On her YouTube channel, Carolyn Ponzoha shares her journey of recovery from psychosis, shedding light on the struggles she faced with verbal expression following her psychotic episode. Not only that, Carolyn, once a gifted artist, found herself unable to pick up a pencil for over a year.

Initially, she could only respond to yes or no questions, grappling with a condition known as alogia or poverty of speech. This poverty of speech manifested as difficulty speaking spontaneously, leading to brief replies or vague, incoherent rambling—a significant hurdle for someone accustomed to articulate communication. Like Carolyn, I, too, found myself grappling with similar challenges during my recovery.

Before my psychosis, I thrived in creative pursuits, excelling in writing, artwork, and verbal expression. However, after my recent psychotic episode, I felt as though I was contending with significant cognitive impairments. Thought blocking and derailment became regular occurrences, disrupting the flow of my thinking and leaving me momentarily blank. The sensation that I had is that I was suffering from genuine brain damage. The sensation of “brain damage” can be described in professional literature as “cognitive impairments” or “cognitive deficits” related to psychosis.

Cognitive impairments commonly observed in individuals recovering from psychosis are:

• Difficulty concentrating and staying on-task, making even simple tasks like reading comprehension a struggle.
• Challenges remembering instructions and organizing tasks, leading to difficulties in completing assignments on time.
• Longer processing times for new information, often necessitating frequent reminders to retain it.
• Zoning out or working at a slower pace, resulting in feelings of disconnection from others.
• Problems with problem-solving and adapting to change, complicating decision-making processes.
• Difficulty maintaining engagement in academic or professional pursuits, sometimes leading to dropping out.

Navigating through these challenges, I sought solace in tools like ChatGPT, which aided me in creative expression and storytelling—a vital aspect of my recovery journey. However, while helpful, ChatGPT’s responses sometimes lacked depth, automatically generated without actual understanding of context and complexities, underscoring the need for a multifaceted approach to recovery.

Beyond technology, my journey of recovery involved medication, therapy, and unwavering support from loved ones—a process of rediscovering and reinventing myself. This journey is uncertain. Like Carolyn, and many other people who experienced psychotic episodes, I’m not likely to meet the high expectations I had from life. I’m not likely to have children, become an accomplished academic, or hold a successful career. In fact, I’ll be lucky if I could live independently and hold a simple job. I’m also not likely to turn my scattered thoughts into a masterpiece. The most I can hope for with ChatGPT is just to be able to rebuild a sense of self from nothingness, to rewrite myself into life. I feel that it is important to point out that I am not writing my blog posts on my own, but with ChatGPT as an assisted technology, the same way people use canes to walk or audio files to read. I am also including the resources I used for this post for further reading.

McCutcheon, R.A., Keefe, R.S.E. & McGuire, P.K. Cognitive impairment in schizophrenia: aetiology, pathophysiology, and treatment. Mol Psychiatry 28, 1902–1918 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-023-01949-9

Sheffield, J. M., Karcher, N. R., & Barch, D. M. (2018) conducted a study titled “Cognitive Deficits in Psychotic Disorders: A Lifespan Perspective,” exploring the cognitive challenges faced by individuals with psychotic disorders. You can find the article at this link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11065-018-9388-2