Kanye West: From A Schizophrenia Sufferer's Viewpoint
*This is an opinion piece on Kanye West*
It’s really hard to watch the portrayal of very dark subjects on TV or in the movies. It’s hard to see people, especially celebrities go through tough times in their lives and it’s spilled out everywhere for all to see. From my perspective, to watch Kanye West going through what he’s going through rings several bells for me that highlight what I previously went through as someone dealing with Schizophrenia in my past.
At my worst, when I was in a very deep psychosis and not medicated for my condition, I had the classic symptoms of Schizophrenia. I had the voices, paranoia, delusions, amongst other negative-type symptoms that go along unnoticed with it. My delusions were remarkably similar to what Kanye’s behavior has shown on national news outlets, and social media. I wasn’t someone who was racist or antisemitic at my worst. This also doesn’t go into speaking about his character too much, because his character is largely a lifelong thing that is built upon with values and morals. This is speaking on the change that we, as a public entity have seen. I feel a lot has changed with his mental state since his mother, Donda’s, passing.
It is as if it’s quite normal to see celebrities go through rough patches, because they are people, too. Though, Kanye’s rough patch has turned a lot of things so upside down that it’s become what is seemingly a complete mental breakdown from my personal eyes, as I’m sure others. I do not condone or pass anything he does as OK, or even typical of any person. It has become something extremely dangerous to him, the people around him, and society.
As of now, December 2nd, 2022, his behavior has seen many downhill shifts. When I had a psychotic break back in 2011, I was outwardly against society and individual people. I wanted my revenge on people for things they had done to me. Given, I didn’t want to harm anyone, I just wanted to cut everyone out of my life for good. I had deleted my Facebook, and all platforms, and cut myself off from family and every friend I had. That was revenge to me. I had delusions about people trying to hurt me. I had a God complex stirring within me, that I felt I needed to tell people very important information that I believed would change the world for the better, no matter how dark it was. I sent cryptic letters to my family members only for them to make fun of me. I could go on. I was never hellbent on anything, though, and I never hurt anyone. If anything at the time, I wanted to hurt myself. I thought everyone was against me.
I was off meds for 4 years and it did wind me up in the psychiatric ward multiple times, very, very many times. Once I got on my medication, I was able to start seeing how I was not thinking right. This is almost sugar coating everything, that last line, because since I was off medication for four years, it took a good year for the medication to really take effect. After that first year, it took another 3-4 years to get my life built to where it was previously before the psychotic break I had initially. That whole span of time for all of that including the 4 year psychotic break was really the whole decade of my 20’s, with maybe a year or two to spare.
It's something I don’t like to think about much, and then to see Kanye and how everything is playing out with him on national TV and social media, it’s, dare I say, triggering. And it is! The second half of it being so, because I see so many deeply trying to dissect every little word he says or thing he does. I personally feel it’s fairly, baseline clear cut, but that’s me. There’s a ton more going into everything that going on, and should we all pay attention? I’m not sure, it’s up to individuals or society. As for me, after writing this, I am going to take a far step back, because it hits home.