A Personal Perspective: Schizophrenia made me want to go back in ...

I am an advocate for schizophrenia recovery and know what it is like to live with the diagnosis. As I meet struggling families who contact me for advice and support, I understand the challenges and loss their loved ones face. I remember in 2007, it really looked like I would never recover and a return to school would not be possible. Every day I grieved for what I had lost, and was desperate to go back in time. But today, I have peace and live in the present.

When I was in high school, I had big dreams. Most of my time was spent thinking about where I would attend college, and what I would study. Dropping out of college due to schizophrenia, and even becoming homeless, was not remotely a part of my wildest imagination for the future.

My teenage life was about practicing the violin and studying. My goal to join the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, which was one of the top five in the country, was achieved at age 13. That year, I also became a student of a violin professor at the Cleveland Institute of Music. I practiced four to five hours every day. No matter how well I did, I was always striving to do better.

In high school, I also did well academically. At 15 years old, I started a special program, enrolling as a full-time college student at the Cleveland area’s Lakeland Community College. I was able to take classes including calculus, economics, literature, general chemistry, and even music theory. Because students at Lakeland wanted to be there, there were no behavior problems. It was exciting to have professors, rather than high school teachers, for all my classes. My life was always centered around my future.

I scored high on my SAT exam and won a half-tuition scholarship to study at my dream school, USC, in Los Angeles, after my graduation. By the time I arrived there, I was set on doing research as a molecular biologist for my career.

My first mental health symptoms appeared right about the time I had achieved my goal and made it to university. I could not realize that life at USC was the perfect fulfillment of all I had hoped and worked for. The academic rigor I had always wanted was part of every class. My first semester there, I took classes including East Asian Societies, and was fascinated by the material. Other students in the dorm were passionate like me, the scenery on campus was beautiful and the food excellent. All I had to do was focus on my dream at USC and study as I had always loved to do, but from the very start, something was clearly wrong with me.

Ravaged by schizophrenia, not only would I drop out of USC, but would become homeless for four years in the LA area. Convinced that I did not need my degree, instead I believed my delusions and expected to become a prophet.

I find it ironic that I spent so many years looking ahead to my future. But once I got there, I was unable to enjoy it. Then, after developing schizophrenia, I found myself constantly looking back to the past. I longed to be a student at Lakeland again, or rewind time to begin again at USC.

I was not diagnosed with schizophrenia until 2007, though I believe there were warning signs during my first semester at USC, in 1999. Thankfully, in 2008, I made a full recovery on an underutilized antipsychotic medication, which I now hope to take for the rest of my life. Thanks to my recovery, which involved adherence to treatment, I was able to transfer to the University of Cincinnati (near my parents’ home) and finally finish my molecular biology degree Magna cum Laude. But I still found myself looking back. At the University of Cincinnati, I attend classes part-time. I remembered that when I was in high school, I was taking a full-time course load and was practicing violin four hours a day.

This year, in 2024, I finally find myself content with my life and do not look back every day to my past, wishing things had turned out differently.

I am deeply grateful to the psychiatrist who treated me in 2008, Dr. Henry Nasrallah, for convincing me to return to college, where I would thrive again at the University of Cincinnati. He was the motivation behind the writing of my memoir, which I published in 2014. He was also the force behind the charitable foundation that he and I established together in 2016. Today, I work for the foundation, and these days, I am extremely busy and fulfilled.

Schizophrenia can be a thief, robbing young people of dreams and forcing us to significantly alter the plans we made for our lives.

As I write this, I would like to say I am deeply grateful for my recovery thanks to treatment. And at the same time, I do stand in solidarity with young people who are grieving over what they have lost.

My biggest piece of advice would be this: always adhere to treatment. You never know how life will turn out or what promising and unexpected turns your life will take. With treatment, there is always hope for the future, and even a return to what you loved most in the past.

However, I fully understand the wonderful life I live today is 100% contingent on staying in treatment. I realize that if I discontinue my medication, and restart it, it may become less effective, even at higher dosages. And every psychotic episode does more damage to the brain.

Today, I enjoy living in the present, where I am finding contentment, grateful for every day. I usually am too busy to look back.

I encourage those struggling with schizophrenia to dream again and not settle for partial recovery. Adherence to effective treatment is the key.