{"id":123257,"date":"2018-03-21T19:27:42","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T23:27:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=123257"},"modified":"2018-03-21T19:36:27","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T23:36:27","slug":"2018-whiting-awards-esme-weijun-wang-nonfiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/21\/2018-whiting-awards-esme-weijun-wang-nonfiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Esm\u00e9 Weijun Wang, Nonfiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Esm\u00e9 Weijun Wang is the author of\u00a0The\u00a0<\/em>Border of Paradise<\/em> and\u00a0the forthcoming essay collection\u00a0The Collected Schizophrenias\u00a0<\/em>(Graywolf Press, 2019), which \u201cundertakes an investigation into life with schizoaffective disorder and chronic illness with narrative drive and prose of confiding grace.\u201d One of\u00a0Granta<\/em>\u2019s Best Young American Novelists, she has written for\u00a0The Believer<\/em>,\u00a0Lenny Letter<\/em>,\u00a0Salon<\/em>, and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

An excerpt from<\/em>\u00a0The Collected Schizophrenias:<\/em><\/p>\n

The debate over AB 1421 touched upon crucial issues of autonomy and civil liberties. The bill makes the crucial assumption that a person who displays a certain level of mental disorder is no longer capable of choosing treatment, including medication, and therefore must be forced into doing so. Sartre claimed, \u201cWe are our choices,\u201d but what has a person become when it\u2019s assumed that said person is innately incapable of choice?<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

\u201cIf only I could have gotten my shit together, everybody else\u2019s lives would have been fine, was the message that I was getting constantly, and so I was responsible for other people\u2019s happiness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Julian Plumadore is the manager of the anti-stigma SOLVE (Sharing Our Lives, Voices, and Experiences) speakers\u2019 bureau, and former Community Advocate, of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, a \u201cpeer-run, recovery-oriented organization.\u201d I know Plumadore because I\u2019ve been a speaker for SOLVE since 2013, and have heard in his talks the way he understands his recovery. He describes his story as one in which he was targeted as the \u201cidentified patient\u201d; the term is based on research on family homeostasis, and describes a pattern of behavior in which a dysfunctional family identifies one of its members as mentally ill, though their symptoms are actually manifestations of the family\u2019s pathology.<\/p>\n

Plumadore is against forced treatment. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen him in anything but a button-down shirt, tie, and slacks, which is a conscious choice on his part; it\u2019s what he wears to meetings like the AB 1421 hearings, where the visual difference between the pro- and anti-AB 1421 constituents are obvious. \u201cThe rooms were divided,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were visibly split in two, and the power imbalance in those rooms was tangible. On one side of the room you\u2019d have the people who basically hold the power in society. Generally white, upper-middle-class, well-dressed professional people, the family members; and then on the other side of the room, you\u2019d have a much more diverse group, generally more dressed down. And,\u201d he finished wryly, \u201cyou could see in the room who was actually having the mental health issues, and who were the people who were essentially trying to get them committed.\u201d<\/p>\n

He told me about one woman he spoke to at an AB 1421 hearing. A mother. She spoke to him, he said, about her 40-year-old son, who is \u201cliving at home with her<\/em> where he belongs.\u201d To her, she is \u201chis only hope.\u201d He highlights both lines with horror. \u201cThey\u2019re so afraid of something bad happening to [their loved ones] out on the street, or out in the rest of the world, or [their family members] can\u2019t take care of themselves, [so] they guard them and keep them home. And that situation becomes increasingly tense and frustrating for everyone involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

He knows about these situations, he tells me, because he was one of those people<\/em>. The people who support forcible treatment sometimes don\u2019t believe him when he talks from personal experience about abusing substances, being homeless, or acting, as he describes, \u201cscary in public.\u201d He\u2019s better now, he tells me, because he was finally told by someone else that he himself knows better than anyone else what he needs. For him, that included harm reduction techniques instead of involuntary rehabilitation, as well as estranging himself from the rest of his family. Because he could discern a method of recovery for himself, he believes that the issue of personal, bodily autonomy must take precedent. He speaks of those with mental illness almost universally experiencing the effects of trauma when forced into treatment, and disagrees with the concept of \u201churting someone to help someone.\u201d \u201cWe have the ultimate decision about what we\u2019re going to allow into our bodies, what we\u2019re not, and the decisions that we make about our own lives,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

A crucial concept in the discussion of schizophrenia, psychotic disorders, and treatment is that of how far the possession goes\u2014or, in psychiatric terms, the level of \u201cinsight\u201d the individual is capable of. To have poor insight is to have a lack of awareness about one\u2019s own condition. A fundamental argument for forcible treatment is that the unwell individual simply doesn\u2019t understand that they\u2019re ill, and therefore lacks the ability to decide for themselves whether, for example, to take the recommended medication. Whether a person diagnosed with severe mental illness will take medication is an issue that repeatedly comes up in communities affected by mental illness; psychiatrists use the pejorative term \u201cmedication noncompliant\u201d to describe those patients who won\u2019t take recommended medications, no matter the reason for the patient\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

I asked Beth, whose adult son lives with schizoaffective disorder, what she wishes people would better understand, or what they currently misunderstand, about psychotic disorders. \u201cThere\u2019s all this stuff about, Give people information and they\u2019ll seek help on their own,\u201d she said. \u201cSomebody who has a mind that they cannot trust because it\u2019s been taken over by whatever chemicals are not allowing them to think straight needs help in getting care, and they might need to be forced into it. It\u2019s comparable to Alzheimer\u2019s. Not to say that people with paranoid schizophrenia are demented or stupid, but they lose the ability to make rational decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mind has been taken over<\/em>. The mind has lost the ability to make rational decisions. There\u2019s something in there, but it\u2019s not whomever it is we formerly believed it to be. Depression is often compared to diabetes\u2014in other words, it\u2019s not your fault if you get it, and you\u2019ll be fine if you just take care of it. Schizophrenia, on the other hand, is compared to Alzheimer\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s still not your fault if you get it, but there\u2019s no fixing it, and though you may not intend to be a burden, you\u2019ll still be one until you die.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

I do have experience with the loss of autonomy that comes with involuntary treatment, as well as the status that comes with being described as lacking a sense of one\u2019s own illness: I was hospitalized against my will in 2002, 2003, and 2011, and the records from my first involuntary, inpatient psychiatric hospitalization stated that I had \u201cpoor insight.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is hard to convey the horror of being involuntarily committed. First, there\u2019s the terrifying experience of forcibly being put in a small place where you\u2019re not allowed to leave. You are not allowed to leave, but you\u2019re also not allowed to know how long you\u2019ll be there, because no one knows how long you\u2019ll be there. You don\u2019t have the things that you love with you: your journal, the bracelet your grandmother gave you, your favorite socks. Your teddy bear. There are no computers. In the hospitals where I\u2019ve stayed, the only phones allowed were the landlines, which could be used at certain times of day for a certain period, causing patients to jockey for position by the phones and to bicker over who\u2019s been taking too long.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, someone will be allowed to bring something you cherish to you during visiting hours, although this must take place after a nurse inspects the goods; a lot of the time, your possessions won\u2019t be permitted into the ward because they include a sharp point or a wire coil or a dangerous piece of cloth. You\u2019re not allowed to choose what you eat, and within the limited choices that do exist, you\u2019re forced to choose only between things that are disgusting. You are told when to sleep and when to wake up. If you spend too much time in your bedroom, it indicates that you\u2019re being antisocial; if you do sit in the common areas, but don\u2019t interact with the other patients, you\u2019re probably depressed or overly inward or perhaps even catatonic. Humans might all be ciphers to one another, but people with mental illness are particularly opaque because of our broken brains; we cannot be trusted about anything, including our own experiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Esm\u00e9 Weijun Wang is the author of\u00a0The\u00a0Border of Paradise and\u00a0the forthcoming essay collection\u00a0The Collected Schizophrenias\u00a0(Graywolf Press, 2019), which \u201cundertakes an investigation into life with schizoaffective disorder and chronic illness with narrative drive and prose of confiding grace.\u201d One of\u00a0Granta\u2019s Best Young American Novelists, she has written for\u00a0The Believer,\u00a0Lenny Letter,\u00a0Salon, and elsewhere. She lives in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1444,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33429],"tags":[33430,33456,8400,33457,364,2164,33455,504,2165,121,93,33453,33454,1253,20510,21641],"class_list":["post-123257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whiting-awards-2018","tag-2018-whiting-awards","tag-esme-weijun-wang","tag-essay","tag-essayist","tag-essays","tag-graywolf-press","tag-graywolf-press-nonfiction-prize","tag-literature","tag-nonfiction","tag-novelist","tag-san-francisco","tag-the-border-of-paradise","tag-the-collected-schizophrenias","tag-whiting-awards","tag-whiting-foundation","tag-whiting-honorees"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n2018 Whiting Awards: Esm\u00e9 Weijun Wang, Nonfiction<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read an excerpt from \u2018The Collected Schizophrenias,\u2019 by 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