Welcome to Lucid Mental Health. This site is dedicated to all things mental health, as well as specifically, the experience of psychosis. Having experienced five episodes since the age of 20 (more than half a lifetime ago), I am interested in sharing ideas, research and letting others know that they too can recover and that they are not alone.
Psychosis can be a frightening experience but by examining it closely we can come to know more about what it is, why it occurs and more importantly, how recovery comes about. According to The Recovery Village, approximately 3% of people in the US will experience psychosis at some point in their lives. That’s 3 in every 100. Each year in the US, 100,000 teenagers and young adults will experience their first psychotic episode (The Recovery Village, 2021).
Whilst the actual content of psychosis experience varies greatly from one person to the next, there are some common themes that can occur including religious or spiritual “delusions”, “hallucinations” (to use medical language) and “ideas of reference” (having a belief or perception that irrelevant, unrelated or innocuous things in the world are referring to them directly or have special personal significance). It is my hope that as a community, we can make sense of such experiences by coming together and talking about them openly without fear of being judged or stigmatised.
Of course, if you or someone you know is having a psychotic experience, I strongly encourage you to seek help through the services of a professional, ie. doctor, psychiatrist and/or psychologist. There are a range of services available to those in crisis, some of which I have listed here.
Thank you for visiting.
Psych Wards: Episode One
I was 21 years old, 25 years ago when this photo was taken. It was a selfie (back before that was even a thing and digital photography) that I took whilst in the recovery process of a psychotic episode in 1994. I think at this point I had stopped taking the meds (Stellazine and/or Melaril) which were pretty heavy duty at the time but rarely get used now. First generation antipsychotics. I had spent 6-weeks in a psych ward and got out perhaps a couple of weeks prior. I think I look and know I felt very lost at the [...]