Personally Speaking: My Schizoaffective Story
By Bradley Tarr
My name is Bradley Nuimano Tarr. I have been diagnosed with mental illness since I was 11 years old. Growing up, I was in and out of hospitals due to my symptoms. I experienced suicidal depression, insomnia, brain hypertension, paranoia and severe manic symptoms, sometimes back-to-back. During this time, my psychiatrist changed several times over, and each doctor would radically alter the medications they prescribed for me.
In college, things became so difficult that the university recommended a leave of absence. At my worst, I was threatening others, going days without sleep, and struggling with intense paranoia. These symptoms were compounded by my frustrations at the lack of medical support offered by the school. I ultimately spent 14 days in a New England hospital.
I was home from college for less than a month before my mom dropped me off at the front door of the county hospital. My mother tells me now that, at the time, she was afraid I would hurt her. For safety, she would lock her bedroom door at night in case my hallucinations worsened. My symptoms were delusional, making me illogical. My understanding of reality was tenuous at best. It is hard to reason with someone seeing, hearing, and smelling things that are not there.
The county hospital refused to admit me, and I was left homeless in the middle of winter. Ultimately, I was offered temporary housing in a homeless shelter operated by the local mental health agency. I was there for about a month, stuck living in cramped quarters with a dozen others, many of whom were far sicker than I was. Eventually, after several days of being verbally threatened and bullied by others, I punched a hole in the wall, landing me on 14 months of intensive mental health court probation. Thankfully, my mom eventually took me back into her household, but that brought little solace.
I paid nearly $1,000 in restitution for the hole in the wall. The probation program often made me feel like a criminal. The truth is, if I had been coached, treated and cared for in a program such as assisted outpatient treatment earlier in my life, I never would have punched the hole in the wall in the first place. I may have never been estranged temporarily from my mom. I may have never even been sent home from college. I was so happy when I graduated from my mental health probation. It had been one of the most trying ordeals of my life.
Two years later, I became symptomatic again. It would prove to be the worst series of symptoms I have experienced. I was hospitalized five times in three months. I was depressed, then manic, then depressed again. I had severe bouts of insomnia, paranoia, delusions and severe headaches.I had visual, auditory and olfactory hallucinations.
After three months, at age 26, my life finally took a turn for the better. Assisted outpatient treatment entered my life, ultimately bringing me my longest period of mental and medical stability. I was gifted a brand-new psychiatrist. She reviewed not only my entire medical history, but also all of the paperwork concerning my previous symptoms and care, going back to when I was 11 years old. She even dug into information about me that had been gathering dust, including behavior reports from my high school and files from the children’s hospital.
Finally, I received the correct diagnosis – I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. My psychiatrist was very attentive to my needs, my body language, and the rhythm of both my symptoms and symptomatic seasons.
I had the opportunity to work with a talk therapy counselor, who helped me organize my thought patterns and maintain a healthy outlook. My counselor coached me on how to slow down racing thoughts and prematurely catch and root out the beginnings of delusions.
As another integral part of my AOT treatment team, I was given a case manager. Since then, he has met with me every two weeks. He counsels me and helps me to establish and ground my goals. He has become a great friend and a trusted confidant.
In many ways, he is like a constant accountability partner. He is the first person I call if I have a bad day and the first person I inform if my delusions, hallucinations, or insomnia worsen. Sometimes, we hang out, and he practices the nearly lost art of listening. It is very cathartic for me to know that someone hears me.
These people choose to invest in me holistically, rather than label or categorize me. They care about my life, in its full context, beyond whether I fill a quota. My AOT team encourages me to have the bravery to learn new things, dedicate myself to staying stable and find meaning in my life. I now know that each day, week and month can be dedicated to new purposes and fresh goals.
I am what you might call an “enthusiastic alumnus” of the AOT program. AOT has helped get me to a place where I can predict a flare-up in my symptoms, fight it, and counteract it, and I have an entire team to help me do that. This program is for anyone who wants to manage their symptoms and beat them. I may have been the first person to graduate from my county’s AOT program, but I certainly hope I won’t be the last.
