Darrell Herrmann : Straight Talk About Living With A Severe Mental Illness

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast hosted by
Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
make you laugh, some will make your cry. Real life
people who will inspire and show that you are not
alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World?
Humanity over Handcuffs the Silent Crisis special event. Joining us
today is Darryl Herman. He's a retired U. S. Army
captain and computer programmer from a small family farm in Weston, Kansas,
about thirty miles east of Dodge City, specialized in in
field artillery and nuclear weapons. His military career ended after
he sought treatment in an army hospital believing he was
being drugged with experimental medicine. Doctors recognized his delusions and
emerging psychosis, leading to his discharge. He later earned a
college degree and worked as a professional programmer, but job
stress triggered mild delusional thinking, prompting him to go on disability.
Since then, he's found purpose in volunteering, speaking to patients,
and writing a book, Straight Talk about living with severe
mental illness. He continues to advocate for those with serious
mental health challenges, bringing tremendous insight to his work. It's
truly an honor to have him here generously sharing his
deep insights and remarkable journey with us. Thanks for coming on.
No problem.
Let's tell us a little bit about your story, because
pretty fascinating story of what you've done. What started you
getting in to support the NSSC.
I developed schizophrenia in nineteen eighty four when I was
a captive. Had State's Army, especially the time or field
arturnery nicle weapons and obviously you can't have a bilit
treck ware with nicular weapons where you have schizophrenia. So
I had to do other things. So went back to college.
You got a computer science degree, became a professional computer programmer,
did that for eighteen years, and then the stress of
doing that and coping with my job and all with
my own it just became more than I could manage.
And I decided to go with disability because I found
out that this guy's stressed was just endemic in America workplace.
And when I went on disability.
I made it my mission of the life to do
everything I could to help other people seriously been willing
to live better lives. Ever since then, that's what I've
been doing. I started doing hospital groups, talking to patients
of the hospital about how to live better lives with
the suverbian illness, and that grew over the years. In
the ten years before COVID, I spoke to more than
thirty thousand people of those hospital groups. With COVID, all
my groups got shut down and as of now, the
hospital has not reopened for me to come in into groups.
So I have no hospital groups today. But up until COVID,
I was doing many groups a week. Like I said,
I saw board thirty thousand people before COVID. As part
of that, I learned what the people that will be
hospitalized need to know based on my own experience about
old research and talk to them and answer their questions
and find out what they need to know. As a
result of all that.
I wrote a book.
The book is called Straight Talk about Living Subminal Illness
and is available on Amazon in paperback, kindle or audiobook.
It's the things that everybody needs to know, the basics
they should know when they're dealing with suerminal illness. But
sadly both people don't know that.
When you first sit down with a new group, what
is some of the things that you do say to
them to make them realize that they are not in
this by themselves. They have someone that will help and
definitely know that they are not alone.
Most have loaded out the other world. They're not alone.
But what I find they don't know is that you
can live a relative in your life after having your
served malilas. When I was doing those hospital groups, I
was usually the first one to ever commit and tell
them that you could live a normal life after Manlonans,
I'd give my own as an example of being a
programmer for eighteen years to most of them that were
just not heard of. They thought their life was overwhere
they got a diagnosis with psychotic illness.
Okay, so everyone that has this illness is affected differently.
Of course, then you have to approach it and focus
on the things that are most important to them and
their lives. What do you find that are some of
the more important things that people will bring up to
you that they may not know or they may just
need more clarification about it.
There's a lot of things that they need more clarification.
Oh that's why I wrote my book, and it's a
short book. It's about sixty year or seventy pages, but
it's the basic stuff that you know. Some of the
big things they need to know are the fact that
diagnosis offer changes. You may ask kit's prey and now
you may have bipolar. Any ask it's affective to some
other time it offered changes. That's one thing they didn't know,
So don't get worried about dinos is changing.
It happens.
Another thing know is that medications are different for everyone.
Medication does wonder for one person may be absolutely poison
to the next, and it takes a lot of time
to find the right medication for most of us. Some
of us have to try three or four half a
dozen before we find something that works really well for us.
And it takes time to find the right medication, the
right dose and get on with your life. It's not
an easy thing. The doctor doesn't know what's going to
work and what side effects you're going to have until
you try the medication.
There's just no way to know. Another thing they didn't
know is that there's no blame to this illness.
It's a combination of genetic, environmental factors and there's no
single cause you can point at. You can't point any
one thing is say this cause of person illness. It's
a combination of things, and there's no blame to be had.
It's just that happens like cancer or diabetes or there's
no blame. It's an illness just like any other.
I think that's a great thing to point out. Now
that you've addressed that, I think it needs to be
more focused so people do realize that it's not their fault.
Sometimes people with psychosis, because of the stigma that's attached
with it, think that they're bad, but they're really not.
They just need some help. So how do you address
this with people so they can realize that they are
not these demons people think they are, They just need
some help.
Well, the first thing you have to understand is what
psychosis is and right, while the medical system does not
teach anyone what psychosis is or what it does to
you and psychosis, a lot goes into the dinosis. But basically,
for practical purposes, there's two things you need to look at.
One is having hallucinations. One is having delusions hallucinations are
especial experiences you have, those around you don't. For instance,
you may hear voices that aren't there. You may see
things that aren't there. You can affect you in the
five senses. Well, why the expirason of that? It's usually
absolutely real to you. Delusions are fixed false fools you
may have to those around you don't. They could be
anything imaginable, could be that your president States, or the
anti Christ, or time traveler, or something as a plant,
a computer ship of your brain.
There's a limit.
And to the personal experiencing psychosis, these are the reality.
To them, it's absolutely real, even though it makes no
sense to anyone else around them. And that's why they're
making decisions and acting the ways that make those systs
those around them, because to them, the hallucination delusions are
the reality. And the other way to control those hallucination
delusions is through medication. But even when you take the medication,
want your loger psychotic to be psychotic, you have to
have hallucinations delusions, but you also have to lose touch reality.
You have to not realize that it's not real.
If you can realize it's real, you're not psychotic a
psychoticist one you can't tell it's not real, but anywhere
the medications will get you out of psychosis, but you.
Still remember what went on to you. It was still real.
And unless someone tells you about hallucination delusions, it tells
you what psychosis is or what it does.
You have no way known.
You should question things that may have happened to you.
And I think that's a big piece of what adsodosia
or lack of insight is. No one tells people of
what psychosis is, what heluciage delusions are the fact that
you can't trust your own mind as a result. To them,
it was all real. Another piece of it is it
or explain what, for example, schizophrena is. If you're told
you have schizephernia, basically you think that's a villain or
a horror movie or a mass burder or some other dangerous,
scared person. And you're sitting here saying, I'm not one
of those people. So you're just throw it all out
the windows, say it doesn't apply to me, is total nonsense,
and you go on, do.
You accept it?
I think that's a big piece of asistonosia that nobody
tells people what these illnesses are and how psychosis effects
a person, And that's something I've been campaigning to have corrected.
But how do you expect the person. I understand that
they can't trust their own thoughts if you don't tell them.
That's a possibility to begin with.
Yeah, I think you had you're writing you had something
that was pretty impressive in the fact that a lot
of people might not realize this or think about it,
but you just touched on it just slightly there. I'd
like to expand on that. And that's the fact that
after they get the medication and it helps them, they
still have the memories of what they thought happened, what
they went through. How do you get past that? Because
some of these memories can be very delusional, as you
was saying, and not real. So how do you get
past that with the medication so that you can separate
the two so you can still move forward and not
let the past memories affect you?
Medication? Does how ready to do with that at all?
Okay, it's all up to you. You have to realize
that you cannot trust your own mind. Okay, there's a
lot of ways you can come to that conclusion. But
you have to come to that conclusion. There are things
that happened to me forty years ago, my first psychosis
that to this day I don't know what was real,
what was thellus delusions, And I've just had to accept
I never will And that's part of dealing with this
illness or other psychagaolysis. You have to accept that you
can never be sure of what reality is. There's another
very troubling aspect of this as well. Some people who
experienced psychosis develop persistent false memories of things that never
actually happen. For example, they may think they were abused
sexually or physically as a child, even though it never
actually happened, but to them it's real. They remember it
happening even though it never did. And some people have
mays their lives that are fiction, but to them it's
real and factual because that's what their mind tells them.
Okay, so when that happens, is it medication and therapy
that of just talking it out that will help them
at least better understand what they've been through so they
can move forward and have that better life that they
want to have.
The medicase has nothing to do with it. The medication
just stops the psychosis. It stops further problems, all right.
The gavin to realize that it's not real is insight
that you have to develop on your own, and there's
no good way to do that. Mental health professionals right
now don't have any idea how to go about that.
What I have found the best.
Way to do is just explain what they should do
is are what psychosis is, what it does, let them
know they could be subject to that, and then let
them start thinking about their owner and say, you know,
maybe this thing I experienced doesn't make sense after all,
and then they can start questioning come to realize that
they themselves may have some experiences that work real. And
that's the only way I know to deal with this.
You have to come to your realization. There's no way
to force that on someone. If you try to force it,
they will not accept it, they'll fight you.
When you had the groups that you had, did you
go into those kind of topics or what kind of
conversations did you have within those groups? And how long
did that usually last? Far as the group time?
Groups typically last through forty five to fifty minutes.
We've talked about some of the things I've just talked about, Yes,
but I also spend a lot of time talking about
other things, and that's probably just as important that to
get the mental health.
To do they teach you about that is how to.
Live and cope with melons, things like what causes relapses
one of the most couple causes of relapses.
No One tells you that, how do you cope with.
Recognizing your goal with dohiltay you can ask for help
before you end up back in the hospital. Nobody tells
you that, how do you cope with hallucination inclusions? Even
though you're not psychotic, some of us still have hallucinations
when we're not psychotic and properly medicated and have to
carry on. When I was a work programmer, I occasionally
hallucinated things. I had to sort out is this real?
Is this elucination? And that's another thing I talk about
in those groups, is help me figure out how to
sort out what's real, what's not real, what's experiencing, Because
when you have a psychic killis you are a subject
to not experiencing the experiencing things that are not real.
At any time, when you experience that that's not real
in your mind that it is, how do you help
or how do you get the people that are around
them to understand what they need so they can still
help them get through what they're going through, and then
eventually hopefully they'll take and get a better side of
where they were.
There's no real sure fire solution here. I think the
best way is to make sure they understand it can't
happen first. That's the key to understanding it can't happen.
And then you start talking about whether or not this
is real. Now, the method I used to determine what's
real for me, this is my own method. I out
my own I divide the things I experienced up into
three big buckets. First bucket sould sics are pretty sure
are real, factual, actually happening, real world stuff. And the
second bucket of those things are pretty sure lot real
lot happening lot, real world stuff, hallucinations, illusions. And I
have a third bucket of things I'm just not sure about.
And I've put things into little three buckets. Basically, my
past experience with old illness. If someone is talking to
me directly face to face, I very solid elucidate that.
So that's probably going to go in the bucket of
real up they whispered down the corner, down the hallway.
Those are things that often hallucinate. And then look at
what I've just heard, and asked myself, does this make
sense with the person who know that, whether we're saying that,
does it make sense or is it nonsense? If it
doesn't make sense, that I put it in the bucket
of things are not real and just dismiss it and
move on with my life. But otherwise I put things
in that third bucket until against some information will allow
me to put it with the other two buckets. Sometimes
the information never does come. It kind of festers and
frustrates you. You want to know what's real. But I've
learned that acting and things that are not real can
get me a big trouble real quick. So I just
leave it in that third bucket until again, some information
will allow me to put it on the other two buckets.
And sometimes the information ever does come, And that's the
only way I know to cope with this. That's my
strategy I tell everyone to do with sky kills. They
need to strategy somewhat something that they could have their
own strategy, but that's the one I use, and that
works well for me.
They may want to try it, but you need some
kind of strategy help sort out what's real what's not
real in your in your world as you go through life.
When you first started having these issues, was you aware
of it that it was going on? What was your
thought process to get to that point of where you
realized that, Okay, this isn't real and this is it?
Took time.
It took time because no one teaches you this stuff.
No one tells you this stuff. When I became ill,
they wouldn't even tell me what what diagnosis was. I
was in a military psychiatric ward. I knew I had
the right to dream of medical records, so I asked
your own medical records, asked to read them. Well, they
had to give them to me, so I read them.
I found out by diagnosas schechropherre of hoe disorder, but
they wouldn't tell me anything about what that meant.
I knew nothing about it. It was total nonsense to me.
And when I got out of the hospital, I tried
to find that in a psychology book because I realized
it was a middle illness diagnosis. I never found that
in any psychology book, but I did find the scripture
of schizophrenia with illucination delusions. I was looking at that
and saying, you know, some of the things I experienced
make sense to me. I don't think they could have
been real. So I went on from that and learned
how to start doing that stuff. But it was not
easy and there was no clear pattern. I just had
to develop on my own because no one talked near
told me how to do it.
Okay, So with the fact that no one told you
and you had to do it on your own, there's
a lot of people out there. Unfortunately, they're not going
to have that mindset to actually dig find and try and.
Work it out.
So what would you give people that when they start
having this. I mean, it's the big black hole. It's unknown,
So anything unknown can be very scary, and when people
get scared, they will do things that they normally wouldn't
do to compensate for it. How do you tell them
where they can take a deep breath and relax a
little bit to take and balance that so they can
figure out what's going on and what they need to do.
I think that's the biggest problem I'm in the house
system to day is that though it would teach you
to this stuff when you first the cup psychi going
to sit down and talking about all this stuff. But
though does you get hospitalized for psychos today? What happens
is you get put on a medication, sometimes of your
own free will, sometimes it gets your will, but you
get put on a at a psychotic medication. In about three,
four or five days, you're a loder in psychotic and
the discharge you and that's all they do to put
you on vacation. Well, since you're a lot in psychotic,
they discharge you. During that time of the hospital most
likely received no other information at all, no therapy, nothing
but medication. And that's why we have so many problems,
in my opinion, because no one understands what's going on
with themselves. I think we need to educate the people
there about this stuff. I've been advocating for that for
some time. I think that's what my groups were trying
to do. You have to educate them or they can't
come to this conclusion. Really, until I found the book
Survivors gets apherm but Doctor Eful of Tory that I
really understood what I had. Those psychidi textbooks gave me
the first insight. First glimmerings. When I got back to
college affricate out of the Army, I was trying to
research the college library and I couldn't find anything of value.
Everything was based on psychoanalysis. They weren't even talking about
medication most of the stuff I read. And then I
found in the same library of the book Survivor Schittrophore
but Doctor E full Or Tory, MD. This was one
of the first books ever written about schizophrenia as a
physical medical owners for the layman. That told me what
I need to know, got me on the tractor recovery.
If I hadn't found that book, I don't think i'd
be talking to you today.
Wow. So I guess the big question is you've been
very fortunate that you found the book. You did your
due diligence, you figured it out, and you've been able
to work it through so that your life can be
what you'd hoped it was in the early life. Now,
how do we help those that they don't have that
deep dive ability they're just relying on doctors? Are they
just relying on psychiatrists or medication to stop it? How
do we get it out there so that we can
help the greater amount of people that need to help,
rather than just to select few that might do.
What you did. Copper Hittary of education for everyone to
become psychotic. That's what I've been advocating for for years.
If you think about it, if you get diagnosed with
type one diabetes, you get educations. Well, it's instantly, I'll
tell you how to deal with it and give you
lots of information how to cope.
Stuff like that.
You get dinosed kitch free, you get medication, told to
go on your way. If you do not what type
one diabetics, they wouldn't get it anywhere. Most of them
died pretty quickly. And that's what's happening with kitchen Free.
We're giving them nothing but medication and send them on
their way. There's no education whatsoever. That's where our mental
health systems biggest failure is to deal with CA kallis is.
No one teaches you how to live with it.
The only way to get changes like that sometimes is
through the legislation, and even that can't help that part
of it. Because you're talking about doctors and the way
that they treat people and help them and continue to
try to help. It seems like like the dog chasing
his tail here? How do we figure this thing out?
We have to get the doctors and metal professionals to
start doing this stuff. That's what I'm advocating for. I
have currently four articles.
I've submitted a Schizophrenia bulletin, which is a professional journal
for psychotic illo. Since that, I advocate for this and
the other review. I've tried to get this out in
the public and say we need to be doing this
stuff right now. The biggest obstacle, the biggest source of
stigma about middle illness, I believe it comes to the
mental health profession itself. There are doctors don't believe you
can do what I did was schizophrenia. Their doctors don't
believe you could have a life with schizphrenia. We've got
to educate the mental health profession itself before we can
get anywhere. The mental health profession, in my opinion, is
the biggest source of stigma against suburban lollness. There is.
Wow.
That's not good because they're the ones that's supposed to
give you support and help. Now, I've talked with several
different people and they went through ten years of hell,
you know, basically figuring this thing out. But then once
they figured it out, got the right medication, got the
right treatment, they've gone on to have very satisfying lives.
So we need to get that out there so that
not only the doctors in the mental health institutions know
and promote it, so that it can help take this
stigma away from people that don't understand it, because I
think one of the biggest challenges that we have is
the average person like myself that don't understand everything about
it because we haven't been around it. So we've got
to get the masses to understand that just because some
label is put on somebody, it doesn't mean it's a
death sentence.
I agree totally, and that's why I wrote the article
on Peer Guide to Psychosis that NSSC is putting out.
That's why I wrote that because we have to educate
the geripublic. We wrote that with specifically in mind legislatures
and judges and district attorneys and prosecutors and sheriffs and
law professionals and just basically anyone.
That need know this information.
What I did was I tried to explain in simple, clear,
easy to understandable terms, the very basics of what they
know about what psychosis is and what it does to
a person.
Yeah, because there's this big dark cloud hovering over it
and stopping people from understanding that it's not the end
of the world. It just means that someone has to
take and help these people so they can get back
on where they were and start creating the life that
they would hope that they're going to have.
Agree totally, And I think the mental health professors are
a big obstacle to that because a lot of them
don't understand it either. Right now, if you're a psychiatrist,
you get educated on psychosist or psychotical some degree. Some
psychiatrists know a lot about it, some know very little.
Some psychiatrists do not treat people with psychosists at all.
They treat people with depression or anxiety or subs abuse,
they don't treat psychostist all. So they don't understand that either.
And we look at psychologists, for example, most psychologists get
absolutely no trading whatsever or psychosists or what goes with
it or any to deal with it. Social workers and
licensed counselors, again, they don't get entreading in this.
It's totally forward to them.
And if you look at our mental health profession right now,
Basically the general population and most mental health professionals think
if you are a mental health professional, you're qualified to
speak with authority on any mental health problem or issue.
That's like saying, if you're a medical doctor, you can
be a general practier one day, a heart surgeon the
next day, do a lug transplant, the day after, do
any transplant the day after that. It's nonsense. You've got
we need Specially, it's a mental health where they have
the skills to do with the stuff. Deal with psychosis
requires a very special skill set that frankly, most mental
health professionals.
Do not have.
So wow, I just didn't realize it was this deep.
How do we get there? I mean, because there are
so many layers to this. You've got the legal system,
which we always worry about. We've got the medication to
get them at least to get it to stop. And
then you've got the knowing and the things that you've
just gone The one thing that kind of connect all
these things together are the doctors and the nurses and
all that that are supposed to help. So if they're challenged,
how do we get this to the point of where
we can get those people that lessen that challenge and
actually get into the ditch and help dig the ditch
and help the people that need to help.
I think that start with the mental health professionals. I
think that's where you start. The mental health professional need
to be taught what psychosis is, how to deal with it,
but most of them just don't know. I find that
most mental health professionals, other than psychiatrists, don't even understand
what psychosis really is. A lot of them have no
idea what to do other give you a pill, and
there's a whole lot more you need to recovery than
just a pill, but most of them think that's what
it takes. And we have a problem with the government too.
There's an age called SAMPSO which you probably know of,
that has guidelines for recovery. If you look their guidelines
for recovery, they make no exceptions of whatever psychosis. They
say everything should be free will, self determination, build your
own path, recovery, self actualization, self determination, self guided. That
works fine if you deal with drug abuse or a depression,
but we do with psychosis where you don't know what
reality is.
How can you do that? You just can't do that.
Furthermore, that guideline for psychosis doesn't put any requirement on
the institutions like hospitals other than that they have to
provide cultural incompetent care, and they have to provide trauma
inform care well. Cultural competence. Most of them don't even
understand what psychosis is. How can they be culturally competent
to someone with psychosis? As far as trauma informed care,
that's become a buzzword that doesn't really mean a whole
lot anymore. And I found by psychotic experiences to be
very traumatic. I think most people psychosis do believe psychosis
is traumatic, but.
I've never seen it.
I allow it is at a hospital anywhere for trauma
as a result of psychosis, they don't even address it.
They just pretend to ignore it. So they're not even
doing that, and that's all they're required to do.
They're not required to tell you anything else, not even
required to tell you what your diagnosis is or explain
what it means.
Yeah. Wow.
So in closing, you've covered a lot of things, and
I think it's really good information that people need to hear.
What would you like to say that you think is
the most important thing for people to understand in the
closing statement here.
I think the most important thing that understand is what
psychosis is, what it does to a person, And beyond that,
I think the next most important thing is going to
be to educate people as to how to live with thrillers,
because right now we're just basically give it a pill
and set up on their way with nothing else and
that doesn't work.
Okay, great, Yeah, it's been great, a lot of great information.
I really appreciate you coming on.
Thanks glad to hell. Thank you very much, Tony.
It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for taking the
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