I have to take advantage of some humor on this message board when I can and my blushing; I appreciate the kind words and jokes. I have had people question my intentions, or blame me or NODID for many different conspiracy theories, and it is heart breaking. I want to show that I am doing my best to understand and work with the community, and as I continue to work towards my graduate degree I will never forget why I have chosen to work in this field.
It has been a very stressful time for me. As an undergraduate student, I am learning so much from my Advisory Board, and have had the honor to work with Dr. Simeon, who allowed me to design a study and utilize resources with Mount Sinai School of Medicine and access to her knowledge to create published research that is designed to show the clinical community the validity of Depersonalization and Derealization as complex disorders with unique symptoms -- we all know that DP often gets thrown aside simply as a symptom of another disorder and the diagnostic criteria is extremely vague in the DSM-IV-TR.
However, we are working to show this is a distinct, quantifiable, and very serious condition with many different experiences that vary among the community. Working on the research, trying to interact with other researchers, and reading and trying to respond to hundreds of e-mails from people who are suffering from both DP/DR and HPPD is very difficult and often a very draining experience. I may receive a 4 page e-mail from an individual, an e-mail with their heart and soul poured into every word, and I must admit that at times I am extremely frustrated that I do not have my advanced degree at the time to be able to answer the questions or provide the help that is necessary. Additionally, DP/DR are such difficult conditions to treat, and when I review the treatments that have been tried, the rates of suicide ideation, and the number of individuals on disability because of these disorders, I become more energized to work harder to legitimize the disorder and work to get funding for further research for DP/DR. It is critical that we establish Depersonalization disorder with all of the unique symptoms that accompany the disorder, which vary from patient to patient, in the DSM-V.
I do not have Depersonalization Disorder, but I have read through the 60+ pages, single spaced, of responses and stories from individuals from this message board about their disorder in our study. Although my focus began with Hallucinogen-induced disorders, I found that DP/DR often accompany drug-induced problems. Independent of this relationship, DP/DR caused from ANY trauma or DP/DR without a precipitating event has affected me at a very emotional level. Looking at almost 400 sets of responses from the study that we designed, we know that each row in our statistical software is a person, one of you, who has feelings and are dealing with a very serious and often misunderstood disorder.
It has been an honor to have this community take the time to answer the questions for the study, and to trust a small group of individuals to work with Dr. Simeon to create the most comprehensive Depersonalization and Derealization disorder database of information that exists to date. We are looking forward to the publication, and it looks like it will make it in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. We address treatment methods, and we have such an extensive collection of descriptive statistics that the paper had to be shortened, and the final manuscript was still 25 pages long.
It has been a unique road for my life to get to this point, and I will continue to work to the next level as an advocate in any way I can. In addition to working this year at a regular job to pay off debts in order to return to school next fall.
Thank you to the members who have trusted their information with us, and when the second publication comes out, I am sure that everyone will feel it was worth the years we have worked on it. It will be very authoritative and is designed to change the hearts and minds of clinicians about the seriousness and constellation of symptoms experiences by a person with DP/DR.
Again, thank you for the jokes. I appreciate these much more than individuals who question the integrity of individuals who are working after other jobs, volunteers who work at no cost, including Dr. Simeon and her staff, to help out a small non-profit organization work with this message board to create such an amazing paper. That is why we acknowledge this web site, because people on here helped guide the questions, so I consider both the study that is already published in Psychiatry Research, and this new study as a work co-designed by those individuals who helped me by providing questions they wanted answers to.
Best wishes to everyone, and thank you for your support.
David
and all you can say it sorry? :evil:
