bipolar I." Which raises a question...

why is it that there's such a horrible stigma against "Schizophrenia," even amongst the severely mentally ill? People will say "why, no, I don't have Schizophrenia; I have Bipolar I" or even "no, no; I'm not Schizophrenic...its Schizoaffective," which makes me think...

"Schizophrenia" is still viewed as a death sentence, isn't it? an invalidation? a sort of nullification of a human being?

ugh. on the plus side, having the official label of Bipolar I = less likelihood of hospitalization. always a good thing. Here where I live, they're trying to focus on "the recovery model," so hospitalization (state-funded) is supposed to be a last resort. The state hospital itself has been trimmed down a good bit. a lot of it was on prime real estate, so the state sold it off and made a cool couple hundred million $$$.

thing is...I come from a "good family," that's currently going the extra mile to help me become one of those "productive adults" I keep hearing so much about. If I was poor and on my own, I'd just be another statistic, and I kind of suspect they'd heap the worst diagnoses on me, just because...that seems to be how things go.

ok. finished ((for now)). :-)