I am going to do a controversial.
SCHIZOPHRENIA IS A CHRONIC ILLNESS THAT DESERVES SPACE IN CRIPPLE PUNK
As an example, I had a delusion for 4 years, that was so pervasive that I ended up seeing 3 immunologists and in treatment on drugs meant for Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. My delusion? An ever-growing list of primarily food allergies that causes debilitating, painful, and sometimes life-threatening symptoms, when the third immunologist suggested that I may have a stomach issue with processing certain foods instead of allergies I had 50 or so known off-limits foods and was eating plain rice, carrots, bananas, and diet soda only. My physical pain and symptoms weren't unreal because of my schizophrenia, it caused me to miss events and stuff.
Schizophrenia can overlap with a lot of physical disabilities to the point where it is a bit of a blurred line between what is caused by mental health and what is caused by physical problems in the body.
I think another layer complicating this is when our bodies don't work. Catatonia, a symptom characterized by strange movements, and inability to move at times is often a feature of schizophrenia. Catatonic movement is something I have been maligned for throughout my life and has never been something I can hide.
What about when delusions complicate our movement? When I have delusions of being dead, often during that time my head tilts to the side and I can't move it without great effort on my part, I also heavily limp, and my arm movements become jagged, to the point where I'm unable to use my wheelchair and crutches for my hEDS pain.
There is also the mistreatment we get for our facial expressions, a key symptom of schizophrenia is that facial expressions are pretty much non-existent or sometimes entirely wrong for the situation we're in (i.e. Laughing during the funeral service of your friend's dad who was murdered) and that can cause us to face abuse because our face doesn't work right and our brain can't translate the right emotion sometimes.
Hallucinations are entirely physical sensations we experience, I frequently experience painful tactile hallucinations, is that pain less real than that of someone with fibromyalgia or hEDS? What about the olfactory hallucinations? When I hallucinate smells so strong that I vomit, is that not a physical manifestation of my disorder? Visual and auditory hallucinations are sound and visual disturbances. For many schizophrenics, auditory hallucinations cause episodes of being unable to interact with others in a sound environment because hallucinations can be so overwhelming. Our body can't tell the difference between reality and hallucination, disability isn't as simple as separating category by cause of disability. In some cases, it's more cut and dry but schizophrenia literally isn't.
My schizophrenia has probably impacted my physical health and disability more than my hEDS, POTS, Gatro(hopefully -paresis, otherwise IDK what it could be), asthma, and episodes of CRPS ever has. We already aren't welcome in mental health or neurodivergent communities because of the ableist idea that associating with us makes others look bad, so it just generally sucks to exist as a psychotic and especially as someone with a Schizo-Prefix disorder.
Side note - The reason psychotics and especially schizophrenics are always rejected from community spaces is because people use "delusional" and "psycho" and "schizo" as insults to undermine and bring into question the intelligence of the person making the arguments. I bring to your attention #abledsarepsychotic during the #abledsareweird era of Twitter. Where traditionally physically disabled people and aspychotic people, in general, used our disability to discredit ableism against them by saying ableds were unreliable sources due to experiencing psychosis, a disability. When I called this out on Twitter I got a lot of angry DM's from people telling me I didn't get a say on disability justice, despite A)Being physically disabled myself, B)Being generally disabled myself, and C)Me literally knowing what I'm talking about in regards to ableism against psychotics.
I can't help but think this messaging about using psychosis as an insult being okay, for even other disabled people to do is about palatability to ableds you know?
