Mental Health Diary

I keep a mental health diary to help me navigate the symptoms of living with paranoid schizophrenia and as a tool to prevent me from repeating mistakes in my approach to periods of challenging mental health. I also maintain several diaries keeping track of those aspects of my life that have nothing to do with my paranoid schizophrenia. A mental health consumer is not defined by their mental illness, which only relates to part of their make-up.

Returning to my mental health diary, I may type parts on my phone or laptop, but pen and paper are my preferred tools for recording my observations. For what I write on my phone and laptop, I print it out and convert it into an offline diary by using a spring binder.

Consider the following examples of questions you can write about if you fear writer’s block over a mental health diary. When did you begin to display symptoms that ultimately were diagnosed as coming from a mental illness? How did you feel once you received your diagnosis for the first time? How did your family and friends react? Did you find a psychiatrist and psychologist you trust? Describe that journey, even if it is unfinished. Do you take medication? How do you feel about your medication? What are the symptoms of your mental illness as you perceive them? How do they differ from what lay people say about your mental illness? Have you experienced stigma? Do you think most media makes that stigma worse? Are there notable exceptions? What are the things that never fail to make you feel better: maybe music, maybe animals? I am sure you will find a way to write about just how exceptional, in a good way, you are and keep a record that may prove helpful to you.

My mental health diary helps me in many ways. Let me focus on a few of them. The fact that I record much of what transpires when I struggle with schizophrenia helps prevent me from over-sharing with the world and helps quality-sharing with my psychologist and psychiatrist. Many of my most constructive appointments with my psychologist and psychiatrist have resulted from me having clearly in my mind what I wish to communicate to them. That clarity is a consequence of what I write in my mental health diary. The mental health diary helps prevent me from over-sharing with people who have no wish to listen to me describe what it’s like to live with schizophrenia and from exhausting those friends and family who do support me by burdening them in conversation with what is better left in my diary for me, and possible my doctors, alone.

My mental health diary helps me recognize recurring symptoms and, therefore, can aid me in seeing red flags that indicate I may be on a slippery slope to another relapse. These relapses have a pattern I have now recorded several times in my diary. These entries push me to ask for help from my doctors if I fear another relapse. They also help me recognize that I may need to rest and lay low while I sort myself out and reach a valuable equilibrium.

The blank page ready for your next diary entry can be a true friend! 

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