A letter to encourage people with psychical problems!

         As a young soldier I lived through my endogenous psychosis for the first time. After this in spite of my very good grammer school examination grade everybody discouraged me from studying at the university. Instead I did it. I had to leave one semester as a gap due to the psychosis. After less than six years I finished my study at the university with a good grade as an engineer. On starting the profession the psychosis also reached me. Not before three years later and up to the age of 48 I was able and allowed to work again as a fully established engineer. So please encourage yourself to not less than before your illness.
        I can feel your disappointment, when media tell of mental ill people and of criminals within one sentence and when criminals tell of themselves as victims of their illness. In official statements concerning my illness depending on the context I was either too healthy or too ill. The only common point in these statements lead to the conclusion that the office hat to face as little cost as possible. I was disappointed by application talks where the decision was fixed upon my past illness and not upon my possible success. But I say thanks to that employer who gave me a chance although I answered him the truth about my illness when applying. I say thanks to those psychologists and psychiatrists, who together with me found out what to do, and did not deaden the illness without telling me the reason. And I thank my family, who were desperate and patient.
        While staying in hospitals I needed medicine in so high dose which a healthy person cannot imagine, not even full drunk. But in all day dose this medicine enabled me to do my job as an engineer. Ending the stay in psychiatric ward must not end the treatment; this determined me getting healthy. Two institutions contributed to this, but I do not tell names, because each of you himself must decide who is the person he can rely on in this treatment: I think it must not be done without psychotherapy, because only this way getting healthy is possible while reducing the dose of medicine. But there is no sense in it before the surface of the invisible wounds has healed. For me this took almost two years. In psychotherapy I had to change my attitude to my own life. But nobody who suffers from endogenous psychosis needs to look for a guilt of his own. Other people are not guilty of this illness anyway. Today I can manage life and my weaknesses in intervals without medicine. And I found new strong points in me.
        After my first psychotherapy, where I was in-patient during the day and at home during the night, my dose of medicine was so low that neither me nor others got aware of it. I lived and worked several years as an engineer with this medicine. During my second psychotherapy visiting a doctor once a month in the evening after working I got aware of the benefit which my medicine had done to me in these years. On ending the therapy I was able to do without this medicine. But sometimes until today it is as necessary for me as for you that I visit a doctor, when I suffer from head ache, insomnia or tension. This well approved medicine brought me to my maximum weight. Today a much better medicine is helping me.
        My wife has lived through a similar past as merchant. In her last acute illness I had to watch that she nearly put an end to her suffering by suicide. Today she is glad that she did not succeed in it. She accepts her way through life in profession and family with success and we are lucky in it. I wish as much success in rehabilitation for each of you. 
Last update on this page: April 20th 2013