‘I’ve been able to build a life that I never thought was possible’

Being creative, especially through music, has been part of my healing. I think it's offered me a way to connect with other people. I found my best friend through our shared love of making and writing music, as well as through our shared lived experiences and our struggles and our recovery and advocacy.

My name is Carlos Larrauri. I just finished law school at the University of Michigan. I'm a former fellow at Harvard Center for Public Leadership, and I live with schizophrenia. I grew up in South Florida in Miami to a home of loving and caring parents. I had, I think, a normal childhood and, went away off to college where I started to first experience the symptoms of psychosis.

I started hearing voices commenting on my situation, asking what's up, what's going on. At some point they were telling me I was an angel or a prophet. I started having belief that there were special messages in the television. I'd watch a Miami Heat game and the NBA players would ask me what was going on.

Routine classwork that I can normally do, cranking out an essay in a couple hours became impossible. I would stare blankly at my computer screen. At some points at college, I was eating out of trash cans and smoking cigarettes off the ground. I had become like a homeless person wandering the college campus at odd hours.

I had a family friend who had been able to see me over the years and she notified my mom that there was some changes in my behavior and that were concerning and my mom immediately came to campus and she met with my academic advisor and myself and my academic advisor said, Carlos, you're an adult. I don't have to share anything that's happened to you on campus.

And I said, you know, with all due respect, professor, I have a Cuban mother I've never really had a right to privacy. So, all kidding aside, my mom was extraordinarily practical about all this. She really took the approach that we have to nip this in the bud. And we know that as early intervention. So I'm very fortunate that, uh, she advocated for me to get the help I needed.

She pushed me to see providers. She helped me to go to appointments. She provided a loving and nurturing space where I could have my basic needs met early on in my recovery so I could focus on getting better, getting well. During the throes of psychosis, this isn't a situation that you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps.

This is a situation where you need a community to step up and help you to get what you need. And I wouldn't be here today without her. I was very fortunate that early on I was connected to support groups and communities such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And there I attended groups at the behest of my family, my mom.

But I quickly decided that I wanted to give back in, in a professional capacity. And so I decided to go back to school. I went to nursing school and then ultimately, graduate school with the aspiration of becoming a psychiatric nurse practitioner. So I could be the person that others would need.

So I could be the person that I needed and it's allowed me to care for the population. And I found that it has enriched my clinical practice. I mean, the hardest part is early on in the diagnosis of psychosis, schizophrenia, where it feels like your whole world sort of turns to black and there's no hope.

And for me, when I share my experience to my patients, I draw not only from my, you know, clinical knowledge, but from my lived experience. After working in the front lines of our healthcare system, doing direct patient care for a number of years, I felt that I could make a greater impact by doing systemic advocacy on behalf of this population.

So I decided to go to law school at the University of Michigan, I decided to go to policy school at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, with the hopes of taking the lived experience I have as someone with this illness, the clinical experience I have caring for this population, to fight for, you know, change, whether that's in the form of a care that's more coordinated between mental health and primary care, whether it's in the form of continuing to share my story, to fight stigma and to change public perceptions and to potentially have, you know, a greater impact one day.

Moving forward now in my role, hopefully shaping mental health policy, I think the most important things are early intervention, getting people care as quickly as possible, community-based care, getting people care in their homes and amongst their friends and family and having access to high quality evidence-based care.

Living your possible means to me shattering expectations of what you think schizophrenia means. You know, early on I felt, and I'm almost ashamed to say that I was destined to a life on the margins, that the best I could hope for was, you know, living at home forever or not working or going back to school or having a family.

I've been able to build a life through the support of friends and family that I never thought was possible when I got first diagnosed. You know, a life filled with work, relationships, and in many ways I feel a deep sense of gratitude and appreciation that despite a challenging road behind me in the head, I still have a very rewarding and fulfilling life.

It was hard early on to feel like I was ready to find love and be loved because you get this stigmatizing diagnosis and label and you just naturally think, you know, this is over. Who would want to be with me? And it took a number of years before I felt ready to put myself out there again, to be vulnerable, to start dating.

But I'm, you know, very fortunate that I met a wonderful woman. She's in the mental health business also. She's a psychiatrist in training. So it's a family affair at this, at this point in my life. I feel immense gratitude that it's exceeded what I thought was possible and my expectations for what I thought my life with this illness would be like.

So, you know, don't give up. You are not alone. And I'm hopeful that the future for people living with schizophrenia is more promising than it's ever been before because we are talking about this condition and more than we ever have before and changing public perceptions.

And if you find it in you, in your recovery to give back, to help others, to serve through peer support, through advocacy, I think that'll not only help others, but it'll help you in your own recovery.