Deb BushongFounder, Owner, & Therapist, Conversations Therapy · Clinical Expertise Meets Lived Experience in Psychosis Care

Oh no, I have Psychosis!!??

24 Jan 2025 · 2 min

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1:37

In this monologue, the speaker addresses the profound challenges faced by young individuals experiencing psychosis, emphasizing the emotional toll of feeling left behind, the heightened risk of suicide, and the difficulty of navigating a sudden mental‑health crisis. The speaker outlines the importance of early psychosis programs and therapeutic support as critical avenues for diagnosis and treatment. Additionally, the narrative explores the deep disappointment and grief felt by parents who had envisioned different futures for their children—athletic, academic, or otherwise—and underscores the need to reframe psychosis as a temporary setback, encouraging hope and the utilization of available resources to help the young person get back on track.

Chapters

So how do you deal with it? How do I deal with my own mental health? And during those times, that is a crushing blow to somebody who is young and vivacious and looking forward to life and sees his peers, his or her peers, like continuing to move forward. And feeling left behind. So there's a very high suicide rate. And that's when they come to something like an early psychosis program, or that's when they look for a therapist who can help them work through finding out that they have a psychotic disorder. So, you know, it is taxing. It is hard, it is heartbreaking. And especially even the parents, they're like, "What has happened? This is never what I planned for my child. These are not the dreams I had for my child. This is not what my child has always been like. My child was a star athlete. My child was a star student." And, you know, having to explain that like, This is a temporary setback. You know, you're going to have to accept this for what it is right now until we can get, you know, so him or her on back on track with the resources that we have at hand.