"I knew John from the {Muskegon} Heights, he told me about this place. I liked it because it was a place where people deal with a lot of stuff like depression and anxiety, but it's a peaceful place. I knew it was a place that could help people, so I told Michelle, then Charles, I told a lot of people who ended up here.

 

I'm schizophrenic with anxiety. It's difficult being around people, I want to curl up into a shell around people and society. I stay with my mom and friends so I don't need too much money. I worked a bunch of different jobs throughout my life, restaurant jobs, factory jobs, I never liked one so I would move on. The Schizophrenia was part of the problem.

 

I was first diagnosed when I was 21. I knew something was wrong, the way I would act, or talk, something was wrong so I went to find help. Sometimes I would act not too good, completely different from other people, or talk really differently, or I would start talking to myself.

 

Society treats people with mental illnesses as real different. They fear what they don't know, and they don't know how mental illness works. They brush it off because they don't understand, they treat us differently and brush people off, make fun of it, say something bad because they don't know. We need more education on mental illness, about how it works, how people deal with it, how it affects people, so society knows, and will treat us better, they will know how to handle people. We need to push it out more, to talk about it more. Many people don't know about it, and when they meet someone with mental illness, they will brush them off, say something nasty. People fear what they don't know and react in different ways to it. 

 

I can understand what people are going through here, and it helps me because I'm not the only one, people here are like me. I hope someone can pick it up after Judie. It would have to be the same person as Judie, Judie mark 2! People look at this place and they know the type of people they're dealing with and will be nicer to people here. And treat us fairly like others. 

 

I know a lot about music, anyone needs to know about music, they ask me. I know the artist who sings a song, if it's rap, rock, country, anything. I just know it, old and new, like a photographic memory. You hum something, and I'll know what it is, even from the '50s, I'll know what it is. I'm sorta universal with music, I like everything. I can beat box really good, my friends don't know how I do it but now with my teeth out, it's hard for me to do it. I make beats now though, I produce. It makes me feel good and free doing music, it's good for my mind. I have a good rhythm, but I never played an actual instrument. I would like to publish my music, I've never tried, but I have a lot of tracks.

 

I just want to tell the whole world that people with mental illness are no different than anyone else, we're still human, we're still the same as anybody else."

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The above story was put into writing by Pat ApPaul, a Welsh Documentary Photographer based in Michigan USA.