Out of Sight, In Your Mind

     “Hello, and welcome to the behind-the-scenes look at the life of seriously mentally ill patients. You'll be happy to find that this blog possesses every tidbit of information concerning treating and curing those afflicted..” - is what I would like to say. Such a simple approach to an immensely difficult and controversial topic is one that I, perhaps an optimistic and naive fool, would love to believe in. However, nothing so prominent in a societal minority could ever be dismissed as easily treatable or acceptable – that's just the disgusting truth. Therefore, I propose that you and I discover the truth behind the lives of these suffering individuals and strive to aid and assist without passing judgement.

      I'm terribly sorry that I've forced our acquaintance without any sort of a proper introduction. My name is Alden Yanos, and I'm quite familiar with minor mental disorders from the experiences I've met with in my life and my volunteer work at Straub Clinic and Hospital. Typically, you can find me pondering life's most difficult questions in correlation to society's mistakes or taking an extremely fulfilling nap; these almost always take place together. I began to take an interest in the psychology of the human mind after stumbling upon the television show “House M.D.” and also after viewing A&E specials concerning serial killers and their motives. I was immediately fascinated with these subjects and began to conduct research on my own, watching an exorbitant amount of documentaries concerning mental health and its defects. In high school, my Psychology teacher had told me of his numerous experiences in psychiatric wards and how some of his interactions with seriously mentally ill patients took place. Again, this prompted me to continue to search for answers concerning mental health stigma, disorders, and everything in between to this very day.

      During the years 2009-2010, when I was approximately a naïve fourteen year old boy, I had begun to reach out towards the internet community more fervently than ever. I joined online discussion boards and chat rooms so that I could gain some insight on certain areas of interest, such as music and games. It was in an online game chat that my life had begun to spiral into a naïve downward path. While there, I began to develop a personal relationship with another female viewer, writing constantly to her every day in order to satisfy some innate need to be viewed as special to someone. After months of time dedicated to this image of her, my mind and my heart began to develop suspicions about the identity of my friend and “first love”. After constant interrogations, the woman I was led to believe existed and cared for me was a facade: I was catfished by a man. Catfishing is known as the act of inheriting a false identity over social media in order to trick people into emotional relationships.

      I was thoroughly devastated, and I believe that I have not recovered since. Since then, I have had three genuine platonic online relationships that have gone awry due to my past experience. Through the miracle of the internet – or perhaps the curse – I have come to understand that I may possess an “Avoidant Personality Disorder”. This disorder specifies that I am afraid to engage in intimate relationships because of my overbearing fear of rejection, and that I withdraw from social situations because I am afraid of inferiority and ridicule. This ties into my study on this topic because my ailment is not even categorized as a “serious mental illness”; the problems that they face on an every day basis must be excruciatingly difficult to overcome, much less painful and embarassing.

      What I found in my research concerning mental health degradation was sometimes repetitive, but always intriguing. Many times, chemical imbalances in the body produce specific ailments or disorders that can corrupt the normal thought processes of the mind. However, the stigma that patients who suffer from these problems are always dangerous penetrates deep into the average majority's psyche. Many whom have no control over their decisions or only partial control are outcasted and feared for being sick; treating those who are physically injured while ignoring those who are mentally hurt is a furiously ridiculous double standard that I will have no part in helping to reciprocate.

       My goal for this blog project is to help those who are underrepresented and undervalued have a voice on a subject that most “normal” people have almost no knowledge about. Through the use of art, I hope to spark interest in the minds of readers that would normally never read the information presented by a “stereotypical” essay. I hope that my amateur hobbies of writing/singing songs and producing poems on my blog helps to educate and inform the public of the diseases that either are unnoticed or ridiculed due to ignorance. Success is determined not by the amount of readers one has, but by the amount of people that have been helped by the subject material. If I am able to help at least one afflicted individual become more comfortable with their disorder and one “normal” individual become more aware and sympathetic to the former, then I will undoubtedly deem this project to be a success. So join me and many others on this journey to discover what it's like to see the world with a different perception, and to perhaps discover something about ourselves in the process.