He was 23 years old with a rich ethnic heritage and identity that he said gave him strength.  He looked like any one of hundreds, maybe thousands, of “youths” you could find on the streets.  A couple of tattoos. The kind I would see when I was driving with my husband and think sometimes “wow, it was so much easier in the days of Marlon Brando movies.” I would have preferred a handsome renegade in a leather jacket to this obese, angry, unkempt person who clearly did not want to talk to anybody, including me. He was not my patient.  A frustrated therapist asked me to see him because no medications had worked on him.  She had expected me to come up with a miracle drug we could get samples.

He told me the same thing, over and over again, that he was doomed, that nobody could help him, that I was a nice lady, nicer than most, but I was wasting my time just like the rest of them.

He heard voices, always angry and deprecating voices, telling him he was going to die, that he was no good and deserved to be killed.  Many times, in his life, he had attempted to prove the voices correct. Read more on The Devil’s Role In Mental Illness…