If you want to know about diabetes, isn't talking to us better than talking to the doctors?

Right now I am doing a presentation on schizophrenia. I have been asked to look at the classifications, and the diagnosis, and the symptoms ect ect, and as I have been doing it it occured to me that everything I am looking at is coming from a purely medical point of view, so I digressed a little from my research and tried to find out what schizophrenics say about being schizophrenic.


The reason I think this is so important is that I thought about when I go to the hospital, and they offer me all this advice and drugs and stuff, and they talk to you like they know everything (some of them do anyway, not all of them), and I just sit there and think it's alright for them, they can go home at the end of the shift and not have to think about diabetes, for them diabetes is a job, for me its life. And I know when people ask questions or want to find out about these things, they ask the professionals, which is fine, they know what they're talking about, but all they can give you is a text book definition, when you live it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you are qualified to talk about it I think and can do so so much better than people who work shifts with it and then leave it behind at the work place when they go home. 


I wanted to find out what it was like for people living with schizophrenia, because its all very well and good throwing me symptoms and diagnostic criteria, but how the hell am I supposed to understand it if I just have that to go on? I stand no chance! I think the only people who can tell me about schizophrenia, are schizophrenics. The only people who can tell you what it is like to live with diabetes, are diabetics and the only people who can tell you what if feels like to live with cancer are cancer patients. No-one can give you a better insight than someone who has been there and done it. If you work with us, you might have knowledge of it, but you cant possibly have knowledge of living with it, because the bets are , you dont.


I have gone against whay my psychology teacher actually wanted tonight, which is a risk, but the only way I am going to understand schizophrenia as a condition and be able to write about it is if I listen to people who actually know what it is like to have it and people who can tell me about it. Being told that a symptom of it is hallucinations is not going to help me, I need to know how it FEELS, what they think, I aren't going to get that from any diagnostic criteria. 


Keep Smiling :)
Love, Tutti-Frutti
xxx