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Ideally, if someone is afflicted with a psychotic illness, once medicated, she or he will gain insight into their condition--and into how their consciousness was or continues to be fooled by delusions and possibly hallucinations. Having insight into one's illness is the only way I know that someone can achieve a lasting and effective recovery from a psychotic condition.  

Developing insight into our condition and taking medication voluntarily is a better situation than someone forcing us to receive treatment. This is so for numerous reasons. Furthermore, forcing treatment on someone may interfere with the learning process. 

While acute psychosis probably interferes with learning, once someone is medicated, she or he has an opportunity to gain some understanding about what happened that led to the circumstances of being medicated and/or hospitalized. 

The mental health consumer should seize this opportunity, and should not ignore it. Family members and treatment professionals should realize that a mentally ill person, when they stabilize, at that point has the opportunity to learn from mistakes and to understand their illness.  

This is where therapy could have efficacy. Yet, many therapists make the mistake of trying to uncover deep pain from a person's past, and this could be not only useless, it can be harmful to the mentally ill individual.  

Therapy for those with a biologically caused mental illness can and should be about dealing with day-to-day problems, and it should be about helping the consumer realize that he or she has an illness that necessitates treatment.  

When stabilized, it is an opportunity to take the next step in recovery, which is often that of acknowledging having a psychiatric condition plus making a commitment to treatment. If enough insight can be gained, and if we reinforce that insight through understanding ourselves more, we have a chance at creating a better future for ourselves.  

When force enters the picture, it could pollute the learning process. Some force is needed some of the time. However, if we do not feel in charge of our own destinies, we could end up simply being at war with treatment professionals who we might perceive as oppressors.  

Concerning gaining insight, the responsibility is mostly that of the stabilized mental health consumer. We own our recovery--it is not owned by the people hired to treat us. We need to do things that help us do better; and if we do better, the credit for it is ours. When we let treatment professionals take "ownership" of our recovery, even though this is merely a perception, it is unhelpful.  

Certain things have helped me in my recovery, one in which I have gone more than twenty years since my most recent hospitalization. 

Journaling, writing down my thoughts and feelings onto reams and reams of yellow pads of paper, was one of the biggest things that helped me develop the capacity for insight into my condition. This insight would ultimately lead to being able to go more than twenty years since my most recent acute episode of psychosis leading to hospitalization.  

It didn't matter if I wrote down delusional thoughts--actually this was a very good thing. I could pick up the writings later in the day or the next day and realize that my thinking at the time was erroneous.  

I began journaling my thoughts back in the 1980's. I don't do as much journaling now, but I did do a great deal of journaling for well over twenty years. It is a way to express emotions, it is a way to help clarify thinking, and it can alleviate pain. While journaling, I have observed and studied how my mind works. 

No one other than the individual writing the journal should have the privilege of viewing the writings. Journaling should be a separate activity from writing things for others to read. These are a person's private thoughts, and they are none of anyone else's business.  

Other than journaling, I have developed my meditation ability to the point where I can often get pain relief from it on demand. While there are medications that can relieve emotional pain, some of which I consume, meditation picks up where medication leaves off. If reliant solely on pills to get relief from emotional pain, you could be on a slippery slope.  

I have developed my own personal method of meditation, by studying the internal causes of my emotional pain. While some kinds of emotional pain are necessary and even healthy, some emotional pain is excessive and we could do without. Taking a class in meditation is a worthwhile undertaking. 

While I believe the responsibility is ours to gain insight into our condition, I think the mental health treatment system could do more to educate people. If people can learn more about their illness and about what works versus what does not, many may never get to the point of needing to be forced to take the psychiatric meds that have been prescribed.